[ Days pass, though they stay in the Underdark long enough that it starts to feel more or less the same, the passage of time becoming one long, dreary march. By the time they’ve done everything they came to do – cultists slain, gnomes free, mushrooms happily dancing – Winter has long passed the point of wanting to quit the place into straight up impatience. The company helps, at least, because misery loves company. In those long, long days, if he and Astarion happen to share any more of those strangely tender moments under a canopy of starless black, he simply sees them for the gifts they are and doesn’t draw too much attention to it.
(He fears that perhaps this strange, burgeoning affection he has for the vampire will frighten him away. But gods, perhaps it’s time he’s stopped pretending his heart doesn’t skip a beat whenever their eyes meet.)
Very unfortunately, when they do make their way to the surface, it’s just as dark and dreary and suffocating as it was underground. And, beyond all possibility, infinitely more dangerous. They trek through the shadow cursed lands with torches and Winter’s Dancing Lights to guide them. They find Jaheira and her Harpers. They find the tieflings. They find an ox who is not an ox.
Then, at long last, they find Moonrise Towers. The place where all of their paths seem to be converging. It takes hardly any effort at all for Winter, gifted liar that he is, to convince them he’s a member of their cult, and they give him and his companions pretty much free reign of the place. In the spirit of knowing what they’re in for, Winter insists they take a look around. There is perhaps an unpleasant run-in with a thing in the wall. And another with a drow in a lab. And a hushed conversation with a gnome in a cell.
By then, the hour is late. As unpleasant as it might be hunker down in what is essentially enemy territory, the “True Soul” and friends are largely left on their own, and find a place to set up camp – it looks like an old, long abandoned storage room, caked in cobwebs and dust, but at least it’s private.
It’s habit by now to drift towards Astarion almost immediately upon settling, and Winter is hardly subtle about it. This time, at least, he feels he ought to check in on him, what with that drow woman looking at him like her newest plaything. So here he comes, poking around the vampire’s tent. ]
"leave act i" achievement goes here
(He fears that perhaps this strange, burgeoning affection he has for the vampire will frighten him away. But gods, perhaps it’s time he’s stopped pretending his heart doesn’t skip a beat whenever their eyes meet.)
Very unfortunately, when they do make their way to the surface, it’s just as dark and dreary and suffocating as it was underground. And, beyond all possibility, infinitely more dangerous. They trek through the shadow cursed lands with torches and Winter’s Dancing Lights to guide them. They find Jaheira and her Harpers. They find the tieflings. They find an ox who is not an ox.
Then, at long last, they find Moonrise Towers. The place where all of their paths seem to be converging. It takes hardly any effort at all for Winter, gifted liar that he is, to convince them he’s a member of their cult, and they give him and his companions pretty much free reign of the place. In the spirit of knowing what they’re in for, Winter insists they take a look around. There is perhaps an unpleasant run-in with a thing in the wall. And another with a drow in a lab. And a hushed conversation with a gnome in a cell.
By then, the hour is late. As unpleasant as it might be hunker down in what is essentially enemy territory, the “True Soul” and friends are largely left on their own, and find a place to set up camp – it looks like an old, long abandoned storage room, caked in cobwebs and dust, but at least it’s private.
It’s habit by now to drift towards Astarion almost immediately upon settling, and Winter is hardly subtle about it. This time, at least, he feels he ought to check in on him, what with that drow woman looking at him like her newest plaything. So here he comes, poking around the vampire’s tent. ]
Astarion?