Mod idea: Sarevok Kills Charname

artificial_sunlight

What if CHARNAME walks out of Candlekeep with Gorion and gets ambushed by the Armored Figure and Tamoko. Gorion shouts to run away, CHARNAME tries to run but Tamako casts Hold Person (?) and succeeds). Gorion manages to kill the lesser goons. Then tries to dispel CHARNAME’s state. The armored figure kills Gorion before the spell finishes. Tamoko chunks the paralyzed CHARNAME… the end?

How difficult is it to start a BG2 game with this sequence.

You (Sarevok) plan to meet up with (Tranzig, Tazok, Davereon, Tarnesh?) in (FAI, Beregost?) but you were captured by mysterious cloaked figures. Unable to cast spells and worn from the battle with Gorion you stood no chance...

A soft woman’s voice wakes you up. You see no-one but you hear some fiddling on the lock. The lock opens and a woman appears as if she materializes right in front of you. It’s Tamoko and she asks you to flee with her, to get out of this dungeon.

Hold up! Tamoko hides in the shadows?? Yes in official resoures (dragon magazine, don’t read the Jaheira and Abdel part (puke smiley)) Tamoko is some sort of ninja from Wu (Kara-tur). So if we make her a Shadowdancer (lvl 5-7) dualed to cleric (of Mask? Or some other Evil or neutral Deity) we have an interesting start point.

You track your way out of the dungeon (encountering your sword) on the way. You encounter Yoshimo and Tamoko is very suspicious (or very happy) to meet someone else from Kara-tur.
You get out together and a spell battle is raging….

We were discussing a bug on the start sequence of BG1 (on reddit) and someone thought it would be cool if Sarevok killed CHARNAME at the start of the game. And I’m thinking about this for some weeks now. I think it would be cool to play BG2 with Sarevok as protagonist. Has someone modded something like this?

Sarevok:
A pre made character.
Lvl 7/8 Fighter with Minor deathblow as skill. Can dual-class to mage or thief (as per ToB). Maybe he has the Bhaal power charname would’ve had.

Tamoko:
NPC
Lvl 5 Shadowdancer  Lvl 7 Cleric . Follows Mask unless there is a more suitable Deity. I have to check if he already escaped Godsbane at this point. But I think he did.

Imoen:
She saw you kill CHARNAME
Is she captured with you or has she followed you to Amn? We can’t leave her out completely do we?

Minsc and Jaheira are not present here.
Are they dead or do we encounter them in Atkatla or the wilderness?

Do we need another NPC?
We could replace Tamoko with Cythandria if we assume Sarevok is captured on a later moment.

THOUGHTS on the workload

- I think BG 2 is really suitable to play as Sarevok. I plan to keep notes on places where he is mentioned or where they are really specific about CHARNAME (Candlekeep, Gorion, Hero of Baldur’s Gate etc.)
- If we forget Jaheira and Minsc we lose a lot of problems with that.
- It’s easy to say to the returning BG1 NPC’s that you never met them.
- The dream sequences are one of my main concerns, they are about Candlekeep, Gorion and Sarevok so that’s weird
- What about Immi, she plays a major role in the story, and getting Tamoko caught by the Cowled wizards is a bit far fetched
- In the hell trails you fight the one Bhaalspawn from Aloundo’s prophecy (a.k.a. Charname)
- In ToB we delete Sarevok (no big deal imho)
- What do we do with Reiltar Anchev?
- We assume the Iron Crisis was resolved by the dukes, without proper leadership the Iron Throne toppled.
- Can you run an normal game and a Sarevok game in the same install with ingame scripts

Humanoid_Taifun

1) From what I remember, Tamoko was supposed to be Yoshimo's sister. They would probably recognize each other. But then, since Yoshimo only traveled there from Kara'Tur to investigate her death, he would probably not have gotten caught by Irenicus (and even if he did, he would not obey a geass to betray her).

2) Sarevok as a level 7/8 fighter?
That is way too low.

3) Irenicus' aides are just conveniently around for this minor scuffle? Tamoko did not have enough time to to expend her spells, and by your own description Gorion never got around to hurting anyone.

- I do not think BG2 is suitable for Sarevok at all. The main quest about traveling to Spellhold would never be accepted by Sarevok. At best he would lay waste to the cowled wizards for insulting him by kidnapping one of his subordinates. Most of the other quests would also hold no interest to him. He might take over the D'Arnise and Roenal keeps in order to gain political power, which he might use to start another war.
- Why would Sarevok care to conjure up Charname for his trials? He saw Charname once and it was not a memorisable encounter. Why would Sarevok even have similar trials to Charname? He is very set in his ways.

I think the idea of Sarevok surviving Baldur's Gate 1 is interesting, but for a mod he should probably be made a companion of Charname. During the final encounter at Bhaal's temple (probably after losing a few subordinates), Sarevok finally realizes that he lost, and can be convinced that he should indeed cooperate with Charname for a chance to survive.
The following mod would be somewhat scary because Sarevok is not a loyal man. He is highly ambitious and liable to backstab you the moment you show any weakness.

artificial_sunlight

Thanks for your response, I made this thread especially for this kind of comments.

Humanoid_Taifun wrote: »

1) From what I remember, Tamoko was supposed to be Yoshimo's sister. They would probably recognize each other. But then, since Yoshimo only traveled there from Kara'Tur to investigate her death, he would probably not have gotten caught by Irenicus (and even if he did, he would not obey a geass to betray her).

Yes that's a problem, I plan to take notes on my next run through BG2 to find such things.

2) Sarevok as a level 7/8 fighter?
That is way too low.

I think a little level drain is not crazy after all the torture.[/quote]

3) Irenicus' aides are just conveniently around for this minor scuffle?

Yes this is something to work on.

- I do not think BG2 is suitable for Sarevok at all. The main quest about traveling to Spellhold would never be accepted by Sarevok.

yes the Spellhold thing is my main concern.

DJKajuru

I think that the biggest challenge in writing a chaotic evil villain mod is showing some real character progression.

I mean, canon BG1 Sarevok shows no conscience, no vulnerabilities, is prone to act violently with his overbearing fighter abilities and his evil nature is transparent . A good villain, but as a playable character it may be a bit childlike ("Im tough and I kill stuff!") , in the game it's only during ToB that he begins to question his own existence and how empty it is to be evil and just kill stuff, specially in his epilogue .

So in my opinion for a Sarevok mod to shine you'd have to bring up those shadows in SoA, otherwise he becomes another Dorn .

fluke13

This would be a huge undertaking, basically a complete game conversion. Such large projects tend to loose steam in the modding world. It might be better to create a single short Sarevok adventure, then you could always do more and even tie them all together at the end, just to insure yourself that if RL gets in the way, you'd have at least something fully complete to enjoy and share.

I've modded the first cut scene in bg1 so that it's playable, so if Charname doesn't run away he will get killed. In terms of structure, you might want to set it up as an alternative campaign (EET style) keeping the original game in tact but copying and renaming area files for your mod.

artificial_sunlight

I think the main difficulty is finding a good reason to travel to spellhold. Maybe he should be captured with his father (not that he really cares about him). So Irenicus can take his father to spellhold.

Sarevok wants to take revenge on Irenicus, and he can tell goodie NPCs a fake reason to go there.

Neverused

An interesting thing to explore is how different his positions would be in BG2 vs BG1. In BG1, he shows no conscience or vulnerabilities because he's at the very seat of his power, the big fish in a pond of minnows. But if he arrives in SoA with no allies, no friends, no machinations he's been working on for years... He might act very differently. He might keep the no conscience act, but he HAS vulnerabilities now, he has to scheme and claw his way to the top.
As for Spellhold, even in vanilla, an alternate motivation to seek out Irenicus is that he promised you that he could empower you further. Sarevok might well take that chance, if he's tasted the hint of divinity but its main power is still escaping him.

Sir_Garrick

This is an interesting idea for a mod. I've thought about a similar idea myself over the years but lack the time, knowledge, and writing skills for creating such a mod. I always thought it would be interesting to have Sarevok kill CHARNAME in the final battle of BG1 and then get captured and taken to Amn in BG2. That way, he's failed in his plans in Baldur's Gate which may cause him to either question his goals or at least reevaluate his place as a Bhaalspawn.

ithildurnew

Sounds like all this is much better suited as fanfiction fodder, to be honest, rather than a time consuming and likely kludgey conversion of the base game. It's my observation that the vast majority of such projects ended up with incomplete or at best rather questionable results... much better ways to direct modders' and would be modders' time and energy imho.

artificial_sunlight

I'm aware that this is a mega project. But I'm not the only one with this idea, and someone might pop-up with half completed mods or great ideas.

Plany

Hm, Instead of Sarevok's journey, I think it would be better to create an more evolved Evil path through BG2. I remember years ago, there was a guy Deathsangel at SHS who was working on a mod called "The mod for the wicked".

The goal of this mod was to make an alternative Evil path through BG2 with clever options/manipulation on other to futher an evil charnames goal. Vanilla BG2 isn't very suitable for an evil charname due to lack of options.

My recommendation would be to revive this mod (with permission of course) or start a mod with a similar idea.

Skitia

The idea sounds fun and I think you should push it forward. The hardest thing to do isn't finding a way around the obstacles people are saying you'll run into, but getting started and distractions (Especially distractions.)

I would write it with the PC not controlling Sarevok, but one of his followers, so they could be of any gender and race and class. Then round it with Tamoko and three others.

You could keep things relatively thematic with some smaller swaps instead.

For example A twist you could add is that this PC is also a Bhaalspawn. This could trigger a battle to the death between them and Sarevok if their disposition with Sarevok, determined by conversations or quest results, was too low when this was revealed. You could also have this culminate in ToB instead after Mellisan is defeated.

Following this route even, you could have Sarevok take Imoen's place and be brought to Spellhold, though you'll have to stretch a bit on why a non-mage was taken (Could have used an illegal scroll?).

Replace Yoshimo with Tamoko, as noted above he wouldn't appear if she was gone probably.

You could play with Imoen being out for revenge, with someone who you could kill or convince to join after winning her over.

With this sort of route, you'd only change the references, a few alterations, a few removals, and probably need to change where the dream scenes happen. Then build up your custom dialogue for your story. It won't be design be compatible with some mods, but is still worth trying.

artificial_sunlight

Those ideas are good.
And indeed distractions happen. I will be spending my Christmas in the hospital this year, my child is very ill.

Endarire

@artificial_sunlight What is Sarevok is captured and taken directly to Spellhold? Maybe it's immediately. Maybe it's after doing enough tasks in the BG2 world. He too has some Bhaal powers and Irenicus might want to drain him!

brunardo

I thought about doing my next BG 2 run with PC as sarevok...totally works though and no different then a evil NPC fighter run. some changes if you keep him with his bhaal powers or not. only issue is TOB and meeting sarevok/himself in the pocket plane which you can just ignore...Mod would be better though