Tag: NWN

Neverwinter Nights 1 Primary Campaign: Magical conspiracy theory and mystery adventure.
Neverwinter Nights 1 SoU Campaign: Coming of age adventure story.
Neverwinter Nights 1 HotU Campaign: Slow descent into hell.
Neverwinter Nights 2 Primary Campaign: Traditional heroic epic.
Neverwinter Nights 2 MotB Campaign: Contemplative look at the nature of religion.
Neverwinter Nights 2 SoZ Campaign: Trade route simulator with Dungeons and Dragons minigame. Hey someone has to pay the adventure bills.

#8: Aribeth de Tylmarande (Neverwinter Nights)

catslevania-symphonyofthenyan:

River's Top Ten Favorite Villains [8/10]

Paladin of Tyr fallen from grace, the elven blackguard Aribeth de Tylmarande is my first BioWare villain love. She entered my life when I was eleven, ranking her only slightly lower than Legolas and considerably higher than Drizzt on my list of “Elves I Enjoy, as Ranked by Seniority”.

(Backstory not free of spoilers, but then again this game came out over ten years ago, so if you haven’t played it yet you’re probably not going to) In the main campaign of Neverwinter Nights, Aribeth begins as a distinguished paladin of Tyr. She aids the player by providing healing and mercantile services, as well as advice about how to proceed in the story. However, at the end of Act 1, an enraged city of Neverwinter turns on her lover Fenthick for his (unwitting) association with the Act 1 big bad. The people call for Fenthick’s death and hang him. This drives Aribeth into a downward spiral of malice and misery. She abandons the player and friends, and returns later in the game with an army at her back, looking to do more than merely avenge her lost love. What becomes of Aribeth after this time is up to the player (it IS a BioWare game, after all), but by the time the expansion pack Hordes of the Underdark comes along, her soul has been banished to the Hell plane of Cania.

So what do I like about her? For one, I’m amused by the reversal of the “kill the girlfriend to further the man pain” cliche. It’s still a cliche regardless of the genders involved, but if you have to sit through the cliche, might as well make it the slightly more interesting version. And actually, I really liked Fenthick, and I liked Fenthick and Aribeth together, and I was eleven the first time I played it so I wasn’t conscious of the cliche aspect and I could just stew in my feels.

Furthermore, again, maybe it has something to do with being eleven at the time, but Aribeth was my first fallen-hero-turned-villain, or at least the first one that gave me real investment in her emotional journey. There’s a huge difference between starting up a game and having a narrator say “there was a hero, the hero turned into a dick, and now you have to go punch her”, and actually watching the hero turn into a dick and realizing that you will need to be the one to punch her. I tend to think of Aribeth as BioWare’s best executed character of this type until Anders came along in Dragon Age 2.

All together, come and mourn
For our fair city, Ascalhorn.
Like a crown jewel was Ascalhorn,
For proud Earlan, her beauty borne.
Yet even at the height of power,
When we ascended like a tower,
And other lands most jealous grew,
Still we sought to prove us true,
For mastery over ancient force.

We looked at the growing race of man,
And fear of weakness through us ran
Reaching down to Shadow’s heart,
For greater forces than our art,
But like reaching out to touch the sun,
We were burned, our strength undone,
And evil through our city did course.

So, for the evil that we had become,
It was up to us to make undone,
We tore it down and slew our kin,
And in blood and death repaid our sin,
We are the traitors and the faithful,
And in death we lay here shameful,
Forever shall our souls feel this remorse.

May those who come upon our sleeping,
Do not waste your time in weeping,
For evil done and good repaid,
We hope our lives a balance made,
And do not harshly judge us now;
We gave our all, best we knew how,
But all together, come and mourn
For our fair city, Ascalhorn.

The Fall of Ascalhorn (Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide, Chapter One)