Lex - the Tav (Baldur's Gate 3)

Wizard. Criminal past. Half (wood) elf.

Can only exist in the bg3 universe and be the Tav-leader, since the story and having to be in "charge" of the group is literally what changes her into who she is now.

She refuses to give up on the team but she's pretty sure she's going to die exactly because of her role and has accepted it. Pink hair, lots of freckles, scar over an eye before she lost it to Volo. Unexpectedly romantic. Kinda going with the vibe and bullshitting her way through with sheer dumb luck and persuasion. 

Trying to protect the underdogs because she doesn't want them to suffer like she did. Has a code. A chill weirdo who enjoys studying (now that no one is telling her she's too stupid to get it) and uses tadpoles like there is no tomorrow, surprisingly warm, and hides a criminal past. Takes in stride every crazy revelation in a "sure, why not" fashion.
Forced to evolve into half Ilythid by a bad roll. Accidentally started leading and people followed, and here we are. At the end of act 3 she becomes an Ilythid, but I'd be happy to write around that by pretending we rescued Orpheus and he did it instead. 

The ONLY thing I cannot write: her abandoning the Tieflings to their fate. She failed at rescuing some of them from the Moonlight Towers and had a breakdown over it because it was the first 'good thing' she tried to commit to in her life. 

Before the events of the game, because it explains a lot: elf mother had her from an affair with a human, was cast out and made Lex feel responsible; she taught Lex how to help her with scams and steal, then found an elf who would take her (but without the child) so she simply abandoned Lex in the woods.
Lex found her way to Baldur's Gate, stole, lied, mugged, fought; extremely violent and scary to others, once older she showed some impressive magical skills for someone who was never taught and was recruited by the closest academy. Unfortunately she was too 'different', and looked down on for classist and racist reasons by a teacher who made her feel worthless, so she left soon after and returned to her old ways. Being kidnapped gave her a chance to get out of it. Unless they talk about it earlier in threads, her past will definitely come up in act 3 because every criminal in Baldur's Gate knows of her. Temporarily on Nine-Fingers's radar, but she was too violent to join the guild back then.
She always feels like she's not good enough, hence later on running away from her own relationships.

Info about her interactions with companions and others. I won't expect your muse to adapt to their paragraph, we'll rewrite our own relationship, but I will reference her other "canon" relationships because they live in the same camp.

I'd still recommend reading this at least once so you understand her team dynamic and her personality.
But I want to say this: when writing with anyone I won't be shipping with (female characters, enemies, male characters who stay platonic) she had a 'thing' with Gale, broke it off with some vague excuse about his story with Mystra being too much (because she felt not good enough), went on to date Wyll and failed to rescue his dad, so she got dumped (good for him, he deserves better). There are strong lingering feelings for Gale and I root for them talking and fixing it once she's done roaming around in the Avernus with Karlach. 

• [EYE HORROR TW] She lost her eye to Volo when pushing him to go on with his crazy experiment to remove the tadpole, so now she can see invisibility with her prosthetic one. 

• LAE'ZEL: Lex finds her funny, even if it's not Lae'zel's intention, and will tease her whenever possible ('I love you too, Lae'zel'). She also doesn't take seriously Lae'zel 'bow to me' comments and always has sarcastic answers for those. She won't criticize Lae'zel for her way to live, though she didn't go for the Creche either. She helped Lae'zel at every turn, but didn't shy away from threatening to kill her if she didn't fall in line because she figured Lae'zel would appreciate the little flash of 'old Lex' and was right (in the game Lae'zel propositions to her soon after). Lex at the very end of the game trusts the Emperor and doesn't save Orpheus, but while initially furious Lae'zel still treats her as a dear friend in the epilogue.

• SHADOWHEART: It's a very complex relationship and one of my favorites: since she woke up to Shadowheart holding a knife to Lae'zel's throat, claiming she'd tell everyone Lae'zel had started changing and got killed for it, Lex's trust in Shadowheart went down very fast, even if she had done her best to not judge her over her faith before. So she intervened when Shadowheart confronted the Nightsong instead of taking a step back, and being forced to either fight Shadowheart or taking a step back and risking she'd kill the Nightsong broke their relationship for a long while, because Lex felt forced to submit and resented her for it. Afterwards Shadowheart became a person Lex could very much like, but Lex kept distance until the truth about her past came out; that's when she got truly involved again and their friendship was able to blossom. She's the first person Lex hugged at the reunion party.

• ASTARION is way too entertaining with his commentary. I stand by the idea that Lex will bicker/roll her eyes at him as much as he rolls them at her, but violently protect him with her life, which must be confusing to most; nobody is allowed to mistreat him except her (you know, the friendly 'oh shut up') unless they are also being friendly, which also means nobody is allowed to pressure Astarion to suck their blood. Lex was determined to kill Cazador and persuade Astarion not to ascend so that he'd stay himself and truly free. Astarion's consent in general is very important to her.  I feel that whenever Astarion complains about characters keeping secrets, though, Lex would immediately bring up 'hey remember the time you were a thirsty vampire and didn't tell me??'. Speaking of which, she let him bite her once out of pity, but it hurt and she's not a martyr, so she told him to just suck it from enemies from then on. Weirdest relationship. She's the type to say 'My friends are here. And Astarion' just to mess with him. Which is why I'm open to both ship or broship in the deepest possible way. (She did convince him not to ascend, and she's so proud of him later.)

• WYLL: Wyll is the one she effortlessly gets along with and she likes his good heart (because they are both heroic even if she's not supposed to be) and she pursued Wyll after breaking up with Gale (reciprocated), because it felt easy as well a something she should be hoping for (become a hero and be with one, no more life in the sewers). She kept thinking highly of Wyll the entire time, Mizora or not. Lex was beyond endeared by how sweet and romantic he was, weak to dorkiness (and that includes dancing). Due to game issues that forced me not to play for months, I forgot about Gortash's ceremony, so I went straight for a fight and had to kill Wyll's father, resulting in him breaking up with Lex, which in rp translates in 'going to to the inauguration felt too dangerous, Lex decided to attack from the sides first and it resulted in Wyll losing his father, whom she thought she could save later, and got dumped'.
  I can ship or broship them easily, as well as writing them as exes. She told Wyll he shouldn't give his soul to resurrect his father, too.  

• I ACCIDENTALLY started romancing GALE to see if he'd respond well when they performed a spell together, so I reasoned she got a bit lost in it, but I can feel that once he revealed his secret, not the Orb, but the relationship he had with Mystra, Lex pulled back because she couldn't deal with the 'sleeping with a goddess' part, especially because to her it felt like Gale thought something was missing from his relationship with Mystra, so how could a street-rat compare with his grand dreams? Surely he'd realize Lex is nothing. So she ran away from it. But Lex cared about him so much and everything felt weird for a while after, with a lot of hurting as well as worrying. She's not letting him sacrifice himself, though, and will fistfight anyone for suggesting it. This to say, I'm open to ship with Gale too, or to have a super strong friendship, and Lex will always have a very big soft spot for him, or we can even write them as 'exes' who can rekindle things if they ever talk about why Lex backed off, especially because her insecurities were starting to get better as time went and she realized she's a great wizard herself.
  But if we ever write them taking a romantic direction for the first time, know that her fears will eventually come up (as will his, I'm sure). In my game he had a hell of a happy ending becoming a teacher, but also there was a weird 'exes' vibe between them that I dug, bringing up their first spell together. 

• KARLACK could easily be her best friend for life. Lex wanted to hug her as soon as possible and was looking forward to getting some approval from her because she found Karlach to be so cool. There isn't much to say about Karlack except that Lex would do anything for her, it's very straightforward. Dammon was already dead by the time they reached him and the quest to save Karlash was gone, so the entire rest of the journey was riddled with fear of losing her and denying that anything would happen. Lex refused to make her become the Ilythid, and in the end left with Karlack to Avernus to find a 'cure' for her situation. They seem to be having a grand time together even if Lex is a Mind Flayer (as an aro writer, this ending made up for the lack of romance).

• We are in love with the dog. SCRATCH is Lex's baby and if anything happens to him she'll kill everyone at camp and then herself (cit.). We missed the Owlbear cave.

• I know of MINTHARA only from other playthroughs, Lex killed her right away to protect the tieflings. I can interact with her if we assume Lex accidentally left her knocked out, and later feels pity because the way Minthara speaks is like she had no choice and is actually less bloodthirsty than other companions. I don't have any specific relationship in mind since it didn't happen in Lex's canon but I'm assuming it's similar to the one she has with Lae'zel, where she finds her interesting but she will not pretend to be uncaring.

• I have HALSIN in my camp and he seems very pro-Lex, and Lex is glad he's around, but truthfully not particularly close to him. They can become great friends but she's not attracted to him, so I'm only open to them getting to know each other as friends (and I'll confess that I wouldn't have very specific ideas for it because they just... quietly talk and have no reason to fight, it's a pretty complete relationship except for the fact that Halsin re-propositioned to her without being prompted in any way). 

• JAHEIRA accidentally brings up all of Lex's parental issues because Lex wished she had a mother like her. As an adult, she's trying very hard not to get swept in by that. She's also failing. MINSC and BOO are instant friends, Lex finds them hilarious. 

• Isobel got taken away and I didn't even know saving her was an option during this playthrough, but I'm open to writing her as surviving. Nightsong is someone Lex find super cool too and if Isobel survived, Lex will be smiling a lot when seeing them be lovey-dovey. Every kid they find is also kept at camp, basically, and cared for. She rescued Zevlor and understands he's a flawed person, Lex doesn't hold it against him. She killed Raphael, Gortash and Orin as soon as possible with no bonding or no fake deals, so I don't know them well (I will in next playthroughs), but I can easily see how Lex could interact in threads with Raphael, when there is no threat of getting to a bad ending. Didn't go after Ethel because of my technical problems so no quest was completed there.  

• She had Withers at camp the entire time, but Lex still can't believe a magical corpse is trying to get her money. I feel like he and Lex had weird conversations off screen too. Still, he's a friend in his own way and forced to babysit every kid Lex sends to camp.

Added: December 23rd 2023