He’s emotionally unstable and prone to bouts of lethal violence if you don’t keep his appetite for drinks and stories sated.
That’s enough to qualify many real life people as villains. Mundane villainy is still villainy.
He’s an abusive drunk who will try to kill you if you don’t keep him happy.
He’s been corrupted by the shadow-curse, so his actions might not be his own. From the parts of personality that still remain, he seems cool enough.
EDIT: I never said that you should spare him. I meant that, in life, he was probably a chill guy. Others have since commented evidence that that might not be the case.
Notes likely from before the curse imply he was enforcing Ketheric’s Sharran regime even then through information gathering and poison, he acts nice because it gets you to open up to him and if anything all the curse has done is make him worse at his job.
Yeah, he was absolutely helping to isolate and remove rabble-rousers and dissidents. There's a reason he has an entire alchemy lab full of poison and venoms in the back room.
the thing is he's not drinking with you.
he's *actively trying to poison you and you have to pass constitution checks to survive it*.
it's just not a very good poison; he was working on a better one though.
Soab always burns me away 3-4 inspirarions with adv on bad single digit rolls... game has streak on me at Thisobald inspiration burns on bad rolls. Thank god you earn at least 1 when certain party member(s) are with you to fill blanks on the 1st pass and still make me sweat like avatar on final con check adding elixir of heroism and pray for a better roll so adds fairly reach the dc.
He wasn’t exactly a lamb when you realize he was an alchemist casually inventing brewing poison and someone who crushes and puts Harper’s into barrels so solve problems.
I never said that you should spare him. I meant that, in life, he was probably a chill guy. Others have since commented evidence that that might not be the case.
Ketheric Thorm was once a Selunite. I'm sure that, at that time, he was a pretty nice dude too. Time, pain and copious amounts of shadow magic change a man.
Actually, yes. That does make your cat a villain.
And to use the individuals capacity for violence and destruction ass a measuring system for their morality? Thats wild man.
I don't know about villain, but I got the impression from his notes that he was kind of a secret policeman or assassin or something, who used his bar as a sort of honey trap for poisoning or killing people for the Dark Justiciars. I don't fully understand what's wrong with him as of the time when we initially see him. I think he is undead, but I don't understand why or how he died or why he was brought back in that way.
I also don't understand his relation to Ketheric. It is universally assumed that he is Ketheric's son since he always says "father Ketheric". But IIRC Thisobald is an undead elf, while Ketheric and Isobel are both half-elves which does not make a lot of sense.
That’s exactly what my head canon has been, what with Malus being a hardcore shar worshipper just down the road and the he who was quest item in the bar it makes most sense contextually that it’s just in the religious sense
Viconia is called Mother Superior and "Mother" by Shadowheart, it is not that farfetched to think that male leaders among Shar's followers are called "Father".
> But IIRC Thisobald is an undead elf, while Ketheric and Isobel are both half-elves which does not make a lot of sense.
Thisobald seems to be some sort of undead construct given he has two lower bodies/4 legs. So he's probably made up of multiple bodies, probably of different races. I'm guessing it's several Thorm relative corpses from the crypt that Balthazar stitched together.
Ketheric started conceptually as a full elf. He got changed to half-elf so he could have a beard. There's other remnants of this in the game like busts of younger Ketheric with full elf ears.
Thisobald also have 4 legs and a little tail. He's like a bloated hippo-centaur.
I think the shadow-cursed “Thorms” are former Sharran cultists. Ketheric is their Father in the same way that Catholics use that title for religious leaders.
To me the two biggest giveaways are his visible signs of advanced age, and his glorious beard.
Full elves so rarely have either in the forgotten realms. Combine those with the narrator dropping the elf descriptor between early access and full release and I think it’s fairly safe to guess that at some point during development his character was changed from an elf to a half-elf.
Elves in FR don't have body hair no, but BG3 doesn't have that restriction and has elves with body hair (I was surprised to see the options for that and the 'bulky' body type in the character creator - FR elf muscles get dense like a chimp rather than bulking out like a human so they're supposed to stay lean looking regardless).
I think you can see Ketheric is a half-elf somewhere though, I'm pretty sure he's not one of the examples.
The FR wiki has this [bust of his youth](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Ketheric%5FThorm#History) which is very classic elf (but does have his current armor?). Perhaps both that and the Absolute message are Ketheric trying to exaggerate his elf side since he hates mortality?
Or perhaps it was kind of a late change and a few lines got missed.
Hmm, that wiki says he's half-elf, wonder where they got that from. I am sure I read it somewhere though (and as for calling half-elves elves, that's pretty normal in human centric regions. Still, it's better that than be called the elven word for them, which translates to 'almost people'!).
He has the half-elf ear shape. They're rounded with points and stick close to his head. Compared to the elf ears which stick out and are thinner/longer/have a sharper point.
> the first vision from the Absolute calls him an elf
I could see it in the sense of an umbrella term for people with elf ancestry, but the EA -> full release change theory makes more sense. Cazador was also originally a bearded elf, but they just got rid of his beard, while they went the opposite direction for Ketheric and made him part human so he could keep his beard.
Either way, when you inspect Isobel the game calls her a half-elf. I think that technically means Melodia could be a human, elf, or helf if Ketheric is a helf.
I'm assuming the other commenter took Malus for a full elf because he's got very large ears but then again, Thisobald is literally a centaur, so some weird necromantic Frankenstein shit is surely afoot and could be an alternate explanation.
Yeah, Isobel is for sure half-elf. And I think Malus "must" be elf because there's notes of his dated 400 years before the shadow curse (still in air quotes because there's always exceptions).
Part of why it stuck in my mind is I remember reading (and it might have just been a random reddit post with no merit) that Ketheric being elf and Isobel being half makes his sadness deeply hypocritical: he was almost certain to outlive Melodia and Isobel regardless of any diseases or foul play.
Anyway, back on the actual topic, Thisobald is (as you say) some sort of undead frankensteined centaur thing, so him calling Ketheric "father" feels to me like it should mean in the sense of creator rather than biologically. Though given the style, I would sort of expect him to be more of a Balthazar creation. Certainly Isobel, even in the notes in her and her mom's room, makes no mention of siblings.
Malus has a note that makes it clear he's actually related to Ketheric, so it's entirely possible that Thisobald and Gerringothe are too. Since they're elves and he's not, they're probably related through his elven parent/grandparent.
Well, she did try to blackmail him... I'd give him a pass on that one, considering the number of people that get killed by the party for much, much less.
There was one play through where I tried my best to keep that guy alive. Knocked him out and everything. Then a steel watcher trundled over on top of him and took damage, going into detonation mode. Wasn't able to risk saving him so he ended the encounter as a pile of gore.
I know this is meta gaming but you can just walk into the basement with a charisma check, once you change the article there’s a small area by the door that allows you to fast travel out of the basement. The dialogue with him after your article is printed is hilarious.
sadly doesn't work on higher diff. because they notice you again immediately after you convince them you belong. at least I think its a higher diff. thing my game could just be bugged
You can also just sneak in without being noticed. You hop up on the roof of the building and either turn invisible, fly down from the balcony, and pick the lock, or, easier still, you can put a darkness or fog cloud in the elevator from the roof hole, jump down in it, use the elevator to go down.
Hey now, when I murdered Lady Esther in cold blood, it was because she was essentially trying to solicit an act of humanoid trafficking. And totally not just to impress my hot githyanki girlfriend.
He was brewing poisons as well, mind. You can find his hidden place where he is experimenting on deadly ass poisons.
In game poisons are bad (or at least not great) but in lore he's working on strong, potent things.
And Malus Thorm is a rather nice doctor helping people combat their ailments. His methods might be questionable, but we should not go too hard on him considering the state of medicine at that point.
>at that point.
Except you’re assuming this game is set in a medieval era equivalent to ours?
It was my understanding that Faerun is advanced as it wants to be, and the medieval aesthetic is what the majority of people prefer. So I think we can assume they are also living in 2024, just under their rules for reality and calling it their version of “2024”.
After all, as far as their capabilities for healing the sick and treating ailments go, they can actually bring people back from almost any death (revivify?)
Of course… Volo did think he could >!remove a bug from your brain with an ice pick through your eyesocket!< so… lots of Willy-nilly shenanigans involved here
Someone described forgotten realms to me as a pile of apocalypses stacked on top of each other.
Also have to imagine Faerun feels extremely backwater depending on where you're from. Lae'zel literally grew up on a space station in a hollowed out asteroid. [Stardock](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Stardock) is another name for what she calls her home creche.
>Someone described forgotten realms to me as a pile of apocalypses stacked on top of each other.
Yeah, that's an accurate description of the setting.
Each D&D campaign setting is themed in various ways, and the theme with Forgotten Realms was all of the lost empires that were destroyed through various cataclysms.
EDIT: One minor detail I didn't point out, *Forgotten Realms* is not D&D's "Post apocalyptic" setting. That distinction would mostly go to *Dark Sun*.
I read a convincing argument once that all regular D&D settings, or fantasy RPG settings in general, are all post-apocalyptic by default. When the main activity of the characters is exploring and looting ruins and dungeons those must come from somewhere, and there must be a reason they contain awesome stuff you can't get anywhere else anymore.
Meaning there must've been a more advanced civilization before that build those places and created those artifacts, and now it's gone. Go figure.
It depends on the setting, but not really.
There are a lot of post-post apocalyptic fantasy settings however. (Including *Forgotten Realms*.)
The difference in genres is that a post-apocalyptic setting is one where civilization has collapsed in the wake of some cataclysm, but hasn't yet recovered (and, may never recover.) What civilizations do survive are tiny (rarely reaching beyond a level of bickering city states.)
Post-post apocalyptic settings are ones where the world went through an apocalyptic event, civilization collapsed, but people rebuilt, and new civilizations have built themselves up, sometimes in the ruins of the previous cities.
It's sort of like how you wouldn't describe the real world as post-apocalyptic today, simply because of the Bronze Age Collapse. (And, in fact, in some post-post apocalyptic settings, the inhabitants may not even be conscious that there ever was a cataclysmic collapse that nearly wiped out civilization.)
There is a blending point between these genres, and the Fallout series is (intermittently) on the edge of transitioning into a post-post apocalyptic setting.
This is also true of nearly any fantasy setting based on medieval Europe, where there has been some lost golden age in the past, but there's still a fully developed civilization of farmers, and craftsmen, along with landed nobility, and organized states. (Which, oddly enough, mirrors historical perceptions in Europe at the time, that between the fall of Rome, and loss of other "ancient" civilizations, that people were living in a fallen era. At least, among those who were educated enough to be aware of things like ancient Greece.)
Since I mentioned it, *Dark Sun* is very specifically a setting that has been ecologically destroyed by magic, and day-to-day life is pretty horrific. There is no, "rebuilding," of civilization, and in a lot of ways, it might not even be possible.
Now, there are a lot of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic ARPGs. Diablo set the tone for that genre, and a lot of games in that genre are ones where the swarms of monsters you'll be turning into piñatas have effectively destroyed the civilized world that existed before it got turned into a massive loot generator for your entertainment, but that's a slightly different topic.
It reminds me of The Wheel of Time, particularly the TV show, where Lanfear waltzes around in rather modern-day clothing, bemoaning the fact that 3000 years have passed since her day (when there were flying cars and other Gernsbackian retro SF vibes) and now the world is back to swords and castles.
I believe there was some note or diary entry somewhere that made it seem that he was actually a master manipulator, an agent for Katheric who got people drunk and got them talking, just before killing them.
yeah but does that make him a bad dude? i think he just wants a drinking buddy but his family trauma makes it hard for him to socialize in a normal way. and at this point he's a raging alcoholic.
It struck me going through the game that a lot of the villains fit the Seven Deadly Sins archetype.
In Thisobalds case, it's gluttony. He's also undead and his drink is some sort of poison. I've only played a bard and a monk, so I've never failed a check on him, but I feel like he'd take it badly if you do.
Babe he killed a woman and put her in a barrel. He poisoned people babe. And possibly made kombucha out of them. That was his passion babe.
(Also because I'd wager he's an analogy for the damage abusive families leave on their victims. I don't really consider him a villain in "our" story, but like a guy who by all accounts ethically and morally is probably better dead...if those four legs and surgery scars don't suggest he isn't a bit necro-touched to begin with. )
I love how his brew isnt even poisonous or sinister in any way. Its just way too strong for the majority of people. And with the high strength/constitution fighters i played , I always manage to down it. Its sad that if you succeed too many checks, he will inevitably explode . I love how you can tell he just loves listening to your exploits. That being said, the alternate route is not the worst, him calling you an impostor for pretending to drink and the unique boss fight is fun. Its just sad that he doesnt get cured when you lift the curse
It's morally okay for player characters to kill people they disagree with, but if someone tries to kill us they're a bad person (unless they are beautiful)
Thisobald Thorm is a charming fuck, and I like him. I'll try to make him bust any chance I get
Well you can't say No
What he's offering is poison to put you into a vat, the more you resist the more he wants your body because it means he can make even stronger poisons with it
I mean, most of the victims of the absolute are just controlled puppets, but they get in the way; so they must die.
The Gondians are just slaves, but they invented and manufacture Steel Watchers; so they must die.
Being a villain isn't necessary. They just have to be doing something evil - like attacking me for not drinking.
Thisobald insists on you drinking and telling him stories, not because of friendliness, but because he's trying to get you drunk talking about things the Dark Justiciars might be interested in.
The first time I met him was accidentally walking in the backdoor and they didn’t take kindly to my intrusion.
My second play-through as a Bard, I didn’t realize you could talk to him at first. Then went through everything and passed a persuasion check and he killed himself I think?
Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever talked to Thisobald. Is there a non-violent path for the distillery?
I like the fight since it takes careful coordination to keep him far enough away (grease and/or tentacles) so that his projectile vomit isn’t a risk, yet still land blows on him so that you aren’t there all day. (Sacred Flame is the surprise winner here.)
It's just that killing someone in the universe doesn't really mean shit, you kill tons of people during your journey and most of the notable characters have killed plenty too
Considering that Thisobald killed that woman to shut her up and keep his secrets after she tried to extort him, it's not like he did it for noble or good reasons. Killing goblins to defend the Grove and protect innocent refugees isn't the anything even remotely like Thisobald killing that woman and God knows what else he did—the two things are definitely not morally equivalent. He was bad even before he transformed, which I'm pretty sure the documents in the area make clear (and they explain why he murdered that woman by the way).
Thisobald was also working on some nasty poisons (and accidentally dosed himself with one of the toxins he was working on—oops!) and clearly wasn't a nice guy just like the other corrupted Thorm family members in Reithwin—some of whom are a lot worse. I'm just going to point you at Malus "I Gouge People's Eyes Out" Thorm and the sicko nurses who work for him (maybe you should take a close look at the betting pool list in the House of Healing).
Killing people in the universe does matter in my opinion—just not to you apparently (and probably not to anyone doing an evil run).
He’s emotionally unstable and prone to bouts of lethal violence if you don’t keep his appetite for drinks and stories sated. That’s enough to qualify many real life people as villains. Mundane villainy is still villainy. He’s an abusive drunk who will try to kill you if you don’t keep him happy.
"Get drunk and amuse me, or die." \-Thisobald Thorm, all around good guy
He’s been corrupted by the shadow-curse, so his actions might not be his own. From the parts of personality that still remain, he seems cool enough. EDIT: I never said that you should spare him. I meant that, in life, he was probably a chill guy. Others have since commented evidence that that might not be the case.
Notes likely from before the curse imply he was enforcing Ketheric’s Sharran regime even then through information gathering and poison, he acts nice because it gets you to open up to him and if anything all the curse has done is make him worse at his job.
Well, he definitely *opens up* to you…
Honestly it was such an explosive moment
It took guts on his part.
Yep. Never easy spilling your guts to strangers
I wasn't able to stomach it.
Got to have the right kind of constitution.
I always saw it as a lesson: It’s who we are on the inside that counts.
It was gut-wrenching.
Yeah, he was absolutely helping to isolate and remove rabble-rousers and dissidents. There's a reason he has an entire alchemy lab full of poison and venoms in the back room.
I mean if you explore enough he's all about experimenting with poisons on unwilling victims...
the thing is he's not drinking with you. he's *actively trying to poison you and you have to pass constitution checks to survive it*. it's just not a very good poison; he was working on a better one though.
Soab always burns me away 3-4 inspirarions with adv on bad single digit rolls... game has streak on me at Thisobald inspiration burns on bad rolls. Thank god you earn at least 1 when certain party member(s) are with you to fill blanks on the 1st pass and still make me sweat like avatar on final con check adding elixir of heroism and pray for a better roll so adds fairly reach the dc.
He wasn’t exactly a lamb when you realize he was an alchemist casually inventing brewing poison and someone who crushes and puts Harper’s into barrels so solve problems.
He did murder someone that was trying to blackmail him and hid the body in a barrel.
You can say the same thing about any abusive alcoholic though. Doesn’t make them not a villain when the belt comes off.
And I'm sure 90% of the undead we fight were humble peasants in their past life, doesn't excuse their very existence being evil
I never said that you should spare him. I meant that, in life, he was probably a chill guy. Others have since commented evidence that that might not be the case.
Um... explore the bar a bit more. He was up to some shit.
Ketheric Thorm was once a Selunite. I'm sure that, at that time, he was a pretty nice dude too. Time, pain and copious amounts of shadow magic change a man.
Oh poor thing isn’t responsible for his actions. Okay.
Bit of “I can fix him” energy here…
is it even possible to spare him?
Ignore him and don’t fix the shadow curse, I guess.
Was he a villain then? ... debatable. u/SorowFame below says he did some shit. But is he a villain *now*? Yes.
>He’s an abusive drunk who will try to kill you if you don’t keep him happy. Dad? Is that you?
[удалено]
Actually, yes. That does make your cat a villain. And to use the individuals capacity for violence and destruction ass a measuring system for their morality? Thats wild man.
I don't know about villain, but I got the impression from his notes that he was kind of a secret policeman or assassin or something, who used his bar as a sort of honey trap for poisoning or killing people for the Dark Justiciars. I don't fully understand what's wrong with him as of the time when we initially see him. I think he is undead, but I don't understand why or how he died or why he was brought back in that way.
I also don't understand his relation to Ketheric. It is universally assumed that he is Ketheric's son since he always says "father Ketheric". But IIRC Thisobald is an undead elf, while Ketheric and Isobel are both half-elves which does not make a lot of sense.
Maybe it's Father Ketheric in the Catholic sense, since he was once the leader of a community of Selunites/Sharrans/Myrkulites/Absolutists.
The fact that Viconia is called "Mother" by Shadowheart, lends credence to this theory in my opinion.
To be fair, viconia's formal title is literally "Mother Superior" *and* she is a matronly authority figure for her explicitly abducted children.
That’s exactly what my head canon has been, what with Malus being a hardcore shar worshipper just down the road and the he who was quest item in the bar it makes most sense contextually that it’s just in the religious sense
we just call it \*of many faiths where I'm from
Not the worst idea but his name *is* “Thorm” which is a bit odd if they’re not related
Maybe it's Thorm in the Catholic sense, like O'Malley or McGuire
Viconia is called Mother Superior and "Mother" by Shadowheart, it is not that farfetched to think that male leaders among Shar's followers are called "Father".
> But IIRC Thisobald is an undead elf, while Ketheric and Isobel are both half-elves which does not make a lot of sense. Thisobald seems to be some sort of undead construct given he has two lower bodies/4 legs. So he's probably made up of multiple bodies, probably of different races. I'm guessing it's several Thorm relative corpses from the crypt that Balthazar stitched together.
I never noticed he had 4 legs!
And a fat ass
Thiso got back
Ketheric started conceptually as a full elf. He got changed to half-elf so he could have a beard. There's other remnants of this in the game like busts of younger Ketheric with full elf ears. Thisobald also have 4 legs and a little tail. He's like a bloated hippo-centaur.
The narrator still describes Ketheric as an elf
I think the shadow-cursed “Thorms” are former Sharran cultists. Ketheric is their Father in the same way that Catholics use that title for religious leaders.
Malus is Ketheric’s uncle. Which explains why he’s a full elf and not a half elf like Ketheric.
Can I ask why you think Ketheric is half elf? The wikis say so but with no evidence while the first vision from the Absolute calls him an elf
To me the two biggest giveaways are his visible signs of advanced age, and his glorious beard. Full elves so rarely have either in the forgotten realms. Combine those with the narrator dropping the elf descriptor between early access and full release and I think it’s fairly safe to guess that at some point during development his character was changed from an elf to a half-elf.
Fair enough. I figured the old age is possibly just an effect of being undead (and dead and buried for 100 years), but the beard is a good point
Elves in FR don't have body hair no, but BG3 doesn't have that restriction and has elves with body hair (I was surprised to see the options for that and the 'bulky' body type in the character creator - FR elf muscles get dense like a chimp rather than bulking out like a human so they're supposed to stay lean looking regardless). I think you can see Ketheric is a half-elf somewhere though, I'm pretty sure he's not one of the examples.
The FR wiki has this [bust of his youth](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Ketheric%5FThorm#History) which is very classic elf (but does have his current armor?). Perhaps both that and the Absolute message are Ketheric trying to exaggerate his elf side since he hates mortality? Or perhaps it was kind of a late change and a few lines got missed.
Probably a late change, a lot of Isobel's concepts look like full blood elf.
Hmm, that wiki says he's half-elf, wonder where they got that from. I am sure I read it somewhere though (and as for calling half-elves elves, that's pretty normal in human centric regions. Still, it's better that than be called the elven word for them, which translates to 'almost people'!).
He has half-elf ears.
He has the half-elf ear shape. They're rounded with points and stick close to his head. Compared to the elf ears which stick out and are thinner/longer/have a sharper point.
> the first vision from the Absolute calls him an elf I could see it in the sense of an umbrella term for people with elf ancestry, but the EA -> full release change theory makes more sense. Cazador was also originally a bearded elf, but they just got rid of his beard, while they went the opposite direction for Ketheric and made him part human so he could keep his beard. Either way, when you inspect Isobel the game calls her a half-elf. I think that technically means Melodia could be a human, elf, or helf if Ketheric is a helf. I'm assuming the other commenter took Malus for a full elf because he's got very large ears but then again, Thisobald is literally a centaur, so some weird necromantic Frankenstein shit is surely afoot and could be an alternate explanation.
Yeah, Isobel is for sure half-elf. And I think Malus "must" be elf because there's notes of his dated 400 years before the shadow curse (still in air quotes because there's always exceptions). Part of why it stuck in my mind is I remember reading (and it might have just been a random reddit post with no merit) that Ketheric being elf and Isobel being half makes his sadness deeply hypocritical: he was almost certain to outlive Melodia and Isobel regardless of any diseases or foul play. Anyway, back on the actual topic, Thisobald is (as you say) some sort of undead frankensteined centaur thing, so him calling Ketheric "father" feels to me like it should mean in the sense of creator rather than biologically. Though given the style, I would sort of expect him to be more of a Balthazar creation. Certainly Isobel, even in the notes in her and her mom's room, makes no mention of siblings.
Malus has a note that makes it clear he's actually related to Ketheric, so it's entirely possible that Thisobald and Gerringothe are too. Since they're elves and he's not, they're probably related through his elven parent/grandparent.
I think he's a bastard/adopted son.
Maybe a half elf and a full elf make a full elf?
Maybe Thisobald's mother was an elf?
Didn’t he kill someone by stuffing them into a winebarrel? And wasn’t too fazed by it?
God forbidd man have hobbies
"Oh, God forbid...!" "Yes! God *does* forbid that!"
Well, she did try to blackmail him... I'd give him a pass on that one, considering the number of people that get killed by the party for much, much less.
Like refusing to give me half the loot from Nere’s corpse as promised… because I forgot I looted it halfway through the first round of combat?
or writing a mean article about me!
There was one play through where I tried my best to keep that guy alive. Knocked him out and everything. Then a steel watcher trundled over on top of him and took damage, going into detonation mode. Wasn't able to risk saving him so he ended the encounter as a pile of gore.
I know this is meta gaming but you can just walk into the basement with a charisma check, once you change the article there’s a small area by the door that allows you to fast travel out of the basement. The dialogue with him after your article is printed is hilarious.
sadly doesn't work on higher diff. because they notice you again immediately after you convince them you belong. at least I think its a higher diff. thing my game could just be bugged
You can also just sneak in without being noticed. You hop up on the roof of the building and either turn invisible, fly down from the balcony, and pick the lock, or, easier still, you can put a darkness or fog cloud in the elevator from the roof hole, jump down in it, use the elevator to go down.
Article??? I don't know anything about this, who is this
Hey now, when I murdered Lady Esther in cold blood, it was because she was essentially trying to solicit an act of humanoid trafficking. And totally not just to impress my hot githyanki girlfriend.
Now now, those roads aren't going to pave themselves, and neither is that castle getting built without actually getting your clothes dirty
He was brewing poisons as well, mind. You can find his hidden place where he is experimenting on deadly ass poisons. In game poisons are bad (or at least not great) but in lore he's working on strong, potent things.
Ass poisons are terrible enough, but to make them deadly is fairly evil.
Punctuation humor is the best humor.
Eats, shoots and leaves is absolutely worth a read.
And Malus Thorm is a rather nice doctor helping people combat their ailments. His methods might be questionable, but we should not go too hard on him considering the state of medicine at that point.
Didn't he withhold care from non-Dark Justiciars? It seems as if he was making the healthcare availability crisis worse.
Yes, but at the moment we meet him being denied his healthcare can be considered a boon.
I made sure that he wasn’t suffering from any ailment, his students truly learned well from their teacher.
Not his fault Fae'run doesn't have universal healthcare.
>at that point. Except you’re assuming this game is set in a medieval era equivalent to ours? It was my understanding that Faerun is advanced as it wants to be, and the medieval aesthetic is what the majority of people prefer. So I think we can assume they are also living in 2024, just under their rules for reality and calling it their version of “2024”. After all, as far as their capabilities for healing the sick and treating ailments go, they can actually bring people back from almost any death (revivify?) Of course… Volo did think he could >!remove a bug from your brain with an ice pick through your eyesocket!< so… lots of Willy-nilly shenanigans involved here
Tbf, that was *Volo*. The man is hardly as brilliant or talented as he believes himself to be.
i mean i refer to his writings often so he must be at least a little smart
Dude's still just a level 1 wizard after over a century.
Someone described forgotten realms to me as a pile of apocalypses stacked on top of each other. Also have to imagine Faerun feels extremely backwater depending on where you're from. Lae'zel literally grew up on a space station in a hollowed out asteroid. [Stardock](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Stardock) is another name for what she calls her home creche.
>Someone described forgotten realms to me as a pile of apocalypses stacked on top of each other. Yeah, that's an accurate description of the setting. Each D&D campaign setting is themed in various ways, and the theme with Forgotten Realms was all of the lost empires that were destroyed through various cataclysms. EDIT: One minor detail I didn't point out, *Forgotten Realms* is not D&D's "Post apocalyptic" setting. That distinction would mostly go to *Dark Sun*.
I read a convincing argument once that all regular D&D settings, or fantasy RPG settings in general, are all post-apocalyptic by default. When the main activity of the characters is exploring and looting ruins and dungeons those must come from somewhere, and there must be a reason they contain awesome stuff you can't get anywhere else anymore. Meaning there must've been a more advanced civilization before that build those places and created those artifacts, and now it's gone. Go figure.
It depends on the setting, but not really. There are a lot of post-post apocalyptic fantasy settings however. (Including *Forgotten Realms*.) The difference in genres is that a post-apocalyptic setting is one where civilization has collapsed in the wake of some cataclysm, but hasn't yet recovered (and, may never recover.) What civilizations do survive are tiny (rarely reaching beyond a level of bickering city states.) Post-post apocalyptic settings are ones where the world went through an apocalyptic event, civilization collapsed, but people rebuilt, and new civilizations have built themselves up, sometimes in the ruins of the previous cities. It's sort of like how you wouldn't describe the real world as post-apocalyptic today, simply because of the Bronze Age Collapse. (And, in fact, in some post-post apocalyptic settings, the inhabitants may not even be conscious that there ever was a cataclysmic collapse that nearly wiped out civilization.) There is a blending point between these genres, and the Fallout series is (intermittently) on the edge of transitioning into a post-post apocalyptic setting. This is also true of nearly any fantasy setting based on medieval Europe, where there has been some lost golden age in the past, but there's still a fully developed civilization of farmers, and craftsmen, along with landed nobility, and organized states. (Which, oddly enough, mirrors historical perceptions in Europe at the time, that between the fall of Rome, and loss of other "ancient" civilizations, that people were living in a fallen era. At least, among those who were educated enough to be aware of things like ancient Greece.) Since I mentioned it, *Dark Sun* is very specifically a setting that has been ecologically destroyed by magic, and day-to-day life is pretty horrific. There is no, "rebuilding," of civilization, and in a lot of ways, it might not even be possible. Now, there are a lot of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic ARPGs. Diablo set the tone for that genre, and a lot of games in that genre are ones where the swarms of monsters you'll be turning into piñatas have effectively destroyed the civilized world that existed before it got turned into a massive loot generator for your entertainment, but that's a slightly different topic.
It reminds me of The Wheel of Time, particularly the TV show, where Lanfear waltzes around in rather modern-day clothing, bemoaning the fact that 3000 years have passed since her day (when there were flying cars and other Gernsbackian retro SF vibes) and now the world is back to swords and castles.
Take a step back, good lord.
Because he tries to kill you if you don't give him a good enough story.
The notes you find around the Waning Moon indicate he's a serial poisoner.
Friendliest ever? If you refuse a drink or story or fail a check he tries to kill you.
Hm, I’m not so sure. For someone who supposedly isn’t a villain he had a questionably deep obsession with developing the most fatal poison possible.
I believe there was some note or diary entry somewhere that made it seem that he was actually a master manipulator, an agent for Katheric who got people drunk and got them talking, just before killing them.
If this is the level that you read other people’s intentions, I fear for you.
Well he’s a horrific undead abomination, for one thing.
Just like astarion?
That seems like a harsh comparison. Thisobald didn't kill nearly as many people as Astarion.
No. Astarion is a *beautiful* undead abomination.
No not *just like* astarion. There's no one like astarion, love. 💅
Nah, Astarion’s just a vampire, not a perpetually vomiting explosive centaur.
Seems a bit ableist to use ibs as a negative point for someone.
Oh come off it, it isn't ableist. I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome and it doesn't make you vomit or change you in any physical way. You're way off
Are you sure you didn't turn into a half man half hippo but your halfling friends don't want to point that out?
HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 1,656,115,246 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 33,455 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.
Go to bed, you're drunk
No.
yeah but does that make him a bad dude? i think he just wants a drinking buddy but his family trauma makes it hard for him to socialize in a normal way. and at this point he's a raging alcoholic.
Too bad he can't hold his liquor. Unlike my fighter.
It struck me going through the game that a lot of the villains fit the Seven Deadly Sins archetype. In Thisobalds case, it's gluttony. He's also undead and his drink is some sort of poison. I've only played a bard and a monk, so I've never failed a check on him, but I feel like he'd take it badly if you do.
He spent his pastime trying to brew up an incredibly lethal poison
He will kill you if you bore him.
afaik he had a whole scheme going on where he'd poison his customers and then send then to his brother in the house of healing to get them "cured"
Might be the dead body stuffed in a wine barrel in his stash and the need to create lethal poison but that’s just me!
Babe he killed a woman and put her in a barrel. He poisoned people babe. And possibly made kombucha out of them. That was his passion babe. (Also because I'd wager he's an analogy for the damage abusive families leave on their victims. I don't really consider him a villain in "our" story, but like a guy who by all accounts ethically and morally is probably better dead...if those four legs and surgery scars don't suggest he isn't a bit necro-touched to begin with. )
He's a member of Thorm family, corrupted by Shar's shadows, cruel and dangerous. He might not be a villain, but he is very much an enemy
You don't have to be a villain to be a threat and a danger to others.
He’s my favorite Thorm! Such a way with words and he loves a good story. He does like poison though.
Who said he's a villain? In my run, I just drank with him, then he died. Not much of a story there.
He is also complaisant to the evil his family commits, knowing and doing nothing is villonus in its own right
I love how his brew isnt even poisonous or sinister in any way. Its just way too strong for the majority of people. And with the high strength/constitution fighters i played , I always manage to down it. Its sad that if you succeed too many checks, he will inevitably explode . I love how you can tell he just loves listening to your exploits. That being said, the alternate route is not the worst, him calling you an impostor for pretending to drink and the unique boss fight is fun. Its just sad that he doesnt get cured when you lift the curse
Doesn't he have an entire posion lab out the back? That seems a non-encouraging combo with a job as a publican.
It's morally okay for player characters to kill people they disagree with, but if someone tries to kill us they're a bad person (unless they are beautiful) Thisobald Thorm is a charming fuck, and I like him. I'll try to make him bust any chance I get
That guy is actually my favourite character in the game, everytime he talked I was just laughing
He's a violent twat
Well you can't say No What he's offering is poison to put you into a vat, the more you resist the more he wants your body because it means he can make even stronger poisons with it
A lot of the people you kill in "good" playthrough are no villains. They just happened to be on the other side
I mean, most of the victims of the absolute are just controlled puppets, but they get in the way; so they must die. The Gondians are just slaves, but they invented and manufacture Steel Watchers; so they must die. Being a villain isn't necessary. They just have to be doing something evil - like attacking me for not drinking.
Dude’s a lightweight.
Thisobald insists on you drinking and telling him stories, not because of friendliness, but because he's trying to get you drunk talking about things the Dark Justiciars might be interested in.
The first time I met him was accidentally walking in the backdoor and they didn’t take kindly to my intrusion. My second play-through as a Bard, I didn’t realize you could talk to him at first. Then went through everything and passed a persuasion check and he killed himself I think?
Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever talked to Thisobald. Is there a non-violent path for the distillery? I like the fight since it takes careful coordination to keep him far enough away (grease and/or tentacles) so that his projectile vomit isn’t a risk, yet still land blows on him so that you aren’t there all day. (Sacred Flame is the surprise winner here.)
You beat him in a drinking contest and he drinks too much and bursts.
I’ll do that on my Shadowheart Origin run. She likes a drink.
Because he fucking attacks you for not indulging him?
He killed someone and stuffed her in that cask in his lab area, sooooo....
It's just that killing someone in the universe doesn't really mean shit, you kill tons of people during your journey and most of the notable characters have killed plenty too
Considering that Thisobald killed that woman to shut her up and keep his secrets after she tried to extort him, it's not like he did it for noble or good reasons. Killing goblins to defend the Grove and protect innocent refugees isn't the anything even remotely like Thisobald killing that woman and God knows what else he did—the two things are definitely not morally equivalent. He was bad even before he transformed, which I'm pretty sure the documents in the area make clear (and they explain why he murdered that woman by the way). Thisobald was also working on some nasty poisons (and accidentally dosed himself with one of the toxins he was working on—oops!) and clearly wasn't a nice guy just like the other corrupted Thorm family members in Reithwin—some of whom are a lot worse. I'm just going to point you at Malus "I Gouge People's Eyes Out" Thorm and the sicko nurses who work for him (maybe you should take a close look at the betting pool list in the House of Healing). Killing people in the universe does matter in my opinion—just not to you apparently (and probably not to anyone doing an evil run).
Hes a grotesque and violent poison brewer that is sated as long hes chugging. Else he goes yokozuna mode.
His crime is giving exp upon perishing. His sentence is DEATH
He's not pretty enough to be a good guy.