Clarion

ANDANTE:  Oh, I simply knew them before they were Shadow Thieves.  I have known them long enough to air their dirty diapers, so to speak.  Nothing recent, but embarrassing enough for men of pride that they would rather not try to clean up the trouble they know I can and will make if they try to kill me.  Thankfully, Aran and Renal are men of class.  We can converse cordially enough without the threats.

Step back, Xarana.  You offend my nose, and now I believe a fireball would aggravate that beyond repair.  Heat is best not applied to foul odors.  Something I *just* recently learned from Clarion's feeble attempts at doing laundary.

CLARION:  Now that was going too far.  *casts Icelance*  

*Wild Surge: Anti-magic Shell*

CLARION:  Well, that might be the most useful wild surge yet, from me.  Still, I would appreciate you keeping my secrets, well, secret.  Pretending embarrassment is tiring.  I should change your background, have some ethics drilled into your ass.  Then you could be just like me.  Same bumbling idiot.  Start behaving or I'll take all your stats down to 3 and throw you in the scrap bin.  You know I wouldn't shed a tear over it.

ANDANTE:  (trying to cast something, anything)  To the Abyss with you, Clarion.  I shall kill Imoen if you persist in trying to make me befriend her.

CLARION:  Shut up.  I'm trying to soften your character so that you're palatable enough to swallow without sticking in the craw.  Gods above, below, and in between, I'm choking on you.  You were supposed to be a modding teething ring for me to cut my teeth on, and now you're evolving into this monster.  I won't pretend to be angry, because I'm not sophisticated enough to feel that way, but you are frustrating enough to try the patience of a saint.

And I've been lectured more than ten times in the past twenty days on the nature of sociopathy.  Everyone seems to have a different understanding of it, which they claim is the absolute reality.  Irrelevant here, because Andante is not a sociopath.  But to explain the waning of my nerves, the waning of my patience, and my loss of ability to put it all in words.  I understand better than I know how to say, because the language of words is an emotional one, and I don't understand that sort of thing.  So, I end up saying (or typing) something irrelevant to what I mean.  Like taking a jigsaw to a puzzle to make the pieces fit, but they never do anyway.

Thus, I try too hard to take the evil edge off of Andante, and I end up with another Bioware screwup.  Oddly enough, he seems more false when I try to make him *nicer*.  On the other hand, my relationship with Andante is too adversarial for me to be able to shut up and listen to him tell me where he wants to go.  If only he were physically here and I could vent a little pressure breaking his nose, but alas that isn't to be.  I owe him something for breaking my mask, though.  I'll at least tell Imoen he's ticklish (after I hand her a Protection from Magical Energy scroll, that is).  And Korgan might want to know Andante has a bad left knee, just in case they come to blows.

It seems my struggles with this bastard are frustrating everyone.  May I borrow a hammer?  I'd like to smack Andante with it, then myself.

(Internet back, for time being.  Would not count on it lasting long.)

My personal degree of antisocial personality disorder is irrelevant to the situation.  I'm bored with it, trying to change it for the sake of something interesting, not for any particular moral cause.  

ANDANTE: Tempest, would you happen to know how entertaining it is to blackmail the majority of influential people in Athkatla?  I ask, because you strike me as being sorely in need of some good entertainment.

CLARION:  Wow, your mood's gotten better.

ANDANTE: Hmm, mayhap.  Watching pureblood nobles squirm is a hobby of mine, I suppose.  It does wonders for my mood. (chuckle)  Of course, it pays to have potentially embarrassing material on Aran Linvail and Renal the Bloodscalp - which ensures my safety from Shadow Thief assassination - magically sealed away to become apparent to all the wrong people should I die...violently.  Ah, people are debating my ethics then?  How very amusing.  

Tell the whimpering Aurilite and the stuffed pigeon that for them I would make an exception to my rule of never getting my hands dirty - if they come near me I shall personally shove fireballs down their throats for the sake of seeing what will happen.  Will they explode, or just crumble?  I have always been curious to know.  

This outside of city limits, of course.  Burned bodies are disgusting beyond measure and I *loathe* trying to get blood out of fabrics.

Oh, dear, good job.  You have succeeded in reducing me to Edwin's level.  Well played.  I let my emotions get the better of me, a mistake I shall endeavor not to make again.

I like the law because it is lawful, and orderly.  It reigns in the disgusting chaos of humanity at large.  And the laws of Athkatla, well, one need not even bend them to work them to his own benefit.  As long as one keeps their magical workings out of the streets, there is nothing one cannot do and get away with, short of homicide in the middle of the street.

And there is no such thing as good, or neutral, you naive, infantile imbeciles.  Have I not said before that we are all inherently evil?  Or am I simply the only honest man in the world?

CLARION:  Okay, that monologue was taking it a bit far, Dante.  If they want to believe in the difference...never mind.  Arguing with you is worse than trying to argue with Diriel from the IWD2 NPC project.  At least he lives for a cause.  You?  You're out for yourself.

ANDANTE:  Oh, but of course.  Even my future journey with Charname is in the interest of my continued survival, and I make no secret of this.  If I wish to strike at the heart of the Cowled Wizards for what they did to me, *and* survive their reprisal as well, I need powerful allies.  A Bhaalspawn should be sufficient.  Just so long as they are not one of those Chaotic fools.

CLARION:  Why would a chaotic bhaalspawn want an OCD sorcerer?

ANDANTE:  You create me, you must live with the consequences.  Now tidy up your desk, you slovenly vagabond.  How do you find anything in that maelstrom?

CLARION:  With Tymora's blessing.  Now, Tempest, Andante was never meant to be a sociopath.  If I wanted to make a real socio, I'd have modeled him after myself.  No true emotional capacity beyond social camoflauge.  Nothing.  An empty, flat, two-dimensional Lawful Neutral bore too broken to even get properly angry when prodded with a sharp stick.  Or rather, going from 0 to 7280 in five seconds, from empty to a blind, destructive, pseudo-rage with no real emotional inflection.  Andante tries to remain clinically detached, but he's emotional, and he cares about things.  He cares about himself, he cares about keeping things tidy, he cares about proving to the Cowled Wizards that they're not as all-powerful as they think they are, and eventually, someone might force him to unwillingly care about the wellfare of other people.  Imoen + big hammer = an attempt at making Andante open his opinionated eyes a little.

Andante is a man who, below the surface, loves riddles, plays cello with an astonishing degree of skill, likes to read history books, and contemplates what will ultimately make him happy.  Of course, with his view of the world, he won't ever *be* happy, but he can try.  On the surface, he's a bastard in every sense of the word who takes pleasure in making people squirm, who is rumored to have poisoned his own mother, and is blackmailing everyone that benefits him to do so.

Andante is meant to be two things: an onion, and a cockroach.  An onion because you find something new every time you peel away a layer(and he can make a grown man cry, but that's beside the point), and a cockroach because you can poison him, squish him, set him on fire, lop off his head, and bury him alive, and somehow, he always comes back to haunt you.  (Rather like some of the canon wizards, no? Doesn't the dialogue for Xzar and Edwin include, "Didn't I kill you?")

Sorry to have cut out so early...I got the notice that my internet was about to go away.  Right now I'm borrowing a friend's comp 'cause I don't have internet at home.

I also would like to apologize for being a total ass.  Having a bad day is no excuse for being a b****.

A bit more about Andante's beliefs...  He thinks that there is no such thing as morality.  We're all evil at heart, even paladins.  We do the right thing out of fear of some kind of reprisal.  A god's wrath, an afterlife in hell, execution, a stay in jail...  He thinks he's just less hypocritical than the paladins who proclaim to be paradigms of holy goodness.  He freely admits that he's a self-serving bastard who obeys laws to avoid the inconvenience of a jail stay or public burning.

He has been raised in a noble household (despite being bastard-born) and therefore likes courtesy.  He is likely to get along with Mazzy better than Edwin, for example, because Mazzy is polite.  And he despises Edwin.  He thinks Edwin is...

ANDANTE: Edwin might mayhap be considered superficially intelligent, but he has the common sense and foresight of a drowned rat.  And he works so very, *very* hard to prove what a truly evil man he is.  Pfeh.  Imbecile.  I have nothing to prove, except that I am not a man to be trifled with, and this I need only prove to the Cowled Wizards.  Xarana, you are a pathetic little girl who could not cope with the way the world works.  Are you truly so weak you need rely on Auril to hold your hand?  Arkalian, you seem...interesting.  I would need further study to formulate a proper opinion of you.

CLARION: Just a ray of sunshine today, aren't you?

ANDANTE: Oh do shut up.  Clarion, you must by now realize that I think of little of you as of Edwin.  You epitomize chaos, you are slovenly, disorganized, weak-willed, and as socially inept as Korgan.

CLARION: Hey!  I shan't contest the disorganized part, or the chaotic part, but you're really taking me out of context.

ANDANTE: Oh?  Are you to say, even after studying your last comment to Tempest, that you are not quite as socially inept as Korgan?  Well, point ceded.  You are as socially inept as Keldorn.  You do not have quite the pungeant stench required to be as socially inept as Korgan.

CLARION: So much for courtesy.

ANDANTE: You lost that privilege.  You do not have the luxury of my respect.  I do not regard unsophisticated trash with any courtesy.  This you should know.  (smirk)  You created me, after all.

CLARION: And I'm regretting doing so.  Well, I think we've established that you're courteous until you become an ass.  Now, to have your banters show the more pragmatic tactitian side of your personality...  Because I suspect that when people really get a taste of you, your tactical thinking may be the only redeeming quality you have, and the only reason for anyone to keep you alive, aside from, of course, the fact that you're a sorcerer.

Eh, long post, but I haven't been active in a while and I won't be for another long while, until we get the net fixed at home.  Internet is hard to come by these days, it seems.

Tempest, I respect you, but please don't lecture me on sociopathy.  I *am* a sociopath, I understand what it means.

And Andante is not supposed to be a sociopath.  And he can't be Chaotic anything...he hates chaos.  Despises it.  Which is why he might come to some fatal conflict with Korgan, one of the few people he'd actually dirty his hands to personally murder.  Most of the people he'd likely almost get along with, he'd almost get along with because they are mostly respectful and quite tidy.  Imoen is a special case.  She'd likely force her way under his skin and inadvertantly *make* him like her.  She would take his tidily defined little world and toss it upside-down.

ANDANTE: Clarion, if I may respectfully request to speak for myself?  Xarana, it would suit your continued existence far better to close your mouth.  Otherwise, some of us might consider you to be...I'll continue this later.  Right now I have more pressing engagements.

Bring it on, I dare ye!  I'll also politely request, and humbly beg.  Whatever suits your fancy.

ANDANTE: So long as who I'm required to banter with is not of sub-fungal intellect like that obnoxious dwarf, I shall be pleased to oblige.  I have nothing against conversation, after all.  Just...Clarion, please promise me you do not have some contrived romance with Imoen or some such up your sleeve.

CLARION: Hah!  Knew what I was thinking, did you?  No.  Friendship, no romance, I promise.  But I will tell Imoen you're ticklish if you misbehave