BG - Why Won't You Just Die

Short Description: This didn't actually happen in-game.

Long Description: It was getting late at night when we first tried the last battle with Irenicus. We got to this point--where Irenicus, as the Slayer, goes one-on-one with Slevik after stripping him of everything but the clothes on his back--and I wasn't quite sure what to do. I went ahead and changed Slevik into the Slayer, but the problem with that is there's a bug in the game that reduces his hit points from ~160 to ~16 when he changes. (We found this out earlier in a rather hilarious fashion; there will be a comic about it later.) I figured it was better than no armor and no weapon...which it was, but Slevik-as-Slayer still got whupped.

Since it was late, we decided to stop for the evening and try again next time. We had the idea of dropping some of Slevik's equipment on the ground before we went into battle to see if he could pick it up when Irenicus turned into the Slayer. This image came to mind soon after: Slevik getting shredded by the Slayer but eventually winning (barely). I thought it was probably the most likely scenario at that point.

We tried this next time we played, but he just couldn't do any damage. Turns out, it was supposed to be Slayer vs. Slayer, but there's no way Slevik could win that with only 16 HP while Irenicus had over 100. So we kinda had to press the I WIN button on the Slayer to get past this part of the game.

I was annoyed that my decent-looking sketch went out-of-date so quickly, but I decided to go ahead and finish it anyway. Who cares if it's accurate?

The meaning of the title: We had killed Irenicus at least two or three times by this point, and in the middle of some dialogue, I said, "WHY. WON'T. YOU. JUST. DIE?!" as the same option in the dialogue came up. Heh heh. What's even more annoying is that we still had to kill him one more time after this.

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The Art: After I finished shading the two characters, I decided to use this picture as background practice. They're in some level of Hell, so there is supposed to be light coming up from the chasm (from fire, lava, etc.) with smoking bits here and there. I think I kinda got that across, though it could use stronger shadows, I think, to really make the cliff pop. Then again, I had to tone down the cliff to keep it from overwhelming the characters.

I'm quite happy with Slevik's pose and facial expression, the latter of which I got from a stock photo of a businessman yelling into a cell phone. The Slayer, on the other hand, is way too spiky, methinks, though it was hard enough trying to figure out what the Slayer actually looks like using the tiny, pixellated portrait on the equipment page.

Overall, I'm reasonably happy with this drawing, especially since I wasn't expecting it to be all that great in the first place.

Graphite pencils on printer paper, 8.5 x 11 inches.

Baldur's Gate © Bioware.