Okay, I have finally - I hope - answered almost everything here to the best of my ability (please shout if I've missed anything - it wasn't intentional!) and shared everything non-spoilery in my notes that I think folk here might be interested in.

The questions I've not yet addressed are about the reaction in the room and from the people there to the Halsin/Astarion scene. Right now, I'll just say it was a bit of a mix of shock, admiration and amusement. And probably a combination of those three things would be an accurate description of my own personal reaction too.

I'm sure you'll be curious for more detail (particularly on the "admiration" bit, which might seem a strange word to use in this context) but you can see from all my posts today that I've already spent a long time here so I'm going to beg your patience for one more night and will expand on my short answer properly tomorrow, once I've had some sleep.

Speak to you all then!

"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"