While at work today, working with patients in healthcare, I had quite an interesting discussion with my colleagues re: immunosuppressive medicines and transplants. According to the newer studies, the survival for 15-20 years after a heart transplant is becoming the rule rather than chance. Which means that Karlach would have a better chance at survival in the real world she doesn't exist in, than the fantasy world with multiple planes of existence, magic, divine powers of all kinds, a f*ckton of varied races and classes of people incredibly skilled in their own ways...you name it. They kill humanoids all the time, just pick a healthy fucker, bring the heart to a good surgeon and make sure you have someone knowledgeable in infernal blacksmithing there too to support the out-taking of the engine, and reverse the process.
I mean c'mon. If we can keep people with end-stage heart failure alive by changing their failing heart for a donor's one, and have them survive for twenty odd years (mind, this requires medical checkups, medication, good overall health and a team of professionals through the years), how is Karlach's particular case such a doomed/bound to fail one? What is it that makes her engine situation so particular that in the world of Faerűn and DnD, there's not a single soul in the surroundings of Baldur's Gate that can help? Gale can get a boon with a goddess that grants him a pardon for trying to reach godhood, if he agrees to explode at the end of the game - WHICH TA-FRIGGEN-DAH, HE CAN DEUS EX FROM, but our girl Karlach has to be sold off to Zariel and unwillingly become her champion after getting her heart ripped out/taken out/magically transformed ????? and branded with all kinds of Zariel-propaganda tattoos like her little pet.
C'mon. I understand that there's a lot of sustenance in the idea that she has to accept her fate. It'd be a sorrowful but meaningful one....had she existed in a more realistic world and not surrounded by a bunch of crazy fuckwits that have messed up with gods themselves and gotten themselves in particulates FAR WORSE to get out of than Karlach. And each and every one of them is given at least one way out of their issue. Why not her? Why do the options get to be: - Squid - Explode into flames and die - Live but only if you go back to the last place you want to set your foot in, ever again, probably getting swarmed by an army of Zariel at somepoint
My ADHD is hyperfixating like nuts because she's come to mean such a great deal to me and I cannot wrap my head around how we can bring folk back from the dead (revivify, true resurrection), grow back cut limbs (regenerate), wish for genuinely anything or any event to be nullified (out of bounds for BG3 levels but still in world and could be granted by gods/powerful magic users), asked for help from a deity of Tav's as a cleric or in general (divine intervention)...
I mean how is her heart more of a problem than Mollymauk/Lucien in CR2 (spoilers but once again, divine intervention and greater restoration, y'all).
