Astarion: I suppose you want to hear about Cazador.
(...)
Player: Not a good master, I take it?
Astarion: He had me go out into Baldur's Gate to fetch him the most beautiful souls I could find.
Astarion: It was a fun little ritual of his - I'd bring them back and he'd ask if I wanted to dine with him. And if I said yes, he'd serve me a dead, putrid rat.
Astarion: Of course if I said no, he'd have me flayed. Hard to say which was worse.
IIRC, this iteration is kind of specific, I've definitely had it in EA a few times, but I can't nail down what kind of situation triggers it right now. I think it's if you haven't discussed Cazador at all, and then you discover about him. When you talk to him, he directly brings up the topic.
It's a pity that Cazador can only be killed once in the game. Slicing scars on him is also too little. I just wanted to understand, at least at what point in the game (in what act and after what events, at least approximately, this dialog can happen)? We've discussed Cazador multiple times - after the bite, after killing Gandrel, the dialog about the scars after the first night (I don't know if that can be considered dialog about Cazador, Astarion told how Cazador sliced those scars). After we learned from Raphael the meaning of the scars, Astarion said he was going to kill Cazador (and he said this later on, as I recall it was more than once). The dialog when Astarion talked about Cazador calling them “family”. In the castle during the main quest, Astarion recounts a few more hard moments from his past involving Cazador, but didn't talk about it specifically. I know I missed the story about Astarion taking pity on the boy and Cazador punishing him for it with “a year of hunger” because you have to start judging Astarion to activate that dialog, but there was nothing in the video of that dialog about “dinner with a rotten rat” either. And how can you not discuss Cazador? After the bite, Astarion still talks about “Szarr's family”, but after Gandrel starts talking about Cazador anyway.
@Mirmi, thanks a lot!
Yes, I had exactly that dialog with Ulma. Very good points about the Gurts. They wanted to kill Astarion, it doesn't matter to them that spawns don't have free will and can't do their master's bidding, same goes for enchanted humans. And:
- (Ulma): If our children are truly dead, then we will take payment in blood. I know you are able to understand that, spawn. (Words of pure revenge, if the children are dead, we will kill you).
It's clear that one's own clan and one's own children are more important than the lives of others, it's a matter of survival. But Tav, for whom Astarion is certainly more important, and who kills these very Gurts, is in no way more "immoral” than they themselves.
- (Ulma): But you didn't see him feed, did you? He could keep captives in his possession for days before killing them. (How can the head of the Gurus, who has no access to the palace, know more than the spawn who lived in the castle?)
That's for sure. Except, logically, Cazador should have fed alone. He didn't kill his victims, but made them into spawns afterwards. And hid it from the spawns that served him, respectively, and he wouldn't feed in front of his slaves. But Ulma can't know that. Unless she can assume that Cazador “plays with food” by not immediately killing his victims. Or, if there are multiple victims, he wouldn't kill them all at once anyway, but would feed on them one by one, and someone else could be saved. Though, given how much time has passed since the children were kidnapped (more than a few days), it could also be some form of self-conviction, of hope.
