A New Tav Has Entered the Scene

Behold: Tav, short for Tavarezzyn, a pathetic excuse for a githyanki.

Tav is, by githyanki standards, a coward and a dogshit warrior. She managed to survive multiple attempts by crechemates to put her down mainly through a combination of dumb luck and pitying intervention by adults, but she has (not pictured here) about a half a dozen notches in her ears to prove her lost fights and make sure other githyanki know what a loser she is on sight.

Unfortunately this had the impact of making her a perpetual defeatist, convinced at the start of any task that she's definitely going to fuck it up, which inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, further convincing her of her own uselessness.

Despite utterly failing to achieve any measure of success by githyanki standards, she continues to zealously laud those same values, worshipping Vlaakith and dreaming of ascension, something laughably beyond the realm of possibility for her. However, early in the adventure after escaping the nautiloid, she does consider that actually, removing herself from githyanki society might be best for everyone. (And in fact, she was caught by the nautiloid in the throes of regret over deserting her platoon, trying to make her way back to them.)

Lae'zel begins their acquaintance from a point of total contempt. She is aware very quickly that Tav is a black sheep among their people and has no respect for her. But Tav's quick and surprisingly successful flash of leadership on the nautiloid, allowing both her and Lae'zel to survive, gives her a desperately needed confidence boost, and as the weeks on the road progress, she discovers she is actually, good at maybe a couple of things, or at least she can improve at some things. Maybe.

For her part, Tav is smitten with Lae'zel immediately, but of course aware of Lae'zel's disdain for her (which does nothing to temper her growing loyalty to and affection for Lae'zel) and assumes there is no chance that will ever happen.

Much to Lae'zel's annoyance, she finds her attitude towards Tav shifting as they travel together, until she's surprised to find she cares about this loser. Together, they weather the shock and anger of Vlaakith's betrayal of the githyanki people and vow to carve their own path and take their queen out of power, the keystone cementing their now inseparable bond.

Tavarezzyn

Lae'el is a bitch and a half to Tavarezzyn once she realizes how low on the feeding chain Tav really is among the githyanki (which doesn't take long; the scars her crechemates left her were supposed to show she's a loser who can't hold her own in a fight). Some of the other companions--Wyll, Gale, Karlach--take some issue with this. Unfortunately, faced with the double humiliation of being rejected by her own kind and being pitied (as she sees it) by outsiders, her response is generally "FUCK OFF ISTIK" or perhaps challenging them to a fight, thanks to a heady cocktail of continual rejection by her own society and a lifetime of bullying combined with feverish commitment to the same values and norms over which she was rejected.

loading up a cargo ship for her issues, bad enough to be disdained by the only other gith around, but being comforted by ISTIK?, intolerable, her brief sojourn into Baldur's Gate began to shift her views, but in Act 1 she still has a ways to go