Is the monster hunter in the swamp dead in your playthrough? I have had decision paralysis for a while trying to decide if my durge would want to get out of the conversation quickly or kill him to protect >.< I'm curious what Marrow thought the moment Gandrel said he was hunting Astarion.
While working on Marrow’s story, we actually thought a lot about the monster hunter scene. Marrow killed him in our playthrough, and we asked ourselves over and over again maybe she would have let him live, but near the end game it became clear that it was more our personal wish to see this character alive and his impact. We’re game nerds and love to see all, literally all, content, but in this case it conflicted with Marow’s canon
So yeah, Gandrel is dead and likely to remain so. Marrow really didn’t care. Not about him, not about his hunt. It was the 1st act - the time when she was most focused only on herself. All she was really interested in was revenge and anything stopping her, such as tadpole, goblins, or a random monster hunter. She preferred to just liquidate any obstacle and did not see any problem in this, only if her companions did not argue with her. She didn’t even see Gandrel as a person or anything like that, just an object, just a problem, just a potential threat to her path. The murder just seemed… a natural solution. The right one. And she started to think that there was really something wrong with her methods and mind only after Alfira’s death, when she realized wow, she really seemed to be out of control
As for Astarion, she didn’t even think about protecting him. Sure, she already knew he was a vampire, but they weren’t close yet and, as we said, she had pretty “psychopathic” behavior to feel the need to protect someone. Protecting him is just a combination of circumstances. If Astarion wants to kill some hunter, so let him, as long as nothing delays them. That’s his business. However, Astarion began to see her as a good tool to use. As he thought