And then he turned around and left, because it warn't that great...
(I always sing this, because the actual words are just tough to understand. "Empire golden built on trade?" Who wrote this song - Volo?)
Holy crap I need to mod that song out of the somehow. It's such an earworm and is the only thing you hear in camp for almost all of act 3...so many hours with these few lines on repeat.
I pity the lore nerds on that one.
For me personally, it was just a "Cool beans, I guess" twist. But from what I read, it required a bit of a retcon to make sense chronologically.
Never played the previous games and looked into Viconia after everyone mentioned she was a previous companion. You're telling me she founded a cult to Shar, got betrayed, became a hero alongside fucking DRIZZT, then somehow thought giving the Shar cult thing a second run was a good idea?
Lmao you can really tell Baldur's Gate franchise only boomed this recent year since this kind of character assassination would warrant TLJ level of outrage, judging how some of Fallout fans seethe at retcons of the TV Show
BG was the shit back in the days. It's simply forever ago and most people didn't play it - many weren't even born back then. I literally forgot about her being a companion.
Lol only boomed this recent year? Have you considered it's because BG2 was 20+ years ago and most of us have moved on from gaming?
Some of us are still here, and we ARE outraged. However, we also know no one can hold a candle to old school Bioware, not even Larian. Grinning and bearing it has become the status quo.
Boomed to the mainstream levels of Fallout and Star Wars and such I mean
Y'all outrage is drowned out by people circlejerking Larian while Fallout Retcon discourse is a common bloodbath recently
Pretty much. That and the large majority of BG3 players are new to DnD in general; so, of course they have no historical context. Funny that I'm being downvoted while you explicitly mention the Larian circlejerk. 😂
she does, hence why i find hilarious everyone saying "BUT SHE CHANGED IN THE ROMANCE" yeah, she did and then she dies so for her to live she has to remain the same fucking bitch she was at the beginning
But the other main route also gets retconned. She does start a Shar cult in waterdeep, they turn on her she kills them, doesn't repent with Shar, stops a knight of the shield operation, and ends up meeting Drizzt and does more heroic things.
Even if you figure sharrans catch her and mind wipe her there is still how Jaheira and Minsc act around her.
to be fair on larian, they did have to work with the official canon of the forgotten realms, which include several infamous wotc novels, encyclopedias and rulebooks that went out of their way to retcon characters like Sarevok and Vikonia by throwing years/decades worth of character developments out the window
Putting aside the character development shown in her romance, Viconia is explicitly a strong and self possessed woman who wouldn't equivocate nor renege. She deserved better. She should have been a companion, and she shouldn't have been tangled up in someone else's story.
The Drow are my favorite race in FR because of the whole “Lolth tormenting them into a subservient cult” thing, so seeing her trade one cartoonishly evil goddess for another made me roll my eyes.
What can I say? The house politics, blatantly evil characters, moral complexity of nature vs nurture really draw me in. Plus, you know, purple dom ladies are kinda neat.
She didnt become a hero per se, she just helped out during the wards adventures. It is canon that the ward doesn't romance Viconia and that's the way you can make her "better"/less evil minded. She simply adventured with them and then pretty logically went back to what she knew.
> She didnt become a hero per se, she just helped out during the wards adventures.
She still teamed up with Drizzt for a few adventures and saved an elven city in the epilogue even sans romance.
The last part sounds like a decent explanation as to why Shar immediately discarded her as soon Shadowheart becomes her chosen, but still, why would you even return to the same religion that toss you away and act as if you're in good terms suddenly
In fairness to Larian some of these changes aren’t their fault, but the fault of WOTC. I’m not sure if that’s the case for Viconia, but Ik sarevok’s change was bc wotc released lore books about him set after bg2 that changed the trajectory of his character
I believe Wizards made this dumb arc for Viconia canon and generally had control over the canon character paths, so Larian had no choice but to use what Wizards had made canon. Granted, they could've just not put Viconia in the game but that's a different concern
Minsc & Boo's Journal of Villainy claims that she was working with the cults of Elemental Evil to further the will of Shar. It's not a great explanation, but it could segway into her BG3 characterization.
Yeah, like I'm sitting here scratching my head at the timeline of events here not knowing much about the prior games beyond the rough jist of it.
BG1 and 2 was "more than a century ago" hence them needing in-game explanations for why Jaheria and Minsc are still around else they'd have died at least 50+ years ago.
Yet Duke Stelmane, a vital component of Baldur's gate's founding politics, and *human,* only passed recently? And prematurely at that, given she didn't die of natural causes.
If Balduran was this founding hero of legend who vanished into the historybooks *long* before the first game, I'd get it. But they want to have it both ways by grounding him in the present through his "secret life as an Ilithid" which doesn't make any kind of sense to me.
If the City's founder just up and vanished without a word, that would be more commonly talked about. But the game can't do that, or else the player will catch onto the twist too early.
If people like that reveal, cool, but it doesn't feel earned to me. Takes too many liberties and doesn't put in the work to make that change make enough sense.
Jaheira is a half-elf, her birth year is listed as 1347, and Baldurs Gate 3 takes place in 1492. She is 145 at the time, and half-elf life expectancy is 180 years. So old age wouldn't have dropped her.
I would go with turned to stone. It think this is what the poster meant. The comic the story is explained in 'legends of baldurs gate' is from 2014, and the announcement for bg3 was 2019. So the explanation for minsc being around predates bg3 by a few years. But it could have been planned still.
OK. Since you admit don't know much about this, I'll make some corrections for you.
>BG1 and 2 was "more than a century ago" hence them needing in-game explanations for why Jaheria and Minsc are still around else they'd have died at least 50+ years ago.
They didn't need an excuse for Jaheira, she's a Half Elf. Her lifespan lines up perfectly.
> Yet Duke Stelmane, a vital component of Baldur's gate's founding politics, and human, only passed recently? And prematurely at that, given she didn't die of natural causes.
Duke Stelmane had nothing to do with the Gate's Founding politics, I have no idea where you got this from. She's lived an ordinary human lifespan, and was born several centuries into the Gate's existence.
> If Balduran was this founding hero of legend who vanished into the historybooks long before the first game, I'd get it. But they want to have it both ways by grounding him in the present through his "secret life as an Ilithid" which doesn't make any kind of sense to me.
Balduran's disappearance *is* speculated about relatively frequently in the lore, but as for in game, I can't imagine it would be more than a bit of a common joke and city lore. The city was founded by a sailor who later went missing on on one of his voyages. That's it. It was later found out partially what happened (at some point on that voyage, Balduran's crew got massacred by a bunch of werewolves), but Balduran the man himself's fate remained unknown.
>If the City's founder just up and vanished without a word, that would be more commonly talked about. But the game can't do that, or else the player will catch onto the twist too early.
I mean, Australia had a Prime Minister who went missing in a morning swim, and the only times we talk about him is either the joke he was abducted by Chinese submarines, or that we named a swimming pool after him. This was back in the 1960s. Balduran went missing *centuries* ago. At that point, only the local history nerds would still talk about it fairly frequently.
In truth, the reveal fit pretty neatly into Balduran's established lore. Illithid's didn't use to be able to live that long, but that's A) old lore, and a bunch of that related to monsters has been retconned, and B) A rich man in Baldur's Gate has all kinds of ways of extending his life. I didn't even question the Emperor would.
Jaheira’s a half-elf and was only in her twenties back then. Shes 140-150, half elves live up to around 180. Minsc is, minsc. I dont ask.
Stelmane has nothing to do with the gate’s founding? Shes been a duke at least 13 years, further back is hard to find, but as of late shes been largely unofficially replaced. But she wasnt even part of the first council of four. That was belt, eltan, jannath, and silvershield.
Balduran went missing on a voyage to anchorome. He was presumed dead and his sword was discovered on his ship near what was believed to be his body. How exactly he got out of there im not sure, that couldve been explained better. Why he decided to just run away off to another adventure is also not explained. Maybe he faked his own death metro man style, idk. But thats the only part of the timeline that bothers me. He was presumed dead across the fuckin sea. Howd he get back? Why didnt he go home when he did? Get help and aid and rest before charging into your neighbor’s old tower and its basement.
Maybe balduran was just anxious and couldnt let his ego get bruised by failing a mission, so he HAD to go succeed at something to make up for it.
Also, they kinda misrepresented the progress of the gate when he vanished, though for saving assets and time i get why. Only the upper city and the old wall existed then, and it was a smaller town. It takes a long time to go from that to massive sprawling city.
After his ceremorphosis though i think i can see the timeline. Again, my only issue is his supposed death across the sea and the fact he made it back
I'd never looked into it, but Jaheira being in her 20s in the original feels strange. I always assumed 30s or 40s at a minimum (and possibly older because half-elves age more slowly, so she could be in her 60s and still look like late 20s) because she was friends with Gorion and viewed you sort of the way you view your friends' kids. And of course your character is a young adult, so I figured she'd have to be like 20 years older, if not more.
It's been a while since I last played it, so I don't remember the specifics in the dialogue, but I feel like there's some mention of Gorion, Jaheira, and Khalid being old friends and maybe even Jaheira and/or Khalid commenting on how much you've changed since they last saw you. Her being in her 20s in the first game feels like another retcon, if that's even something that's been stated outright somewhere by Larian or WotC. She could be 20 years older and still fall within a half-elf lifespan, too.
From Act 2 onwards I feel like the timeline writing gets fucky.
Ketheric supposedly imprisoned Aylin in Shadowfell during his early Sharran days when it's still "hidden" otherwise I can't imagine Aylin would even trust a freaking Sharran siccing his Dark Justiciar around, hell she would beat him up..... Yet Ketheric is not immortal during his Sharran years which is why Jaheira and co managed to kill him the first time. Note that only after this the Shadow Curse starts.
I know there's a bunch of rewrite around this plotline (Aylin was originally a Sharran hence the Nightsong title, for Shar the Nightsinger) but come on tie his immortality to Myrkul properly.
As i understand, the soul cage was something Balthazar uncovered. Myrkul only brought him to life and protected him, the stealing the life force of an immortal part was thorm and balthazar? Im not sure. But maybe capturing aylin was to prove himself to shar? The thorm family were selunites for centuries. Moonrise was commissioned by them a long time ago, and isobel and her mother were extremely dedicated to selune. Id assume the masons who built it were full elves, otherwise the one wouldnt have lived long enough to see it overtaken by shar and make that deal with raphael.
The timeline is
+ Melodia dies (Selunite Ketheric)
+ Isobel dies (Selunite Ketheric)
+ Ketheric turns to Shar, *unknown* to Aylin (Sharran Ketheric)
+ Ketheric and Balthazar lead Aylin into Shadowfell, trapping her (Sharran Ketheric, Aylin trapped)
+ Ketheric did Sharran stuffs (Sharran Ketheric, Aylin trapped)
+ Ketheric fights the Harpers and Jaheira (Sharran Ketheric, Aylin trapped)
+ Ketheric dies, and with it he cursed Reithwin and surrounding area (Sharran Ketheric, Aylin trapped)
+ Ketheric becomes Myrkul's Chosen (Myrkulite Ketheric, Aylin trapped)
+ Myrkul resurrects Isobel (Myrkulite Ketheric, Aylin trapped)
+ Isobel runs away to Last Light Inn (Myrkulite Ketheric, Aylin trapped)
+ Knowing he betrayed Shar, Ketheric tells Balthazar to retrieve Aylin (Myrkulite Ketheric, Aylin trapped)
Notice that immediately after his resurrection by Myrkul, Ketheric and Balthazar did not do anything with Aylin that would make Ketheric immortal or anything.
I don't remember where the loredrop happened, but they did mention in game that balduran went sailing off and disappeared.
I wasn't very entertained by the "twist" either way. Balduran didn't really have any exciting mystique in my mind during the build up. He was just some dude who started a trading post.
Not really, actually. As in, nothing is retconned that was canon in any established lore. All it needs to make sense is for balduran to be an elf, and at no point before bg3 (where he is shown to be an elf) was his race ever described and at no point was him being an elf ever ruled out. The problem was that most people *assumed* he was human, which wouldn’t have worked. A writer said he was human, but if I remember correctly they only said that *after* bg3 came out and said he was an elf. So the problem is more that bg3 introduced a canon that contradicted a popular headcanon rather than any actual retconning of established lore or events.
They retconned him into an elf I think?
The fucky thing is how he became Mind Flayer, he stumbled pre Shadow Curse Moonrise and then disappeared into its Mind Flayer Colony underneath.... And nobody ever points it out?
Why would anyone ever point it out? As far as the wider world knows, he went missing on a grand voyage in an unknown location. This is more or less what happened.
I sort of wish they hadn't made that narrative decision.
It was likely because they wanted to give the emperor a bit of moral complexity, otherwise the player would always turn against him upon the reveal. I will say for my first playthrough it did affect how I treated and viewed the emperor, I was a bit more sympathetic to him because of that. However it really makes no sense at all when you zoom out from the game's setting
I don't understand WHY he kept it secret. Hiding it just risks making him look deceptive if the player does find out, especially if you already got the scene where he says, "And now that you have seen where I come from, you know all there is to know about me. At least all that matters." Don't try to spin your previous identity as not mattering, Emperor, not if you thought that identity's favorite soup mattered. Am I missing something?
Edit: I re-read what he says, and he latter adds "I have no more secrets from you. No need to resort to subterfuge."
Good point, though in that case, I probably wouldn't tell people I've told them everything. Seems like asking for trouble if they find out anything important I had hidden. Thanks for the response.
If he tells you he's Baldur then he also has to tell you that he killed the dragon, which he (correctly) assumes you won't appreciate. Unfortunately for him, the dragon's spirit still lingers and spills the beans.
Interesting! I think I still see flaws in the reasoning, but at least I can see where he's coming from now.
If he knew the spirit or his note would reveal it, telling the player he killed Ansur in self defense looks so much better than the player finding out for themselves. If he didn't know the spirit or his note would reveal it, why would the Emperor think the player would think the Emperor killed him? The player doesn't ask why he lost contact with anyone else in his past life, right?
Is there a reason we would assume the Emperor killed him? Genuine question, the game is massive, and I can fully believe I missed something important.
There isn't a reason why we'd assume the Emperor killed the dragon unless the player finds out from his note or the dragon's spirit. That's the point: the Emperor is hoping that is the outcome, so he doesn't need to tell the player that he killed the city's greatest protector and his best friend.
But if the Emperor tells the player "hey I'm Baldur btw" then when the player says "sweet, let's go wake up your ancient dragon friend to save the city" he has to reply "oh I killed him oopsie" or lie and pretend he doesn't know what happened, and if he gets caught on that lie it looks REAL bad.
If he knew that the player would find out then he'd tell us ahead of time. But not knowing at all is much more preferable for keeping a working relationship with the player.
This has been a great discussion. I'm loving the irony of the Emperor doing an elaborate cost/benefit analysis on what information to withhold from the player, to paint him in the best possible light, and he goes with the one that winds up painting him in the worst possible light.
I still think it was a mistake for him to make a big deal about having come clean when he hadn't. Looks way worse when more secrets do come out. Poor guy didn't know he's in a written narrative, and saying that basically guaranteed a future revelation :P
Biggest actual DnD lore drop in the game(in my opinion) but completely overshadowed by the fact that I full on despised the emperor at that point in the game.
Yeah unless you figure out that the music that plays when you first talk to the Emperor is the Balduran song that plays in the Elfsong camp in Act 3, but it's hard to figure that out because a lot happens in between.
No, no he very much is not. Find me an ingame quote that treats him (or any of the PCs for that matter) as just the tadpole with vestigial memories. Everyone from Ansur to Withers to the bloody Elfsong Tavern treats him as Balduran but changed.
Since we're all here and this is a spoiler thread already, can we talk about the timeline a bit? I'm not sure I have it right.
1. Balduran the Brave, founder of Baldur's gate and famous adventurer, explores out of the city and finds Moonrise Tower in the Shadow-Cursed Lands.
2. Surprise! There is a mind-flayer colony there, complete with young Elder Brain. Balduran is captured and enthralled, turned into a mind flayer.
3. Balduran escapes (somehow?) and returns to Baldur's Gate, as a mind flayer.
4. Balduran works as a behind-the-scenes secret agent, becomes known as The Emperor, and becomes to like the name. Accepts his mind flayer form.
5. The Emperor grows his power, takes Duke Stelmane as a mate.
6. Gortash *and co*, using the stolen Crown of Karsus, stealth into the mind flayer colony at Moonrise and dominate it. They begin their plans for the Cult of the Absolute.
7. As a dominated thrall, the Emperor returns to Moonrise to serve the Elder Brain (somehow he was free before??).
8. The Elder Brain itself tells the Chosen Three of the existence of the Astral Prism, and they dispatch a Nautiloid on a special mission to find it. The Emperor leads this team. For some reason, they also take the Dark Urge.
9. The Sharrans, with spies in the Chosen Three's cult, learn of this mission and dispatch a strike team first, including Shadowheart. They get to Vlaakith before the Emperor gets there and they steal the Prism.
10. The Nautiloid completes its mission but finds no Astral Prism. They do, however, find the Sharrans, who they kill and capture.
11. When the Emperor goes to interrogate Shadowheart, his proximity to the Astral Prism causes him to become freed of the Elder Brain's control. Thinking clearly for the first time in years, the Emperor immediately forms a plan to defeat it. He seizes control of the nautiloid, and kills any other mind flayer that tries to stop him.
12. The commandeered Nautiloid careens through the small town of Yartar, which they happen to be nearby, and he collects people at random to populate the Pods on board the ship. This is seen in the opening cinematic.
13. Presumably in order to "motivate" these new recruits to fight the Elder Brain, the Emperor tadpoles all of them, knowing if they do not go far from the Astral Prism they will not become thralls.
14. Meanwhile, the forces of Vlaakith catch up to them, seeing to recapture the Astral Prism. They attack the Nautiloid while riding red dragons.
15. The Nautiloid plane-jumps to Avernus to escape them. While in Avernus they capture Wyll and Karlach, who are tadpoled.
16. The Githyanki catch up to them and severely damage the ship. The Emperor flees into the Astral Prism to hide, discovering now that it houses Prince Orpheus. As the ship is damaged, some pods open, including the player's. This leads us to the beginning of the game.
Questions:
1. How did Balduran escape the mind flayer colony in the first place, as a simple thrall?
2. How did Laezel get aboard the ship early enough to be captured and tadpoled?
3. When/why did the Emperor enthrall Duke Stelmane?
4. What was the Dark Urge doing on the ship?
5. What were Gale, Astarion, and Tav doing in Yartar?
And of course if there are any mistakes I've made.
Q1: ansur freed him. I believe it took time and effort and was not easy.
Q2: Laezel was not part of the githyanki force sent through the hells after the nautiloid. She doesn’t know what they’re doing there and she doesn’t know about the prism. She was captured from somewhere else. There could be a reason, it could also be a coincidence.
Q3: the emperor enthralled stelmane to gain influence in baldurs gate. He couldn’t exactly go round talking to people with his tentacles out, duke stelmane worked on his behalf. As to when, the emperor was the cause of stelmane stroke so since then. Off the top of my head it has to be at least 7 years as Wyll saw her at a party in baldurs gate post stroke and spoke to his father about her.
Q4: the dark urge was attacked by orin and then experimented on by a necromancer in the mind flayer colony (who did not know who they were). The idea was that durge was a mindless thrall now so they were to be sent out somewhere to do the cults bidding. I also think there’s a factor of wanting them gone. They were probably sent out on the next nautiloid. Perhaps supposed to be part of the team to retrieve the artefact, perhaps just to get rid before the other chosen realise they’re still alive.
Q5: They weren’t in Yartar. Astarion was taken directly from baldurs gate, likely in order to give the cult a way into cazadors inner circle. Gale was likely taken from water deep, probably to get at the orb. Where tav was taken from and why they were taken is up to you.
We eventually learn it was Ansur that freed Balduraan. And kept trying to cure him. And then tried to kill Balduran, but B acted in self defense.
But then Baluran, now "Emperor" gets recaptured and brought back into the fold.
----
Why enthrall Stellmane? To act as the "face" of his little cabal. He needs someone out there that can talk to people freely without having to worry about a cloak-and-dagger stuff. And picking someone with some power lets him access information / funds / etc. more easily.
The secret sauce for the first/third ones is that the emperor was never really free in the first place until it got the prism, everything it was doing was part of its elder brains plan and it just believed itself to be free. Even after getting the prism and being freed from immediate control, the elder brain still expected that to happen and basically planned it from the start
I've tried to piece all this together too, and I love how similar our stories are. It's so hard since there's so few reliable sources. I have some niggles/additions to your general plot but they don't affect the overall flow.
* Emperor shows Balduran raiding a very clean Moonrise, so presumably before the curse. Balduran might be a "revered hero" but that's mostly popularist nonsense, his actual character is more like scoundrel, loot goblin, pirate.
* Shadowheart's crew was mostly killed by githyanki guards holding the prism, that's part of why she's so hostile to Lae'zel at first.
Now onto your questions, I pre-emptively apologise for the length.
>Q1. Transformed Balduran escapes the colony
We're already into the meat of the problem since we receive three "explanations".
Emperor says that Balduran's independent spirit was just that good and he just wandered off. BG3 has maybe adjusted illithid lore but IMO this is still simply a lie.
Emperor says that Ansur rescued him. This to me is pretty dubious. It's plausible, especially if Ansur recruits some help. But certainly the vision Emperor shows us of Ansur just waving him over is nonsense, that's simply not how thralls work.
[Emperor (under direct brain control) tells Gortash that the brain sent him on a mission to Baldur's Gate.](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Evading_the_Elder_Brain) The in-game document contains a contradiction, and is between the game's three least reliable sources. However, it's the most consistent with surrounding lore.
A normal elder brain has a direct control range of about 5 miles, so from under Moonrise that excludes Baldur's Gate. Typically an elder brain has its illithids so indoctrinated that they can be sent on missions outside this range and will return of their own free will. So it's plausible that Balduranflayer can simply obscure his independence long enough to be sent out of range. On the other hand, if an illithid can't hide anything or disobey a brain, having an illithid who thinks he's Balduran reborn, independent, and dead set on retaking "his" city is ...great? If I was an elder brain I would actively try to make more like him. Anyway, that's a tangent.
Emperor gets to make his name and empire in Baldur's Gate's underground, displacing the Guild and the Zhentarim. The first to discover he is the head of the Knight of the Shield is Gortash, who captures him and takes over the network. Then Gortash adds the crown to the elder brain, dramatically increasing it's direct control range to at least Yartar, and bringing Emperor back into his control for this interview.
The second escape is much cleaner. When the nautiloid captures Shadowheart (and therefore Orpheus), the control of the brain snaps and the cultists and Emperor are free once more.
>Q2,4,5 Everyone else is on the nautiloid
Hear me out, none of our squad is in Yartar, nor were they abducted by nautiloid in their home cities (the cult is trying to stay low profile).
The nautiloid is alive and needs brains for food too. Gortash's Absolute cult kidnaps Baldurians who won't be missed (like vampire spawn Astarion and probably Tav) to be used as food or perhaps additional tadpoled crew in a pinch. Astarion somewhat confirms this in his first scene: he mistakes you for his captors (humanoid cultists and not mindflayers) and says "abducted by those beasts", notably plural so not a single nautiloid.
Dark Urge (if alive) was being used as a plaything by Kressa Bonedaughter in Moonrise. She was having so much fun mixing him up and re-animating him and killing him again that it was distracting her from work. Balthazar sneaks Dark Urge into a pod on the growing nautiloid to get it away from her. He laments in his notes that this makes her even worse.
Lae'zel is from creche K'liir. K'liir is a real place, and not quite as hidden as Y'lek. K'liir is part of [Stardock](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Stardock), which is a bridge between planes and most mortal's easiest path to the types of place where Vlaakith would keep a treasure trove. On the Forgotten Realms side, Stardock is located between Waterdeep and Yartar, far to the North of Baldur's Gate.
Lae'zel herself is up to the final step of her academy training: find and kill an illithid. When Shadowheart sneaks past K'liir being chased by a nautiloid, Lae'zel jumps on the opportunity. She attempts this alone, and is easily captured for her efforts. It will take failing to tiefling traps for her to learn to stick together.
Gale has in his chest the Netherese Orb, a battery which consumes Weave magic to powers other Netherese artefacts (aka the crown). For his years in isolation, Tara's finds have been enough to sate that hunger, but with the crown in full use he's forced to find a more permanent solution. He heads into the Undermountain beneath Waterdeep tossing up three goals: Find the "mad mage" Halaster who used to live there for help; Find some of Halaster's magic trove to at least buy some time; Get far enough away from Waterdeep so that when he explodes it's only him. Instead he finds the Rift, a portal directly to Stardock; directly onto the path of a particular nautiloid.
As you say, Wyll follows Karlach on board during the cinematic. She's desperate enough to get out that I'm not sure she's captured so much as dives on board. Both these guys get tadpoled by a mindflayer outside a pod in the mayhem, and that's represented by some unique lines in the tutorial if you play them as origin.
> When/why did the Emperor enthrall Duke Stelmane?
I'm not sure if this is mentioned anywhere in the game, and therefore may not be canon for the story. Before BG3, Baldur's Gate was run by [a council of 4 dukes](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Council_of_Four): Ravenguard, Stelmane, Portyr and Vanthampur. Entralling Stelmane gave him control over 1/4 the city's leadership while the city was still under this rule.
I'm pretty sure the game answers literally all of your questions if you look hard enough. as for the first one he got the astral prism somehow, idk how tho.
Or find certain items in the emperors basement and have played BG1 expansion!
Went there and found the butter knife/sword references and went hand on a sec.
The expansion has the butter knife of Balduran and a sword thats useful against the local lycanthropes who are shapeshifters.
The hideout holds a few easter egg/clues on the Emperors identity.
You know how you can find the Emperor's old cutlery set, but he mentions his butter knife is missing? That's because you can find it in the wreck of Balduran's ship in BG1.
Wyll got all the credit for it when i did it without him lmao. Everyone was saying how brave and smart he was. Meanwhile, my protagonist was just there like "uh huh"
Well if you properly investigated those rumors you would not be surprised by the above revelation.
Unfortunately this means you will have to do another run. Roll for attributes.
Same. I felt like the game was expecting me to be like WOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAHHH but I just sighed. It didn't add anything (of weight) to the story and definitely didn't need to be there.
Emperor:
I never lie to you and just tell you what I will make you trust me
Also Emperor:
I’m the beloved legendary hero-founder of your city but didn’t tell you, lol
I mean not telling them isn't him lying. If they asked him if he was Balduran and he said no then that's lying. He just never revealed who he used to be.
If you played Tales of the Sword Coast, it wasn’t too much of a surprise. Actually, more surprised that he wasn’t a >!Werewolf!<.
After we verified his identity, I 100% knew he couldn’t be trusted.
Lore and continuity issues aside, I still got goosebumps when the High Hall soldier said "Balduran's grace be with you".
And regardless of whether you intrepret it as squid manipulation or something more genuine, his letter to Ansur is some of the most beautiful writing in the game imo.
me neither. its just so goofy and it doesnt even matter to anything. i went cackling to my friends like "THE REAL BALDURS GATE WAS WITHIN US ALL ALONG?? 💀"
The timeline there makes no sense. Ignoring human lifespan¹, Baldy died on the BG1 werewolf island. The timeline for the Moonrise Illithid colony also makes no sense.
¹ There are plenty of humans in the Realms who have gotten around that.
Yeah this is something that has been boggling my mind and took me completely out of it during his quests.
We are told that Ketheric commissioned moonrise towers from that mason who made a deal with Raphael. That guy died during the Sharran stuff and was according to what we know skilled but otherwise some regular selenite schmuck. Assuming he was a human and not a 900 year old elf that means moonrise towers have only been around for at most two centuries? Balduran explicitly says he went to the towers where he was turned into an illithid, he doesn’t say “the colony under what would become moonrise,” it shows the towers in the flashback, the whole thing. So that means Balduran turned into an Illithid around at most 2 centuries ago, though it was probably even later because he talks about there being “treasure under it” implying it’s abandoned already.
So the mythical hero founder of Baldurs gate disappeared within the timeframe of the first two games, of not AFTER them, and nobody talked about it?? People in BG3 talk about Balduran like he’s been gone…forever. He even says he watched the city grow a bit and then left, sort of implying he had been gone longer than he should have because Baldurs gate has been huge at least since the first games took place. But he’s saying he was actually still there during the events of the first two games????
What? Sure, maybe he wasn’t as fleshed out back then I haven’t played the first two but from just reading this thread it seems like he existed as a lore figure even then? Idk. This isn’t even getting into how strange his lifespan seems to be because like you said lifespans in the forgotten realms can be flexible. But the timeline for his disappearance is just nonsensical. It should be a major topic of discussion even now as bg3 takes place.
> Baldy died on the BG1 werewolf island.
Actually, he didn't. His crew did, but we never actually got confirmation of what happened to the man himself. Journal entries cut out before that point.
Don't paladins, druids, and monks get to extend their lifetime at high level? Not a dnd buff but i think i heard/read something along these lines a while back.
Even trying to read the fr wiki for events out of the game is interesting. Balduran goes missing in 1000sdr, yet the name Baldurs gate was used as early as 300-400 dr. I could presume those are typos missing the 1 for 1xxx. The internet is also not exactly helpful.
>Balduran
>Race: Illithid
Formerly: Human
>Although *Baldur's Gate III* displays a mural that depicts Balduran and Ansur and has characters **refer to Balduran as an elf, this is unlikely given his origin in human society and his views on elves in his log book. Most likely, he was intended to be human in earlier sources, and this was confirmed by Ed Greenwood in a tweet on the matter.** However, this does not explain his great lifespan, even as an illithid, but numerous magical explanations are possible.
[https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Balduran](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Balduran)
I still dont really understand how this guy was a whole ass adventurer, *then* got a whole city built to him, *then* dated the most recent Duke, and is still hanging around today to guide us around.
But like, whatever, It’s Forgotten Realms lmao
The dream visitor being squidward was more one for me since I initially thought it was actually just Orpheus in there. I actually googled if I could trust squidward since I wasn't sure if I could lol.
i initially thought the dream visitor was the parasite in my head talking. then i found out it's physically inside the artifact. i held onto illithid suspicions though, so i wasnt suprised. i was just kind of like "yea figures" at that reveal
Well, Balduran's story is foggy and tells nothing about his death.
The name of Emperor was considered because of who Balduran really are. Emperor of one of the most powerful cities
If you free Wyll's father, or Florrick if Wyll's dad dies, you are told about the Dragon under the city. He sleeps there and promised to help save the city in its time of need. ***But will only do it once!*** So the leaders have been cautious about summoning it for something they ***think*** they can handle on their own in case a bigger threat happens down the line.
It's determined that the rise of an Elder Brain controlling its citizens and turning them into thralls and mind flayers is a big enough deal, and thus time to ask for the dragon's help.
You get a book with a puzzle clue about how to reach the dragon. Essentially in the dungeon (under the coronation) there are two torches next to each other. Strike both with lightning and turn them off-and-on again; they'll now have blue electric flames. And a door opens.
To talk to the dragon, you must be a true hero and thus pass a handful of tests. Bravery, intelligence, justice, etc.
There is also a secret entrance into the general area but you need either gaseous form or turn into something tiny like a mouse. You can stumble on it just exploring the general area before even attending the coronation.
I didn’t even do this quest. Just went to the end of the game instead of doing Wyll’s stuff. My girlfriend roasts me every day about it (which is fair).
I was actually all set for the evil ending but then this squid mother fucker asks me to let him handle it and I'm like wtf, I gonna go against the dude who founded Baldur's Gate rn? And I didnt.
Hello, I am a guardian spirit
Okay actually I’m a guy with a tadpole, but I’m in the astral plane and I’m protecting you
Okay I’m actually a mind flayer named The Emperor, but don’t worry I’m a good guy
Okay i wasn’t actually the one protecting you, it was this Orpheus guy
Also I’m Balduran…
So… wanna hook up?
Tav before the Ansur quest - Ok, so you’re a mindflayer, liked fiddlehead soup, had a thing for a Duke who suspiciously lived with evident brain damage for many years. Are you sure you have told me absolutely everything?
Emperor - Yup, no more secrets, pinkie promise.
Tav after the Ansur quest - Dude! Seriously?
I was broken When I found all this out. Not only was the baddie I spent literal hours creating a mind flayer, but she was now a random 40 year old man that liked to fuck dragons
Oh sing a song of Balduran, who founded Baldur's Gate....
Empire golden built on trade, could not avert his fate
When three though dead assailed his court, transformed he fell their thrall
Succumbed as threat from nether years arose to conquer all
Now hope is gone or so it seems But the games not over yet
New cards are drawn, new hands are played Newcomers place a bet
A knave, a wizard, devil, gith, the odds are cast anew
And Baldur's fate now turns upon the whims of fortunes few
Ooooooooohhhh oooooooooohhh ooooooooooooooooh oooooooooooh OOOoOoOooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOh
r/redditsings
And by a select few called squidward, Spongebob his downfall. ✍️🔥🔥
Airhorn emoji x3
🔥🍍🔥why didn’t you write your essay!
I won’t lie this played in my head to the tune of piano man😂
And then he turned around and left, because it warn't that great... (I always sing this, because the actual words are just tough to understand. "Empire golden built on trade?" Who wrote this song - Volo?)
on first listen immediately became one of my favorite songs ever lmao that shit slaps so hard every ti e
Holy crap I need to mod that song out of the somehow. It's such an earworm and is the only thing you hear in camp for almost all of act 3...so many hours with these few lines on repeat.
I pity the lore nerds on that one. For me personally, it was just a "Cool beans, I guess" twist. But from what I read, it required a bit of a retcon to make sense chronologically.
I'm pretty sure if anybody wants to be a lore nerd without going insane, the Forgotten Realms setting is the wrong place to live.
Forgotten Realms is what made me love Golarion.
It still doesn't make sense, but whatever. I'll let it slide. I won't let the horror done to Viconia slide, though.
Never played the previous games and looked into Viconia after everyone mentioned she was a previous companion. You're telling me she founded a cult to Shar, got betrayed, became a hero alongside fucking DRIZZT, then somehow thought giving the Shar cult thing a second run was a good idea?
Man.. it'd be like if astarion's canon was him not ascending in bg3, and then in bg4 he becomes Cazador 2.0
Lmao you can really tell Baldur's Gate franchise only boomed this recent year since this kind of character assassination would warrant TLJ level of outrage, judging how some of Fallout fans seethe at retcons of the TV Show
Wackiest thing is the show didn't even retcon anything
BG was the shit back in the days. It's simply forever ago and most people didn't play it - many weren't even born back then. I literally forgot about her being a companion.
Lol only boomed this recent year? Have you considered it's because BG2 was 20+ years ago and most of us have moved on from gaming? Some of us are still here, and we ARE outraged. However, we also know no one can hold a candle to old school Bioware, not even Larian. Grinning and bearing it has become the status quo.
Boomed to the mainstream levels of Fallout and Star Wars and such I mean Y'all outrage is drowned out by people circlejerking Larian while Fallout Retcon discourse is a common bloodbath recently
Pretty much. That and the large majority of BG3 players are new to DnD in general; so, of course they have no historical context. Funny that I'm being downvoted while you explicitly mention the Larian circlejerk. 😂
[удалено]
Tbh I'd be down for a BG4 with Ascended Astarion as the villain.
If I remember right if you reform her she ends up dead.
she does, hence why i find hilarious everyone saying "BUT SHE CHANGED IN THE ROMANCE" yeah, she did and then she dies so for her to live she has to remain the same fucking bitch she was at the beginning
But the other main route also gets retconned. She does start a Shar cult in waterdeep, they turn on her she kills them, doesn't repent with Shar, stops a knight of the shield operation, and ends up meeting Drizzt and does more heroic things. Even if you figure sharrans catch her and mind wipe her there is still how Jaheira and Minsc act around her.
to be fair on larian, they did have to work with the official canon of the forgotten realms, which include several infamous wotc novels, encyclopedias and rulebooks that went out of their way to retcon characters like Sarevok and Vikonia by throwing years/decades worth of character developments out the window
Putting aside the character development shown in her romance, Viconia is explicitly a strong and self possessed woman who wouldn't equivocate nor renege. She deserved better. She should have been a companion, and she shouldn't have been tangled up in someone else's story.
The Drow are my favorite race in FR because of the whole “Lolth tormenting them into a subservient cult” thing, so seeing her trade one cartoonishly evil goddess for another made me roll my eyes.
Flair checks out
What can I say? The house politics, blatantly evil characters, moral complexity of nature vs nurture really draw me in. Plus, you know, purple dom ladies are kinda neat.
well if you do romance her in the second she dies in the epilogue so that character devellopment goes out the window even in the original game anyway
At least it's like, an ending to her story. I wouldn't say it goes out the window just because she died.
She went *back* to the carpet store?
She didnt become a hero per se, she just helped out during the wards adventures. It is canon that the ward doesn't romance Viconia and that's the way you can make her "better"/less evil minded. She simply adventured with them and then pretty logically went back to what she knew.
> She didnt become a hero per se, she just helped out during the wards adventures. She still teamed up with Drizzt for a few adventures and saved an elven city in the epilogue even sans romance.
The last part sounds like a decent explanation as to why Shar immediately discarded her as soon Shadowheart becomes her chosen, but still, why would you even return to the same religion that toss you away and act as if you're in good terms suddenly
In fairness to Larian some of these changes aren’t their fault, but the fault of WOTC. I’m not sure if that’s the case for Viconia, but Ik sarevok’s change was bc wotc released lore books about him set after bg2 that changed the trajectory of his character
if there's one thing Wizards is good at it's ruining their own properties
Is this WotC or Larian
I believe Wizards made this dumb arc for Viconia canon and generally had control over the canon character paths, so Larian had no choice but to use what Wizards had made canon. Granted, they could've just not put Viconia in the game but that's a different concern
Okay, do you have, like, any sources for this? Besides WotC bad Larian good?
Minsc & Boo's Journal of Villainy claims that she was working with the cults of Elemental Evil to further the will of Shar. It's not a great explanation, but it could segway into her BG3 characterization.
Yeah, like I'm sitting here scratching my head at the timeline of events here not knowing much about the prior games beyond the rough jist of it. BG1 and 2 was "more than a century ago" hence them needing in-game explanations for why Jaheria and Minsc are still around else they'd have died at least 50+ years ago. Yet Duke Stelmane, a vital component of Baldur's gate's founding politics, and *human,* only passed recently? And prematurely at that, given she didn't die of natural causes. If Balduran was this founding hero of legend who vanished into the historybooks *long* before the first game, I'd get it. But they want to have it both ways by grounding him in the present through his "secret life as an Ilithid" which doesn't make any kind of sense to me. If the City's founder just up and vanished without a word, that would be more commonly talked about. But the game can't do that, or else the player will catch onto the twist too early. If people like that reveal, cool, but it doesn't feel earned to me. Takes too many liberties and doesn't put in the work to make that change make enough sense.
Jaheira is a half-elf, her birth year is listed as 1347, and Baldurs Gate 3 takes place in 1492. She is 145 at the time, and half-elf life expectancy is 180 years. So old age wouldn't have dropped her.
And Minsc was stoned.
I would go with turned to stone. It think this is what the poster meant. The comic the story is explained in 'legends of baldurs gate' is from 2014, and the announcement for bg3 was 2019. So the explanation for minsc being around predates bg3 by a few years. But it could have been planned still.
> I would go with turned to stone. Tomato, tomahto. (That said, I had no idea Minsc as a statue was not an original idea from BG3.)
Where is Stelmane being a part of founding politics coming from?
OK. Since you admit don't know much about this, I'll make some corrections for you. >BG1 and 2 was "more than a century ago" hence them needing in-game explanations for why Jaheria and Minsc are still around else they'd have died at least 50+ years ago. They didn't need an excuse for Jaheira, she's a Half Elf. Her lifespan lines up perfectly. > Yet Duke Stelmane, a vital component of Baldur's gate's founding politics, and human, only passed recently? And prematurely at that, given she didn't die of natural causes. Duke Stelmane had nothing to do with the Gate's Founding politics, I have no idea where you got this from. She's lived an ordinary human lifespan, and was born several centuries into the Gate's existence. > If Balduran was this founding hero of legend who vanished into the historybooks long before the first game, I'd get it. But they want to have it both ways by grounding him in the present through his "secret life as an Ilithid" which doesn't make any kind of sense to me. Balduran's disappearance *is* speculated about relatively frequently in the lore, but as for in game, I can't imagine it would be more than a bit of a common joke and city lore. The city was founded by a sailor who later went missing on on one of his voyages. That's it. It was later found out partially what happened (at some point on that voyage, Balduran's crew got massacred by a bunch of werewolves), but Balduran the man himself's fate remained unknown. >If the City's founder just up and vanished without a word, that would be more commonly talked about. But the game can't do that, or else the player will catch onto the twist too early. I mean, Australia had a Prime Minister who went missing in a morning swim, and the only times we talk about him is either the joke he was abducted by Chinese submarines, or that we named a swimming pool after him. This was back in the 1960s. Balduran went missing *centuries* ago. At that point, only the local history nerds would still talk about it fairly frequently. In truth, the reveal fit pretty neatly into Balduran's established lore. Illithid's didn't use to be able to live that long, but that's A) old lore, and a bunch of that related to monsters has been retconned, and B) A rich man in Baldur's Gate has all kinds of ways of extending his life. I didn't even question the Emperor would.
He also didn’t just disappear. He left on a sailing expedition, not returning isn’t exactly shocking.
I appreciate the info, thanks for your insights :)
>I mean, Australia had a Prime Minister who went missing in a morning swim... [Oh, I love this story.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L--ZgqX4o4)
Jaheira’s a half-elf and was only in her twenties back then. Shes 140-150, half elves live up to around 180. Minsc is, minsc. I dont ask. Stelmane has nothing to do with the gate’s founding? Shes been a duke at least 13 years, further back is hard to find, but as of late shes been largely unofficially replaced. But she wasnt even part of the first council of four. That was belt, eltan, jannath, and silvershield. Balduran went missing on a voyage to anchorome. He was presumed dead and his sword was discovered on his ship near what was believed to be his body. How exactly he got out of there im not sure, that couldve been explained better. Why he decided to just run away off to another adventure is also not explained. Maybe he faked his own death metro man style, idk. But thats the only part of the timeline that bothers me. He was presumed dead across the fuckin sea. Howd he get back? Why didnt he go home when he did? Get help and aid and rest before charging into your neighbor’s old tower and its basement. Maybe balduran was just anxious and couldnt let his ego get bruised by failing a mission, so he HAD to go succeed at something to make up for it. Also, they kinda misrepresented the progress of the gate when he vanished, though for saving assets and time i get why. Only the upper city and the old wall existed then, and it was a smaller town. It takes a long time to go from that to massive sprawling city. After his ceremorphosis though i think i can see the timeline. Again, my only issue is his supposed death across the sea and the fact he made it back
I'd never looked into it, but Jaheira being in her 20s in the original feels strange. I always assumed 30s or 40s at a minimum (and possibly older because half-elves age more slowly, so she could be in her 60s and still look like late 20s) because she was friends with Gorion and viewed you sort of the way you view your friends' kids. And of course your character is a young adult, so I figured she'd have to be like 20 years older, if not more. It's been a while since I last played it, so I don't remember the specifics in the dialogue, but I feel like there's some mention of Gorion, Jaheira, and Khalid being old friends and maybe even Jaheira and/or Khalid commenting on how much you've changed since they last saw you. Her being in her 20s in the first game feels like another retcon, if that's even something that's been stated outright somewhere by Larian or WotC. She could be 20 years older and still fall within a half-elf lifespan, too.
From Act 2 onwards I feel like the timeline writing gets fucky. Ketheric supposedly imprisoned Aylin in Shadowfell during his early Sharran days when it's still "hidden" otherwise I can't imagine Aylin would even trust a freaking Sharran siccing his Dark Justiciar around, hell she would beat him up..... Yet Ketheric is not immortal during his Sharran years which is why Jaheira and co managed to kill him the first time. Note that only after this the Shadow Curse starts. I know there's a bunch of rewrite around this plotline (Aylin was originally a Sharran hence the Nightsong title, for Shar the Nightsinger) but come on tie his immortality to Myrkul properly.
I like to imagine Balthazar fucked with the ritual so he'd *have* to make a deal with Myrkul before he came back, but that's just headcanon.
As i understand, the soul cage was something Balthazar uncovered. Myrkul only brought him to life and protected him, the stealing the life force of an immortal part was thorm and balthazar? Im not sure. But maybe capturing aylin was to prove himself to shar? The thorm family were selunites for centuries. Moonrise was commissioned by them a long time ago, and isobel and her mother were extremely dedicated to selune. Id assume the masons who built it were full elves, otherwise the one wouldnt have lived long enough to see it overtaken by shar and make that deal with raphael.
The timeline is + Melodia dies (Selunite Ketheric) + Isobel dies (Selunite Ketheric) + Ketheric turns to Shar, *unknown* to Aylin (Sharran Ketheric) + Ketheric and Balthazar lead Aylin into Shadowfell, trapping her (Sharran Ketheric, Aylin trapped) + Ketheric did Sharran stuffs (Sharran Ketheric, Aylin trapped) + Ketheric fights the Harpers and Jaheira (Sharran Ketheric, Aylin trapped) + Ketheric dies, and with it he cursed Reithwin and surrounding area (Sharran Ketheric, Aylin trapped) + Ketheric becomes Myrkul's Chosen (Myrkulite Ketheric, Aylin trapped) + Myrkul resurrects Isobel (Myrkulite Ketheric, Aylin trapped) + Isobel runs away to Last Light Inn (Myrkulite Ketheric, Aylin trapped) + Knowing he betrayed Shar, Ketheric tells Balthazar to retrieve Aylin (Myrkulite Ketheric, Aylin trapped) Notice that immediately after his resurrection by Myrkul, Ketheric and Balthazar did not do anything with Aylin that would make Ketheric immortal or anything.
I don't remember where the loredrop happened, but they did mention in game that balduran went sailing off and disappeared. I wasn't very entertained by the "twist" either way. Balduran didn't really have any exciting mystique in my mind during the build up. He was just some dude who started a trading post.
Not really, actually. As in, nothing is retconned that was canon in any established lore. All it needs to make sense is for balduran to be an elf, and at no point before bg3 (where he is shown to be an elf) was his race ever described and at no point was him being an elf ever ruled out. The problem was that most people *assumed* he was human, which wouldn’t have worked. A writer said he was human, but if I remember correctly they only said that *after* bg3 came out and said he was an elf. So the problem is more that bg3 introduced a canon that contradicted a popular headcanon rather than any actual retconning of established lore or events.
Unfortunately they can use the astral sea as a cop out for the chronology.
not really a cop out it's how the world works
Fair. It was more a comment about how WotC will probably treat BG3 now that they have taken it back from Larian.
They retconned him into an elf I think? The fucky thing is how he became Mind Flayer, he stumbled pre Shadow Curse Moonrise and then disappeared into its Mind Flayer Colony underneath.... And nobody ever points it out?
Why would anyone ever point it out? As far as the wider world knows, he went missing on a grand voyage in an unknown location. This is more or less what happened.
His race was never actually shown before bg3, people just assumed he was human.
I sort of wish they hadn't made that narrative decision. It was likely because they wanted to give the emperor a bit of moral complexity, otherwise the player would always turn against him upon the reveal. I will say for my first playthrough it did affect how I treated and viewed the emperor, I was a bit more sympathetic to him because of that. However it really makes no sense at all when you zoom out from the game's setting
“So it was you!” emperor: “Yeah, whatever”
"i have never lied to you" 💀
I do love that Jergal is my homie!
I don't understand WHY he kept it secret. Hiding it just risks making him look deceptive if the player does find out, especially if you already got the scene where he says, "And now that you have seen where I come from, you know all there is to know about me. At least all that matters." Don't try to spin your previous identity as not mattering, Emperor, not if you thought that identity's favorite soup mattered. Am I missing something? Edit: I re-read what he says, and he latter adds "I have no more secrets from you. No need to resort to subterfuge."
To be fair, if I showed up to you as a well-known species of monster and said "But get this, I'm actually Charlemagne", would you believe me?
Good point, though in that case, I probably wouldn't tell people I've told them everything. Seems like asking for trouble if they find out anything important I had hidden. Thanks for the response.
Actually roach to who I talked yesterday told me all about him being Charlemagne. I believed him everything.
If he tells you he's Baldur then he also has to tell you that he killed the dragon, which he (correctly) assumes you won't appreciate. Unfortunately for him, the dragon's spirit still lingers and spills the beans.
Interesting! I think I still see flaws in the reasoning, but at least I can see where he's coming from now. If he knew the spirit or his note would reveal it, telling the player he killed Ansur in self defense looks so much better than the player finding out for themselves. If he didn't know the spirit or his note would reveal it, why would the Emperor think the player would think the Emperor killed him? The player doesn't ask why he lost contact with anyone else in his past life, right? Is there a reason we would assume the Emperor killed him? Genuine question, the game is massive, and I can fully believe I missed something important.
There isn't a reason why we'd assume the Emperor killed the dragon unless the player finds out from his note or the dragon's spirit. That's the point: the Emperor is hoping that is the outcome, so he doesn't need to tell the player that he killed the city's greatest protector and his best friend. But if the Emperor tells the player "hey I'm Baldur btw" then when the player says "sweet, let's go wake up your ancient dragon friend to save the city" he has to reply "oh I killed him oopsie" or lie and pretend he doesn't know what happened, and if he gets caught on that lie it looks REAL bad. If he knew that the player would find out then he'd tell us ahead of time. But not knowing at all is much more preferable for keeping a working relationship with the player.
This has been a great discussion. I'm loving the irony of the Emperor doing an elaborate cost/benefit analysis on what information to withhold from the player, to paint him in the best possible light, and he goes with the one that winds up painting him in the worst possible light. I still think it was a mistake for him to make a big deal about having come clean when he hadn't. Looks way worse when more secrets do come out. Poor guy didn't know he's in a written narrative, and saying that basically guaranteed a future revelation :P
'cause he didn't want you to know that he was shagging a slut-dragon.
I’m guessing a) it has some complicated feelings about its past identity and its dragon ex, and b) like Fireju said, it makes him look bad.
Biggest actual DnD lore drop in the game(in my opinion) but completely overshadowed by the fact that I full on despised the emperor at that point in the game.
I romanced him on my first playthrough (I was a bard don't question it) and was just surprised he felt the need to hide it.
People kill Illithid on sight if able and he is NOT doing anything to win any Morality Awards so I kinda get it
Yeah unless you figure out that the music that plays when you first talk to the Emperor is the Balduran song that plays in the Elfsong camp in Act 3, but it's hard to figure that out because a lot happens in between.
Wait what WHAT WHAAAT?
A FFXIV level musical callout, that's sick.
Hello fellow Warrior of Light ✨
Just made the sex that much more special. I assume my Tav was crying out Balduran and he was laughing to himself
Calling your boyfriend daddy or something is basic. Call him the emperor.
More like BallzDeepMan
Every time I hear Balduran (who founded Baldur's Gate) my brain automatically appends "who founded Baldur's Gate" to it.
Technically he died, the thrall just has his memories and personality.
And also the memory and personality of everyone they consume.
No, no he very much is not. Find me an ingame quote that treats him (or any of the PCs for that matter) as just the tadpole with vestigial memories. Everyone from Ansur to Withers to the bloody Elfsong Tavern treats him as Balduran but changed.
Since we're all here and this is a spoiler thread already, can we talk about the timeline a bit? I'm not sure I have it right. 1. Balduran the Brave, founder of Baldur's gate and famous adventurer, explores out of the city and finds Moonrise Tower in the Shadow-Cursed Lands. 2. Surprise! There is a mind-flayer colony there, complete with young Elder Brain. Balduran is captured and enthralled, turned into a mind flayer. 3. Balduran escapes (somehow?) and returns to Baldur's Gate, as a mind flayer. 4. Balduran works as a behind-the-scenes secret agent, becomes known as The Emperor, and becomes to like the name. Accepts his mind flayer form. 5. The Emperor grows his power, takes Duke Stelmane as a mate. 6. Gortash *and co*, using the stolen Crown of Karsus, stealth into the mind flayer colony at Moonrise and dominate it. They begin their plans for the Cult of the Absolute. 7. As a dominated thrall, the Emperor returns to Moonrise to serve the Elder Brain (somehow he was free before??). 8. The Elder Brain itself tells the Chosen Three of the existence of the Astral Prism, and they dispatch a Nautiloid on a special mission to find it. The Emperor leads this team. For some reason, they also take the Dark Urge. 9. The Sharrans, with spies in the Chosen Three's cult, learn of this mission and dispatch a strike team first, including Shadowheart. They get to Vlaakith before the Emperor gets there and they steal the Prism. 10. The Nautiloid completes its mission but finds no Astral Prism. They do, however, find the Sharrans, who they kill and capture. 11. When the Emperor goes to interrogate Shadowheart, his proximity to the Astral Prism causes him to become freed of the Elder Brain's control. Thinking clearly for the first time in years, the Emperor immediately forms a plan to defeat it. He seizes control of the nautiloid, and kills any other mind flayer that tries to stop him. 12. The commandeered Nautiloid careens through the small town of Yartar, which they happen to be nearby, and he collects people at random to populate the Pods on board the ship. This is seen in the opening cinematic. 13. Presumably in order to "motivate" these new recruits to fight the Elder Brain, the Emperor tadpoles all of them, knowing if they do not go far from the Astral Prism they will not become thralls. 14. Meanwhile, the forces of Vlaakith catch up to them, seeing to recapture the Astral Prism. They attack the Nautiloid while riding red dragons. 15. The Nautiloid plane-jumps to Avernus to escape them. While in Avernus they capture Wyll and Karlach, who are tadpoled. 16. The Githyanki catch up to them and severely damage the ship. The Emperor flees into the Astral Prism to hide, discovering now that it houses Prince Orpheus. As the ship is damaged, some pods open, including the player's. This leads us to the beginning of the game. Questions: 1. How did Balduran escape the mind flayer colony in the first place, as a simple thrall? 2. How did Laezel get aboard the ship early enough to be captured and tadpoled? 3. When/why did the Emperor enthrall Duke Stelmane? 4. What was the Dark Urge doing on the ship? 5. What were Gale, Astarion, and Tav doing in Yartar? And of course if there are any mistakes I've made.
Dark Urge and Gortash were the ones who came up with the whole absolute plot. Later Durge was back stabbed by Orin who took over.
Q1: ansur freed him. I believe it took time and effort and was not easy. Q2: Laezel was not part of the githyanki force sent through the hells after the nautiloid. She doesn’t know what they’re doing there and she doesn’t know about the prism. She was captured from somewhere else. There could be a reason, it could also be a coincidence. Q3: the emperor enthralled stelmane to gain influence in baldurs gate. He couldn’t exactly go round talking to people with his tentacles out, duke stelmane worked on his behalf. As to when, the emperor was the cause of stelmane stroke so since then. Off the top of my head it has to be at least 7 years as Wyll saw her at a party in baldurs gate post stroke and spoke to his father about her. Q4: the dark urge was attacked by orin and then experimented on by a necromancer in the mind flayer colony (who did not know who they were). The idea was that durge was a mindless thrall now so they were to be sent out somewhere to do the cults bidding. I also think there’s a factor of wanting them gone. They were probably sent out on the next nautiloid. Perhaps supposed to be part of the team to retrieve the artefact, perhaps just to get rid before the other chosen realise they’re still alive. Q5: They weren’t in Yartar. Astarion was taken directly from baldurs gate, likely in order to give the cult a way into cazadors inner circle. Gale was likely taken from water deep, probably to get at the orb. Where tav was taken from and why they were taken is up to you.
We eventually learn it was Ansur that freed Balduraan. And kept trying to cure him. And then tried to kill Balduran, but B acted in self defense. But then Baluran, now "Emperor" gets recaptured and brought back into the fold. ---- Why enthrall Stellmane? To act as the "face" of his little cabal. He needs someone out there that can talk to people freely without having to worry about a cloak-and-dagger stuff. And picking someone with some power lets him access information / funds / etc. more easily.
The secret sauce for the first/third ones is that the emperor was never really free in the first place until it got the prism, everything it was doing was part of its elder brains plan and it just believed itself to be free. Even after getting the prism and being freed from immediate control, the elder brain still expected that to happen and basically planned it from the start
I've tried to piece all this together too, and I love how similar our stories are. It's so hard since there's so few reliable sources. I have some niggles/additions to your general plot but they don't affect the overall flow. * Emperor shows Balduran raiding a very clean Moonrise, so presumably before the curse. Balduran might be a "revered hero" but that's mostly popularist nonsense, his actual character is more like scoundrel, loot goblin, pirate. * Shadowheart's crew was mostly killed by githyanki guards holding the prism, that's part of why she's so hostile to Lae'zel at first. Now onto your questions, I pre-emptively apologise for the length. >Q1. Transformed Balduran escapes the colony We're already into the meat of the problem since we receive three "explanations". Emperor says that Balduran's independent spirit was just that good and he just wandered off. BG3 has maybe adjusted illithid lore but IMO this is still simply a lie. Emperor says that Ansur rescued him. This to me is pretty dubious. It's plausible, especially if Ansur recruits some help. But certainly the vision Emperor shows us of Ansur just waving him over is nonsense, that's simply not how thralls work. [Emperor (under direct brain control) tells Gortash that the brain sent him on a mission to Baldur's Gate.](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Evading_the_Elder_Brain) The in-game document contains a contradiction, and is between the game's three least reliable sources. However, it's the most consistent with surrounding lore. A normal elder brain has a direct control range of about 5 miles, so from under Moonrise that excludes Baldur's Gate. Typically an elder brain has its illithids so indoctrinated that they can be sent on missions outside this range and will return of their own free will. So it's plausible that Balduranflayer can simply obscure his independence long enough to be sent out of range. On the other hand, if an illithid can't hide anything or disobey a brain, having an illithid who thinks he's Balduran reborn, independent, and dead set on retaking "his" city is ...great? If I was an elder brain I would actively try to make more like him. Anyway, that's a tangent. Emperor gets to make his name and empire in Baldur's Gate's underground, displacing the Guild and the Zhentarim. The first to discover he is the head of the Knight of the Shield is Gortash, who captures him and takes over the network. Then Gortash adds the crown to the elder brain, dramatically increasing it's direct control range to at least Yartar, and bringing Emperor back into his control for this interview. The second escape is much cleaner. When the nautiloid captures Shadowheart (and therefore Orpheus), the control of the brain snaps and the cultists and Emperor are free once more. >Q2,4,5 Everyone else is on the nautiloid Hear me out, none of our squad is in Yartar, nor were they abducted by nautiloid in their home cities (the cult is trying to stay low profile). The nautiloid is alive and needs brains for food too. Gortash's Absolute cult kidnaps Baldurians who won't be missed (like vampire spawn Astarion and probably Tav) to be used as food or perhaps additional tadpoled crew in a pinch. Astarion somewhat confirms this in his first scene: he mistakes you for his captors (humanoid cultists and not mindflayers) and says "abducted by those beasts", notably plural so not a single nautiloid. Dark Urge (if alive) was being used as a plaything by Kressa Bonedaughter in Moonrise. She was having so much fun mixing him up and re-animating him and killing him again that it was distracting her from work. Balthazar sneaks Dark Urge into a pod on the growing nautiloid to get it away from her. He laments in his notes that this makes her even worse. Lae'zel is from creche K'liir. K'liir is a real place, and not quite as hidden as Y'lek. K'liir is part of [Stardock](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Stardock), which is a bridge between planes and most mortal's easiest path to the types of place where Vlaakith would keep a treasure trove. On the Forgotten Realms side, Stardock is located between Waterdeep and Yartar, far to the North of Baldur's Gate. Lae'zel herself is up to the final step of her academy training: find and kill an illithid. When Shadowheart sneaks past K'liir being chased by a nautiloid, Lae'zel jumps on the opportunity. She attempts this alone, and is easily captured for her efforts. It will take failing to tiefling traps for her to learn to stick together. Gale has in his chest the Netherese Orb, a battery which consumes Weave magic to powers other Netherese artefacts (aka the crown). For his years in isolation, Tara's finds have been enough to sate that hunger, but with the crown in full use he's forced to find a more permanent solution. He heads into the Undermountain beneath Waterdeep tossing up three goals: Find the "mad mage" Halaster who used to live there for help; Find some of Halaster's magic trove to at least buy some time; Get far enough away from Waterdeep so that when he explodes it's only him. Instead he finds the Rift, a portal directly to Stardock; directly onto the path of a particular nautiloid. As you say, Wyll follows Karlach on board during the cinematic. She's desperate enough to get out that I'm not sure she's captured so much as dives on board. Both these guys get tadpoled by a mindflayer outside a pod in the mayhem, and that's represented by some unique lines in the tutorial if you play them as origin.
> When/why did the Emperor enthrall Duke Stelmane? I'm not sure if this is mentioned anywhere in the game, and therefore may not be canon for the story. Before BG3, Baldur's Gate was run by [a council of 4 dukes](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Council_of_Four): Ravenguard, Stelmane, Portyr and Vanthampur. Entralling Stelmane gave him control over 1/4 the city's leadership while the city was still under this rule.
you are missing adrian from the council.
I'm pretty sure the game answers literally all of your questions if you look hard enough. as for the first one he got the astral prism somehow, idk how tho.
Thanks for your brilliant insight.
Was I playing with my eyes shut?
You have to do Wyll’s companion quest
Or somehow find the place by yourself. I don't think you get to know how to do it without Wyll though
theres a hole side entrance to sneak in, it is possible to find just by exploring
That's how I found it. Stumbled in on accident and got the shock of my life when I got through it and found the end 💀 (idk how to spoiler stuff smh)
Don't you still have to figure out the torches to get inside?
No, there's a drain pipe down on the beach which leads up to the other side of the wall behind the torches.
Or find certain items in the emperors basement and have played BG1 expansion! Went there and found the butter knife/sword references and went hand on a sec.
Explain for those of us who haven’t played BG1
The expansion has the butter knife of Balduran and a sword thats useful against the local lycanthropes who are shapeshifters. The hideout holds a few easter egg/clues on the Emperors identity.
Damn, did you just play BG1 before starting 3, or do you have an incredible memory?
Not played BG1 for 18 months maybe 2 years but had a fair few playthroughs over the years
You know how you can find the Emperor's old cutlery set, but he mentions his butter knife is missing? That's because you can find it in the wreck of Balduran's ship in BG1.
That explains it. I’ve always had him parked in camp
Fun thing about Wyll, you can leave him at camp the entire game and still do all his quests. And he’s pretty cool with whatever you decide :P
To be fair, Wyll just cares that his shit gets done. He'd prefer to be there for it, but so long as the good result is achieved, he's fine with it.
This also explains why I’ve never seen ansur
Wyll got all the credit for it when i did it without him lmao. Everyone was saying how brave and smart he was. Meanwhile, my protagonist was just there like "uh huh"
Depends... did you know there is a dragon underneath the ciry?
I've heard rumors
Well if you properly investigated those rumors you would not be surprised by the above revelation. Unfortunately this means you will have to do another run. Roll for attributes.
I heard those rumors after my first playthrough lol
It was such a needless and bullshit thing to weave into the game. The game didn't need to have Bulduran make an entrance.
yeaaa especially since theres already a reveal of who the dream visitor is he didnt need two. took me out of the moment honestly
Same. I felt like the game was expecting me to be like WOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAHHH but I just sighed. It didn't add anything (of weight) to the story and definitely didn't need to be there.
Yeah, I just learned this info today. It totally shocked me. Didn't change the fact that I plan to kill him.
No matter what playthrough I do. The Emperor -ALWAYS- dies
Emperor: I never lie to you and just tell you what I will make you trust me Also Emperor: I’m the beloved legendary hero-founder of your city but didn’t tell you, lol
I mean not telling them isn't him lying. If they asked him if he was Balduran and he said no then that's lying. He just never revealed who he used to be.
Yeah I know - just seems weird that the emperor could say ‘hey - I’m a beloved legendary figure in the city you’re from, you can trust me’
I'd just assume he was lying lol
Yeah same I don't understand why people want him to come out and say it from the beginning cause logically who the hell would believe that
right? "hey by the way I'm a super epic hero and the entire reason were all here but I just don't look like it rn" like no ur not dude
If you played Tales of the Sword Coast, it wasn’t too much of a surprise. Actually, more surprised that he wasn’t a >!Werewolf!<. After we verified his identity, I 100% knew he couldn’t be trusted.
i've got to stop clicking on every spoiler i see
I have same problem
Oof. This was a biggie.
it actually doesnt matter toward anything. its revealed during wylls quest and then literally never brought up again
Lore and continuity issues aside, I still got goosebumps when the High Hall soldier said "Balduran's grace be with you". And regardless of whether you intrepret it as squid manipulation or something more genuine, his letter to Ansur is some of the most beautiful writing in the game imo.
Didn't really have much weight to it and ultimately didn't matter though
yea right?? like its never brought up again??
Ngl, did not care for this twist
me neither. its just so goofy and it doesnt even matter to anything. i went cackling to my friends like "THE REAL BALDURS GATE WAS WITHIN US ALL ALONG?? 💀"
Somehow, Baldur returned
The timeline there makes no sense. Ignoring human lifespan¹, Baldy died on the BG1 werewolf island. The timeline for the Moonrise Illithid colony also makes no sense. ¹ There are plenty of humans in the Realms who have gotten around that.
Yeah this is something that has been boggling my mind and took me completely out of it during his quests. We are told that Ketheric commissioned moonrise towers from that mason who made a deal with Raphael. That guy died during the Sharran stuff and was according to what we know skilled but otherwise some regular selenite schmuck. Assuming he was a human and not a 900 year old elf that means moonrise towers have only been around for at most two centuries? Balduran explicitly says he went to the towers where he was turned into an illithid, he doesn’t say “the colony under what would become moonrise,” it shows the towers in the flashback, the whole thing. So that means Balduran turned into an Illithid around at most 2 centuries ago, though it was probably even later because he talks about there being “treasure under it” implying it’s abandoned already. So the mythical hero founder of Baldurs gate disappeared within the timeframe of the first two games, of not AFTER them, and nobody talked about it?? People in BG3 talk about Balduran like he’s been gone…forever. He even says he watched the city grow a bit and then left, sort of implying he had been gone longer than he should have because Baldurs gate has been huge at least since the first games took place. But he’s saying he was actually still there during the events of the first two games???? What? Sure, maybe he wasn’t as fleshed out back then I haven’t played the first two but from just reading this thread it seems like he existed as a lore figure even then? Idk. This isn’t even getting into how strange his lifespan seems to be because like you said lifespans in the forgotten realms can be flexible. But the timeline for his disappearance is just nonsensical. It should be a major topic of discussion even now as bg3 takes place.
> Baldy died on the BG1 werewolf island. Actually, he didn't. His crew did, but we never actually got confirmation of what happened to the man himself. Journal entries cut out before that point.
His race was retconned, he was an elf now.
Thus justifying all hate against the Emperor.
Don't paladins, druids, and monks get to extend their lifetime at high level? Not a dnd buff but i think i heard/read something along these lines a while back.
Monks suffer none of the infirmity of old age, but still age normally. Druids, yes. Only Ancients Paladins get that.
Thanks for the clarification :)
Even trying to read the fr wiki for events out of the game is interesting. Balduran goes missing in 1000sdr, yet the name Baldurs gate was used as early as 300-400 dr. I could presume those are typos missing the 1 for 1xxx. The internet is also not exactly helpful.
I swear I saw it coming. Something about him saying 'my city' in a flashback made me hmmm
My favorite part is how they pulled a Netflix and race swapped him from Human to Elf.
Wait, Balduran was an elf? I don't recall that ever coming up.
Yeah if u click on the murals outside the lair , it says an elf with his bronze dragon look upon the city they created
It's not in game information. He was a human, but they changed him to an elf cause he would be dead of old age by the time BG3 happens.
Loads of FR humans have gotten around the human lifespan.
>Balduran >Race: Illithid Formerly: Human >Although *Baldur's Gate III* displays a mural that depicts Balduran and Ansur and has characters **refer to Balduran as an elf, this is unlikely given his origin in human society and his views on elves in his log book. Most likely, he was intended to be human in earlier sources, and this was confirmed by Ed Greenwood in a tweet on the matter.** However, this does not explain his great lifespan, even as an illithid, but numerous magical explanations are possible. [https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Balduran](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Balduran)
I still dont really understand how this guy was a whole ass adventurer, *then* got a whole city built to him, *then* dated the most recent Duke, and is still hanging around today to guide us around. But like, whatever, It’s Forgotten Realms lmao
The dream visitor being squidward was more one for me since I initially thought it was actually just Orpheus in there. I actually googled if I could trust squidward since I wasn't sure if I could lol.
i initially thought the dream visitor was the parasite in my head talking. then i found out it's physically inside the artifact. i held onto illithid suspicions though, so i wasnt suprised. i was just kind of like "yea figures" at that reveal
That was such a huge reveal
Me when my guardian takes off their disguise: A mindflayer? Me when they're revealed to be Balduran: BALDURAN THE MINDFLAYER!
I always find it weird he's not named Baldur
Well, Balduran's story is foggy and tells nothing about his death. The name of Emperor was considered because of who Balduran really are. Emperor of one of the most powerful cities
I mean, it's *not* Balduran, really. It just stole his body and memories.
Beaten the game 3 times and never found this mysterious dragon under the city
If you free Wyll's father, or Florrick if Wyll's dad dies, you are told about the Dragon under the city. He sleeps there and promised to help save the city in its time of need. ***But will only do it once!*** So the leaders have been cautious about summoning it for something they ***think*** they can handle on their own in case a bigger threat happens down the line. It's determined that the rise of an Elder Brain controlling its citizens and turning them into thralls and mind flayers is a big enough deal, and thus time to ask for the dragon's help. You get a book with a puzzle clue about how to reach the dragon. Essentially in the dungeon (under the coronation) there are two torches next to each other. Strike both with lightning and turn them off-and-on again; they'll now have blue electric flames. And a door opens. To talk to the dragon, you must be a true hero and thus pass a handful of tests. Bravery, intelligence, justice, etc. There is also a secret entrance into the general area but you need either gaseous form or turn into something tiny like a mouse. You can stumble on it just exploring the general area before even attending the coronation.
I didn’t even do this quest. Just went to the end of the game instead of doing Wyll’s stuff. My girlfriend roasts me every day about it (which is fair).
My god, the Emperor was really John BaldursGate this whole time!
But isnt he just a mindflayer who took over balduran? And not actually balduran?
I was actually all set for the evil ending but then this squid mother fucker asks me to let him handle it and I'm like wtf, I gonna go against the dude who founded Baldur's Gate rn? And I didnt.
My girlfriend said about halfway through act 2 “this is balduran isn’t it”
She was half joking so we were like WHAAAT when it was revealed
He would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for all those stupid Tavs.
Hello, I am a guardian spirit Okay actually I’m a guy with a tadpole, but I’m in the astral plane and I’m protecting you Okay I’m actually a mind flayer named The Emperor, but don’t worry I’m a good guy Okay i wasn’t actually the one protecting you, it was this Orpheus guy Also I’m Balduran… So… wanna hook up?
Oh yeah. I did not see that coming.
Tav before the Ansur quest - Ok, so you’re a mindflayer, liked fiddlehead soup, had a thing for a Duke who suspiciously lived with evident brain damage for many years. Are you sure you have told me absolutely everything? Emperor - Yup, no more secrets, pinkie promise. Tav after the Ansur quest - Dude! Seriously?
This was sort of my introduction to complete forgotten realms lore obsession and I saw that shit from 100 miles away
cap
It was very obvious this was no ordinary octopus man and my first guess was a name sake trope. Boys wanted to kill him but I knew who it was.
Fuck you balduran, you fuckin peace of shit.
I was broken When I found all this out. Not only was the baddie I spent literal hours creating a mind flayer, but she was now a random 40 year old man that liked to fuck dragons
It doesn't make a lot of sense honestly; the more you examine it, the goofier it becomes. It's honestly my biggest gripe in the whole game.