#Baldur's Gate 3 Lore

[stars-and-clouds]

Astarion isn't as power hungry as he wants us to think. I mean, he wants power but he doesn't want power for the sake of it, unlike any lawful evil vampire would. He just wants to be free. He wants to live. And the only way he can do that is by overpowering his slaver. that's really the only reason he wants power.

This happens when you're discussing how someone becomes a vampire and this is what he thinks. His priority isn't being all powerful and ruling over others; the only reason he wants power is to defeat Cazador. He is so bad at being consistant with his lies lmao. He says he wants to "bend others to (his) will" but really he only wants to bend Cazador to his will.

"Exactly! I can be better than him. Stronger. More powerful. More - oh, you meant 'be kinder'? Pet bunnies, that sort of thing? I've no objection to being nice, of course. Once I have the power to bend others to my will."

Imagine the fantasies the man has in his head about controlling the man who controlled him for centuries. He says, "bend others to my will," when he is talking about being stronger than Cazador and it leads me to believe he only wants to control Cazador. Astarion's facade is made out of cheap printing paper and it crumples everytime he speaks. He's so cute. Can't believe I used to be scared of him when I first started playing BG3. That lasted a day and now I want to squish him and draw chibi versions of him.

Edit: ofc he is power hungry and ofc he wants power since he's been powerless for so long. But having power and abusing it are very different. He has no problem being nice as long as he has power. If one is interested they can read my stupidly long analysis for more of my opinion on his personality.

What I stated is going to be just one of the many paths you can go down with him. Larian said that your decisions will influence your party members and there are many ways the story can end.

So if he sees that you can be nice and not misuse your power, he's going to think twice before misusing his own power beyond what needs to be done. If he sees you misusing your power, he's going to misuse it.

[shewhowas39]

some fun lore for your drow OCs

y'all some to like it when i write up little chunks of Forgotten Realms lore as it relates to BG3. so, since i know a lot of you play drow and half drow, here's some of my favorite drow lore:

you probably know about Lolth, the evil demon goddess of the Dark Seldarine pantheon to whom most drow are sworn, but do you know her daughter, Eilistraee?

if not, you should. because she's dope.

Eilistraee is Lolth's daughter and is a chaotic good goddess. she's the goddess of several things in the Dark Seldarine pantheon: good drow, moonlight, hunting, song, dance, beauty, and swordwork. one of the most abiding images of her is a beautiful drow woman with silver hair dancing naked in the moonlight with a sword. (hot)

her followers take on a variety of rules to serve her. some devote their lives to going into the underdark and saving/redeeming other drow or fighting slavery. some dedicate their lives to promoting the arts - especially song and dance. (take note you drow and half drow bards)

one of her followers most well known rituals is the High Hunt, in which her followers go out into the woods - typically fully nude - and are tasked to bring down a beast with only their sword.

okay so maybe you've noticed, there's a fair bit of nudity in the church of Eilistraee. this goddess loves to be naked and her followers love to join her. an Eilistraeen wedding involves the priestess and the couple getting married to disrobe as part of the ceremony.

anyway, Eilistree is like my favorite Forgotten Realms goddess. she and her followers are badasses, whether they are hunters, bards, swordfighters, or spies who infiltrate the underdark to rescue people from the Lolthsworn. also she's a hot naked dancing goddess with serious "fuckyou, mom!!" shit going on.

there's so much more. and her and her church's forgotten realms wiki pages are GREAT and full of so much good detail you could easiily work into fanfic or whatever.

IS this post me selfishly hoping to see more love for Eilistree in bg3 fic? yes. yes it is.

[saeterdaeg]

Astarion enters reverie but also sleeps

During Astarion's Origin run we get more information regarding his rest cycle. While during a non-Astarion PC run we see him resting in the position for reverie:

When playing as him we get two important segments:

1. During his solo rest he may try to remember his scars with enough detail to understand that they are not simply a poem carved into his back, but actually written in Infernal Runes.

He begins this scene deep in trance (literally stated by narrator), reliving his memories.

If choosing the second dialogue option "[INTELLIGENCE] Push the pain away, try to banish the memory." the narrator tells us he may try to push his memories away until he feels nothing

and that he may finally rest, dreaming of brilliant futures.

This could simply be a generic use of the verb to rest as a synonym for any other kind of resting (since resting has been associated with trancing at the start of the scene) and not necessarily sleeping. Considering reverie is reliving one's past memories and the narrator states he dreams of the future, this can either mean that after his initial reverie he falls asleep and dreams or that he stops trancing and imagines the possibilities of the future while simply resting.

Here is the full dialogue branch (CAMP_Astarion_SCO_CazadorNightmare_SecondDream there's a possibility of Astarion succumbing to a nightmare in other branches):

2. If Astarion has not bitten an enemy in front of his companions, he will need to feed, triggering his nightmare scene during the night. In this scene he walks through a forest in the dark. He calls out and hears the voice of his master.

Astarion can choose how to interact with this scene, cowering before Cazador, demanding the owner of the voice he hears to show themselves or try to sneak away. This is not a previous memory but a nightmare. In this, Cazador recites his four rules at Astarion. Astarion wakes up startled and wonders if, since he can walk in the sunlight, he can also go against Cazador's rules.

Considering resting in a state of reverie/trance is reliving one's memories at this stage of his life/undeath, and that Astarion doesn't have many years of good memories (and those memories are likely very old, having been created before his turning) there's a chance he might prefer to simply sleep rather than endure whatever horrors Cazador has put him through night after night. This view considers his nightly trance pose as a simplified in-game mechanic. But there's also the possibility that instead of choosing to relive bad memories, Astarion instead uses his trance to review his lockpicking, sneaking and fighting, as a way to continuously improve himself, or otherwise avoids the most visceral of his horrors, skirting away from them nightly.

Reference for Solo rest scene videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rShNX_AKbrY&ab_channel=Kinestezja

Reference for Nightmare Scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJod2Ii-Eso&ab_channel=SharnaVanhyatt

Reference for DnDE5 Elf Trance https://5e.tools/book.html#mtf,1,living%20in%20reverie

and

Thanks to Zigraves, Cal, Anjael and Oak for the help locating/gathering the references.

[tadpole-apocalypse]

Perils of dating a Wild Magic Sorcerer while trying to have a dramatic moment on your grave.

[lazylittledragon]

pov a weird lady pulled you out of a portal and now there's a morgue in your house

[artist-rat]

return of the shenanigang! 🎪 no feature to let karlach win plushies at arcade games? shh it's canon anyways 💯🧸🧸 (wyll is being told bad puns to distract him from dribbles' fate. astarion has stolen back the entirety of their coin which they lost spinning the wheel too many times)

[ssalballoon]

be a moon unto yourself 🌕

i took a long break btwn working on this one n this was the original idea... i do miss it but i thought the clothes were too unrelated to him :( goodbye leyendecker inspired gale 💔

- comp based on gale's datamined icon/waterdeep's coat of arms

- pose is from persona 3 protag's boss fight in p5r + listen to kimi no kioku if u haven't already ⚰️

- the flowers are roses!! i associate them with gale + his ambition even more after learning he burnt the rose bushes as a child

[zyana-wyvern]

Running into random comments about how he's so eViLL and will only like an evil OC, before even playing the game, only to then be surprised non stop at the fact that I can play my Chaotic Good Druid in her full glorious chaos and get approval for the most unexpected things. It was why when I started the game I was certain I won't romance him, even though I had been low-high key simping for years seeing shots of him here and there.

He even judged me when I was about to fall for Raphael's manipulations, or when I blew up Rosymorn Monastery, though he survived and I didn't left him behind. He just thought I was an idiot for destroying it and he was right. Hence why I reloaded.:))))

He approves if you're nice to animals, approves if you're nice to kids, freaks out and yells at you to hurry and save Lae'zel at the creche so she doesn't die, approves if you side with the wholesome walking mushrooms in the Underdark, feels sorry for a stuffed baby cave bear... Yeah, pure evil by default. Yes, you can certainly make him worse, but left on his own he will choose the Chaotic Neutral, to even Chaotic Good options. Even at the very end of his personal side-quest. Basically what his race dictates, because elves are by default Chaotic Good or Neutral.

This man is layered and complex like few characters I ever encountered and will dislike things that are good too. For example he disapproves of helping Isobel and would rather give her away to Marcus, but that is because he will often avoid big battles and a huge damn battle ensues after you refuse Marcus. He seems to have a sense for big scary battles cause he often warned me not to do x thing and when I did do it s**t hit the fan quickly and we barely got out alive. I suppose he has a sense for danger and its only logical, considering what he went trough in the last two centuries.

"Y'all would really kick babies just so Astarion would approve."

Um...no? Do you realize you don't have to be pure evil to get him to like you?

I'm over here playing my bard as a chaotic good/neutral little shit and I gained his approval REAL fast in Act 1:

I screamed "BAAA" at the redcaps

Defended Karlach against Wyll, and then later Mizora

Told Kagha "I just wanted to see what would happen" after saving Arabella from her

Fed the Owlbear cub and later pet him

Shouted "Boo!" at Volo's singing

Threw dung in a goblin's face after he tried to get me to rub it on my face

Intimidated another goblin to kiss my foot after he tried to get me to do it to him

Refused to accept Raphael's help upon first meeting him

Let him bite me

Listened to him talk about Cazador and offered my support

Let the Laviatar worshipper beat me

And I did all of that before I even encountered the Gur monster hunter that's tracking him, found the necromancy book that I ended up giving to him, or started his romance. I didn't even do all of these before his approval was in the High range. Not once did I hurt an innocent person.

It's really not unheard of to follow the "good" path and still have him like you. Granted, he does call you "a bit naive in the ways of the world" later on in Act 2, but at that point, he still respects the hell out of you.

No doubt that there are some players who would do cruel things to get Astarion's approval early on, but not all of us.

[nottragic-stilltoothsome]

Everything I found in Szarr's palace, for all your fanfiction-writting needs. I haven't found any other post like this one, so i hope i m not copying anyone. Posting it here, because editing the official wiki feels intimidating. Feel welcome to add anything I missed.

Astarion's siblings (the other spawn):

Petras - one of the two you meet in the Flophouse.

Dalyria - the other one from the two you meet in the flophouse. Her diary can be found in the "guest room". Before Cazador turned her, she was a doctor, a "Physician General to the Parliament of Baldur's Gate". She thinks vampirism is a disease and plans on curing herself of it by drinking blood of someone young and healthy - other spawn's daughter, Victoria.

Leon Onufrio - before Cazador turned him, Leon was a sorcerer. He is the one whose daughter's (Victoria's) body is found, cursed, in the room where with the Kozakuran dictionary.

Leon put a protective counter-curse on her, to discourage other spawns from attacking her. Despite his efforts, Dalyria bit her, hoping it'd cure her vampirism. Needless to say, it didn't and Victoria died @easterlingwanderer found out that if you use "speak with the dead" on the body, it turns out that it was a random urchin and Leon did get Victoria out of the city on time. After removing the curse inflicting you with necrotic demage, you can loot a letter of her body from her father instructing Victoria to read said dictionary, so she can freely move around the castle.

In the favoured spawn room, you can learn that Leon was the one usualy occupying it (along with his daughter). His diary reveals that he put extra effort to be Cazador's best hunter, so he can keep Victoria away from others and that he came up with a plan with Figaro to disguise and sneak Victoria out of the palace.

He also notes that he doesnt like the way Violet looks at Victoria and Cazador's wicked smile, when Leon asked him what his master was planning to do with his daughter.

Violet - you can find her Diary in the Dormitory of Spawn. She notes that she put garlic in Yousen bed as a prank.

Aurelia - a tiefling

Yousen - @neophytepagan noticed he is a gnome

Other:

The chamberlain of Cazador was Antwun Dufay. In his diary, which can be found under his bed in his room after a successful passive perception check, it says that he had a lover Lurianna (a werewolf, who can be found dead by walking through fake north wall of chamberlain's office, or through another fake wall in Chamberlain's private room). He knew about Cazador's Black Mass enough to fake his death in order to avoid the threat of taking Astarion's place. Unfortunately for him, it seems he confused the actual death potion and fake death potion, and really died. His lover drank the other potion, which melted her guts. The actual fake-death elixir can be found in his desk, which puts the player in 10-turn coma. He ordered the elixir from Bonecloaks', where he also ordered most of the things the palace needed to function (like bloodstain remover, candles and food for "guests").

Godey - Cazador's right hand. Astarion says that while Cazador was the master of the palace, the kennels (the room where the spawn d be tortured, when they did something Cazador didnt approve of) was the domain of Godey. Godey tortured the spawn when Cazador didnt feel like it. Cazador trusted Godey with the key to the sealed ballroom for the duration of the ritual.

Through the palace, fanatic-servants cleaning the palace: Syrin - human, Greenfern - wood half-elf, Vilhelm - human, Varderola - also human. All of them are servants, who Astarion said are devoted to Cazador and came to the palace of their own will, beggining Cazador to turn them into vampires. Vilhelm is most noteable, as you can talk to him and he asks Astarion why isn't he downstairs, that he is late and the ballroom is already locked. If pressed, he informs that Godey has a key and that the Cazador is going to punish Astarion for missing the ritual (and from his expression, he seems to quite like the thought).

Chamberlain Dufay wrote a blooddonnors ledger, instructing the Spawn to favourite the lower class as prey, as too many missing patriars may drow too much attention.

The language Cazador uses is Kozakuran, from a distant land of Kara-Tur. Astarion notes that they were strictly forbidden from learning it. From Cazador's Journal you can learn that Astarion was not an unreliable narrator when he said Cazador liked torturing him the most: Cazador paid the most attention to him in the journal.

In the favoured spawn room, there is a ledger with the list of spawns who have been favoured (its only Leon and one time Violet).

Amanita Szarr - on her 13th birthsday, invited by her Uncle Cazador. She was invited to the ballroom. She became a vampire, but was not happy about it. She rejected her family name Szarr and named herself Lady Incognita. She claims she stays in the attic and writes stories. One of the books written by her can be found on Cazador's desk.

Mrel Alkam - vampire mastress from Athkatla that Cazador wrote a letter to.

[indimiart]

thank you for reminding me what the sun feels like

They’ve both got a lot of years of missing sunlight. Lucky they get to relearn warmth again together🫶🏼

[ennissg]

"Telling myself I won't go there Oh, but I know that I won't care Tryna wash away all the blood I've spilt This lust is a burden that we both share Two sinners can't atone from a lone prayer Souls tied, intertwined by our pride and guilt"

(Daylight - David Kushner) Gale "With you I forget my goddess" Dekarios and Dr. "We could be gods. But would you really want to?" Vrach, two wizards lost in eachother. The birth of the God of Ambition and a new God of Death.

I'm never ascending Gale in this playthrough BUT That doesn't stop me from wondering what kind of ending they would've gotten if he did ascend. Which works as a corruption ark with Dr. Vrach's story of embracing humanity and rejecting his divinity as a bhaalspawn. Godhood was pretty much his life goal pre tadpole, though, maybe less of a corruption and more of a return to the original plan. Also I finally figured out his outfit, only 2 more redesigns left, yeehaw

[stars-and-clouds]

Masterlist of My Major Posts (multifandom)

Last updated: 26/10/2023

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☾ FFXIV:

Ishgardian Hierarchy

FFXIV Astral and Umbral Eras

Ishgardian Curses (writing aid)

Pre-Calamity Coerthas Map (writing aid, not mine/referenced)

Haurchefant and Aymeric’s Kindness (Character Sketch)

Aymeric’s Insecurity (Character Sketch)

Coerthas/Ishgard  Aesthetic Prompt

Borel House Heraldry (HC)

☾ The Wayhaven Chronicles:

(moodboard) Adam Du Mortain

(moodboard) Nathaniel Sewell

(moodboard) My Detective x Adam

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fancast for Rafayel, Xavier and Zayne

Xavier Romance Headcanons (SFW)

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Fenris, Elvhen Slavery, Golems and Tranquility Theory

☾ Baldur’s Gate:

Why Astarion Won’t Betray Tav Theory

Lamentable is the autumn picker content with plums (I hc completed Astarion’s shirt poem)

Romanced Astarion’s need for power

Astarion Romance Headcanons

Astarion likes sweetness

Astarion moodboard

Astarion and the sweet sweet man

☾ ASOIAF/Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon:

Unseen Westeros Compilation

Tolkien vs Martin

☾ Hakuouki/Shinsengumi Kitan:

How to play Hakuoki SSL on PC (guide)

Why Do People Hate Iba Hachiro?

Hakuoki random alignments

Hakuoki as text posts

☾ Moodboards and Aesthetics:

Aymeric de Borel stimboard

Camp Dragonhead during a blizzard

Thanalan during a sandstorm

[shewhowas39]

y'all seemed to like the bg3 relevent forgotten realms lore i posted yesterday

if that's something people would be interested in more of, give this a like. i'm happy to do more posts like that.

my current longfic has a durge who is a big history nerd, so i am doing a lot of forgotten realms reading for research. happy to share cool bits of info that relate to bg3 if people want it.

[tendermiasma]

Clover Lore Masterpost

I'm very touched by everyone who's shown interest in my Baldur's Gate character. Many of you have asked where they can learn more about him, so here is the promised Clover masterpost!

I'll update it as we go along, but things yet to be revealed I'm keeping secret 🌙 It's pinned to my linktree in my bio.

Clover (he/him)

Half-Elf Wizard

Age: unknown, likely early 20s

Height: ~5'3

Introduction

Clover

The Winter Court

Clover's magic

Origins

Clover's spellbook

INT

Halsin and Clover's relationship

Intro

Intro 2

Did Clover help Halsin with the Shadow Curse?

Intimacy (spicy)

Intimacy cont. (spicy)

Intimacy 2

Injury

Thisobald

Scent

Why did you choose Halsin as Clover's love interest?

Post-Game life

(spoiler-free because I haven't finished it either)

What's an average day for Halsin and Clover once they settle in together?

Miscellaneous lore and FAQ 🍀

Clover's relationship with the other companions

Astarion gets suspicious

Clover's very quiet, especially compared to Halsin. Why?

How does Halsin feel about Clover's hair?

More hair...

Clover's outfit (far left, I've made a few minor changes since then)

Can others do art/fic/cosplay? - It's all so welcome!! I didn't think this would become such a thing and I'm touched and delighted by what you've done. ❤️

[justporo]

I wanna talk about this Epilogue letter for a hot moment.

I bet someone must've talked about this before but alas I haven’t seen it and BOI do I have feelings about this.

This letter is from the Gur to Astarion.

Not only did I find it astounding that they wrote him a letter but like...

Not only are they forgiving him but they tell him he is a ROLE MODEL to their vampiric children. They admire him for the redemption he lived through, the development he made to become the bigger man.

So not only do they tell him that they're even with him now: no! They also claim that he's helped them to accept their vampire children. Because Astarion showed them that they can be more than just undead creatures.

They voice admiration for him and tell him they're gonna keep watch of him.

(This is not to say that Astarion's actions against the Gur should be overlooked, but it shows to me that both sides have learned and moved on.)

Now: imagine Astarion reads this letter at the reunion party. Or maybe Tav hands it to him later because he couldn't be bothered to waste his time sorting through letters (is what he says but he probably thought no one would have sent him one). He reads the letter barely believing the words he's reading. Tav notices he's gone super silent and turns to find Astarion teary eyed, hand covering his mouth. When he sees you noticing he looks almost like he's going to snarl at you but then he just let's you wrap your arms around him.

"I'm so proud of you," you say.

And he might need more time to accept that, but the seed is planted.

[halichor]

Scourge of the Seas

Just started another save with durge Jehan since I missed that last time, and I'm /still/ not done with Karythos and Vesna's saves aaaaaa 🫠