#I was looking up elminster because I only learned of him in bg3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kirain · 2 months

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your gale takes actually got me to look deeper into forgotten realms lore (esp where it pertains to the afterlife) and long story short i’m at least a little bit fixated on it now and also will go to bat for that wizard basically at any point. also wild magic. i’ve been reading so much about wild magic, it’s so so interesting. esp wild magic sourced from the far realm and the implications that could have for a wild magic mage in esp the bg3 setting

Thank you, I'm so glad to hear that! I'm still learning about the lore myself (there's so much), and we should all be thanking Larian for introducing so many new people to D&D!

Wild magic is insane, and I had a great time using it with my sorcerer. The magic system in general is truly fascinating, as is its history in context of the game. It's just too bad it's linked to a god. I think I've said this before, but an irksome detail about Mystra is that she technically isn't a "bad" god, but she should definitely keep her fingers to herself. Every iteration has done objectively horrible things to mortals, but because she's written by a man who clearly favours her (in my humble opinion) nothing she does is presented as wrong. 😒

These asks actually reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine. He basically said, "Elminster is on Mystra's side and he cares about Gale, so obviously Mystra is right." But here's the thing:

Not only is Eliminster a really annoying self-insert made by Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms (and I mean that literally, he's admitted he's a self-insert), but Eliminster has also had ... "relations" with his surrogate daughter. He's betrayed his friends for Mystra. He's killed arguably innocent people. So you'll have to forgive me if I don't look to him for moral guidance. He also slept with the previous iterations of Mystra and blindly follows her commands, so he might just be a teensy bit biased. In fact, if you look at various forums, you'll see a lot of players complaining about the character's irritating Gary Stu status, and that Dungeon Masters hate putting him in their campaigns.

Elminster will never question Mystra, because in his mind she's a perfect being who deserves everything, including people's lives; ignoring the fact that pretty much every god in D&D is canonically flawed. He's the type of person who would tell a grieving parent that God took their recently deceased child for "reasons we cannot comprehend".

He says he took no pleasure in burdening Gale with her ultimatum, but let's be real—he wasn't that hurt by it. In fact, the Elminster we meet in game isn't even real. It's a snow clone. He couldn't be bothered to visit Gale, who he apparently respects and cares about, in person. The only time he shows any genuine emotion towards Gale is in the ascended epilogue, when he writes him a disappointed letter. And I wouldn't be surprised if that disappointment is more about him challenging Mystra than actually achieving godhood.

Though it should be said that Elminster is also a victim of Mystra. The iteration before Midnight (current Mystra) groomed and abused him for a millenia, yet for some reason we, the audience, are supposed to pretend there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, we're supposed to view it as "sexy". As if Gale and Elminster are "lucky" to have caught her attention.

Reading up on the lore surrounding these two is truly horrifying. Elminster is old enough now that his actions are informed and unforgivable. He helps Mystra groom boys to exploit and never questions her. He's not merely complacent, he's active in her ploys. Despite his numerous heroic feats, I personally can't overlook it, especially when he could have been Gale's biggest defender.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #larian studios #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #bg3 mystra #elminster #lore

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asphaltvalkyrie · 4 months

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I had an extremely slow day at work today, so I chose to look busy by writing about BG3. Someone smarter than me has probably had this revelation before, but it gave me pause enough for me to feel like I need to share it.

I decided to romance Gale in my 2nd playthrough, with the intent of letting him get ahold of the Crown of Karsus, and its making me Feel Things. I like this walking apocalypse of a wizard a lot (he and Karlach are my easy faves,) but its taken romancing him to really see that

tl;dr Gale's backstory really makes a handy allegory for gifted kid burnout.

From the beginning he was special, a golden child, someone who would do great things and go far. So, he ended up building his entire personality on that eventuality. Older authority figures took a special interest in his talent and he immediately wanted nothing more than to please them, at the cost of making friends or learning life skills (well, except cooking apparently?)

(Then there's the whole issue of him developing a sexual relationship with Mystra who was without a doubt considerably older than he was and had that "but he's so mature for his age," mindset and all the fuckery that comes with that holy shit I can't even begin to desconstruct how much that would fuck someone up.)

Then he makes a mistake. He breaks a rule he didn't know existed. Why doesn't he know that rule existed? Because no one told him. They conflated his intelligence with maturity and his self-confidence with knowing his own limits. They forgot that he's basically a kid compared to them. (Elminster is what, centuries old? And Mystra is a fucking deity.) He lacks the emotional maturity to understand why what he did was so bad.

Gifted kids know. Among the absolute worst thing an adult can say to you is "I expected more of you," or "you should have known better." Which is pretty much what Elminster and Mystra said to him. And then they not only withdrew their attentions and support, but they also refused to help him deal with the orb - an omnipresent physical and spiritual reminder of his trangression. After that... he just has no idea what to do with himself. He sits in his wizard tower until the Mind Flayers get him.

By the time the others find him, he's realized that the talent he used to get by on no longer serves him, but since he built his whole personality around it, he doesn't know how else to act. So he maintains the bluff and bluster of a child prodigy, but he's now keenly aware of how pointless it is. He seems insufferably arrogant at times, but there's a razor-fine edge of self-loathing to that arrogance that he couches in self-aware humor. Over the course of his short time with the party he starts to feel like he's cared for and among friends, and even proves himself an attentive, affectionate and very grateful partner if you romance him.

Then Elminster shows up and tells him to atone for what he did by suicide bombing the Elder Brain. Bam, there goes his hope of finding a life outside of that "greatness" others told him he was destined for. Once a gifted kid always a gifted kid. Destined to be a human sacrifice on the altar of someone else's expectations, for good or ill.

And in a semi-related note, when you take him through the Dryad's trial, the answer to the question "whats his biggest flaw" is that "he thinks the world would be better off with him dead" and he says that its very true, but he didn't realize it until you said it.

Then you find the Annals of Karsus, and what does he say he wants to do with it? Reforge the Crown of Karsus with it so that he can obtain godlike power and make the world better for mortals, and he wants to share it with you. With how smart he is, he really should know thats a terrible idea. But he doesn't, because of a combination of hubris and naivete. He learned absolutely zero lessons from the orb debacle because he hasn't really been allowed to learn any lessons beyond "I just have to do the thing I'm good at, only I have to try harder this time."

I'm only on the second netherstone, but I have a feeling that this is going to end very badly.

#gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #bg3 #bg3 thoughts

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alteredsilicone · 6 months

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The Dark Urge : Act I

A long ramble about my Dark Urge playthrough, split up between acts since this game gets meaty.

This is my third playthrough so more or less I knew what I was getting into (had some durge story bits spoiled too).

When I set out to play durge I also wanted to do an "evil" playthrough, so I set some goals: embrace the "big" durge decisions, be evil when possible without going full murder-hobo. Ally with Gortash, dominate the Brain. Make SH a Dark Justiciar, ascend Astarion, romance Minthara, push Gale towards Godhood and help Lae'zel stay loyal to Vlaakith. The results were... varied.

Recruiting Minthara meant the tieflings had to die, so I indulged the durge by watching Arabella die. Surprisingly this way the game guilt trips you less about doing bad things. (The guilt tripping aspect I will bring up at the very end, after my Act III retrospective)

I quickly learned why durge x Astarion is a popular ship - he really jumps on you from the very beginning, a total 180 to how he treats Tav. Anyways, he wasn't my romance goal so I let him be. For a while.

Alfira is one of my favorites, but she had to go. Sorry. I know there is an alternative by making a different NPC appear but I wanted an authentic(tm) durge experience. Besides, Alfira would die in the grove massacre anyways, two birds with one stone and all.

Dream Guardian interlude - I made her look like my first version of Viri, so it's a Viriception.

Since I'm collecting all the "evil" choices, I also decided to indulge the tadpoles. Partly for achievements, partly to see how it works. Truth be told I didn't use the tadpole skills too much, so if I replay durge (I might do for certain different story outcomes), I will ignore the tadpoles altogether.

Sceleritas Fel was an excellent addition, obviously I humored and indulged him since I wanted to be papa's most specialest murderer.

As I was allying with the goblins I explored some stuff I didn't previously - got shackled up by Gut. Escaping her was quite easy, just had to avoid her afterwards. Then I rushed to Minthara.

I love Minthara's character a lot - she stayed in my party throughout the whole game. Needless to say, but I killed Karlach for Wyll (and stupidly didn't get his armor because I forgot to put him in my party, oh well), Wyll left me when I attacked the Grove (I assume he died offscreen or I killed him without noticing) and I never even met Halsin so he also just died offscreen.

I could also rant about the whole "evil playthrough cuts you from 20% of the content" aspect, but that is a tired rant. I don't mind the grove massacre being the price you pay for Minthara joining your party (she IS an evil character, she straight up agrees with all evil actions together with Astarion and is totally on board with dominating the Absolute and becoming rulers yourself), I just wish there was some alternative with playing on the more evil side.

Maybe befriend goblins? More drow? Anything, really? Then again, BG3 is already a massive game... Oh well, you can't have everything.

Anyways, now that I have done the first big quest, I went to the Underdark to try out one specific thing:

What happens if you sacrifice Gale to the fish people before Elminster stabilizes the orb?

He aggros, you kill him and then after two in-game days this happens:

Needless to say, I reloaded a save and just humored the fish people without killing Gale. Besides, for a corruption arc he needs to live. This is also why I only indulged the "big" durge reactions...

My personal philosophy is that being a murder-hobo is a boring way to be evil (death is not the worst thing that can happen y'know), I much rather would corrupt characters.

However, another part of me got curious about one thing: if you bite off Gale's hand when you find him in the portal, can you present it at the murder tribunal in Act 3?

Anyways.

Remember I said Astarion really gets the hots for durge? So, Minthara leaves for Moonrise so she isn't in my party at the moment this happens... durge decided to have some "fun".

This sequence was very corny, but I know it's all part of Astarion's play-pretend so I just let it play out. Spoiler alert - I will friendzone him later (for his own good).

I decided to feed durge the Noblestalk to get some memories/lore. I hoped for more but probably getting everything back in Act I would be anti-climatic, so this was a nice tidbit all the same. Also the environment bugged out, I should be in a dark dank cave, not outside.

Gale also decided he likes me. I promptly friendzoned him. Trust me, Galey, you do not want a romantic adventure with this tiefling (also he is soulbound to Nila, my other Tav, can't have him cheating on his wife...).

Anyways, Gale is a funny case because Larian keeps mucking up his romance flags, I couldn't replay his romance scene with my actual Galemancer Tav, but the romance does trigger later in Act I when you farm some approval (so either in the Underdark or Creche, depending which path you go on). But it also bugs out (I had to long rest twice with my Tav as the first time it triggered tiefling party dialogue before promptly cutting out, probably a bug because it was an old save where the romance SHOULD have triggered during the party).

Anyways, moving on. I am jumping over some zones/quests because nothing particularly interesting happened (I helped the Myconids but I do that always so that's that, though I let Glut die while fighting the Duergar, not on purpose he just got felted, sorry big guy).

Siding with this guy has exactly zero payoff (Act II spoiler - Balthazar turns him into a zombie and that's that), which is another evil run gripe. He is like Minthara where you can convince him to go against the Absolute, but instead it just goes nowhere apparently.

I just sided with him and suffered through killing a bunch of gnomes and Duergar. Well, at least I got some new scenes.

Astarion flirting interlude:

I put this here because the durge evil face is just so funny. These two would make a disaster pair, but, alas, we in this house are women-loving-women.

So, remember me setting out to push Lae'zel towards loyalty to Vlaakith?

I went as far as to stab the Dream Guardian...

Obviously I should have known better, because the Guardian has plot-armor for obvious reasons. This game kinda sorta railroads you to go against Vlaakith/side with the Guardian. Otherwise the game would just end for obvious reasons... So I decided that I might just shelve Lae'zel along the way.

Maybe I should have made some other decisions in later acts (like killing Voss), but I had my companion-squad already with me, so I decided to let it go.

And that concludes a "brief" overview of durge Act I:

#bg3 tag

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