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u/Mariposura 4d ago
This EXACT thing happened to me in my origin Shadowheart run after I burned through four inspirations trying to pass the deception check. I just let it be but I did miss Lae’zel 😭
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u/MidnightPractical241 Bard 4d ago
I love Dream Guardian- that is so them.
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u/Mariposura 4d ago
Sameee like ok my ✨dauntless protector✨❤️
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u/MidnightPractical241 Bard 4d ago
“I’ll protect you.” 💔
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u/Mariposura 4d ago
“You are exquisite.” Got me swinging my feet
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u/MidnightPractical241 Bard 4d ago
“Your devastating beauty…” had me thinking about leaving my husband tbh.
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u/jpterodactyl 4d ago
I’m still weirded out that they would try to catfish you.
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u/Mariposura 4d ago
Felt but I came to terms with it and understand why he felt the need to do it. I ended up liking him even more in act 3 anyway.
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u/MidnightPractical241 Bard 3d ago
It’s flawed, which makes it even more human! If The Emperor has 0 apologists, I’m dead
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u/BoatSouth1911 3d ago
Ahhh yes, I too love human flaws like not having a soul, mind controlling others to make them your puppets against their will, using forced hallucinations to back up your lies, abusing the one person who can save his entire race, and willingly being mind controlled into trying to murder the entire party. What an understandable human character!
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u/MidnightPractical241 Bard 3d ago
Who says they don’t have souls? Illithid are from the far realm, they are something not from that universe and are akin to lovecraftian horror monsters. So yeah- they are evil. But not every illithid is the same. Some are able to get away from the hive mind and become something else. This is something several mindflayers have done throughout the dnd lore. The hallucinations do eventually stop, just like how some companions, characters, npcs do the same thing with you and reveal their truth to you. It doesnt care about its race really, it cares about its own freedom and survival. Keep in mind that while it says it knows everything, it doesn’t. It’s incredibly insecure and actually doesn’t know a whole lot more than you. But it doesn’t act as a confidant and guide to the Absolute. And once it has- It has given you everything it could at that point. All the cards are on the table and if you turn your back from the only thing it thinks will help it survive and be free- yeah, it chooses to fight against you. Just like how Shadowheart will leave you, just like how Astarion will try to kill you, etc.
You give it a choice, to die, or to be controlled. So it chooses survival. The turn around is very fast, but Illithids work like that. They are incredibly pragmatic and primal- wouldn’t you choose to survive?
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u/BoatSouth1911 3d ago
Withers says they don’t have souls.
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u/MidnightPractical241 Bard 3d ago
Not a mortal soul. Withers say they do not have an “apostolic soul”. You can see from this screen shot: https://imgur.com/hRN0hjg
Remember, like I said, illithid are from the far realms, the same place The Old Ones and Ao the Overgod comes from, not in Toril (bg3 is set here). DnD exists in multiverses- if you look of the lore behind Ao, this will be explained further, but essentially for some undisclosed/unknown reason in DnD the one universe became many- illithids are not from the same realm.
Because illithids are from a different universe and follow a different form of god- Illithid’s do not have apostolic souls. This distinction is incredibly important. A conventional god can’t claim a non-apostolic soul and since the gods can’t use them it’s like nothing at all to them. That doesn’t mean illithid are void of one. The Dead Three were going to make use of the illithid soul by essentially taking souls away from the gods and using it from their own. This means that a being that has undergone ceremephosis doesn’t just change physically, their souls change as well. But, an Illithid’s non-apostolic soul can be claimed and used, but possibly not in a way Mystra, Shar, and Selûne use them.
In dnd, a soul is claimed by a god or goes adrift towards their chosen plain which can be a long process between the astral realm. There is a book in Act 1 that explains that a soul that forgets itself cannot be claimed (this is in regards to the god Shar, as a follower who was void of memory was unclaimed and wandering after her death.). So it shows that the soul is very deeply tied to “the self” in life.
A typical soul drifts through the astral plain- it takes time to be claimed, this is shown by how so you can resurrect characters and other players, but when you “raise the dead” you’re merely raising a body and using it for your own. The difference is the soul and whether or not it has been claimed this might also be why resurrect and “raise the dead” is so different. (One raises the person the other raises a body). This can also be seen in how you can’t resurrect some characters, like Alfira or when someone in your party dies out of combat and you cannot resurrect them.
The Emperor is different from other illithid, which is said numerous times in the game and in the books scattered around Faerûn, including a Balthazar’s murdered apprentice, who saw many illithid and yet knew it was different, for example. The Emperor accepted its change, but on some level remained Baldurian. This can be shown in how it makes an effort to remember his old life. This accounts for something and makes it incredibly distinct from other illithid. Omeluum as well- thought it’s not clear how close it is to who it was previously.
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u/yanagitennen 2d ago
Just saying thanks for this explanation! As fun as it is to do deep dives into Forgotten Realm/D&D wikis, the lore is so vast it'd be impossible for a newbie like me to put things like this together :) :) :)
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u/MidnightPractical241 Bard 2d ago
You’re very welcome! I was there right with you in my first playthrough. I had played a couple failed DnD campaigns but besides classing and the basic mechanics I had no idea how the world worked. After I finished bg3 my friends would argue about theories, but in the end none of us delved into DnD lore- so being the nerd I am I started traveling to YouTube and the endless pit of wiki. A lot is still up for interpretation and there isn’t answers to everything, I bet someone more knowledgeable could convince me otherwise- but either way, it really helped me get more out of the game for my second play through. I’m glad it helped you too!
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u/Mariposura 3d ago edited 3d ago
Mind flayers do have souls. Of course he isn’t going to have the full-blown same ideals as someone who doesn’t have an alien mind, but he does exactly as he tells you he will and never betrays you. He’s definitely more “human” than the average mind flayer.
I really, really wish we had more on the Stelmane story. Obviously, The Emperor is moved by her passing, and even mentions her to us in a dialogue before if we choose to comfort the guardian when they show vulnerability. The note you can find in the room beside his hideout states that his visits to Stelmane post-stroke seemed to make her perk up, which can lead us to infer that he was doing something to improve her condition during this time, perhaps treating her in some way to help reverse the effects his domination had on her.
He cared about her and some shit went down and we don’t know why. He shows us that memory in a moment that can be explained as a means of threatening us into obeying when we repeatedly refuse to trust him, when in his mind we need to trust each other to be able to survive this dire threat: “look at what I did to her. I’ll do it to you if you don’t start listening to me.” Which is fucked up, but like I said, this is a dire, end of the world scale threat.
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u/MidnightPractical241 Bard 3d ago
Yes- I completely agree people put it to a standard it’s never going to uphold. Someone said something really funny (maybe on this subreddit) once and I think it holds true- “It’s one nat 20 persuasion check away from taking over the entire city”. Which I’m inclined to agree. It’s not a good person, if at worst, it is lawful-evil aligned. But there is a HUGE difference between, let’s say, Gortash who is the very definition of lawful-evil and The Emperor. But why does it feel so different? Because It’s not evil aligned. That’s really it.
It is a flawed person, who struggled very long with its identity and holding onto something it inevitably couldn’t. It eventually overcame and decided to move on from its grief only to suffer more of it after Duke Stelmane. It did experience loss when eventually she passed. People believe that it caused the stroke, but it didn’t. However, it is suspected by Emperor haters that it was controlling her when it visited her- and she was under its influence. This, I doubt, because they were close before her stroke as well.
You can get a lot more context if you go back and read up on Decent Into Avernus with Stalmane. And a little from Wyll as well with the right dialogue. She was just as aligned as it- and became very ill. It took control of her body when she started to lose it and even started to disguise itself as her. This is also because most illithid powers need to be within proximity- and if you’re working for the city’s underbelly is pretty hands on.
The Emperor clearly did want to do things differently, but was also captured at moonrise and under control for so long, that it needed to do anything it could to make sure they were free again once they saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
People will misinterpret the Emperor at every turn because of the catfishing, but let’s be real for a second- why would you turned a mind flayer that visits your dreams and tries you to put more worms in your brain? people will also argue it hides the truth, which is does, but so does everyone else in the damn game. People will also use the insult dialogue from the mind blown scene as truth, when in reality it is incredibly hurt by you, because it was the first time it really did show you its truth, ugly and raw as it is, to show you how much it cares. Something that you have to trigger if you were nice enough- and you turn it around on them. Of course they are going to try to make you feel small. You punched it in the balls when its pants were pretty literally down.
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u/Mariposura 3d ago edited 3d ago
Idk what’s spoiler anymore so I’m blocking everything again. 😭
In Descent into Avernus, I could only find so little about the Stelmane situation. The people who say that he was controlling her when he visited her have no proof of that, just like I have no actual proof he really was treating her condition. They just give us that jarring vision, a bunch of scattered notes and expect us to fill in the blanks ourselves, which leads me to believe it may have been something that was up to interpretation? I do choose to interpret that he was treating her though😭
Though I do remember something more about Descent into Avernus, and it was that Shield of The Hidden Lord, the one the book says is so damned evil, just its presence in Baldur’s Gate was enough to start corrupting the citizens, for it housed Gargauth(some kind of devil if I remember correctly?)
Now, the Hhune patriar family possessed the shield somewhere in their residence or something my memory well and truly fails me at the moment, but I know THEY had it. I was able to find the note “Stelmane’s Journal” in the Hhune Mausoleum regarding her initial meeting with The Emperor. I don’t recall DIA nor BG3 stating anything about her having a relation with the Hhune’s, but is that just a coincidence then that her journal can be found in their mausoleum?
If that shield was enough to corrupt the city just from being in it, then what would it do to someone like the Hhune’s, or someone like Stelmane who was perhaps close to the Hhune’s, who was often in close proximity?
I do think he caused her stroke though because DIA says her stroke was caused by a mind flayer, whether or not it was malicious or an accident is I guess, once again, up to interpretation. I choose to interpret that perhaps the shield corrupted her, he noticed the change, (as you said, she became sick, so he wanted to help) so he controlled her, and it went wrong.
Also yes he’s one nat 20 persuasion from taking over the world but Tav literally has to propose it first 😭 Tav is a bad influence, ok?
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u/Mariposura 3d ago
Yessss omg! I’ll be an Emperor simp until the day they put me in the ground. He’s my absolute favorite 🫶🏻
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u/why_Charizard_why 4d ago
Nuked her?
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u/Mariposura 4d ago edited 4d ago
It will be a spoiler so I’ll block it out but if you play as origin Shadowheart, when Lae’zel confronts you about having a githyanki artifact, after you fall asleep, she’ll wake you up with a blade to your throat. If you fail one of the deception checks, she stabs you, you fall to the ground and she picks up the artifact with the guardian inside who then explodes her, resulting in Lae’zel being permanently dead while Shadowheart barely survives with like 1hp.
I want to add that if you fail the check with high approval I believe that there is a different outcome, but I didn’t have high approval unfortunately.
Also wanna add that your companions will react as though you, Shadowheart, killed her, even though you didn’t.
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u/AbaddonArts 4d ago
To be fair I think that's before they know about the guardian, and from their perspective the artifact, a rare thing that Shadowheart explicitly hides away, exploded Lae'zel. Now all they know is their companion has a volatile bomb in their bag and the party is forced to be around her
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u/eveningdragon 3d ago
Gale's gonna be doing the same meme expression once the party bombards Shadowheart about that
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u/maliczious 4d ago
note: this only happens if you arent being truthful to her and show the artifact. She wont become confrontational otherwise if you acquiesce to her demands
source: also a shart origin enjoyer
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u/AcrosticBridge 4d ago
My AU Tav, if she ever saw that ability: "You could've done that the whole time? The whole time? The whole time?!!"
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u/frachris87 3d ago
My Origin Shadowheart was a Bard who slept with both Lae'zel and Astarion before stabbing the Nightsong and going for Minthara.
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u/yanagitennen 2d ago
holy crap, that's the non-existent chaotic-chaos alignment if I've ever seen it
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u/EggplantDangler 3d ago
He will even kill Shadowheart if he wants to. I was playing a Gale origin run and her speak with dead dialogue said the artefact killed her
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u/ABlindMoose 4d ago
Could you please not put spoilers in the title?
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u/ilessthanthreeyoutwo 4d ago
i guess it’s best i leave sub before more spoilers lol my fault i just started
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u/Ewilson92 4d ago
I gotta start playing the origin campaigns.