Baldur's Gate 3

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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)

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[SPOILER] How do you interpret the intro? (swg-empire.de)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Let's add a friendly image so that people don't see any spoilers by accident.

So, the way I see it the Emperor probably tailed Shadowheart's team who liberated the Astral Prism. Maybe he even got the Nautiloid and some cultists and Mindflayers from the Elder Brain so that he could extract Shadowheart's team. Orin left her sibling on there for good measure. Mindflayers doing Mindflayer things they abducted Shadowheart.

But as soon as the Prism was close enough the Elder Brain lost its grip on the Emperor. Probably just him because he already was able to leave an Elder Brain once. Seeing the opportunity he killed the Mindflayers near him and took control of the Nautiloid.

Being the practical Mindflayer he probably sought to build an army of tadpoled people with super duper Illithid powers to fight the Absolute. He went to Baldur's Gate to find more people and thus snatched up Tav and the others.

The Githyanki were in close pursuit and disrupted him so he had to flee. When the Nautiloid arrived on Avernus he hid inside the prism.

I'm not quite sure where Lae'zel fits into all this. She probably went aboard the Nautiloid to get her Mindflayer head but was captured instead. She didn't know anything about the Prism because it was way above her paygrade.

What do you think happened? Or is there an official version of the events that lead up to the game?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It’s explicitly stated by the Netherbrain in act 3 that they allowed the Emperor to escape their thrall, anticipating all of the events leading to him discovering Orpheus and your adventuring party - as well as the the chosen of the Dead 3 discovering the Crown of Karsus and the Ilithid oubliette under Moonrise Towers. It is implied that the whole idea for the creation of the Cult of the Absolute and planned power grab by the Dead 3 was also anticipated/orchestrated by the brain from the beginning.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

That is stated, but I'm not sure I'd consider the Netherbrain a reliable narrator. I feel like it was an attempt to intimidate the party. The sheer amount of secret knowledge and unlikely events that come together to begin freeing the brain at the end of A1 seems beyond the ability of an elder brain, which is all it would've been when it formed the plan.

The whole idea that it would use use an artifact that had only been seen once, very briefly, with no measurement or understanding of its true capabilities, to evolve itself into a being powerful enough to overcome the control it was submitting to as part of its plan... I know elder brains are scary smart, but this seems a ludicrous proposition.

Consider: what part of its plan could it not have achieved simply by tadpoling Gortash and anyone else to begin with?

Now it could be that what the brain says is canonically true and this is just weaker writing, but until I see confirmation I think the brain was trying to demoralize the party into thinking they'd always been dancing to the brain's tune the whole time and everything they had done had been in service to its plot the whole time, when the truth is it has been (very capably) trying to regain the upper hand since Ketheric's death.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Orin's sibling was the first of the Absolute's tadpole victims, weren't they? Haven't played in a couple months but that's what I remember from the dark urge storyline.

I was also under the impression that the emperor was in the astral prism since before the story started. I'm not sure if the mindflayers knew about the emperor either since they just left the artifact in a bag on the ground - their mission seemed to be all about tadpoling people

The story was left open to interpretation but I'm inclined to think the emperor was not involved in any kidnapping or tadpoling.

And Lae'zel was definirely part of a mission to recover the artifact (for Orpheus - they definitely don't know about the emperor) and got captured, she wasn't just hunting mindflayers

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Fuck I've got to finish this game before I read this post... I am 10 hours in and it feels like I've hardly started.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

You have! So much left to do lol

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Are you implying the mindflayer who abducted us was the emperor, not some rando? I missed that if so. I thought our abductor was dead on the ground in early act 1, the one who tried to make us feel compassion towards it or whatever. I just presumed an absolute lackey

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

The mindflayer that infects the pc in the intro certainly looks like the Emperor. No other in the game with that same sized collar as the Emperor.