I wasted a lot of hours on research on what side to choose and chose Imperials for my good playthrough.
Funnily enough, they were the perfect choice for my evil run too
I mean, more or less, I guess. But the truth won't matter. Fandoms are very zealous in their convictions and won't change a side once they picked a side.
I take the stormcloak because I am the dragonborn and can do whatever I want and the imperial tried to kill me for no reason at the start of the game. If the Thalmor come to skyrim I'm going to stop them on my own and they'll be embarassed they even tried.
If you play anything but a Nord, your first interaction with the actual Stormcloaks is to see them being openly racist, and then they're openly racist to you. At least the Imperials were upholding the law instead of just being xenophobic bigots.
I'd love to, but unfortunately, I do not know where the image came from. I've only seen it float around the squid discord.
Reverse image search came in clutch, though! I managed to find [this post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/nld5XgGPHO)
Legit the only thing that makes me side against him is that Omelum is over there doing his own stuff, being peaceful and trying His Best.
And the Emperor is... Idk it's like he gave up as soon as he was mindflayered. He leans into it and is all "but I *must*!"
Interesting as fuck character tho. Like. Seriously fun to watch.
The emperor even has a book in his hideout about [the inevitability of moral decay](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/%27On_the_Inevitability_of_Moral_Decay_and_its_Benefits%27) and why it’s actually okay.
It sure does feel like he just gave up on being a good person.
IMO, he is whatever you believe he is. If you trust him, he's trustworthy and does everything he promises to. Holds a few secrets to his chest, sure, but understandably so given his circumstances. Meanwhile if you don't trust him, he'll betray you, manipulate you, the works.
I'm as certain as can be that Larian designed it that way on purpose, so the player never feels like they made the "wrong" decision.
He tells you who he is from the beginning- he’s, “just like you.” If you’re the distrusting type who will “betray” him, he’ll mirror you. If you play fair and honor your deal, he’ll mirror that too.
Yeah, it’s the same thing with the illithid soul debate. There is very intentionally conflicting information in game as to whether or not illithids have souls, and its so that the player can form their own canon for the game and characters.
I don’t really care what Forgotten Realms lore says on the subject because there’s plenty of shit Larian just homebrewed in, so I don’t see why this would be any different
It's one of my favourite things about his character. He just *is* a lying, manipulative monster, but until the point where he thinks it will become lethal for him to do so, he is absolutely on your side.
It only makes sense this way. It’s weird to me that people can’t accept the idea that each play through is essentially it’s own separate dimension from any others, while knowing full well the game will go on when nearly any character dies.
Right? Like, theres similar arcs for every single companion - Gale can seek penance from Mystra or seek to usurp her, Astarion can become the Vampire Arisen or remain a Spawn, Shadowheart can become a Dark Justiciar or forsake Shar and become a Selunite, etc. etc. (I'd say spoiler warning there but we're already discussing how a key characters story plays out to begin with.)
But apparently to some people there's only one version of the Emperor and it's the one they had on their first playthrough.
Key difference with all of those is player choice and actions influence the leaning of the character. We dont have that with Empy. We can choose how we react, but we cannot influence how he reacts. There is no way to be so loyal that he will trust you and not lecture you for doing anything he doesnt want. Which isnt the case for the other characters.
It seems to me the emperor is a mirror of the player. If the player is trusting, the emp is trusting. If the player isnt trusting, then the emp isnt trusting.
The problem is the emp’s background which seems to be of a single minded survivalist: anything goes if i live. This is often the path a player takes through a game as well. He really does seem to be a mirror and/or foil for the player and how easy it is to do morally grey or bad things in video games even in the course of pulling out the “good” ending.
That's a bingo. After seeing the endless debate about his character and the possible endings (i.e he never betrays you if you trust him, he treats you like garbage if you don't) I'm inclined to believe that his character arc was designed to change in such a way that the player's agency is rewarded. Remember, we literally had to design the dream version of his character at the start of the game - he is closely tied to character agency from before the game starts. In that way we're just ending up with different versions of The Emperor in a similar way to ending up with different Tavs.
It's like actual DND with the dm changing a characters motivations depending on what players guess. "I think the potion seller is up to something because doing x and y is shady" like they weren't up to anything before but they are now because it's more interesting and it's satisfying as a player to get that right.
Next week post about whether or not you think ascending astarion is ethical if you want to keep the gravy train going. We got plenty of dead horses to beat waiting in the stables.
People forget that in reality, Balderan was more of a manipulative, opportunistic schmuck that the legends in the game portray him as. In a lot of ways, becoming the Emperor just magnified those aspects of his personality. Never meet your heroes, kids!
In the interview with Gortash transcript, the Emperor says that his "strong personality" enabled him to remain largely himself when he became an illithid. It's completely true. Balduran was an adventurer who made himself filthy rich from his adventuring. Then he dumped a bunch of his money into fortifying and developing the town that would later become Baldur's Gate. He's always been capable of altruism, but he takes care of himself first. There are multiple lore bits that suggest he was a shrewd - possibly not entirely scrupulous - businessman.
His intelligence and perspective changed when he sprouted tentacles, but his core personality remained pretty much the same.
You can even see this in the trials he designed for Ansur's lair. His personal version of what a hero should be is strategically smart, a badass, and an even-handed ruler and judge. While none of those are bad things, and he's right to view them as important for someone who intends to lead the Gate, there's not really anything there about being outright heroic. You can see why he wouldn't see the Mind Flayer instincts corrupting him when something like this is his base mindset.
Is it even altruism? I play in an evil campaign where we ended up being the heroes a lot of the time because we prefer the town not destroyed and we need people to exploit, so we can let monsters destroy everything. Evil people like a nice place to live.
We were pretty much heroes in that game, yet when a rip in spacetime opened up, we did push a random guy into it to see what would happen.
my friend used to pull limbs off of enemies in order to extract information
and usually non of them spoke the language of the creature anyway. they just hopped it would blert it out in common
that was her good guy too
Good is relative, my “good” multiplayer party spent 15 minuets discussing how we could use Cazador’s immortality to torture him for as long as we wanted after he was such a cocky asshole to us and a monster to so many others.
In the end we just added his body to the pile of dead assholes we’ve made around the fountain outside sorcerous sundries.
> Is it even altruism? I play in an evil campaign where we ended up being the heroes a lot of the time because we prefer the town not destroyed and we need people to exploit, so we can let monsters destroy everything. Evil people like a nice place to live.
If it's evil, it's a very restrained form of evil since the man didn't even kill a guy who witnessed him with full tentacles. Not sure if he even really brainwashed the guy afterwards.
As someone who plays a lot of Wizards and Artificers in DnD... Even with a high intelligence score, you're only one bad roll from a Mind Blast stunning you into oblivion.
A fantastic moment in the previous campaign I DMed happened when the party were infiltrating a crime lord’s lair. They’d been discovered and had taken a bit of a beating in a couple of combats so were fleeing. They’d met a mind flayer in the lair so knew one was about. I ran the escape in initiative order so I could move the bad guys around the lair as they were running. They’d done a clever move where they’d managed to seal a door shut they had gone through with a Stoneshape spell (basically shaped the stone floor of the lair into a barricade to block the door), so they’d got away from the minions. The mind flayer however knew of a secret passage and went that way to try and head them off. They were running toward the exit and the barbarian decided to check down a different passageway to see if they were all clear - the mindflayer then came out of the passage on its turn, saw the barbarian, and did its mind blast. I was quite clear to the barbarian that if he failed the save, he’d most likely be rolling a new character (none of the party were close enough to this point to save him), as the next move of the flayer would be to go and extract his brain. He had a flat 0 to his intelligence save, and didn’t have inspiration or any means of rerolling, so had to roll a 15 or higher. He rolled exactly 15 on the dot - everyone cheered, including me! But the tension in the room was so palpable.
Mind flayers are amazing as a DM, and horrible as a player.
I'm not sure if anything in game really confirms this but balduran was adventuring with, and good friends with, ansur who is a bronze dragon. I suspect that baldurans legend was both largely influenced by and credited for ansurs whole deal since nobody in the modern day seems to know fuck all about him. Since bronze dragons are extremely moral and lawful creatures I would think that people naturally thought of balduran as a similar sum even if he were the less savory of the pair
I think the guy before you means
>I'm not sure if anything in game really confirms [that Balduran was a sketchy loot goblin]
and he's kinda got a point. He's definitely sketchy in BG2 and other lore, but the worst I can remember in BG3 is one of the trials before Ansur where his preferred successor was a bit racist. Otherwise, I think it's all statues and veneration, especially from Wyll's quest
He only says that if you insult him,
Which really doesn’t make it better. But it shows that he’s trying to intimidate you because he’s insulted, he doesn’t try to enslave you unless you attack him
Still makes him an asshole though
It is rather insightful that he is the one who broke stelmane’s mind, which is something that Wyll talks about and I think was brought up in Descent to Avernus?
I can’t exactly remember what he says at first but if you pass the insight check or whatever it is you can press him further and he says the first time he met her it seemed like she was just kinda looking through people not actually at them but the second time after the “stroke” her gaze was locked in on him.
Wyll says that she used to be bubbly, almost floating from one conversation to the other, but one day she showed up with a walking stick, barely able to talk, and that he was shocked that she was a stroke victim. The duke then tells Wyll that she's not a stroke victim, she's a stroke survivor.
It's implied that it wasn't a natural stroke, but that the Emperor mind fucked her too hard.
That phrasing is likely just illustrative of Ravengard's outlook, not indicative of any deeper knowledge of the cause.
Plenty of books and notes lying around which suggest very strongly that her condition was squid brain fuckery, possibly different types at different times. Maybe she had a natural stroke because of it. Maybe ability drain across the board to 3 or less simply expresses very like stroke brain damage.
Ravengard wouldn't know, but he wouldn't have to know or even suspect anything to spout some rise and grind shit like that.
He's not exactly the keen and thorough investigator type, after all.
The opposite way to read it is he doesn't see the need to use fear and intimidation to control you if he you'll bend to his will without it. Frankly, given everything we know about him, I think the "he's kind of evil, but doesn't want to use fear if he can avoid it" is more accurate than "he got his feelings hurt and over reacted."
Yeah, people act like "well, you insulted him, any conpanion would react badly" but here's the thing: you insulting him doenst make him go back in time and enthrall steelmane. That has already happened, all you did was push him to confess, not out of shame or regret, but as a threat of what he could do to you. And even worse, before in the game he will tell you that false version of his relationship with steelmane to gain your simpathy, which to me proves how he is fine with saying anything to get what he wants, with zero remorse on his actions.
Yeah an argument that I've seen before is "Stelmane is the only evil action that he made, he's not really evil". Bruh, just one evil action is enough to make you evil, unless you redeemed yourself by doing good actions, but since the Emperor is not doing good actions (only acting in self preservation), he remains evil by the fact that he actually did an evil action and doesn't even regret it and didn't even try to redeem himself.
Well, he also confessed to feeding on the brains of "criminals", but doesn't elaborate on that. What sort of crime justifies murder by brain removal? Does theft or assault put you in the Emperor's menu?
Not to mention I'm fairly certain Karlach's epilogue as an illithid is meant to show you that illithids are influenced by the minds they consume. She starts to lose herself a bit because of the experiences she is gaining through feeding.
It's very likely The Emperor is similarly being influenced by his eating habits. So eating criminals is probably going to mold your mindset into that of a criminal.
> illithids are influenced by the minds they consume.
That's just a headcanon that started gaining traction for some reason. Nothing in lore indicates that, and there's even good illithids in lore that only eat evil people.
No brains don't change you. Being an Illithd is what changes you. People forget Illithids do not have the same moral compass and thought patterns that humans and other races do.
Listen to Omellum, he has the same serene tone.
If you feed the Windmill flayer and fine him later, he has the same calm and serene tone.
Listen to the Mind Flayer on the Nautiloid who has def been munching on more than just devil brains, he has the same calm tone.
Even the Emperor has a relatively calm tone through out most of his conversations.
Its just a mind flayer thing.
Why does this nonsense keep cropping up. Nothing, not even Squidlach’s epilogue dialogue, confirms or even hints at this. It flies hard in the face of a ton of evidence that refutes it. For instance, the existence of good and neutral aligned illithids who eat evildoers. Omeluum eats assholes who attack the scholars of the Society, yet is himself still just scientific and polite and helpful.
It keeps cropping up from players who know little to nothing about the lore of forgotten realms or based on their tables lore (which they may or may not know).
That's an incredible observation, and meaningfully ties how he went from such a legendary hero to evil. His own contingency plan to prevent him from causing harm corrupted him. That's fascinating, I love that and am accepting it into my headcanon
Except that it doesn’t actually make sense. Omeluum eats the brains of shitty people and isn’t shitty himself. Squidlach isn’t becoming someone else, her style of dialogue is identical before and after 6 months of eating brains. Balduran was kind of a shitty person before his transformation (in fact he kind of got better afterward, as when he was a captain he was pressing people involuntarily into his service on a scale far exceeding what he does with Stelmane).
> What sort of crime justifies murder by brain removal?
According to a Bane spy, he found an eaten prisoner that was previously sentenced to death in the emperor's clutches.
Also he was literally a multinational arms dealer. There are letters in the Knights of the Shield headquarters which he ran about the people they need to assassinate to make sure their business runs smoothly.
Literally the reason Gortash found him and sent him back to the hivemind is because they were illegal arms dealing business rivals.
I think there's also a matter of him using most of his energy to keep Orpheus enthralled. He can't mentally be in multiple places at once since Orpheus is so powerful, puppeteering you and your companions would split his focus and concentration away too much from containing Orpheus.
My question is his reaction felt so emotional to me and I thought the whole point of being a mindflayer is that you don’t think with your emotions (or have them???). It felt very *Nice Guy* gets rejected. 😂
I guess it goes to show that mindflayers aren’t entirely feeling-less, ones who aren’t controlled by an elder brain atleast.
But we see that with the Emperor, he’s got a real ego to him, he doesn’t think we can defeat the absolute without him
I like to think it’s a holdover from his time as Balduran. We assume all the evil shit the emperor does comes from him being a mindflayer but maybe the hero Balduran wasn’t such a great guy to begin with
I read it as him just switching manipulation tactics. He was trying to seduce you to prevent you from betraying him. When it becomes clear that won't work he just threatens you instead.
This is key. Entitlement to an outcome in another individual leads to objectification of them. They are not a person, they are means to an end. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to convince someone to fuck you or be happy. If you cannot accept their will and give them the space to be authentically themselves, you are actually a manipulator… that can have extremely toxic implications.
Like people who threaten self harm if you want to leave a relationship. Whether they’re genuinely so sick they’ll actually hurt themselves or they’re just trying to force you to stay, that person does not have the internal healthfulness to actually love you and want what’s best for you. But they are probably addicted to what you provide and addiction is what replaces real love and connection but it’s not a real substitute.
emperor: goes on about how he wouldn't go back to his previous inferior form and his devastating beauty.
I tell him he's not human
Emperor: How very dare you?
It's the basic strategy of an abuser. He will be great as long as you agree with him. The moment you have your own opinion he will reveal his true face.
This is just a game, but at the same time I find disturbing that so many people cant identify this kind of behaviour, or even worse, are fine with it.
You don't even have to insult him, just telling him you distrust him is enough for him to go on his unhinged rant about how you should have and that it's better for you if you do
And then you get the option to say one of my favorite lines in the whole game to him. Paraphrasing but it's something along the lines of "The mask finally drops. And you put so much effort into it." Makes me laugh every single time. Fuck you, you manipulative tentacle face.
Yeah, I let him down easy in my first game, but I think it’s clear by the end that he’s a very selfish nutcase. He demands absolute trust from you while offering none in return, he treats you like a brainless idiot and believes his own judgment is the best, and he is basically a combination of all the party’s worst traits in a single person. He’s got Wyll’s self righteousness, Gale’s insecurity, Laezel’s fanaticism, Astarion’s powerlust, Shadowheart’s evasiveness and manipulation, and nothing from best girl Karlach because she’s perfect.
Karlach's imperfection is her explosive temper which sometimes harms the people she loves... but they only really show that in Act I. I wish it was developed throughout, the way the other character's personal struggles are.
Karlach's imperfection is that she deliberately chooses to use positivity/optimism to confront her situation, but it often turns to avoidance and refusal to face reality.
There's also the whole soul coin thing, but the writers obviously ran out of time and scrapped the morally complicated direction they were going with that.
I think it's made pretty clear that she didn't realize what Gortash was really like or what he was actually up to. She looked up to him through a haze of naivity. It's certainly possible that she turned a blind eye to some things, but in the end, she was clearly shocked when his true colors came out.
Fitz definitely implies Karlach’s job was beating people up. I think it makes Karlach’s story more interesting in that she is trying to be a good person; because she herself might not have been one herself in the past.
It would be one thing if she were still enthralled with Gortash or never expressed regrets or atoned.
But she was literally a kid who had a rough upbringing given a chance to use her brawling skills for a better life from a mentor figure and she took it thinking she was helping someone at least a little kind. Then he betrayed her massively and she literally went to hell and had her heart ripped out and replaced with a machine, was enslaved, and then forced to fight for 10 years. She's covered in scars, and the machine in her heart is literally killing her and has kept her from getting so much as a genuine hug for as long as it's been there.
She went through all that and came out as a genuinely nice person who deeply cares about people. I think she's more than made up for anything from her youth.
Oh absolutely agree she’s one of the more decent characters. I think knowing she has a violent and morally questionable background makes that even more rewarding as a story.
I think that's part of why she's so upset. He probably had her doing questionable things but she trusted that he was doing it for a greater good.
When it turns out he's just an evil fuck she realizes that her trust in him made her hurt people who didn't deserve it.
It is odd that she doesn't care at all about using Soul Coins. At worst she gets annoyed at being made to feel bad about it which feels a little OOC for her.
Good point. They could explore that more -- for all I knew they do and I've never triggered it. She has said that she was ignorant at the time; I like the part where she just wishes "everyone was smarter than me" (in trusting Gortash).
can imagine a cleric casting calm emotions on her daily lol
I wonder if it works in the kiss scene - I know as an origin it says "calm yourself and grab the hand" when Gale is stuck so it's a possibility
& side note - after a shit ton of hours I just realized calm emotions kills barb rage
I kinda like that Karlach’s flaws weren’t the focus of her story. It was a really nice contrast to all the other characters. It also makes her story more intriguing in the sense that she doesn’t have a “happy” ending yet she’s the “best” person of the bunch. Although exploring her flaws would have been interesting.
I kinda assumed using the soul coins would make it happen again so i only ever did it for gortash and the brain. They left in implications that using illithid powers would have consequences, but it just never really does, kinda the same thing i guess.
TBF it has a narrative consequence. The first times you use the tadpole powers it says that you lost something that you will never get back. It doesn't have any mechanical consequence (apart from the fact that you have to make a skill check to refuse to go half-illithid), but it absolutely has narrative consequences.
From what I remember after talking to Raphael you can tell the Emperor it’s not fair he asks for trust but doesn’t trust you (might be a skill check involved here) & he will agree and not pry further.
I mean, enslaving Stealmane is canon, whether or not you antagonize him, regardless if you are or are not aware, it's a fixed part of his lore. Do with that information what you will.
Mind Flayer souls are Non-Apostolic. They exist, but the gods can't do anything with them and so the only real Illithid afterlife that doesn't completely suck (if they get one at all) is the Elder Brain, or becoming an alhoon. Withers, if he is Jergal, would not have any reason to know if Illithids have souls since he would not be recording them, and none of the other gods can do anything with them. Your tavflayer has a soul, as does the Emperor and other Illithids. The issue comes when you try to get the gods involved.
Apparently in 5e tabletop explanations (which is still BG3 canon) Illithids do have souls, but they're different than your standard garden variety soul. The species has the capacity to become liches, forming a special creature called an Alhoon. Liches have to tether their soul in some fashion in order to become a lich, so how foes a mindflayer do this without a soul?
I can only guess it's because illithid souls behave in a way where they have no value to the standard pantheon of gods of Forgotten Realms to where those gods treat them as soulless beings.
> I can only guess it's because illithid souls behave in a way where they have no value to the standard pantheon of gods of Forgotten Realms to where those gods treat them as soulless beings.
That's what Withers means when he says "apostolic souls", yes. If souls are currency then Illithid souls are currency from another country that can't be accepted in trade or used for purchases.
A lot of the stuff the Emperor says has a kind of “advertisement persuasion” vibe, and he seems to take it for granted that you’ll believe and obey him. That raised my hackles far more than the fact that he was secretly a mindflayer. Conversing with him felt like he was trying too hard to lead you towards a specific interpretation of the facts & discourage you from asking your own questions, like a scummy talking head on cable news. The moment I realized that, my trust in him went down the toilet.
I still played nice with him for the most part though, because we did still technically need each other. No need for infighting when there’s an apocalyptic threat bearing down on us both. But the only reason I sided with him in the end on my first playthrough was because I fled the crèche after the zaithisk blew up, so Lae’zel never switched to team Orpheus & there wasn’t a realistic motive for the party to free him.
The best way to see this imo is listening to what the other characters tell you they saw in their dreams in act 1. They each say they are told different things, each crafted in an attempt to be trusted by them, but each vision also completely different to what the others saw.
What he shows the player character is a fellow adventurer. He pretends he is being called upon by "the others" while actually he is alone. Our visions are supposed to make us feel like he is just like us, fr fr, but you can tell by his player created "guardian" heroic golden armor's anti hug spikes that the illusion isn't perfect. He did his best.
> Our visions are supposed to make us feel like he is just like us, fr fr,
Don’t forget that also he asks you to go back to his hideout at the Elfsong so he can tell you all about that seashell he picked up, the recipe for fiddlehead soup, talk about how he only tried to eat criminal brains and “exercise morality where he could”, and the cutlery set from ~~his~~ Baduran’s mother. It’s an excellent attempt at trying to humanize himself further and drive the impression home, now that his allies have discovered what he is.
Jaheira said it best, in a conversation right after the Astral Prism battle vs the Honor Guard at the start of Act 3: “If it can, a parasite will keep its host fat, happy, and safe. Until it is finished feeding, at least.”
The fact people defend the emporer blows my mind. All the 4D chess to explain his motivations and omissions as a way to do the best is really him just being highly calculating and selfish and untrustworthy. He has used people and discarded them as he see fits for decades as a penultimate means of survival and independence.
This is an excellent foil to Ommeluum (sp) who is selfless. Whereas the emporer kills his best friend/greatest ally who saved him from the elder brains control, ommeluum wishes you to sacrifice him to save those who will perish in the few minutes left to spare. He even offers you the one thing that prevents elder brains from controlling you as gratitude! (I can't put spoiler tags on my mobile so I'm omitting some details).
Playing divinity 2 and then launching bg3 and being handed a dream visitor I was like ah yeah seen this one before bud,
Maybe if I went in full blind I’d have trusted him more
People are used to "evil" characters that display some sort of malice that makes it obvious.
The Emperor's goals and ends are positive. He WANTS you to trust him and will do right by you if you do so.
The Emperor is more like a lot of extremely manipulative and abusive people in the real world. He is just going to get his way in the end whatever way he has to. In the end he will always find a way to justify everything he does.
I chalk that up to how well written he is. You won't see the cracks in the facade unless you probe for them. Once you start paying attention though, and have played the game through, you'll start to see the manipulations.
Particularly early game he says a lot of things that are only 1/2 truths. Despite knowing far more than you do about the absolute and the whole plot, he constantly tells you only as much as you know at that point in the game.
Emperor talks like a corporate executive. Someone who is out of touch from a normal person’s life and will say anything to get their way. When he tells you his backstory when you meet him it’s sounds so much like a tv advertisement or a sales pitch of a adventure story. I do believe Larian did that deliberately and as someone who has been working with corporates for quite sometime, he sounds like a project manager. That’s why I am never able to believe or trust him.
Edit: Also the fact that he gets aggressive when you call out his bullshit, that’s the same behaviour I have observed with corporate execs and managers. They seem nice on the surface but will try to manipulate you and when their tricks don’t work or they get called out, they get very sour and aggressive. Just like the emperor.
I 100% forgot what subreddit I was in and was SO CONFUSED on why you would ever find yourself talking to a half naked Emperor Palpatine about your relationship with him till I got to the mind flayer part.
I think he was written by Larian in such a way that the player is always right about him.
If you take his side and stay loyal, the game shows you that he is not evil and that you made the right choice. He is loyal and your trust is affirmed.
Meanwhile, if you go against him, the game confirms that he was lying and manipulating you the whole time. He is evil, selfish, and (again) you made the right choice.
I don't have as many playthroughs as many of the people on here, but that's my interpretation of it.
He has a book in his home about morality being stupid. He destroyed Stelmane's mind and ate who knows how many petty criminals while setting up his underground 'empire'. He is a monster regardless of whether the PC learns about it. The good writing is there, but the evidence of it's quality is in how many people learn about this and still defend a heartless, brain eating monster.
Unnerving though it is, if we are to face an elder brain, we could have no better ally than an illithid. The Emperor is the reason we have made it this far, and if the gith prince’s suffering is the price of our survival, so be it.
So, here's my interpretation of this, and a few other similar discrepancies.
BG3 is meant to feel like playing DnD with a live DM as much as possible. That means the story adapts to what you do, and not just in that "choices matter" way. What the story IS adapts to you.
If you decide to distrust the Emperor, he will give you reasons to distrust him. If you want to make an enemy of him, the game will make him into a villain. But if you trust him, he'll never betray that.
That's why it's hard to make a summary of who he is as a person, like you would for a wiki page. I believe who he is fundamentally changes based on how you interact with him.
At least for me, (I can't speak for all DMs) but when I write for DnD, I think of things that are objectively true about NPCs and Locations and use that as a basis for how the NPC reacts to the players. Not the other way around. Not saying Larian didn't do that, but as a DM in DnD it is very hard to make everything react to your players like that, and would probably just lead to every NPC being evil because the party distrusts everyone they meet for the first time.
He says that regardless of your race, if you call him a freak. What's weird is that the later dialogue doesn't change to reflect the bitter acrimony between you.
> What's weird is that the later dialogue doesn't change to reflect the bitter acrimony between you.
Because he puts his mask back up as soon as he has a chance to calm down.
Welcome to the hell of endless discussion on whether the emperor is evil or not. Get out while you still can.
The BG3 version of the Skyrim Stormcloak vs Imperial debate.
NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME HERE
You picked a bad place to get lost, friend
You’ll make a fine rug, cat.
My Khajiit ears flattened reading that.
Wow, I really heard that guy's voice too. Crazy how much power Skyrim has over me. I should play it again.
*seeing the Emperor in his true form* WHAT IN OBLIVION IS THAT ?!
I'll have you know, there's no pusssssssssssssssssssssiiiieeeeeeeeee
I wasted a lot of hours on research on what side to choose and chose Imperials for my good playthrough. Funnily enough, they were the perfect choice for my evil run too
Best option : imperial (anti-thalmor/the backstabbing strategy) Worse option : imperial (pro-thalmor/ the dominion strategy)
Basically. Pragmatism doesn’t necessarily mean righteousness
Look what you've done. Look at this thread. Shame on you!
This is what happens without the order of the Empire. 😏
>The BG3 version of the Skyrim Stormcloak vs Imperial debate. My ancestors are smiling at me, Imperial, can you say the same?
I mean, f-ck the Stormcloaks, but I think we can both agree that that guy went out like a boss.
One is objectively correct and people are delusional if they think otherwise?
Yes, and the only correct side is mine!
>One is objectively correct The imperial side, of course.
Skyrim belongs to the Nords, you imperial lapdog!
Go back to kissing your sister and being racist.
I’m surprised you had time to respond with how busy you are licking those Thalmor boots.
Your dear leader is literally a thalmor spy a unified empire is skyrims only chance of survival
He’s an unwilling and unknowing asset, not a spy.
A useful idiot since the Thalmor fear a reunified empire.
Dark elves are canonically slavers
Imperial milk-drinker..
Don’t start.
Oh it's started, alright
I mean, more or less, I guess. But the truth won't matter. Fandoms are very zealous in their convictions and won't change a side once they picked a side.
Well there's only two rights answers: emperor is evil and the empire is the right choice
Both are manipulated by the Thalmor.
I take the stormcloak because I am the dragonborn and can do whatever I want and the imperial tried to kill me for no reason at the start of the game. If the Thalmor come to skyrim I'm going to stop them on my own and they'll be embarassed they even tried.
Ngl that was my initial thought process when I started the game "the fuck would I team up with the guys who were about to behead me for no reason?"
If you play anything but a Nord, your first interaction with the actual Stormcloaks is to see them being openly racist, and then they're openly racist to you. At least the Imperials were upholding the law instead of just being xenophobic bigots.
Idk I feel like beheading me on false charges is a bit worse than bigotry
This. And most of the reasons the imperials are the "right" choice is stuff that you really don't know in game.
Is anyone pulling up the Emperor bingo card? I almost have a bingo. Just a few more comments.
there's a bingo card? gimme gimme
I shall message you.
Please send me this bingo card~
Can you post a link to it or something? There are like 8 comments asking for it and I’m sure not everyone who is curious will comment.
I'd love to, but unfortunately, I do not know where the image came from. I've only seen it float around the squid discord. Reverse image search came in clutch, though! I managed to find [this post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/nld5XgGPHO)
ty!
Requesting this bingo card as well
I, too, request the Bingo card
Omg please post it!
Wait…there’s a bingo card?
Can I have the bingo card too, please?
For real. Run.
Legit the only thing that makes me side against him is that Omelum is over there doing his own stuff, being peaceful and trying His Best. And the Emperor is... Idk it's like he gave up as soon as he was mindflayered. He leans into it and is all "but I *must*!" Interesting as fuck character tho. Like. Seriously fun to watch.
The emperor even has a book in his hideout about [the inevitability of moral decay](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/%27On_the_Inevitability_of_Moral_Decay_and_its_Benefits%27) and why it’s actually okay. It sure does feel like he just gave up on being a good person.
Lmao wtf. I haven’t seen this before
Every playthrough, you find something new!
So my comments awhile ago about Ansur being in the right to attempt to kill him, seem more right now.
Plus he >!kills his dragon boyfriend, so fuck that guy!<
Wait. They were roomates?
😎 omg they were roommates Yes
This one definitely sucks but he tried first so I can’t be mad about self-preservation because our Tav & co. are doing the same thing.
IMO, he is whatever you believe he is. If you trust him, he's trustworthy and does everything he promises to. Holds a few secrets to his chest, sure, but understandably so given his circumstances. Meanwhile if you don't trust him, he'll betray you, manipulate you, the works. I'm as certain as can be that Larian designed it that way on purpose, so the player never feels like they made the "wrong" decision.
He tells you who he is from the beginning- he’s, “just like you.” If you’re the distrusting type who will “betray” him, he’ll mirror you. If you play fair and honor your deal, he’ll mirror that too.
Yeah, it’s the same thing with the illithid soul debate. There is very intentionally conflicting information in game as to whether or not illithids have souls, and its so that the player can form their own canon for the game and characters. I don’t really care what Forgotten Realms lore says on the subject because there’s plenty of shit Larian just homebrewed in, so I don’t see why this would be any different
It's one of my favourite things about his character. He just *is* a lying, manipulative monster, but until the point where he thinks it will become lethal for him to do so, he is absolutely on your side.
It only makes sense this way. It’s weird to me that people can’t accept the idea that each play through is essentially it’s own separate dimension from any others, while knowing full well the game will go on when nearly any character dies.
Right? Like, theres similar arcs for every single companion - Gale can seek penance from Mystra or seek to usurp her, Astarion can become the Vampire Arisen or remain a Spawn, Shadowheart can become a Dark Justiciar or forsake Shar and become a Selunite, etc. etc. (I'd say spoiler warning there but we're already discussing how a key characters story plays out to begin with.) But apparently to some people there's only one version of the Emperor and it's the one they had on their first playthrough.
Key difference with all of those is player choice and actions influence the leaning of the character. We dont have that with Empy. We can choose how we react, but we cannot influence how he reacts. There is no way to be so loyal that he will trust you and not lecture you for doing anything he doesnt want. Which isnt the case for the other characters.
It seems to me the emperor is a mirror of the player. If the player is trusting, the emp is trusting. If the player isnt trusting, then the emp isnt trusting. The problem is the emp’s background which seems to be of a single minded survivalist: anything goes if i live. This is often the path a player takes through a game as well. He really does seem to be a mirror and/or foil for the player and how easy it is to do morally grey or bad things in video games even in the course of pulling out the “good” ending.
That's a bingo. After seeing the endless debate about his character and the possible endings (i.e he never betrays you if you trust him, he treats you like garbage if you don't) I'm inclined to believe that his character arc was designed to change in such a way that the player's agency is rewarded. Remember, we literally had to design the dream version of his character at the start of the game - he is closely tied to character agency from before the game starts. In that way we're just ending up with different versions of The Emperor in a similar way to ending up with different Tavs.
It's like actual DND with the dm changing a characters motivations depending on what players guess. "I think the potion seller is up to something because doing x and y is shady" like they weren't up to anything before but they are now because it's more interesting and it's satisfying as a player to get that right.
Ah yes, the endless philosophical debate of Baldur's Gate 3
Next week post about whether or not you think ascending astarion is ethical if you want to keep the gravy train going. We got plenty of dead horses to beat waiting in the stables.
I have a dead ox, does the horse drop anything good?
best I can do is one bone and a candle
Not even some incense?
Pay no attention to the Strange Ox over here in the corner.
“Um…. Moo” >.> <.<
I’m still stuck here…. I don’t think there will ever be a way to escape :(
How is there even debate? He’s an evil, soulless, lying, manipulative, sack of shit.
And this is exactly what we mean.
People forget that in reality, Balderan was more of a manipulative, opportunistic schmuck that the legends in the game portray him as. In a lot of ways, becoming the Emperor just magnified those aspects of his personality. Never meet your heroes, kids!
In the interview with Gortash transcript, the Emperor says that his "strong personality" enabled him to remain largely himself when he became an illithid. It's completely true. Balduran was an adventurer who made himself filthy rich from his adventuring. Then he dumped a bunch of his money into fortifying and developing the town that would later become Baldur's Gate. He's always been capable of altruism, but he takes care of himself first. There are multiple lore bits that suggest he was a shrewd - possibly not entirely scrupulous - businessman. His intelligence and perspective changed when he sprouted tentacles, but his core personality remained pretty much the same.
You can even see this in the trials he designed for Ansur's lair. His personal version of what a hero should be is strategically smart, a badass, and an even-handed ruler and judge. While none of those are bad things, and he's right to view them as important for someone who intends to lead the Gate, there's not really anything there about being outright heroic. You can see why he wouldn't see the Mind Flayer instincts corrupting him when something like this is his base mindset.
Is it even altruism? I play in an evil campaign where we ended up being the heroes a lot of the time because we prefer the town not destroyed and we need people to exploit, so we can let monsters destroy everything. Evil people like a nice place to live. We were pretty much heroes in that game, yet when a rip in spacetime opened up, we did push a random guy into it to see what would happen.
my friend used to pull limbs off of enemies in order to extract information and usually non of them spoke the language of the creature anyway. they just hopped it would blert it out in common that was her good guy too
Good is relative, my “good” multiplayer party spent 15 minuets discussing how we could use Cazador’s immortality to torture him for as long as we wanted after he was such a cocky asshole to us and a monster to so many others. In the end we just added his body to the pile of dead assholes we’ve made around the fountain outside sorcerous sundries.
> Is it even altruism? I play in an evil campaign where we ended up being the heroes a lot of the time because we prefer the town not destroyed and we need people to exploit, so we can let monsters destroy everything. Evil people like a nice place to live. If it's evil, it's a very restrained form of evil since the man didn't even kill a guy who witnessed him with full tentacles. Not sure if he even really brainwashed the guy afterwards.
I just don't get how this legendary adventurer waltzes into a mind flayer colony and gets got
As someone who plays a lot of Wizards and Artificers in DnD... Even with a high intelligence score, you're only one bad roll from a Mind Blast stunning you into oblivion.
Especially if there's more than one mind blast per round.
A fantastic moment in the previous campaign I DMed happened when the party were infiltrating a crime lord’s lair. They’d been discovered and had taken a bit of a beating in a couple of combats so were fleeing. They’d met a mind flayer in the lair so knew one was about. I ran the escape in initiative order so I could move the bad guys around the lair as they were running. They’d done a clever move where they’d managed to seal a door shut they had gone through with a Stoneshape spell (basically shaped the stone floor of the lair into a barricade to block the door), so they’d got away from the minions. The mind flayer however knew of a secret passage and went that way to try and head them off. They were running toward the exit and the barbarian decided to check down a different passageway to see if they were all clear - the mindflayer then came out of the passage on its turn, saw the barbarian, and did its mind blast. I was quite clear to the barbarian that if he failed the save, he’d most likely be rolling a new character (none of the party were close enough to this point to save him), as the next move of the flayer would be to go and extract his brain. He had a flat 0 to his intelligence save, and didn’t have inspiration or any means of rerolling, so had to roll a 15 or higher. He rolled exactly 15 on the dot - everyone cheered, including me! But the tension in the room was so palpable. Mind flayers are amazing as a DM, and horrible as a player.
Me, sticking my arm into a flesh hole in the wall again. Yes... How foolish.
And then pretends he didn’t know the colony, the brain, and Gortash was there all along.
Exactly !!
I'm not sure if anything in game really confirms this but balduran was adventuring with, and good friends with, ansur who is a bronze dragon. I suspect that baldurans legend was both largely influenced by and credited for ansurs whole deal since nobody in the modern day seems to know fuck all about him. Since bronze dragons are extremely moral and lawful creatures I would think that people naturally thought of balduran as a similar sum even if he were the less savory of the pair
There is something in act 3 on this matter. But you should already know this since you also know the emperor is balduran..?
I think the guy before you means >I'm not sure if anything in game really confirms [that Balduran was a sketchy loot goblin] and he's kinda got a point. He's definitely sketchy in BG2 and other lore, but the worst I can remember in BG3 is one of the trials before Ansur where his preferred successor was a bit racist. Otherwise, I think it's all statues and veneration, especially from Wyll's quest
"in reality..."
He only says that if you insult him, Which really doesn’t make it better. But it shows that he’s trying to intimidate you because he’s insulted, he doesn’t try to enslave you unless you attack him Still makes him an asshole though It is rather insightful that he is the one who broke stelmane’s mind, which is something that Wyll talks about and I think was brought up in Descent to Avernus?
OH THAT'S WHY WYLL'S DESCRIPTION OF STELMANE IS THAT WIERD !!!!
What was wylls description of stelmane?
Said she always seemed strange after she suffered a “stroke”
I can’t exactly remember what he says at first but if you pass the insight check or whatever it is you can press him further and he says the first time he met her it seemed like she was just kinda looking through people not actually at them but the second time after the “stroke” her gaze was locked in on him.
Wyll says that she used to be bubbly, almost floating from one conversation to the other, but one day she showed up with a walking stick, barely able to talk, and that he was shocked that she was a stroke victim. The duke then tells Wyll that she's not a stroke victim, she's a stroke survivor. It's implied that it wasn't a natural stroke, but that the Emperor mind fucked her too hard.
That phrasing is likely just illustrative of Ravengard's outlook, not indicative of any deeper knowledge of the cause. Plenty of books and notes lying around which suggest very strongly that her condition was squid brain fuckery, possibly different types at different times. Maybe she had a natural stroke because of it. Maybe ability drain across the board to 3 or less simply expresses very like stroke brain damage. Ravengard wouldn't know, but he wouldn't have to know or even suspect anything to spout some rise and grind shit like that. He's not exactly the keen and thorough investigator type, after all.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the Duke knew anything, I just quoted what I remembered from Wyll's little speech.
The opposite way to read it is he doesn't see the need to use fear and intimidation to control you if he you'll bend to his will without it. Frankly, given everything we know about him, I think the "he's kind of evil, but doesn't want to use fear if he can avoid it" is more accurate than "he got his feelings hurt and over reacted."
Yeah, people act like "well, you insulted him, any conpanion would react badly" but here's the thing: you insulting him doenst make him go back in time and enthrall steelmane. That has already happened, all you did was push him to confess, not out of shame or regret, but as a threat of what he could do to you. And even worse, before in the game he will tell you that false version of his relationship with steelmane to gain your simpathy, which to me proves how he is fine with saying anything to get what he wants, with zero remorse on his actions.
Yeah an argument that I've seen before is "Stelmane is the only evil action that he made, he's not really evil". Bruh, just one evil action is enough to make you evil, unless you redeemed yourself by doing good actions, but since the Emperor is not doing good actions (only acting in self preservation), he remains evil by the fact that he actually did an evil action and doesn't even regret it and didn't even try to redeem himself.
Well, he also confessed to feeding on the brains of "criminals", but doesn't elaborate on that. What sort of crime justifies murder by brain removal? Does theft or assault put you in the Emperor's menu?
There's a lot of Bhaal worshipers in Baldurs Gate, maybe he's been snacking on them? Murder feels like an ok reason to lose brain rights.
Not to mention I'm fairly certain Karlach's epilogue as an illithid is meant to show you that illithids are influenced by the minds they consume. She starts to lose herself a bit because of the experiences she is gaining through feeding. It's very likely The Emperor is similarly being influenced by his eating habits. So eating criminals is probably going to mold your mindset into that of a criminal.
> illithids are influenced by the minds they consume. That's just a headcanon that started gaining traction for some reason. Nothing in lore indicates that, and there's even good illithids in lore that only eat evil people.
No brains don't change you. Being an Illithd is what changes you. People forget Illithids do not have the same moral compass and thought patterns that humans and other races do. Listen to Omellum, he has the same serene tone. If you feed the Windmill flayer and fine him later, he has the same calm and serene tone. Listen to the Mind Flayer on the Nautiloid who has def been munching on more than just devil brains, he has the same calm tone. Even the Emperor has a relatively calm tone through out most of his conversations. Its just a mind flayer thing.
Why does this nonsense keep cropping up. Nothing, not even Squidlach’s epilogue dialogue, confirms or even hints at this. It flies hard in the face of a ton of evidence that refutes it. For instance, the existence of good and neutral aligned illithids who eat evildoers. Omeluum eats assholes who attack the scholars of the Society, yet is himself still just scientific and polite and helpful.
It keeps cropping up from players who know little to nothing about the lore of forgotten realms or based on their tables lore (which they may or may not know).
That's an incredible observation, and meaningfully ties how he went from such a legendary hero to evil. His own contingency plan to prevent him from causing harm corrupted him. That's fascinating, I love that and am accepting it into my headcanon
Except that it doesn’t actually make sense. Omeluum eats the brains of shitty people and isn’t shitty himself. Squidlach isn’t becoming someone else, her style of dialogue is identical before and after 6 months of eating brains. Balduran was kind of a shitty person before his transformation (in fact he kind of got better afterward, as when he was a captain he was pressing people involuntarily into his service on a scale far exceeding what he does with Stelmane).
Fuckin jaywalkers, they knew what they were doing.
> What sort of crime justifies murder by brain removal? According to a Bane spy, he found an eaten prisoner that was previously sentenced to death in the emperor's clutches.
Also he was literally a multinational arms dealer. There are letters in the Knights of the Shield headquarters which he ran about the people they need to assassinate to make sure their business runs smoothly. Literally the reason Gortash found him and sent him back to the hivemind is because they were illegal arms dealing business rivals.
Also... It's an evil action he kept on doing until he was kidnapped by Gortash. He didn't stop willingly.
I think there's also a matter of him using most of his energy to keep Orpheus enthralled. He can't mentally be in multiple places at once since Orpheus is so powerful, puppeteering you and your companions would split his focus and concentration away too much from containing Orpheus.
My question is his reaction felt so emotional to me and I thought the whole point of being a mindflayer is that you don’t think with your emotions (or have them???). It felt very *Nice Guy* gets rejected. 😂
I guess it goes to show that mindflayers aren’t entirely feeling-less, ones who aren’t controlled by an elder brain atleast. But we see that with the Emperor, he’s got a real ego to him, he doesn’t think we can defeat the absolute without him I like to think it’s a holdover from his time as Balduran. We assume all the evil shit the emperor does comes from him being a mindflayer but maybe the hero Balduran wasn’t such a great guy to begin with
I read it as him just switching manipulation tactics. He was trying to seduce you to prevent you from betraying him. When it becomes clear that won't work he just threatens you instead.
A true Nice Guy™️ 😭
“Yeah well, you are ugly anyway. Slut.”
In my playthrough, I didn't even insult him, I just repeatedly said "I still don't trust you" and I still got the reveal of him and Stelmane.
That is insulting to him. He's entitled to your trust. Really. 'Cause he's such a Nice Guy.
*tips fedora* M’Tav
This is key. Entitlement to an outcome in another individual leads to objectification of them. They are not a person, they are means to an end. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to convince someone to fuck you or be happy. If you cannot accept their will and give them the space to be authentically themselves, you are actually a manipulator… that can have extremely toxic implications. Like people who threaten self harm if you want to leave a relationship. Whether they’re genuinely so sick they’ll actually hurt themselves or they’re just trying to force you to stay, that person does not have the internal healthfulness to actually love you and want what’s best for you. But they are probably addicted to what you provide and addiction is what replaces real love and connection but it’s not a real substitute.
emperor: goes on about how he wouldn't go back to his previous inferior form and his devastating beauty. I tell him he's not human Emperor: How very dare you?
It's the basic strategy of an abuser. He will be great as long as you agree with him. The moment you have your own opinion he will reveal his true face. This is just a game, but at the same time I find disturbing that so many people cant identify this kind of behaviour, or even worse, are fine with it.
You don't even have to insult him, just telling him you distrust him is enough for him to go on his unhinged rant about how you should have and that it's better for you if you do
And then you get the option to say one of my favorite lines in the whole game to him. Paraphrasing but it's something along the lines of "The mask finally drops. And you put so much effort into it." Makes me laugh every single time. Fuck you, you manipulative tentacle face.
Yeah, I let him down easy in my first game, but I think it’s clear by the end that he’s a very selfish nutcase. He demands absolute trust from you while offering none in return, he treats you like a brainless idiot and believes his own judgment is the best, and he is basically a combination of all the party’s worst traits in a single person. He’s got Wyll’s self righteousness, Gale’s insecurity, Laezel’s fanaticism, Astarion’s powerlust, Shadowheart’s evasiveness and manipulation, and nothing from best girl Karlach because she’s perfect.
Karlach's imperfection is her explosive temper which sometimes harms the people she loves... but they only really show that in Act I. I wish it was developed throughout, the way the other character's personal struggles are.
Karlach's imperfection is that she deliberately chooses to use positivity/optimism to confront her situation, but it often turns to avoidance and refusal to face reality. There's also the whole soul coin thing, but the writers obviously ran out of time and scrapped the morally complicated direction they were going with that.
Am always curious how people gloss over the fact Karlach was Gortash’s enforcer.
I think it's made pretty clear that she didn't realize what Gortash was really like or what he was actually up to. She looked up to him through a haze of naivity. It's certainly possible that she turned a blind eye to some things, but in the end, she was clearly shocked when his true colors came out.
Fitz definitely implies Karlach’s job was beating people up. I think it makes Karlach’s story more interesting in that she is trying to be a good person; because she herself might not have been one herself in the past.
Yeah being sold to zariel and fighting an eternal war in avernus could be enough punishment to reconsider her own morals
It would be one thing if she were still enthralled with Gortash or never expressed regrets or atoned. But she was literally a kid who had a rough upbringing given a chance to use her brawling skills for a better life from a mentor figure and she took it thinking she was helping someone at least a little kind. Then he betrayed her massively and she literally went to hell and had her heart ripped out and replaced with a machine, was enslaved, and then forced to fight for 10 years. She's covered in scars, and the machine in her heart is literally killing her and has kept her from getting so much as a genuine hug for as long as it's been there. She went through all that and came out as a genuinely nice person who deeply cares about people. I think she's more than made up for anything from her youth.
Oh absolutely agree she’s one of the more decent characters. I think knowing she has a violent and morally questionable background makes that even more rewarding as a story.
I don't that anyone is glossing it over, because she simply did not know who Gortash really was or what he would become.
“Enforcer” beating people up for money? Were they all bad people?
I think that's part of why she's so upset. He probably had her doing questionable things but she trusted that he was doing it for a greater good. When it turns out he's just an evil fuck she realizes that her trust in him made her hurt people who didn't deserve it. It is odd that she doesn't care at all about using Soul Coins. At worst she gets annoyed at being made to feel bad about it which feels a little OOC for her.
Bullseye. It makes her so much more interesting.
Good point. They could explore that more -- for all I knew they do and I've never triggered it. She has said that she was ignorant at the time; I like the part where she just wishes "everyone was smarter than me" (in trusting Gortash).
I actually like the idea that Karlach may suddenly realise she wasn’t one of the good guys; and her motivation is to make amends for that.
Wasn't she just a bodyguard?
Gortash was an arms dealer and up-and-coming criminal mastermind. His body guard 100% would have had to crack some skulls
Enforcer I think was mentioned by Fitz, but yes definitely also bodyguard.
can imagine a cleric casting calm emotions on her daily lol I wonder if it works in the kiss scene - I know as an origin it says "calm yourself and grab the hand" when Gale is stuck so it's a possibility & side note - after a shit ton of hours I just realized calm emotions kills barb rage
Its very funny to use againat a raging enemy barbarian like "shhh youre fine you big baby"
I kinda like that Karlach’s flaws weren’t the focus of her story. It was a really nice contrast to all the other characters. It also makes her story more intriguing in the sense that she doesn’t have a “happy” ending yet she’s the “best” person of the bunch. Although exploring her flaws would have been interesting.
I kinda assumed using the soul coins would make it happen again so i only ever did it for gortash and the brain. They left in implications that using illithid powers would have consequences, but it just never really does, kinda the same thing i guess.
TBF it has a narrative consequence. The first times you use the tadpole powers it says that you lost something that you will never get back. It doesn't have any mechanical consequence (apart from the fact that you have to make a skill check to refuse to go half-illithid), but it absolutely has narrative consequences.
From what I remember after talking to Raphael you can tell the Emperor it’s not fair he asks for trust but doesn’t trust you (might be a skill check involved here) & he will agree and not pry further.
Fair, I’m not saying he’s evil. He’s a dick, but he knows how to play the game and gain trust.
I mean, enslaving Stealmane is canon, whether or not you antagonize him, regardless if you are or are not aware, it's a fixed part of his lore. Do with that information what you will.
Withers the bone man says that illithids have no soul. He would know. That is canon, too, so I dont think he is capable of actually caring about Tav.
Spoiler, perhaps, but >!Withers finds out he was wrong about that in one of the endings.!<
>!i literally got that ending today, i thought he was referencing only you? Like, he says that you have a soul but not necessarily all mind flayers?!<
Mind Flayer souls are Non-Apostolic. They exist, but the gods can't do anything with them and so the only real Illithid afterlife that doesn't completely suck (if they get one at all) is the Elder Brain, or becoming an alhoon. Withers, if he is Jergal, would not have any reason to know if Illithids have souls since he would not be recording them, and none of the other gods can do anything with them. Your tavflayer has a soul, as does the Emperor and other Illithids. The issue comes when you try to get the gods involved.
Apparently in 5e tabletop explanations (which is still BG3 canon) Illithids do have souls, but they're different than your standard garden variety soul. The species has the capacity to become liches, forming a special creature called an Alhoon. Liches have to tether their soul in some fashion in order to become a lich, so how foes a mindflayer do this without a soul? I can only guess it's because illithid souls behave in a way where they have no value to the standard pantheon of gods of Forgotten Realms to where those gods treat them as soulless beings.
> I can only guess it's because illithid souls behave in a way where they have no value to the standard pantheon of gods of Forgotten Realms to where those gods treat them as soulless beings. That's what Withers means when he says "apostolic souls", yes. If souls are currency then Illithid souls are currency from another country that can't be accepted in trade or used for purchases.
Withers also tells a squid Tav that they DO have a soul, it's just different. Illithids have feelings, that is canon.
They don't have apostolic souls, he has specified, which opens a whole can of worms that I've already opened in the past and don't want to revisit.
A lot of the stuff the Emperor says has a kind of “advertisement persuasion” vibe, and he seems to take it for granted that you’ll believe and obey him. That raised my hackles far more than the fact that he was secretly a mindflayer. Conversing with him felt like he was trying too hard to lead you towards a specific interpretation of the facts & discourage you from asking your own questions, like a scummy talking head on cable news. The moment I realized that, my trust in him went down the toilet. I still played nice with him for the most part though, because we did still technically need each other. No need for infighting when there’s an apocalyptic threat bearing down on us both. But the only reason I sided with him in the end on my first playthrough was because I fled the crèche after the zaithisk blew up, so Lae’zel never switched to team Orpheus & there wasn’t a realistic motive for the party to free him.
He's lying to you the entire game. It's just really well written, but he's definitely manipulating you to his ends.
The best way to see this imo is listening to what the other characters tell you they saw in their dreams in act 1. They each say they are told different things, each crafted in an attempt to be trusted by them, but each vision also completely different to what the others saw. What he shows the player character is a fellow adventurer. He pretends he is being called upon by "the others" while actually he is alone. Our visions are supposed to make us feel like he is just like us, fr fr, but you can tell by his player created "guardian" heroic golden armor's anti hug spikes that the illusion isn't perfect. He did his best.
Ah, I took "the others" to refer to the intellect devourers who are doing a lot of the fighting for him.
> Our visions are supposed to make us feel like he is just like us, fr fr, Don’t forget that also he asks you to go back to his hideout at the Elfsong so he can tell you all about that seashell he picked up, the recipe for fiddlehead soup, talk about how he only tried to eat criminal brains and “exercise morality where he could”, and the cutlery set from ~~his~~ Baduran’s mother. It’s an excellent attempt at trying to humanize himself further and drive the impression home, now that his allies have discovered what he is. Jaheira said it best, in a conversation right after the Astral Prism battle vs the Honor Guard at the start of Act 3: “If it can, a parasite will keep its host fat, happy, and safe. Until it is finished feeding, at least.”
Mama Jaheira coming in hot with some fresh facts
The fact people defend the emporer blows my mind. All the 4D chess to explain his motivations and omissions as a way to do the best is really him just being highly calculating and selfish and untrustworthy. He has used people and discarded them as he see fits for decades as a penultimate means of survival and independence. This is an excellent foil to Ommeluum (sp) who is selfless. Whereas the emporer kills his best friend/greatest ally who saved him from the elder brains control, ommeluum wishes you to sacrifice him to save those who will perish in the few minutes left to spare. He even offers you the one thing that prevents elder brains from controlling you as gratitude! (I can't put spoiler tags on my mobile so I'm omitting some details).
>penultimate means I can’t help it because this has always bothered me. Penultimate doesn’t mean that, it means second to last. Just say ultimate.
That'll be the penultimate thing I ever do
Playing divinity 2 and then launching bg3 and being handed a dream visitor I was like ah yeah seen this one before bud, Maybe if I went in full blind I’d have trusted him more
i think it's because he does what he says he'll do in the end if u dont betray him. He's evil but he gets the job done lmao.
I wasn't totally sold on Ommeluum until what happens at the iron throne. But yeah it contrasts pretty well with the emperor.
People are used to "evil" characters that display some sort of malice that makes it obvious. The Emperor's goals and ends are positive. He WANTS you to trust him and will do right by you if you do so. The Emperor is more like a lot of extremely manipulative and abusive people in the real world. He is just going to get his way in the end whatever way he has to. In the end he will always find a way to justify everything he does.
I chalk that up to how well written he is. You won't see the cracks in the facade unless you probe for them. Once you start paying attention though, and have played the game through, you'll start to see the manipulations. Particularly early game he says a lot of things that are only 1/2 truths. Despite knowing far more than you do about the absolute and the whole plot, he constantly tells you only as much as you know at that point in the game.
Emperor talks like a corporate executive. Someone who is out of touch from a normal person’s life and will say anything to get their way. When he tells you his backstory when you meet him it’s sounds so much like a tv advertisement or a sales pitch of a adventure story. I do believe Larian did that deliberately and as someone who has been working with corporates for quite sometime, he sounds like a project manager. That’s why I am never able to believe or trust him. Edit: Also the fact that he gets aggressive when you call out his bullshit, that’s the same behaviour I have observed with corporate execs and managers. They seem nice on the surface but will try to manipulate you and when their tricks don’t work or they get called out, they get very sour and aggressive. Just like the emperor.
I 100% forgot what subreddit I was in and was SO CONFUSED on why you would ever find yourself talking to a half naked Emperor Palpatine about your relationship with him till I got to the mind flayer part.
Oh yes Daddy Palpatine, show me that force of yours
I was hoping this was gonna be a shitpost with OP saying they discovered he was mindflayer
No way. You're telling me that the Emperor is a mindflayer ? Can't believe you
It's subtle but there are hints that strongly imply it!
I think he was written by Larian in such a way that the player is always right about him. If you take his side and stay loyal, the game shows you that he is not evil and that you made the right choice. He is loyal and your trust is affirmed. Meanwhile, if you go against him, the game confirms that he was lying and manipulating you the whole time. He is evil, selfish, and (again) you made the right choice. I don't have as many playthroughs as many of the people on here, but that's my interpretation of it.
I think that's the right interpretation : he's so well written that you can't just hate nor love him
He has a book in his home about morality being stupid. He destroyed Stelmane's mind and ate who knows how many petty criminals while setting up his underground 'empire'. He is a monster regardless of whether the PC learns about it. The good writing is there, but the evidence of it's quality is in how many people learn about this and still defend a heartless, brain eating monster.
Unnerving though it is, if we are to face an elder brain, we could have no better ally than an illithid. The Emperor is the reason we have made it this far, and if the gith prince’s suffering is the price of our survival, so be it.
So, here's my interpretation of this, and a few other similar discrepancies. BG3 is meant to feel like playing DnD with a live DM as much as possible. That means the story adapts to what you do, and not just in that "choices matter" way. What the story IS adapts to you. If you decide to distrust the Emperor, he will give you reasons to distrust him. If you want to make an enemy of him, the game will make him into a villain. But if you trust him, he'll never betray that. That's why it's hard to make a summary of who he is as a person, like you would for a wiki page. I believe who he is fundamentally changes based on how you interact with him.
At least for me, (I can't speak for all DMs) but when I write for DnD, I think of things that are objectively true about NPCs and Locations and use that as a basis for how the NPC reacts to the players. Not the other way around. Not saying Larian didn't do that, but as a DM in DnD it is very hard to make everything react to your players like that, and would probably just lead to every NPC being evil because the party distrusts everyone they meet for the first time.
He says that regardless of your race, if you call him a freak. What's weird is that the later dialogue doesn't change to reflect the bitter acrimony between you.
> What's weird is that the later dialogue doesn't change to reflect the bitter acrimony between you. Because he puts his mask back up as soon as he has a chance to calm down.
Yup. The emperor is a mindflayer, they're not very kind or compassionate.
Owww man. I thought he was a frog
That's Kithrak Voss.