Characters / Baldur's Gate III: Astarion

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Astarion Ancunín

Vampire Spawn

Voiced by: Neil Newbon

"Don't be shy, I promise not to bite until we've been formally introduced."

Race: High Elf (Vampire Spawn)
Class: Rogue
Background: Charlatan
Place of Origin: Baldur's Gate

A high elf vampire spawn whose tadpole infection has somehow given him the ability to move freely during the day. While the rest of the party seek to remove their tadpoles, Astarion hopes to learn to control his and master his new powers.

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#-K

• Acquired Situational Narcissism: If you don't prevent him from Ascending (or if you play Origin as Astarion, committing to Ascension, should you choose to), Astarion becomes more arrogant, possessive, and power-hungry as a full ascended vampire. His attitude is more pompous and theatrical, also dripping with even more condescension and flowery words and an even more callous disregard to his companions and to the sacrificed thousands of souls he devoured out of fear and hunger. Notably, both Neil in an interview and the developer notes outright say that him being very theatrical is a mask. Another thing to note is if you found Vellioth's skull, you'll find out that Cazador was also in Astarion's place under his predecessor and laid out his rules of control unto him. And if you play as Astarion being your Origin character, it turns out Cazador also has rules for his slaves to remember- which he will also eventually impose should he Ascend and let loose in the ending.
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Of a sort: Back in Early Access he had a few black strands in his otherwise white hair, implying he may have just turned gray over time (and/or from Cazador-induced stress). In the full release he's naturally white-haired.
• Admiring the Abomination: He admits several times that while he's not thrilled about the prospect of being turned into a mind flayer, he’s still very fascinated by the tadpole and its abilities. Mostly because it's the only thing keeping him in the sunlight.
• Affably Evil: He's an amoral and selfish Blood Knight, but he can still be quite the charmer, especially if romanced. Either way, he has a particular soft spot for the enslaved.
• Agent Peacock: Astarion looks, sounds, and acts like a mix of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, David Bowie, and Matt Berry, but he's also a full-fledged Blood Knight that loves diving headlong into the fray.
• Ambition Is Evil: Once he learns what the scars on his back really mean, he immediately starts scheming to overthrow Cazador to become the Ascendant himself. The player can point out to him that too much power too soon can corrupt. And "corrupt" is about the tamest thing you can call him if he Ascends — Astarion basically becomes as bad as Cazador in haughtiness, arrogance, and self-assured confidence almost immediately after the ritual is over.
• Anti-Hero: Through Character Development, he can become this. If you manage to get enough approval and get him to open up, Astarion will defrost and start going from an outright amoral prick to still morally grey but ultimately far less villainous person. This culminates if you convince him not to Ascend with Astarion breaking the the routines caused from Cazador's abuse by showing compassion and forming genuine bonds. Subverted if he Ascends, as Astarion becomes a straight-up villain and an evil shell of his former self.
  • If a good-aligned playthrough where he wasn't romanced, Astarion can reveal in the epilogue that he's taken up being an adventurer and a hero, though one up to his standards.
  Astarion: It turns out nobody cares about murder, so long as you murder the right people. And as it turns out, I'm rather good at it!
• Armor-Piercing Question: Can receive one from a romanced player in Cazador's palace. After finding most or all of his former marks imprisoned, you can ask if you might have met the same fate at his hands. Despite insisting that you would have been different, Astarion is clearly rattled by the idea. If you demand he face it and admit that he'd have led you to your death as much as anyone else in those cages if it meant his own power increasing, he's so rattled he even receives a brief debuff from the interaction.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Throughout the game, Astarion encourages the player character to embrace the power of the mind flayer tadpoles and look for ways to grow stronger while minimizing the risk of being turned yourself. He even suggests that they should use the Netherstones from the cult leaders to control the Netherbrain for their own gain. If they actually do, even a Vampire Ascendant Astarion ends up getting reduced to a mindless thrall under their control through the elder brain. Although this gets subverted if they romanced Astarion, in which case he becomes exempted from being enthralled by the Netherbrain and gets to enjoy the spoils of becoming the Absolute with his lover.
• Becoming the Mask: Partway through his romance arc, he admits to the player that he initially seduced them simply to manipulate their feelings in the hope that they wouldn't throw him out. Of course, his plan backfired when he started to actually feel something for them, much to his dismay.
• Beneath the Mask: Judging by a large amount of his ambient dialogue and banter, he seems to largely uphold the facade of himself as the quintessential debauchery-loving foppish player with most of the party and even the player, if unromanced. Most of them will make it to the end of the game still fully believing that is truly who he is, teasing him as late as Act 3 about being a skirt-chaser and a sleaze. You will only ever see past that mask and learn of his romantic side and desires to be seen as a person if you romance him.
• Berserk Button:
  • Acting like a Fearless Fool gets on his nerves. When discussing Raphael, a Fiend Pact warlock character can point out that Raphael is "only" a cambion, and therefore inherently less dangerous than a full devil. Astarion very impatiently reminds them that as long as they don't know who messed with the worms in your heads, why they did it, and why a devil — "Pardon, a cambion" — is interested enough in the situation to personally get involved, Raphael is still holding all the cards, whatever species he might be. He did mention a few sentences earlier that Cazador really gets off on doing this to his slaves ("Let them think there was hope, right until the end... Until he snatched it all away."), so being back in almost exactly the same situation does not sit well with him.
  • Making insinuations involving Cazador. In Early Access, Astarion would go absolutely nuclear with rage and threatens to kill Tav brutally because of a tasteless joke about Cazador being his master in the bedroom. In the full release, Ascended Astarion screams at Tav to shut up if they compare him to Cazador.
• Better the Devil You Know: Inverted. If you argue that he'd just be trading one master for another if the group lets Raphael remove the tadpoles, Astarion has this to say:
  Astarion: You're familiar with the phrase "Better the devil you know"? I know Cazador. And I'll take anything that saves me from that.
• Big "SHUT UP!": He does not appreciate the player pointing out how similar to Cazador he's become post-Ascension.
• Blood Knight: Puns aside, he clearly enjoys violence, possibly because it's the first time he's really been able to let loose with his powers since he got turned.
• Boomerang Bigot: He (perhaps understandably) doesn't think much of vampires, deriding them as "scheming, paranoid, power-hungry beasts." Of course, he also doesn't exactly consider himself a vampire.
• Break the Haughty: His questline in Act 3 sees him lose his smarmy attitude. Returning to Cazador's palace brings back unpleasant memories, but it's seeing Sebastian and thousands of other vampire spawns, many of which he brought to Cazador personally, that horrifies him to the point he starts having serious doubts about hijacking the Ascension ritual. If you manage to convince Astarion not to and kill his former master, he breaks down into a sobbing wreck.
• Broken Tears: After convincing Astarion not to undergo Ascension, Astarion will still stab Cazador to death. Afterwards, he falls to his knees and sobs as the weight of the abuse and fear he suffered under Cazador lifts from his shoulders.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Subverted come Act 3. He repeatedly claims throughout the game that he can't even remember half the people he brought back to Cazador, and initially tries to uphold that charade; but upon discovering that the many victims Cazador made him seduce and bring back to be fed on were actually turned into Vampire Spawn for the Ascendant ritual Astarion can remember them all, including their names and what went on between him and them. Seeing them again absolutely wrecks him.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: The party can encounter Gandrel, a Gur hunter, in Act I when exploring Auntie Ethel's cursed swamp. He's genial to the party even if Tav/Durge make a disparaging comment about his status as a Gur (noting that he's well aware of their reputation, even if it's based on lies), but he's also in the area specifically to hunt Astarion. The problem? Gandrel has no idea what Astarion actually looks like, so if he happens to be in the party when the topic arises, Astarion will make increasingly bold statements about how cunning Gandrel's prey happens to be before getting bored and outright asking Tav/Durge if he can just kill the hunter.
• Cannot Cross Running Water: In Early Access he would take acid damage if he tried, as is common for all vampires in D&D. His AI would even identify it as a hazard the same way other characters' would react to fire or clouds of poisonous gas. In the official launch this is no longer the case, but he will remark on it with surprise the first time you cross a river with him (suggesting it's the work of the tadpole).
• The Casanova: Deconstructed to hell and back: Astarion is attractive and a shameless flirt, but it's eventually revealed that he was often used as a Honey Trap for Cazador's victims, and that even beyond that he's used to using his sexuality to get what he needs regardless of whether he's actually interested in his target, something he admits he hates. During his romance arc, his deepening feelings for the player eventually make him withdraw sexually, wanting to come to terms with the emotional aspect of their relationship before continuing with the physical. Downplayed regarding his interactions with the party members: He'll flirt with most of them, which usually results in witty rejections, though some still admit behind his back that they aren't unwilling to sleep with him. His Charisma is also just an average 10, but his persona is already enough to bring back several victims over the years even if none of them lasted for more than a night.
• Character Development: Astarion is selfish and can even be cruel due to having only known callousness and letting his negativity loose once he's off the collar, calling you naive if you're on the morally good for the first half of the game. He even tries to appeal to your heart by suggesting of doing the "right" thing of taking over a cult. However, as Astarion learns to trust the player more while continuing to be upright, he will gradually approve more and more virtuous deeds, becoming more than what Cazador made him out to be in the ending where you stop him from committing the ritual. Just moments ago, he tells you off that he can't be the person he wants you to be. But, in a conversation between you two a bit after, he thanks you for believing that he can be more than just his fears and doesn't need to be an Ascendant to rise up. In this route, he treats you as his equal- someone neither to fear nor needing to manipulate that helped him to be genuinely free.
  Astarion: But you saw something else in me- someone else I could be. Someone who could break the cycle of terror that started centuries ago. You saved me back there. I may not have appreciated it at the time, but I do now. Thank you.
• Cursed with Awesome: Astarion is the only one of the infected who was actually strengthened by the tadpole. Namely, it grants him immunity from the sun — which freed him of a vampire's greatest weakness and allows him to hide his true nature — and freed him from Cazador's influence, allowing him to finally act against his former master. He also still possesses Vampiric Bite, which enhances his abilities further.
• Cute and Psycho: Leans more into Cute if he remains a spawn, teeters towards Psycho if he ascends.
• The Dandy: He immediately gives off this impression and he does care a great deal about his looks. Inspecting his outfit closer reveals that they have been mended over and over again and are barely holding together, but they are mended in a way that makes it clear their wearer places great importance on his appearance.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Despite impressive competition, he's the undisputed winner of the 'most horrendous backstory' prize among your recruitable companions, which goes a long way towards explaining what an absolute mess of a person he is. Getting kidnapped, turned into a vampire spawn, and subjected to centuries of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by his sire while serving as his evil minion will do that.
• Dark Secret: He's a vampire spawn. This is immediately obvious to the player, what with the Undeathly Pallor, the mouthful of fangs^note Which was downgraded to Cute Little Fangs in a later patch, and the puncture scars on his neck, but it takes a few nights in-game before their character figures it out. If he trusts you enough to volunteer this information, you can even casually reply that it was obvious.
  • Hilariously, the other Origin companions are equally slow on the uptake if the PC is Origin Astarion. You gain the ability to bite enemies after the Nautiloid crash (justified in-game as having fed a few days before getting snatched and his hunger is catching up to him), so you have flexibility on when to actually tell your companions. If Astarion goes too long without biting someone, he’ll receive a debuff and then a special cutscene that plays similarly to a Tav/Durge run where he shakily stumbles over to the nearest companion to take a bite and then they wake up… or you can simply use the Bite action in combat before the first Long Rest and your companions will immediately clock that you’re a vampire.
    Shadowheart: (sees Astarion bite an enemy) Wait, you’re a vampire?!
• Daywalking Vampire: Justified. Fifth edition D&D vampire spawn normally take the same damage in sunlight as their masters, but the mind flayer tadpole apparently lets Astarion go about in daylight with no visible consequences, much to his delight. There is a limit to it, as being in the vicinity of the Solar Lance will disintegrate him like it does everyone else(note that this thing was powerful enough to destroy a building). In the Good Ending of the game, if Astarion doesn't hijack Cazador's ritual for himself and remains a vampire spawn, he'll lose his daywalker status. This understandably upsets him, tearfully stating "it was nice while it lasted" before diving for the nearest patch of shade.
• Deadpan Snarker: While all companions have their moments, Astarion stands out as the biggest smartass of all of you. You can probably count the number of times he's actually sincere on one hand... Maybe two, if romanced.
• Deal with the Devil: He's extremely eager to strike a deal with Raphael because, as mentioned under Better the Devil You Know above, he considers any alternative to being forced back into Cazador's service or turning into a mind flayer viable solution to his tadpole problem. If you go through the various encounters with Raphael without Astarion in your party, he'll tear you a new one for it every time you talk to him in camp.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Casanova/Ladykiller in Love — He mostly acts like this out of habit, after spending over 200 years being forcibly pimped out by his master Cazador to draw in prey for him (when he wasn't being starved and/or gruesomely tortured). He eventually learned to almost completely dissociate during sex, but the fact that he genuinely comes to care for the player during his romance arc his makes him unable or unwilling to keep doing so. Astarion really struggles to deal with his growing feelings for the player, and he actually staves off a romantic tryst because he wants to make sure he really does love the player. Sure enough, if the player presses forward during this event, Astarion recoils from it and ends up breaking things off from the player. This is even sadder if you romanced him and decide to try being with someone else; he'll dejectedly ask if it's because they haven't been sexually intimate in a while. It takes Astarion coming to terms with his past and his growing love for you that he'll initiate by asking to make love in the resolution of his arc. He lets you choose whether to finally be able to have sex without the feeling of being tainted, wait for another time, or just simply be there and reflect in calmness. Either way, Astarion respects your choice.
• Decon-Recon Switch: Of the Ladykiller in Love. Most of his life is spent on using his charms and body due to having no choice in the matter and can seduce the player in an effort to manipulate and remain in your good graces and to protect him. When he sexually withdraws, he's in the matter of settling his past and separating that from his genuine attraction and love towards you. The recon part is that, eventually, he has come to terms with his feelings and even offers to be sexually intimate again (on top of his grave, even), this time out of genuine desire and love. He showers you with praise and all the reasons behind his affection for you, but compared to him using his facade, his wording is less ornate, but straight from the heart. Note that he doesn't stop being flirtatious towards you or calling you pet names by the end- being charming is just a natural part of his personality, but devoted to you.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: He's initially very condescending and brushes off any attempts to get to know him with mean-spirited snark. If you accept what he is when it finally comes out, he's genuinely grateful once the surprise wears off, and sincerely thanks you if you let him drink some of your blood. If you don't romance him but still keep his approval high, he'll greet you with a genuinely cordial "What can I do for you, my friend?" or call you "(his) favorite traveling companion."
• Didn't Think This Through: He is manipulative, cunning and usually has a good read on what drives other people. What prevents Astarion from being a more competent Guile Hero or Manipulative Bastard (depending on his alignment) is that he usually slips up when things require more complex planning. He eventually admits himself that he's not much of a "details-person". This shows up throughout the story in various ways.
  • His Wounded Gazelle Gambit at the beginning founds on his idea that the player is in cahoots with the mind-flayers, so he lays out a trap for you to "help" him kill "one of those brain things" - which wouldn't make much sense if you actually were working with the illithids.
  • He’s probably the most adamant party member about using the tadpole’s power early on and is keen on trying to encourage the player to try it for themselves too. If you try to dissuade him or say you’re skeptical, he gets defensive. That’s until the Emperor introduces the Astral-Touched Tadpole, when he immediately refuses to have anything to do with it, since he only then realises the cost is ‘turning into a grotesque beast’.
  • He eventually tries to convince the player that they ought to take control of whatever is controlling the tadpoles in Moonrise Towers. When asked how exactly he thinks they should go about it, Astarion's "plan" boils down to: 1. find the device he assumes is there controlling the tadpoles 2. murder some people 3. ??? 4. success. This is also the event where he admits to not being a details person.
  • While the logic that belies why and when he gives approvals of the player's actions can come across as rather mercurial, a good chunk of it is handed out if he sees any gain from your choice (be it personal amusement or physical rewards) or if it's a more cruel and often violent choice, even if said choice can have disastrous consequences for the group or if the non-violent choices lead to better outcomes in the long-term. He is particularly short-sighted if he has personal stakes in a matter (like his deal with Raphael, where he will initially disapprove of any action that isn't an all out attack on the Orthon, even if the player is trying to talk the orthon into killing himself and his minions - he’ll approve if it works). Though interestingly enough, events that earn you his inspiration points are often those where you talk your way to victory.
  • When asked about his plan to deal with Cazador, Astarion's nice simple plan consists of two steps: 1. find Cazador, 2. kill Cazador (maybe while hijacking the Rite of Ascension) and work out any "details" along the way. This is especially egregious since Astarion reminds the player multiple times just how dangerous and cunning Cazador is.
• Distressed Dude:
  • His siblings can ambush your party after you arrive in Baldur's Gate, and if he goes down they will successfully kidnap him. Then you're treated to a unique cutscene where you play as him trying to resist his captors.
  • If you have him in your party while confronting Cazador, he'll lose his temper and try to punch Cazador in the face. Cazador takes this opportunity to capture Astarion with his staff, drag him over to his spot on the ritual, and restrain him there to start the ritual proper. The fight starts with Astarion trapped, half-naked and completely unable to move, and he'll die within 3 rounds unless you or one of your other companions uses a Help-action to free him.
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: After defeating the Absolute, Astarion notes with surprised elation when he appears to be unaffected by the morning sun, wondering if being a host for his tadpole affected his vampire physiology. It turns out, much to his disappointment, that it was simply a delayed reaction and he's forced back underground.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Laying the sympathy on too thick or promising to protect him if Cazador comes knocking will just make him lash out and/or mock you for apparently thinking you alone can protect him from a vampire lord.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • If you ask him where he plans to get blood in the future after possibly feeding on you, he immediately promises not to target innocents, "Only villains that we need to kill anyway." While you could just write it off as Pragmatic Villainy on his part, it should be noted that even after being freed from Cazador's control, he still opted to go after animals instead of some vagrant or hermit no one would miss.
  • If the player tries but fails to save Arabella from Kagha, he admits in an unusually serious tone that he considers death a harsh punishment for theft. If pressed about what — if anything — he would’ve done differently, he claims that he would’ve gone the "merciful" route of amputating her hand.
  • He's genuinely disgusted by Malus Thorm's twisted experiments, noting how they are no different from how Cazador would treat him.
  • When confronted about the children he kidnapped, he's quick to assert that unlike the adults, he didn't lure them through seduction.
  • If you convinced the owlbear mother not to fight you, returning to the cave later will show that goblins came by, killed her and took her baby. He seems to be genuinely sad for the fallen owlbear, lamenting that the goblins found her little hiding spot.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He thinks Mayrina's husband rising as a zombie is hilarious. If you express pity for her, he'll even quip that it was "a shame she couldn't see the funny side."
• Evil Is Hammy: If he becomes the Vampire Ascendant, he develops a taste for scenery and a penchant for Milking the Giant Cow. How he addresses the romanced player also depends on whether you chose to let him take over as an Ascendant usurper or killing Cazador but remaining as a spawn. He tends to use more flowery wording in the former while declaring world domination while being more straightforward but genuinely heartfelt in the latter.
• Everybody Knew Already: Nobody is terribly surprised that he turns out to be a vampire, with everyone suspecting it already at least a little. Should the player go to the Underdark without triggering his bite scene, he'll fess up to it directly, to which the player can tell him it was already obvious.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Hates the Gur, both for personal reasons and probably because it's a pretty common prejudice in Faerûn. He also more than once lumps in kobolds in with animals.
  • He also makes disparaging remarks about gnomes, and unlike with the Gur, there's no apparent personal history involved.
  • As a vampire spawn Astarion is himself a victim of this, as vampires are considered monsters. Even though vampire spawn are themselves victims and suffer all the downsides of being undead but have none of a true vampire's powers, they are treated as unpersons without legal rights that anyone can murder without repercussions. It doesn't help that they're officially dead and were buried years ago, or that they suffer from constant painful hunger for blood... And while they can survive on animal blood (and even exist in a weakened dazed and feral state with no food at all, as seen on Sebastion who has suffered for 170 years without being fed), Astarion's low-key orgasmic reaction to drinking "the blood of sentient creatures" (the player character's) for the first time in his unlife makes it clear he wasn't lying when he said subsisting on animal blood makes a vampire's senses dull and their mind clouded.
• Fatal Flaw: His inability to plan things out properly, and to a lesser degree impulsivity. Quite possibly due to his torturous past, Astarion is primarily focused on his own survival by any means necessary, leading him to not consider the (sometimes imminent) consequences his actions can have. He is somewhat aware of his own shortcomings which is why he sticks with the player's character, seeing it at his best chance to avoid both, his old master Cazador and becoming a mind-flayer.
• Faux Affably Evil: Downplayed, in that his charm and good manners are genuine parts of his personality; however, when pissed, he can really crank up the insincerity when delivering threats and brutal critiques with the same smile.
• Foreshadowing: The morning after an early Optional Sexual Encounter, the player character has the option to remark that Astarion's mind seemed elsewhere at times. That's because it was; his motives for seducing the player are self-serving at that point in time, and he's developed a tendency to dissociate during such encounters.
• Fragile Speedster: Rogue only having access to light armor combined with being the only companion without shield proficiency to start with means that Astarion's AC won't reach the same highs as a number of other martial characters, at best reaching the low twenties very late in the game compared to others. However, his ability to move around the battlefield and sneak attack allows him a massive amount of terrain advantage few characters can compare to.
• Freudian Excuse: His It's All About Me and often cruel mindset is quite a bit more understandable within the context of his backstory; he has spent more than 200 years at the mercy of his sadistic vampiric master, being the victim of every sort of abuse imaginable, as heroes and gods alike never came to save him. His prior life has left him numb to cruelty, angry at the world and deeply cynical that true heroes even exist when he spent so long suffering in silence. He doesn't want to be the hero for others that nobody ever was for him and resents the player for dragging him into a heroic position. In good playthroughs, however, he slowly becomes more and more empathetic and heroically-inclined. While he'll never be as much of a Nice Guy as the likes of Wyll or Karlach, his Spawn epilogues feature him really coming into his own and becoming a heroic figure even without the direct influence of the player.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Played With. The only person he really cares about is himself, but he only ever drinks blood from animals or hostile enemies. Painfully averted if he becomes a Vampire Ascendant. He loses whatever morality he has left, begins plans to dominate as much as he can, and essentially becomes no different from Cazador in how he treats a romanced player character. On the other hand, he can become much more moral if he refuses to complete the ritual, possibly even helping the 7000 released spawn in the Underdark as a leader.
• Friends with Benefits: Even if he is not romanced but still has high enough approval of the main character, at some point they can have sex during an orgy with two courtesans and, potentially, one of their companions.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • The tadpole lets him walk in sunlight and enter houses uninvited, but in Early Access "running water still burns like acid," and he did in fact take acid damage if he tried to cross it.
  • If the player allows it, he'll feed on them at night without waking them up. Fittingly, his Vampire Bite ability doesn't break stealth and won't wake or damage a sleeping target.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Beyond his unique appearance and his bite ability, Astarion is built using the same creation rules as every other playable character and counts as a regular high elf gameplay-wise, being a humanoid and not undead. This means, amongst other things, that healing magic affects him normally (instead of having to rely on Vampiric Regeneration, which he does not have, to recover HP), nor does he resist Necrotic damage like most undead. Spells and effects that only work on undead (like being turned, or the Circle of Bones) do not impact him either. Having to adapt Astarion 'correctly' by the rules would likely be an Interface Spoiler and would make him extremely difficult to balance, as vampire spawn have several abilities (resistance to all nonmagical damage, a permanent Healing Factor, the ability to bite as a standard attack, and the ability to climb any surface) that would be either game-breaking or impossible to implement.
  • As a Rogue his starter strength score is an unimpressive eight, same as Gale; storywise however as a vampire spawn he is able to take down such impressive prey like boars and bears, and the monster-hunter Gandrel notes they are only weak when compared to their master. Then again, should the player choose to sell him out to Gandrel, Astarion goes down after one punch to the face from said hunter.
• Glass Cannon: In-story, Astarion can single-handedly take down boars and bears, but one good punch to the face from Gandrel knocks him out cold.
• Good Feels Good: In the Playable Epilogue, if unromanced and encouraged to turn good, Astarion admits that he taken a liking to being called "hero" and admired.
• Graceful Loser: Surprisingly, for all his vanity, he's not at all upset if you tell him you find another companion more attractive than him; he still gains approval while mock-whining that he thought you and he had something special, before casually saying he needs to get his beauty sleep to catch up to the competition.
• Groin Attack: Can be on the receiving end of one when caught trying to drink the Player Character’s blood. Can also be subjected to it again if he becomes Vampire Ascendant in Cazador’s place and if you romanced him. Doing so causes him to leave your party.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Sexually Active Today?: Astarion talks a big game about all the hedonistic debauchery he got up to in Baldur's Gate, although it's not to cover for a lack of sexual experience. It's to cover for a lack of consensual sexual experiences while he was enslaved by Cazador, and the deeply conflicted attitude toward sex that resulted. When presented with actual opportunities for "debauchery," such as with the drow twins, it’s unclear if he actually wants to or not. As he’ll initially decline to participate, but will join in after Cazador has been dealt with— only to disassociate during the deed (as a spawn). If he becomes the Vampire Ascendant, he’ll have a different reaction, but still won’t enjoy himself.
• Heal It with Blood: His Vampire Bite ability recovers 2d4 hit points and gives him a Status Buff.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the Patch 5 epilogue, an unascended Astarion has happily embraced actual heroics, albeit in his own snarky murderous way. He's come a long way from the guy who threw around disapprovals like confetti against a player who volunteered to help innocent refugees and slaves.
• Hemo Erotic: Played With. While he universally approves of the player letting him feed from them, and even specifically has an extra approval should they let him bite them during sex, he expresses a lot of discomfort in his vampirism being openly fetishized by a blood-obsessed Apothocary found at Moonlight Towers.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Astarion likes and knows how to do embroidery. If you check his underwear, you can see a cheeky message that's embroidered there. Other descriptions on his clothes also express that it's been worn and retained by him, continuing to resew and mend the threads that have loosened over the decades.
  • There's also a line where Shadowheart says while she can smell the "distinct whiff of undeath", she doesn't notice the same about Astarion. To which he mentions that his "olfactory disguise" is a mix of bergamot, rosemary, and a hint of brandy, and that he missed his calling as a perfumer.
  • At first glance, he may seem like your run-of the mill fancy Agent Peacock nobleman-type—he certainly portrays himself that way, with the way he dresses and the elegant look of his tent. However, if you pay closer attention, the inside of his tent is surprisingly squalor, featuring a drab gray blanket (which may or may not be his death shroud), hay scattered about, a ratty straw mat and a broken shelf of blood jars. Unlike the other companions, whose tents have cozy furs and/or bed rolls for them to sleep on, Astarion sleeps on some sort of wooden platform. In Act 3, the crew will start hanging their laundry at camp, and Astarion's are gray and not dissimilar to what you can find hanging in the poorest parts of the Lower City and Rivington, in stark contrast to the often colorful and fancy clothes hung by other campmates. A closer look at the textures of his starting armor will also reveal how actually worn out they are, as noted in their descriptions in the inventory menu; the velvet is uneven, the threads appear to be pulled and holes have been clearly resewn. His entire outward image is one he meticulously maintains to hide how little he actually has as a vampiric slave.
  • He'll occasionally express a disdain for poetry and poets, which almost seems to clash with his otherwise impeccable Romantic Vampire Boy persona. However, this makes sense when you realize that Cazador fancied himself a poet and that Astarion has believed for decades or even centuries that he has a poem carved into his back. He doesn't learn otherwise until the player calls attention to it and he begins to wonder exactly what it says, making a deal with Raphael to translate it.
• Horrifying the Horror: When encountering Dribbles the Clown in Baldur's Gate he openly calls the clown a horror and one made all that much worse by constantly speaking in horrible puns. He's right to be creeped out by Dribbles too, since he's an Absolute cultist doppelganger Monster Clown and the whole performance is quickly turned into a trap for the party.
• Horror Hunger: As a vampire spawn he suffers from this. While he can get by by feeding on animals it also leaves him weakened and his mind clouded. And being starved of blood fot too long can cause the hunger to override his mind; as Astarion specifically recalls such a time where he was "all but robbed of speech and reason" (likely the time Cazador sealed him in a tomb for a year).
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Played with in regards to Cazardor the party will all agree that Astarion is perfectly justified and should kill Cazador, but believe that stealing his place and becoming Vampire Ascendant in his place will make Astarion just like his former master. They are absolutely correct in this idea; if Astarion succeeds in hijacking Cazador's ritual, he quickly becomes drunk with power and starts behaving not too differently from his former master.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Cazador is not good to his spawn, to put it lightly. Astarion hates and fears his Master for very good reason, and is clearly traumatized despite his attempts to sound dismissive if asked about it. His known abuses include:
  • Being forced to bed with victims to lure them to his master, even when he doesn't want to
  • Carving a poem^note later revealed to be in fact not a poem but part of an infernal ritual sigil written in the language of the Hells into Astarion's back one night, with Astarion sadly recounting how "the more I screamed, the more revisions he needed to make".
  • Demanding that Astarion join Cazador and their "guest" (the person Astarion had seduced) for dinner, then forcing Astarion to eat putrid decaying rats while Cazador feasted on the human in front of him. But if Astarion refused, Cazador would have him flayed.
  • Frequent torture, with Astarion being Cazador's favorite victim among Cazador's seven vampire spawns because Astarion "screamed the loudest". Astarion recounts how he was once tortured for ten days straight by Godey the undead Master of the Slave Kennels. When we meet Godey, he will corroborate this, calling Astarion a "doggie" and proudly proclaiming that Astarion "sang so sweetly" for him and always screamed the most.
  • Even ordering Astarion to torture himself if Cazador felt like it.
  • The "Year of Hell", when Cazador had Astarion sealed, starving, in a dusty sarcophagus in darkness and total silence for an entire year of sensory deprivation. Likely the incident Astarion refers to when he tells the Dark Urge he was once so wracked by hunger he lost all sense of self and became feral like an animal. ^note A memory the player character can dig from Astarion's mind via the tadpole's psychic link to use against Astarion, and also one Astarion himself will recount in another scene in a broken tearful hollow voice while trying to keep his dignity.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Astarion was turned by a vampire lord named Cazador Szarr 200 years ago and has been completely under his control ever since. He's ecstatic about the tadpole breaking his hold on him, and mostly wants to learn to control it so he doesn't have to go back to being a slave.
• Immortal Immaturity: Chronologically he's about 263, maybe 264^note According to his tombstone, he was 39 when he died 224 years ago but he acts more like you'd expect of a bratty teenager. There's implied to be a rather grim explanation for this - he was roughly the elven equivalent of a teen/very young adult when he died, and spent the next couple of centuries in the sort of nightmarishly abusive environment that's pretty much guaranteed to cause severely arrested development. That said, however, it's unknown if the culture in Baldur's Gate is/was different considering that he was also handed the high position of magistrate before his enslavement. It's possible that he was viewed as rather young as a 50-year-old human would view someone in their early 20s or 18 to 19- a very young adult physically, but still considered inexperienced socially and legal maturity was probably considered differently.
• Insistent Terminology: He's not a vampire, he's a vampire spawn. Yes, the difference does matter, considering how one is an immortal apex predator and the other is a slave bound completely to said predator's whims.
• Interface Spoiler: It takes a little while before his vampirism is revealed... Or, in Early Access, you could cross running water while controlling him and scroll over the status effect to discover that "running water eats away at vampiric flesh". Then again, his appearance doesn't exactly hide what he is either.
• Insecure Love Interest: While he is, of course, extremely aware that he's an incredibly handsome and sexually attractive guy, that confidence in himself largely begins and ends there. If in a Love Triangle with another member of the camp, he'll straight up assume you're going to break up with him and go be with your "true love" before you've even spoken to him about it. He seems to discount himself automatically as a real partner, emphasizing himself as someone to have a "sordid affair" with and being genuinely baffled if you tell him you're choosing to be with him. If broken up with before fighting Cazador, he admits to believing it was only a matter of time before the player dumped him for being more trouble than he's worth.
• It's All About Me: After being completely subservient to a bona fide sadist for two centuries, his first and last priority is himself and what he wants. He's got no interest in being a hero, especially if there's nothing in it for him.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: It's possible to hijack Cazador's ritual and turn Astarion into a full-blooded vampire himself. If you do this, Astarion almost immediately starts to have megalomaniacal thoughts of raising up an army of vampire spawn and becoming the most powerful vampire to live. If romanced, it's heavily implied the player's worth to him has dropped to 'property I cherish, but still my property' and if you allow him to turn you, is implied will eventually turn just as abusive as Cazador's relationship with him was. Effectively, he adopts all of Cazador's behaviors, becoming exactly what he hated for over 200 years.
• Kick the Dog:
  • If the party tries to bring Mayrina's husband back to life, he'll only be raised as a zombie and she'll be devastated. While the player character can express anything from remorse to apathy, Astarion will shrug that he found it funny, and approves if the player agrees.
  • The only action he approves of in Ramazith's Tower is selling Dame Aylin out to Lorroakan. Not only is this completely hypocritical after everything he suffered under Cazador, but it arguably crosses over into Stupid Evil when you consider that he might have just personally witnessed Aylin's Roaring Rampage of Revenge through Moonrise Towers and/or her stomping Ketheric Thorm's skull out of existence for doing the exact same thing.
  • If he becomes an Ascendant Vampire and the player turns themself into a mind flayer to stop the Absolute, he breaks off any romance at the end because they’re simply too hideous for him to consider staying with. This is doubly painful, as the player can choose to discuss breaking off a relationship with a non-Ascendant Vampire Astarion, specifically due to the fear of becoming a mind flayer and how they’ll look if they do change. Non-Ascendant Astarion will be heart-broken at the thought and insist that he’d still love the player even if they did become a mind flayer... Only to be a lot more conflicted than he expected should it happen. Unlike his ascended counterpart he's willing to try, and breaking it off instead of accepting his friendship still hurts him, but he's a lot less confident in what your future holds.
• Killed Off for Real: Should you decide to stake Astarion when his vampirism is revealed, it will be impossible to revive him if you succeed. If you confront Cazador with him in the party, Cazador will immediately shackle him to his ritual and can succeed in sacrificing him unless you free him or defeat Cazador fast enough.
• Kiss of the Vampire: If you let him bite you, you're explicitly stated to like it after the initial pain. The bite scene itself is even framed to evoke the imagery of a sex scene, with the camera panning to over his shoulder and both he and the player character jerking against each other in ways that are extremely suggestive. Taken even further if romanced, where you can encourage him to bite you during sex.

L-Z

• Ladykiller in Love: The core of his romance: it's revealed that Astarion was often used as a seductive lure for Cazador's victims, and has had many lovers as a result, none of them serious and most of them so he could get something out of them… and then you came along.
  Astarion: Look, I… had a plan. A nice, simple plan: seduce you, sleep with you, manipulate your feelings so you'd never turn on me. It was easy… instinctive. Habits from two hundred years of charming people kicked in. All you had to do… was fall for it. And all I had to do was not fall for you… which is where my nice, simple plan… fell apart.
• Let's Just Be Friends:
  • If you accepted his proposition in Act 1 and defended him from the blood-obsessed drow in Act 2, as he thanks you he'll open up about how he'd been used to lure pretty people back for his master, what he wanted be damned, for 200 years, and he's grateful that you didn't do the same. One dialog exchange lets you suggest that maybe he needs a friend, not a lover, and he's delighted by the idea.
  Astarion: I've held more people than I can count. An infinite parade of lovers. But a friend? I can't think of a single one. (takes your hand) Until you.
  • If the player chooses to have Tav become a mind flayer and they romanced him, he will be hesitant to continue a romantic relationship with them due to the changes, both in their appearance and the likelihood that they're not the same person he fell in love with anymore, though he does entertain the possibility that they could find love again in each other in time. The player has the option of accepting his proposal to remain friends or leaving him, and he accepts their decision humbly, thanking them for all they'd done.
• Lie Back and Think of England: He occasionally dissociates during sex as a result of two centuries of being forced to bed people against his will.
• Lovable Rogue: Literally as the rogue of the party, but Downplayed in that, while party members (and perhaps also you) welcome him, there is disapproval of certain jerkassery that Astarion gets behind of (or even directly do). He can also be rather standoffish and prickly even when the attitude is undeserved. He's affable towards you and your party for survivability... at first. He cranks the act at times, but can gradually warm up.
• Love Redeems: Depending on how you resolve his personal storyline, namely whether you allow him to become a vampire ascendant or not this trope is either played straight or subverted.
  • If you think his love for the Player Character is strong enough to overcome his lust for power, you're in for a brutal awakening after turning him into a Vampire Ascendant, which pretty clearly ends with him sidelining you at best in favor of striving for world domination. Should you also allow him to turn you into a vampire spawn, your relationship is strongly implied to become a recreation of the hell he himself went through while under Cazador's control.
  • On the other hand, should you talk him out of the ritual and he remains a vampire spawn, he starts to show more genuine empathic behavior and shows a softer side — if not just around the player character. He'll beg the player not to break up with them if they indulge in the astral tadpole or if the Dark Urge is worried about killing him in their sleep, and in the epilogue, while saddened the parasite's removal means he's become weak to the sun again, he's less broken up than he would be in any other permutation of the ending because he at least has you with him.
• Man Bites Man: Once you find out he's a vampire spawn, he gains the ability to bite enemies in combat to damage them and heal himself. Logically, enemies without blood are immune.
• Magic Knight: By default, he starts off with the Firebolt cantrip because he is a High Elf, letting him use it to fight. He can also be made an Arcane Trickster to have better magical skills and spells. However, by default he doesn't work as well as one without adjusting his stats completely.
• Master of Unlocking: He's far and away the best of your recruitable NPC party members at disarming traps and picking locks, and is, in fact, as good as it's mechanically possible for a character to get at such things. He's a Rogue (a Dexterity-primary class that can upgrade Proficiency in skills to Expertise) who's proficient in Sleight of Hand (the disarming/unlocking skill) by default - if you have nonmagical security to breach, then he's your man.
• Might Makes Right: A firm believer in this, so much so that he considers avoiding fights a sign of weakness and thus hates when you do it. How (or even if) he applies this line of thought to himself is unclear, as he recognizes that there are different types of power, i.e. He now has tremendous power of his own but is still leery of Cazador, who is both himself very powerful and has control over others. If you progress his story to be a positive influence, though, he grows out of seeing power as a means to everything.
• Missing Reflection:
  • As a vampire spawn, he lacks a reflection in mirrors. He Lampshades this several times, and it's a bit of a sore spot given that he doesn't even remember what he looked like when he was alive.
  Narrator: The mirror reflects nothing. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, [Astarion assumes he looks] amazing.
  • As of Patch 5, if he Ascends, he regains his reflection, and is overjoyed to see his face once more.
• Missing Steps Plan: Whenever Astarion tries to come up with a plan, it usually falls in this category. While he tries to sell them to the player as Indy Ploys, it quickly becomes apparent that the "details" he insists can be made up as they go along are crucial steps that really should be thought out before diving into something. Thankfully, he is somewhat aware that planning isn't his strong suit.
• Morton's Fork: Like the rest of the party, the tadpole in his head will eventually turn him into a mind flayer. Unlike them, if he does get rid of it, he'll go back to being Cazador's thrall and lose his immunity to sunlight, stripping away whatever freedom he enjoyed. Thus, he has a pretty blasé attitude toward Raphael's offer; if he's up a creek either way, why not hand over whatever soul he's got left to a devil? "Better he has it than Cazador", apparently.
  Astarion: (slightly insane laugh) Of course it'll turn me into a monster! What else did I expect?
• My Fist Forgives You: Might end up on the receiving end of this if he accidentally kills the player when he drinks their blood. Funnily, he doesn't even disapprove of you punching him for it, so he likely knew that he deserves it. He has the nerve to ask if you want another nibble.
  Astarion: I understand you're upset, but let's not get carried away.
  Player: Oh, I feel much better now.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In Cazador's palace, to his horror, Astarion discovers the people he has kidnapped for his master over the centuries imprisoned and transformed into vampire spawns. While Astarion, under Cazador's influence, took them for the purpose of being fed by his sire, subjugating them to an And I Must Scream existence was not his intention.
• Nay-Theist: States that he doesn't believe he owes respect to any of the gods. He further clarifies that he prayed to every single one for help over his long existence, and since none of them answered or helped him, he sees no reason he should worship any of them. The game makes it clear that vampires do still have souls, because otherwise the Rite of Profane Ascension wouldn't work as it consumes the souls of the vampire spawns that are the sacrificial victims and feeds them into the ascending vampire. But as an immortal nihilist, Astarion seems to view his own soul only as a potential bargaining chip.
• Nice Mean And In Between:
  • The In-Between of Early Access's three "evil" companions; while an almost-pathologically selfish Social Darwinist, he's also quite the sweet talker — whether he means it or not — and he does occasionally approve of doing the nice/right thing — not as much as Shadowheart, but a lot more than Lae'zel. See Pet the Dog below.
  • In the full release, Astarion is much more on the mean side. He's still Affably Evil but readily disapproves of most "good" choices. He's also the one most out for himself, as his experiences have taught him that the world is fundamentally unjust and the strong will always seek to dominate the weak, thus he hates feeling weak and vulnerable and seeks power to be able to protect himself. While Lae'zel can be made to see Vlaakith's corruption and aspire to free her people, Astarion's initial empathy tends to be limited only to people who experience what he has had — a lack of freedom. He's outright giddy at the idea of completing his master's ritual to make a new type of Ascendant Vampire and the most openly power-hungry of the companions, although he vehemently refuses to accept the Astral Tadpole's considerable power because using it would turn him into a half-illithid and that is where he draws the line. Granted a lot of this comes from his own personal baggage, his deep-seated fears and a general desire to never be hurt or enslaved again. He angrily states he never had anyone care for him or even offer him a kind word in his life. If the player character offers him support without asking anything in return, Astarion is visibly confused, admitting he is not used to asking for help and actually, well, receiving help! Well, he's an asshole... at first. You can steer Astarion to be less mean throughout his story and help him earn redemption and think about others more. The player must teach Astarion that there are others that are just and empathetic for him if he chooses to care for them too. And if you've seen his interactions with other party members and Non-Playable Characters that have nothing to do with him like Karlach and Yenna, that's proof enough that he already does.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Astarion recounts a time during the first decade of his slavery, where he decided to spare one of his conquests. For his act of mercy, Cazador sealed Astarion inside a tomb for an entire year, leaving him starving and begging for death. The torturous experience broke his spirit and he resolved to not disobey his master again. The fear of punishment likely is one of the reasons that factored into Astarion being a jerkass.
  Astarion: You don't know what it was like. There was no way out. Once — in the first decade of my slavery — I found a darling boy who I couldn't bear to bring back to him. So I ran instead of hurting that sweet man. After Cazador caught me, the bastard sealed me, starving, inside a dusty tomb, all on my own, for an entire year. A year of silence. Months of scratching my hands raw, trying to claw my way out. More months of not moving at all. Months wishing only for death. So don't you ever judge me for doing what Cazador ordered.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • In one of your early interactions with him, you can say that you're also just trying to survive. He'll remark that he and you aren't that different.
  • If the Dark Urge reveals their origins to Astarion while expressing fear at Bhaal’s influence over them, Astarion notes the Dark Urge isn't too different from himself - Astarion gave up on himself and on any hope of escape after Cazador’s torture of him for decades, in the same way the Dark Urge probably gave up on living a life free of Bhaal before their amnesia. This also causes Astarion to encourage the Dark Urge to fight Bhaal as much as they can rather than let their fear rule them as his fear of Cazador did.
• Not Used to Freedom: He'll occasionally mention how "intimidating" or "daunting" he finds the concepts of having to make decisions for himself and (especially) having to deal with the consequences of said decisions.
  Astarion: 'You can do whatever you want' sounds... Terrifying. And it is.
• One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce:
  • His illithid tadpole inexplicably protects him from sunlight, running water, and entering homes uninvited. It's a tenuous handwave, but a necessary one to avoid planning all his gameplay around his vampiric vulnerability.
  • While he's listed as Humanoid in the character sheet, Astarion has the perks of being Undead without the downsides. For example, he's immune to both Holy Water (which deals radiant damage to undead and fiends) and Spell Rot (a curse that ignores undead).
• Painful Transformation: Turning into a vampire is apparently far from a pleasant process. Seeing as it involved Astarion having to die first, then still being conscious but unable to do anything as his body rearranged itself, it's not hard to see his point. This experience is also why he backs out from using the Astral Tadpole; because he can't stand the idea of having to transform into something else again.
  • Upon rejecting Bhaal, Astarion genuinely empathises with the player’s experience of dying then being reborn.
• Permanently Missable Content: Should you reveal him to the monster hunter looking for him, Astarion is knocked out and permanently removed from your party. You also get multiple opportunities to permanently kill him yourself.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He approves of helping Karlach escape her demon captors, even if you don't get anything for it. Probably because her situation reminds him of his own.
  • The fact that you can still have Astarion like you even if you're doing a good run means he's not entirely off the moral slope. Over time, he'll approve you doing good, culminating in him helping you helping others, even in his own sarcastic way.
  • To his credit, despite not asking permission that first time, after that point he will only ever feed from the player when they offer. Even if you have established a relationship where you frequently let him feed from you, he never does so unless given the expressed, direct permission each and every night.
  • If you feed and care for the owlbear cub, Astarion will approve, even letting it loaf on one of his cushions while idling in camp. It's notable that he's only neutral to Scratch (an already lovable dog), but it does say something about him (and you) when you choose to take in a known monster. By act 3, he does become extremely attached to even Scratch and has the strongest response if somehow the dog ends up dying due to an attack on the camp, being the only one to get genuinely weepy about it.
  • He loves cats in general and always approves of being kind to them and/or admiring them. You can even get not just one approval, but two approvals in a row if you indulge His Majesty in the Last Light Inn. He additionally approves of petting an alley cat found in Act 3 and disapproves of scolding Gale's Tressum Tara.
  • When Lae'zel is almost killed by the 'cure' at the githyanki creche, he worriedly asks the player if they're just going to stand there and let her die. He also approves if the player successfully manages to save her.
  • He opposes Gale being sacrificed to kill the Absolute, even if he voices that protest in his usual sarcastic way.
  • He opposes the killing of the seven thousand vampire spawn if convinced not to become the vampire ascendant, believing they deserve a chance to live like does even if there is risk of releasing such a large number of blood sucking undead into the Underdark.
  • If Yenna is taken by Orin he states that the party needs to go rescue her as soon as they can. He catches himself after and brushes it away as a child dying in the city not looking good, but it’s obviously half-hearted.
  • At the start of the game, Astarion is fairly amused at the Dark Urge’s violent desires, saying to ‘play it for all it’s worth’. As the game goes on, especially in a romance arc, Astarion becomes more and more concerned about you and your struggles with the Urge. When the Dark Urge learns about their Bhaalspawn heritage and confesses to being afraid of Bhaal, Astarion realises how alike you are, tells you how afraid he was of Cazador, and begs you to try to stand up to Bhaal, not wanting you to become a mind-addled slave. Upon beating Bhaal, Astarion is genuinely proud of you, tells you that you’re ’no monster’ and ‘have saved him more times than he can count’.
  • If you took up Haarlep's game and give in, he'll gain your form. Every time he has pleasure in your form, you will know. If you openly moan in public, Astarion will be the only one in your party to say that he recognizes your moan being the result of the incubus's doing and seemingly is the only one who grasps the implications of such an arrangement. In his seriousness and zero sarcasm, he'll sympathize with you, as he knows what it's like to have your body out of your control.
  • If you separate Astarion from your party without dismissing him to camp, he'll confess to the Gur if he killed one of their hunters. And regardless whether said hunter stays alive or not, he'll volunteer to try saving their children in Cazador's hold even though he'll be skeptical that they're not dead yet.
  • In a total inversion of what happens if he becomes an Ascendant Vampire, if the party talks him down and he remains a vampire spawn and a romanced Tav starts looking more monstrous from using their illithid powers and tries to end it to save his feelings, Astarion will make it clear that he doesn't care and will continue to love them, and beg them to not end the relationship through genuine tears.
  • If you let Astarion bite you, he has this to say:
    Astarion: This is a gift, you know. Thank you — I won't forget it.
• Pragmatic Villainy: For all his experience lurking in shadows, Astarion has little experience or interest in engaging with the criminal underworld of Baldur's Gate. Not for moral reasons, but rather because of how profoundly stupid it would be for a vampire to provoke a war with the local mafia by hunting among their ranks. He's unenthused about getting involved in the feud between the Guild and the Zhentarim for similar reasons.
• Primal Stance: He tends to slump forward a little bit when angry enough and/or hoping for a fight.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • Is extremely paranoid that Cazador will recapture and re-enslave him, or that even if he doesn’t he'll lose the tadpole and revert to a mindless thrall. During the first act, the party encounters a Gur seeking to capture Astarion and bring him to Baldur’s Gate. He panics hard when he learns this, realizing that no matter where he goes, Cazador will eventually find him and he will have his spawn back.
  • Subverted in that while Cazador does want Astarion back, the Gur are not actually working for him — they only want to interrogate Astarion to find the whereabouts of their abducted children.
• Proud Beauty: Despite having little idea what he actually looks like, he is well aware of how beautiful he is. During a heartwarming and amusing interaction with Tav he is unabashedly fishing for compliments from the player. His missing reflection however adds a bit of insecurity to it, and if the player teases him about moles he doesn't have or sagging skin he'll get sincerely anxious about it, since he doesn't have much of a way to check. Astarion is also horrified at the idea of looking like Minsc (but with hair) when the ranger makes a comment of them looking like twins if he puts Boo on his head as a substitute for hair.
  Minsc: We will be like twins, eh?
  Astarion: We will?! Gods, two-hundred years, and I've never missed seeing my reflection more.
• Quit Your Whining: Astarion can give a Dark Urge player a surprisingly heartwarming version of this if the latter laments that they are too dangerous to live. Astarion outright scoffs and points out it's still nothing compared to what he was made to do for Cazador. If there's hope for someone like him, there's hope for an amnesiac former serial killer-necrophiliac like you.
• Rape as Backstory: Heavily implied. Given his absolutely thermonuclear rage at the implication that he and Cazador were sleeping together, being used as a lure to seduce victims whether he wanted to or not, and his nigh-obsession with personal choice and freedom, it’s pretty easy to draw some dark conclusions.
• Rape by Proxy: That said, Cazador forcing him to sleep with his marks qualifies as one-sided rape by proxy. In Cazador's Palace, Astarion will make an additional comment about "entertaining guests" in the guest bedroom, heavily implying that the spawns were not only forced to seduce to lure people, but also Cazador used them as sex slaves to cater to his party guests during various events hosted at the palace.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Has bright red eyes and a (mostly) pitch-black heart. Whatever colour they were before he was a vampire is left to headcanon, as Astarion himself doesn't even remember.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: One of the many ways Cazador degraded his spawn was forcing them to feed on rats and other pests. Now that he's free, Astarion relishes the chance to feed on higher creatures. Should the player choose to finish the game without completing his character quest, Astarion is once again reduced to eat rats and similar vermin, as Cazador's commands are in full effect again without the tadpole.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Should Astarion have taken up heroics as of the playable epilogue, he gleefully comments that he hasn't lost any of his Blood Knight tendencies.
  Astarion: It turns out most people are fine with murder, as long as you're murdering the right people.
• Revenge: Aside from learning how to control the tadpole, he intends to pay Cazador back several times over for everything he's done to him. He even admits that he wouldn't mind staying a vampire spawn forever if it meant he could kill him.

  Magic Mirror: ... If you could see anything in me, what would it be?
  Astarion: I'd see Cazador, my old master, burning in the sun.

• Romantic Fake–Real Turn: If the player romances Astarion, he will admit he initially planned on seducing them so they would protect him and never turn on him, but that he later fell in love for real.
• Romantic Vampire Boy: As a vampire who can be romanced by a player of any race or gender, he fits this trope pretty well.
• Saved to Enslave: He vaguely remembers that Cazador saved him from death by turning him into a vampire spawn, and then spent the next 200 years subjecting him to unspeakable tortures. An evil Dark Urge run can also inflict this to him again in the ending, even in a playthrough where you get Astarion to ascend.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Somehow, the tadpole in his head is overpowering some of the typical vampire weaknesses. As the Player Character, his curiosity about how far its power goes can drive him to try feeding on "thinking creatures," namely the rest of the group.
• Sexual Euphemism: Occasionally uses "little death" to refer to orgasm.
  Astarion: Just you and me and — well, maybe a little death. Figuratively speaking.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: As a further consequence of selling him out, whatever he's wearing or carrying is lost with him.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Astarion is pretty witty like a learned noble, but he's not above occasionally mixing it with "fuck" and "shit" and other crude words that he seldom uses, often for emphasis.
• Status Buff: Aside from recovering Hit Points, his Vampire Bite also grants him the "Happy" status effect, which gives him +1 to attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks until the next long rest.
• Stepford Smiler: Crossed with Stepford Snarker: In Early Access, the morning after your party's first parasite dream, Astarion seemed in the best mood of all of you, cheerfully talking about how much better he feels and how "enticing" the dream was. If you passed first an Insight and then a Persuasion check, he'd admit that it was actually a nightmare of being with Cazador again... And then snap at you if you try to reach out to him. If he can't deflect by pretending nothing's wrong, he'll deflect with cruel words. He's pretty much more of a Stepford Snarker in the full release, covering his vulnerability with cattiness. He's also occasionally a Stepford Smiler at times when trying to stay at your good side. You can even point out to him after an Insight check that his smile is a tad too composed. In an Origin playthrough as Astarion, one of his options in his nightmare include trying to appease Cazador and trying to smile is described as one of his go-to responses to situations like this.
• Token Evil Teammate: The most outwardly callous and purely selfish of the Origin characters, his taste for bloodshed and conflict surpassed only by Blood Knight Lae'zel. He's out for himself first and foremost and makes no bones about it, being sour and abrasive to the party for most of the game and having no qualms with killing whatever is in his way. He can show a softer side if the player appeals to him properly (or plays as him), but he's also the only Origin character (other than the player themselves) that can dive headlong into purely self-serving villainy after his character arc.
• Took a Level in Kindness: If the player character consistently makes kind or altruistic decisions and manages to keep a friendship or relationship going with Asterion, he'll gradually start approving of more and more altruistic decisions himself, albeit while being as abrasive as possible to keep his mask up. If he remains unascended and on good terms with Tav, then in the added epilogue Asterion will have settled into being a much more benevolent and heroic character. While still a Blood Knight who takes lives, he's ultimately doing it to protect others, and can even become the leader of Cazador's vampire spawn in trying to help them find their own happy existence in The Underdark.
• Touché: After he reveals himself to be a vampire, you can have Tav say that you "absolutely, categorically, do not trust [him]" now that you know that. Astarion falters for a moment, but then admits that such an attitude is entirely fair, given the circumstances.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: If asked about his life pre-vampirism, he admits that he doesn't remember most of it and chalks it up to having been tortured for about 200 years straight. All he can tell you for sure is that he was a magistrate, he was attacked by a group of Gur nomads one night after making some legal decision they disagreed with, and he would have died right there had Cazador not chased them off and offered him "eternal life."
• Troll: Implied, as he approves of actions like throwing dung at goblin sentries or walking in on an ogre and a bugbear having sex. He'll even ask to be the one to open the door for that last one.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Should you kill Cazador without him in the party, Astarion can chew you out for it because he didn't just want to be free, he wanted to be as powerful as his late master and you took that away from him. You can call him out on his lack of gratitude for you putting your life on the line for his sake, but it'll only get you more scorn and mockery. Subverted if you Persuaded Astarion from his ambition of a takeover. He'll remark that it was likely for the best because he can see himself becoming like his abuser if he wasn't prevented from performing the ritual. He still would've preferred being present in the confrontation and enacting vengeance, though.
• Upper-Class Twit:
  • Astarion claims he was a magistrate back in Baldur's Gate when we first meet him. ^note You can check certain instances of this if you play as him being your Origin character and can even say to Wyll that he would've spotted loopholes in his contract due to his past career before he first died and converted to vampirism.
  • He starts out wearing an expensive-looking padded armor ^note In Early Access that padded armor had a -1 penalty to stealth rolls despite Astarion's default class being rogue, but the penalty was entirely removed in the full version of the game along with visually upgrading the padded doubled from brown and white to the red and blue outfit seen on the game's cover art. Subverted in that during late Early Access the description of his clothes stated that Astarion had embroidered his shirt with poetry and his underpants with a cheeky joke. After Launch, the description of his clothes was updated however to state his doublet, shirt, trousers and boots were clearly old and threatening to fall apart, the gold thread on the padded armor threadbare, but that it was apparent Astarion had carefully mended his clothes many times in an effort to still look good. ^note Implying these clothes are the only things Astarion owns and they might have been looted from young noblemen he seduced in those 200 years. Clearly Cazador doesn't even bother to give his spawn clothes despite the player being able to find many expensive outfits in Cazador's personal bedroom.
  • On the first night of camping in the woods Astarion remarks that he is not used to "curling up in the dirt" and that he is used to spending his nights in the crowded streets and bustling taverns of Baldur's Gate. This might, however, just be Astarion playing the role of a noble he presented himself as to the player character, as we later discover that he spent the past 200 years being locked up in a literal "kennel" like a dog when he wasn't sent out to seduce and lure victims to Cazador's palace... the only time he was allowed to use a luxurious bed to "entertain the guest" until Cazador arrived to feed on the victim.
  • That said, he's also a vampire spawn and clearly competent in a fight — his first action upon meeting the player is to (at least try to) trick them into turning their back on him and then interrogate them with a knife at their throat because he makes the same mistake as Lae'zel and thinks the player character might be a servant thrall of the mind flayers who abducted him.
• Vampire Hickey: He still has the puncture wounds from when Cazador turned him, though the high lace collar on his starting armor partially obscures the scars. He additionally leaves one on the neck his love interest, if the player allows him to bite them during his Act 1 sex scene.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods:
  • While the circumstances in which he acquired his skills are extremely grim, the fact remains that he's an incredibly pretty man with centuries of experience in the art of seduction, and he routinely gets rave reviews from his partners. Lae'zel is particularly impressed if neither of them are romanced and she enters a friends-with-benefits relationship with him.
  • He directly invokes this trope, if unromanced and after defending him from a Drow in Moonlight Towers who is Hemo Erotic, ruefully commenting that "there's nothing more diserable in the world than a vampire".
• Vegetarian Vampire: Played With. He really has never killed someone just to feed on them, but that's mostly because Cazador forbade him. Even then, he still initially sticks to animals after being freed, and only feeds on hostile enemies (and you, if you're willing) if/after you agree to let him expand his diet. He can choose to keep this up if he refuses to feed on his teammates as the Player Character, but then it's implied that he's so conditioned by Cazador's torture that he just doesn't have it in him to break his rules even now that he's free. Feeding on intelligent sapient creatures remove the muddiness in his mind compared to just feeding on animals.
• Villain Respect: If you play the role of Toxic Friend Influence to turn Astarion into a worse person and encourage his Ascension, he generally speaking becomes very dismissive of you and everyone around him. However, there are two exceptions that end the game with you still in his good graces.
  • If the player character has romanced him up until this point, they can choose to break up with him once they realize the Ascension ritual has immediately made him just as vile as Cazador. If the player character refused his offer to make them his spawn, he's willing to let you go, outright saying he respects your decision to neither submit to him nor enter the hellish unlife of a vampire.
  • As of patch 6, If the player character takes the evil route for the ending and has romanced an Ascended Astarion, he's genuinely impressed by the cutthroat move of hijacking the Absolute's plot for themselves at the last minute, especially since the player character made the conscious decision to release him from thralldom out of genuine love in spite of how Asterion's personality has changed. He makes it clear that - unlike the abusive hell the player would be trapping themself in otherwise, you've impressed him to the point he's totally okay with sharing the spoils of your conquests on even grounds, whether you've become his spawn or not.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A romanced Astarion can deliver a scathing one to the player character after the encounter with Araj Oblodra. If the player defended him, Astarion may share the uncharacteristically vulnerable admission that he's grateful as Cazador never permitted him to say no to the use of his body... to which the player can respond by pressuring him to show his "thanks" via sex, pushing past his attempts to refuse. If this happens, Astarion will go along with it, but the next morning he will permanently dump the player in absolute disgust, calling them out for being no better than his previous abusers.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Has a mop of pale grey-white curls^note Despite the most common hair color for High Elves in the Forgotten Realms setting being black, and during early Early Access Astarion's character model still had black strands in his pale hair. and, barring the occasional dog pat, is not a nice guy. It turns into a grey heart if you steer him right, though- still weary and cynical, but definitely more open to help others.
• Would Hurt a Child: Not that he has much of a choice given that he can't disobey his master. You find some child Gur he kidnapped for Cazador in his dungeon. He'll claim that he didn't feel anything when he kidnapped them, but when confronted by seeing them imprisoned and called out behind bars, it's clear that he feels guilt and can help free them- either mercy killing them from remaining a potentially dangerous spawn or getting them back to their parents.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Pulls a variation of one upon meeting the player character, claiming to need their help to kill an intellect devourer. Whether or not it works depends on your choice of dialogue and whether you pass or fail a perception check.
• Yandere: If you've romanced him and fail to keep him from ascending he can develop these tendencies towards the end of the game.
  Astarion: Don't be stupid, darling! You're mine. The tadpole is gone, which means your fate is mine to decide. How lucky you are that I chose you — chose you to help me take Baldur's Gate and sit by my side as I rule it. There's no backing out now. We'll be together forever. I can promise you that.

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