Characters / Baldur's Gate III: Origin Companions

Baldur's Gate III | Main Character Index
Origin-only Characters | Origin Companions (Astarion)
Classes | Other Companions & Camp Followers | NPCs and Factions (The Cult of The Absolute | The Tiefling Refugees | House of Hope)

Origin Companions

In General

• A Friend in Need: Despite being a textbook Dysfunction Junction, the party is often willing to offer sympathy or assistance whenever one of the others needs it. For example, they all agree to help Astarion kill his former master in Act 2 without prompting.
• Badass Crew: They may not look it at first, especially given their Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, but they can tear through anything that gets in their way. It starts with a Goblin horde (or a group of tieflings if going the evil route), then quickly escalates to an entire cult, the githyanki, shadow creatures, mind flayers, numerous monsters, the Chosen of three gods, two avatars of said gods, and finally an Elder Brain empowered by the Crown of Karsus. Depending on their choices, they can also take down a dracolich, a vampire lord, an entire factory of steel automatons, an entire Sharran congregation, and a powerful cambion in his own home.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: If you pick any of them as your Avatar, their choices and moral code are shaped entirely by you, which can cause you to make them act in ways that would be otherwise wildly out of character. The most straightforward case of this is turning Wyll or Karlach into power-hungry VillainProtagonists or playing the more amoral Astarion and Lae'zel as straight laced, kindhearted heroes, or in the case of Lae'zel, an illithid-sympathizer who agrees to become a Mind Flayer and takes over as the Absolute, but even other actions, such as making Shadowheart give away the Nightsong to Balthazar, count.
• Beyond the Impossible: Just like Tav and the Dark Urge, if any of the Origin characters become mind flayers and opt to commit suicide, Withers will greet them in the Fugue Plane, showing that despite ceremorphosis running its course, they manage to retain their soul. Gale stands among the rest in that he's the only one who can regain his human form, though this requires him going with Mystra back to Elysium in order to help restore his soul.
• Bittersweet Ending: Or Downer Ending depending on how you resolve the companion's personal quests.
  • Astarion: If Astarion hijacks Cazaron's ritual and becomes "the Vampire Ascendant", he'll quickly let his newfound power go to his head and become no different than his former master. It's worse if he's romanced, as any romantic feelings he may have had for the Player Character quickly turn into possessive ownership in the most literal sense. (It's not as extreme if he IS the Player Character, in which case he can abandon his plans to take over Baldur's Gate or even join Karlach in Avernus to protect her — something Spawn Astarion can't do.) If he doesn't take over the ritual and remains a vampire spawn, then he loses his daywalker status after the tadpole is destroyed, robbing him of his greatest joy and hampering his ability to be with his friends and/or loved one. He even tearfully notes "it was nice while it lasted" before diving for cover.
  • Wyll: Wyll can break his contract with Mizora, but in doing so he most likely loses his father and is potentially turned inhuman for his breaches of their contract. If the contract isn't broken, Wyll becomes Mizora's servant in full and "assists" her in fighting the Blood War. It's also possible for Wyll's story to end horribly if you kill Mizora during Act 2, in which case Wyll will be dragged off to Avernus with her and suffer a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Karlach: No matter what you do, Karlach doesn't get a happy ending, or at least not a golden one. Her infernal engine finally gives out at the end of the game, at which point she can either decide to return to Avernus to keep herself alive and be hunted by Mizora and Zariel for the rest of her life or go out peacefully while in Faerûn. The Player Character and/or Wyll can go with her to Avernus, the latter doing so explicitly to protect her from Zariel. Alternatively, you can turn her into a mind flayer with her identity and will intact, but she will also have to deal with the Horror Hunger that comes with it.
  • Shadowheart: Regardless of how you pursue Shadowheart's questline, she will not end up in a good place, particularly where the end of her personal quest is concerned. If she commits to the Sharran priesthood and becomes a Dark Justiacar, her final test sees her standing in front of her parents. Shar restores her memories of who they are and tells her that her final test is to kill them. Shadowheart either acquiesces, which breaks her so completely that she begs Shar to erase her memories again, or turns against Shar at the last minute to save her parents, causing her to suffer Shar's curse for the rest of her life and lose the support of the Sharran cult she'd just taken over. Alternatively, you can convince Shadowheart to turn away from Shar, converting to her counterpart and rival Selûne in the process and becoming an enemy of the Sharran priesthood. Like in the evil path, Shadowheart finds her parents, but both Shar and they confirm that the only way to be free of Shar is to kill them. Either she does and is freed at the cost of her parents' lives, or she saves them but remains bound to Shar's curse. Like with Wyll, it's also possible for Shadowheart's story to end horribly in the Selunite path if you cut a deal with Viconia and sell her out to the cult, which will cause her to lose all her memories, even those of your party and everything you've been through together, and become completely subservient to Viconia and Shar.
  • Lae'zel: While her questline doesn't have a Downer Ending like the others unless you really go out of your way to screw her over, Lae'zel's view of the githyanki and its leadership are irreparably shattered. No matter which githyanki royal you side with, the other side will condemn her and the ending cutscene implies that she'll be hunted for the rest of her days. Between this, seeing the corruption within the gith ranks, ending up on the receiving end of their xenophobic views for associating with the party and learning how her people are way too gung-ho about killing anyone infected with an illithid tadpole, she realizes the githyanki aren't what she thought they were.
  • Gale: Gale's questline can end in either Aesop Amnesia where he's learned absolutely nothing and wants to use the Crown of Karsus to become a god — which will end in his death if he immediately tries to usurp Mystra's domain (though Patch 5 does add a new ending where he succeeds by choosing the domain of ambition instead) — or he'll give it to Mystra in the hopes it can be used to cure or, at the very least alleviate, his "affliction". He can also sacrifice his life by blowing himself up to take out the Netherbrain, not only redeeming himself in Mystra's eyes but also leading everyone, even the githyanki, to declare him a hero.
• Breaking the Fellowship: What's likely to happen by the end of the game.
  • Lae'zel may leave to join Orpheus or to escape Vlaakith's assassins, though she can be persuaded to stay under certain circumstances. The player, if romanced, can follow her to battle Vlaakith's forces.
  • Astarion loses his daylight immunity if he chooses to reject the ritual, meaning his capacity to spend time with the party becomes very limited.
  • Shadowheart may leave to settle down if she saves her parents or go elsewhere to deal with her grief.
  • Karlach either dies or goes to Avernus with Wyll and/or the player, though her plans are more ambiguous if she becomes a mind flayer
  • Gale makes plans to recover the crown and is killed if he tries to use it to usurp Mystra. If he chooses to return it to her, however, he implies that he'll stick around since he's grown fond of the party.
  • Wyll can go to Avernus with Karlach. If he doesn't do that, then he either retires from adventuring to become the new Grand Duke or he becomes the Blade of Avernus and hunts down infernals, with Mizora potentially being at the top of his shit list.
• Characterization Marches On: In terms of backstory and player interaction:
  • Wyll and Gale are the most obvious examples. In Early Access, Gale was something of a Green-Eyed Monster-cum-Crazy Jealous Guy who takes a long while to explain that he's got an unstable magic nuke in his chest and would heavily crank up the emotional manipulation if the avatar tried to break off their romance, whereas Wyll had a personal vendetta against the goblins for razing a civilian village and torturing him and could be a bit of a braggart. In the full game, Gale is much less manipulative and more upfront about his Artifact of Doom while Wyll is less boastful of his achievements, has no vendetta against the goblins, and is more conflicted about his contract with Mizora — He doesn't really regret giving up his soul to protect others, but he's not blind to how dangerous the cambion is.
  • In earliest Early Access (around 2019-2020), Astarion was a corrupt and decadent nobleman who used his position as a magistrate to funnel criminals to Cazador's coven as food until they turned him for knowing too much. This concept was almost entirely rewritten in the full release to place more emphasis on the trauma of spending 200 years as Cazador's puppet. His background trait was changed first from "Noble" to "Courtesan" on the official character sheet, and then in-game to "Charlatan", while the "decadent gentleman" persona became his cover. The only remnant of the original character concept is that Astarion still claims to have been a magistrate back in Baldur's Gate when he first meets the player after the Nautiloid crashes; Cazador himself never brings it up when taunting Astarion, instead calling him "a small, pathetic little boy who never amounted to anything" and saying Astarion should be grateful to him for making him a vampire spawn. In the final release, it's implied that the Gur hunted him down when he was a magistrate due to outrage over a ruling he made (though, what ruling or what case he had was unknown, it's likely related to them). When he was on the brink of death, Cazador swooped in to "save" him and offered him a choice between immortality and dying. Of course, he wasn't made aware of the details, but he was desperate. Thus, his start of being Cazador's spawn. Whether he already had ties with him prior through his legal career is unknown as well. The description text of Astarion's clothes he starts the game with was likewise changed: In late Early Access the description stated that Astarion was no stranger to working with needle and thread, and had even embroidered poetry into his shirt and a joke into his underwear. After Launch, a patch changed the description of his padded doublet, shirt and boots to note that they were clearly old, faded and falling apart, but that Astarion had carefully mended then many times in an attempt to still look presentable. His embroidery is still present on his underwear with a cheeky message, though.
• Determinator: About the only thing this group has in common (aside from the tadpoles, obviously) is their iron determination to make it through, and possibly the reason they become such an effective Badass Crew at all.
• Dysfunction Junction: To call this team^note Comprised of an amoral vampire, a bloodthirsty githyanki, a priest of an illegal God of Darkness, a Hell-bound slave tiefling with an artificial demonic heart, a wizard with an unstable magical WMD inside him, and a warlock who struggles to reconcile his heroic deeds with the very unheroic patron that helped him do them "dysfunctional" would be a colossal understatement. And if you play as the Dark Urge, you're the most dysfunctional of all of them what with your innate urge for violence caused by the fact that you're a Bhaalspawn, and thus the servant of another evil god.
• Everyone Has Standards: Or Even Evil Has Standards, in Lae'zel and Astarion's cases. There are certain choices or events in the story that are so shocking or heinous that they manage to unite the normally squabbling group:
  • No one is happy about Mystra telling Gale to use the orb in his body to suicide bomb the Absolute, partly because of the catastrophic collateral damage the explosion would cause but mostly because of how utterly callous it is and how little faith Mystra shows in not just her former human lover, but also the party as a whole's abilities to handle the ongoing crisis.
  • Likewise, nobody approves of Shadowheart murdering the Nightsong. Wyll, Karlach, and even Lae'zel openly regard it as her Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, Gale somberly muses that he hopes it was worth it, and Astarion mockingly cheers that the party is now walking around with the Chosen of Shar.
  • Killing Isobel and obtaining the Slayer form as the Dark Urge is also not well received by anyone, with reactions ranging from a full-throated condemnation of what you've become, to pragmatically noting that Isobel was a completely kind and trusting ally who you've just tossed aside. The only exceptions to this are if Shadowheart killed the Nightsong, in which case she's apathetic to Isobel's death but still unnerved by your Slayer form, or if Minthara's in your party, in which case she admires your Slayer form but still disapproves of Isobel's murder.
• Everyone Can See It: If you make plans with someone at the Teifling/Goblin party in Act 1, the entire camp seems to know instantly (aside from Wyll, who is standing away from the party). Shadowheart directly states that you seem "cozy" with your chosen Love Interest.
• Everyone Is Bi: All of the origin companions are open to romancing anyone regardless of gender.
• Fictional Disability: The tadpoles aside, several companions deal with some form of this. Gale and Karlach contend with painful and potentially fatal bodily conditions; Wyll has one of his eyes replaced with a sending stone, Shadowheart has a magical wound that sporadically causes intense pain. Astarion is an inversion as the tadpole has "cured" the drawbacks of being a vampire spawn, allowing him to freely walk in daylight. However, should Astarion remain a spawn when the Absolute is defeated, said drawbacks will affect him again in full force.
• First-Name Basis: The characters are only referred to via their first names, even by strangers. The only exception is Gale, who is called Mr. Dekarios by his former Familiar Tara, and Shadowheart where her finding her real name is an important character milestone, but even then she prefers to go by Shadowheart. Wyll's last name is inferred from his father's. Astarion's last name is seen on his tombstone at the end of his quest, if you go visit his grave with him, while Karlach's only appears in promotional materials or by randomly finding her parents' tombstone with her in the party and clicking on them. Lae'zel being a Githyanki has no family name.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Mostly with Lae'zel and Shadowheart. It takes a very long time for either of them to even slightly trust one another without a sneering jape or comment, since Shadowheart hates the githyanki and Lae'zel is, well, a githyanki. Averted with Karlach and Wyll — despite him pulling a sword on her during their first meeting, they get along with each other quite well once they've cleared up some misunderstandings.
• Friendship Moment: They might not always rub each other the right way, but they all agree that it's completely out of line for Mystra to demand that Gale make up for his mistakes by using the orb inside him to suicide bomb the Absolute, killing him and who knows how many others in the process. Even Lae'zel has a rare non-backhanded compliment for Gale's intelligence when asked about the matter.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: If you play as one of the Origin Companions instead of making a Custom Origin or playing as the Dark Urge, the Origin character becomes the Player Character, and dialogue interactions change accordingly since you're the one in control. This also includes personal quests where you're more involved in shaping that questline's outcome.
• Inksuit Actor: The actors for each origin character also provided the motion capture and their likenesses. Later interviews also had the actors point out that some of the verbal or motor "tics" they did during mocap were intentionally animated in their characters, such as Lae'zel's annoyed head jerk or Shadowheart's haughty wobble.
• Mirror Character: Several sets among your companions:
  • Shadowheart and Lae'zel: Both are dedicated to their Goddess/Queen to the point of near-fanaticism, and both have their faith severely tested over the course of the narrative.
  • Gale and Wyll: Both sought greater power with noble intentions, but paid a higher price for it than they bargained and are forced to deal with the consequences.
  • Astarion and Karlach: Both had extreme bodily changes forced upon them (or in Astarion's case, "chosen" under extreme duress) by abusive masters, to whom both have sworn never to return.
• Nice Mean And In Between:
  • For the men:
    • Wyll is the Nice, being the most unambiguously heroic of the characters, honorable to a fault, and even made his Deal with the Devil with his idea of the greater good in mind.
    • Astarion is the Mean, being an unscrupulous rogue and a fledgling vampire, and an amoral asshole at the best of times.
    • Gale is the In-Between, although he veers a lot closer to nice. What sets him apart from Wyll, however, is that Gale is extremely possessive beneath the surface despite his his folly.
  • For the women:
    • Karlach is the Nice, being a cheerful and affectionate Cute Monster Girl who only ever gets angry at Tav when they do something villainous. She's also the only party member universally liked by everyone else.
    • Lae'zal is the Mean, being bossy, quick to anger, and disdainful of anyone who isn't also a githyanki. However, as the game goes on and she opens up more, the abrasiveness starts to vanish, but never goes away entirely.
    • Shadowheart is the In-Between. She's a charming young woman (relative to half-elves, anyway), who starts off initially somewhat frosty but relaxes around them. Unfortunately, she's also a devout follower of Shar, the Lady of Loss, the evil twin sister of the benevolent Selune.
• Out of Focus: Several of the Origin characters have extra elements of plot or gameplay if they are the player avatar, rather than merely companions. Gale, for example, gets several times the opportunity to absorb strange magics for permanent buffs, and gets several more interactions with Tara, his former familiar, where she visits him in camp and acts as a sounding board to his conflict with Mystra (while Tav/The Dark Urge fills the role normally to a non-player Gale), her suggestions and dialogues are based on her long shared history with Gale, and prior to Patch 5, playing with him as the avatar was the only way to see the consequences of his decision regarding the Crown of Karsus .
• Overrated and Underleveled: All Origin Characters start at level 1, even though some have reputations that state otherwise: Gale is a prodigious-enough wizard that the goddess of magic herself was willing to sleep with him and Astarion has been a vampire spawn for the last 200 years. This is justified for Gale, Wyll, and Karlach, however, who achieved great renown in Faerûn and Avernus: Wyll explicitly states that he seems to have lost much of his power after being infected, Karlach's infernal engine only works properly on Avernus and was frequently supercharged with Soul Coins by Zariel, and Gale lost most of his magical ability after absorbing a part of Karsus's Weave, which actively eats the Weave used by nearly all other magic users. It's not as clear in Astarion's case, since it's never mentioned one way or another, but it's possible that the tadpole suppressing some of the typical vampire weaknesses also applies to some of the associated strengths^note It's also possible that after 200-ish years of A) being forbidden to eat anything but rats and bugs and B) apparently being everyone's favorite whipping boy in Cazador's palace, he's not exactly in top form when the player first meets him.
• Polyamory: Zig-Zagged. Most companions won't mind if the Player Character also romances other characters in the early stages of the romance, but after a certain point they'll make you choose between them. However, some of them^note Shadowheart and Astarion; Karlach makes it clear she's not fully on board but will allow it if you insist are okay with you also romancing the strictly-polyamorous Halsin, or having flings with non-companion characters.
• The Power of Love: Romancing a companion will often influence how their personal quest plays out, namely that the player can guide them towards certain critical decisions by appealing to them as a lover, without any persuasion checks.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: This roster sounds like the beginning of a joke: "A Sharran cultist, a mage with a magical time bomb in his chest waiting to go off, a githyanki, a Daywalking Vampire, a tiefling slave, a monster hunter, and potentially a Bhaalspawn all walk into a tavern..." Astarion explicitly refers to them as "Weirdoes" at one point.
• Rewarding Inactivity: In some companions' personal questlines, the most effective option for the player character is to stand back and allow the companion to handle the situation on their own. Rushing in to help may be regarded as Condescending Compassion and can backfire horribly, causing the companion to emotionally shut down and do the opposite of whatever the player character was trying to accomplish.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: It's a small miracle these people can work together at all. Lae'zel is a githyanki who Hates Everyone Equally and is the first to suggest slitting everyone's throats because of the tadpoles in your brains, Gale is a walking Fantastic Nuke waiting to go off (with the typical mage ego), Karlach is an escaped slave with a malfunctioning infernal engine for a heart, Astarion is being hunted by his former vampiric owner, and Shadowheart is a follower of Shar. Really, the only reason they haven't tried to kill each other is because the threat of becoming a mind flayer is a much bigger concern, and is initially the only reason they work together at all.
• Took a Level in Kindness: They all undergo this at some point, to varying degrees. As the Player Character, you have the option of making them come off as more gentle, or at least less of a prick. It's especially poignant of you choose to play as Lae'zel and make her into a Token Heroic Orc. The biggest example is probably Ascendant Astarion; as a companion, he's a power-drunk lunatic no better than Cazador. As the Player Character, however, he can decide to put his newfound status to better use and even dismiss any plans to conquer the world.
• True Companions: What they eventually turn into toward the end of the game, if your approval values with them are high enough. This is especially true with the Dark Urge, as your companions stick by you even after learning you're a Bhaalspawn if you've managed to curb your murderous desires (or at least suppressed its worst moments).
• We ARE Struggling Together: The devs have said that this group would never travel together under normal circumstances. As the de facto leader, you're usually the one to remind them when arguments come up that maybe you don't all trust each other — some of you might even hate each other — but right now you need each other to get out of this mess alive.
• What Does She See in Him?: Your squadmates will judge everything you do, and this includes whom, if anyone, you sleep with. Reactions range from "fair enough" (usually from Wyll and/or Shadowheart^note slightly more cattily) to this, which they are happy to go into detail about: Astarion thinks Shadowheart's boring, Gale thinks Astarion's dangerous, Lae'zel thinks everyone is inferior to her, etc.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The new epilogue added with Patch #5 sees the party reuniting six months after the game's ending, showing what's become of them since the finale depending on how you handled their personal questlines.
  • Astarion: If he remained a Vampire Spawn, Astarion has re-acclimated to living in the shadows and has undergone a Heel–Face Turn, having decided Good Feels Good after his travels with the party and helps whoever he comes across at night (also, he has discovered that people don't actually care about murder if the victims are the "right kind," to his delight). If he and the Player decided to spare the 7000 spawns from the ritual, he may instead talk about how he has become the leader of a small Vampire Spawn settlement in the Underdark. If the Player Character didn't complete his questline and/or didn't kill Cazador, Astarion still lives in perpetual fear of him tries to convince the avatar to help him kill his old master. An Ascended Astarion, meanwhile, has taken over Cazador's palace as his own base of operations, and will gloat to the avatar about how his schemes will eventually ensnare Baldur's Gate. You can either act impressed by his ambitions, or tell him that his megalomania will eventually blow up in his face. If romanced, Ascended Astarion is also incredibly possessive of the avatar, especially if they complain about their lack of freedom thanks to being trapped in his Gilded Cage.
  • Gale: If Gale is convinced to go through with his plans for godhood, he uses the Crown of Karsus and becomes the God of Ambition, much to the disapproval of many, and will offer to ascend the avatar as well if romanced. If he returned the Crown to Mystra, he's become a professor at Blackstaff Academy and offers the avatar the opportunity to assist him in a new lesson he has planned. If Gale uses the Netherese Orb to destroy the Netherbrain, an astral projection of Gale will be waiting for you at camp to deliver Gale's message.
  • Lae'zel: If Lae'zel is loyal to Vlaakith, she doesn't show up at camp and is implied to have "ascended", though Withers makes it clear the honor of "ascending" is actually a death sentence. If Lae'zel defected and sided with Orpheus, she's aiding him in overthrowing Vlaakith and convinced him to create an astral projection of her to interact with the party after receiving Withers' invitation, and the romanced player may choose to follow her to the Astral Plane. If she was convinced to remain in the Material Plane, she speaks happily of the friends she's made in the world she's come to love, and has been systematically wiping out all of Vlaakith's loyalist bases on the Sword Coast-she invites the player to join her in assaulting the final one in Chult, for old times' sake. She may also be raising a child, Xan, the githyanki egg from Creche Y'llek.
  • Karlach: If Karlach returned to Avernus alone or with company, Withers makes it so she can temporarily reunite with her old friends. Her return is also heralded with good news as she found a solution to her Infernal Engine, implying she might be able to fix or finally be rid of it and return to the mortal plane. If Karlach becomes a mind flayer, she will have stayed in Baldur's Gate and found a personal ethical solution for her need for brains; an arrangement with a healer for the terminally ill, for whom she provides voluntary euthanasia. As a mind flayer she assimilates the memories and lives of all those whose brains she eats, and she has come to consider herself a kind of living repository of those people.
  • Wyll: If Wyll refused to renew his contract with Mizora, he'll have resumed his "Blade of Frontiers" lifestyle albeit now having to rely on his natural abilities and skills. Wyll can also have taken over as the new Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate if his father wasn't rescued, and in this case will have adopted an orphaned child, Lily Aurora Ravenguard. If Wyll goes with Karlach to Avernus, he'll have racked up a reputation as the "Blade of Avernus" and is helping Karlach find a solution for her Infernal Engine problem. Wyll can also become the "Blade of Avernus" if the Ansur questline has been completed, regardless of the status of his pact with Mizora.
  • Shadowheart: If Shadowheart converted to Selune and Mercy Killed her parents, she has become a wandering adventurer, learning about her parents' faith and traveling the Sword Coast while hunted by Sharrans (though she is able to easily evade them with the covert help of Nocturne, who she hopes will one day join her free of the cult); if she spared her parents she states to have taken up a humble life and now owns a farm and several animals. If romanced, the avatar may also have settled down with her. If Shadowheart remained loyal to Shar, then as the Chosen of Shar she has been busy spreading her faith far and wide in the aftermath of the Absolute's destruction, and is happy, as she does not know what she has sacrificed to Shar and never will again. If romanced as a Sharran, it's established that while she separated from the Player Character to focus on her duties, she's more than willing to Loophole Abuse in order to give them opportunities to "reconnect", including at the party itself.

Astarion

See Astarion's separate character page.

Gale

Gale Dekarios

Wizard Prodigy

Voiced by: Tim Downie

"There's a gust of Weave about you, but it's a mere breeze. I need a tempest."

Race: Human
Class: Wizard
Background: Sage
Place of Origin: Waterdeep

An unusually powerful human wizard from the City of Splendors, Gale's ambition and love for the goddess of magic Mystra drove him to seek out extremely powerful — and volatile — ancient magic. Now he faces not only the threat of ceremorphosis, but also a tangle of dark magic that will cause unfathomable destruction if it ever slips his tenuous control.

---

• Abandonment-Induced Animosity: Although Gale is self-aware enough to understand why Mystra cut ties with him, deep down, he's still very angry and hurt to have been left to deal with the Netherese orb on his own. This explodes into a full-blown Motive Rant after he finds a way to reforge the Crown of Karsus, in which he reveals he considers all gods to be contemptibly fickle and unworthy of the power they hold, and thus deserving to be challenged by mortals (namely, him).
• Act of True Love: For a romanced or very high rapport player, Gale can offer to use the orb to suicide bomb the Netherbrain to spare his friend/lover from becoming illithid or from dying in the very last battle. And it's no empty offer; if the player doesn't talk him out of it, he will follow through. If he does, a romanced player will receive a message from his hologram in the epilogue stating that Gale died at peace, as his final thoughts were of his beloved.
• Aesop Amnesia: Gale is openly ashamed of his prior actions, directly comparing it to Karsus' Folly and accepting that its consequences were a direct result of his own hubris. Once Gale learns how to recreate the Crown of Karsus, his desperation to cure his affliction and resentment over Mystra seemingly abandoning him leads to him immediately scheming to recreate the crown himself and make himself a god. It's up to the player to either talk him down or encourage it.
• Alien Blood: If Astarion tries to bite Gale, he'll discover that his "blood tastes like bile", probably due to all his experiments with dark magic and the Netherese Orb.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: Gale references his mother frequently and affectionately (to borderline Momma's Boy levels) and carries her surname; mention of his father is noticeably nonexistent by contrast.
• Ambition Is Evil: Gale's ambition goes hand-in-hand with his hubris, which led to his affliction with the Netherese orb. In one of his epilogue endings, Gale accordingly can become the literal god of ambition if he takes the Crown of Karsus for himself. While he's not as obviously evil as certain other deities, he is a condescending, indifferent Jerkass God who embodies everything he once claimed to despise about how the gods treat mortals. Moreover, as the embodiment of ambition Gale will now never be able to stop trying to challenge other gods to elevate his own station, implying his fate is almost an Ironic Hell.
• Amicable Exes: Depending on how the player encourages Gale to resolve his personal quest, he can eventually achieve this status with Mystra.
• An Arm and a Leg: A Dark Urge player can rip his arm off when he first asks for help in the opening area.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: In Early Access, he explained his past with Mystra to you in the form of a "story". It was obvious from the get-go that he was talking about himself, which you could either point out — and he admitted that it was easier for him to talk about it this way — or play along with.
• The Archmage: Gale was a powerful wizard in his own right before the Netherese orb and the tadpole, and one of the Chosen of Mystra, goddess of magic. Although he was a wizarding prodigy, the Netherse orb in his chest consumed most of his own magical potential. However, as he levels up in the game he can reach those heights again if he remains a single-classed wizard up to level 12.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Gale can do this to himself and his lover if he chooses to become the God of Ambition. This is portrayed negatively by other characters, however, as they believe that in doing so, Gale has effectively ceased to be the young man he once was. This is also possible for Gale as the Player Character Origin if he became a mind flayer, possibly becoming the first illithid deity in the Forgotten Realms' history. Alternatively, if Gale does become a mind flayer, Mystra will offer to take him back to Elysium with her in an attempt to restore his soul as the process of ceremorphosis severely damages if not outright destroys it entirely.
• Badass Teacher: If Gale is convinced to give up on his desire for godhood and returns the Crown to Mystra, the epilogue shows him having become a teacher at Blackstaff Academy.
• Berserk Button: Gale values his mind and his privacy; thus, if the player attempts to use the tadpole to enter his thoughts without permission, it really pisses him off. Trying it too many times can make him angry enough to permanently leave the party.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Gale is friendly, cheeky, and approachable. He also approves of slaying the goblins who make up the Absolute's cult, casually threatens to incinerate Astarion if he puts a dagger to Tav's neck on first meeting, and delivered many a Total Party Kill to aggressive players who attacked him in Early Access. And that's before you get into the whole issue of him being a walking Fantastic Nuke.
• Bookworm: Befitting The Smart Guy of the group, Gale LOVES books. A glimpse of his home in Waterdeep reveals it's overflowing with books, and a key part of his personal quest takes place in a bookshop (which he is beyond excited to finally reach). He also frequently invokes "something I read in a book" in his romantic arc to convey his developing feelings, including books that cover spicier topics. Lastly, he freaks out and disapproves if the player attempts to destroy an Obviously Evil tome found in the Blighted Village, specifically aghast that you are harming a book.
• Break the Haughty: Gale is midway through this process when the story begins. He's already been humbled by a catastrophic error and a year of depressed isolation, and when recounting his backstory to the player, shows a lot of self-awareness that his misfortunes were entirely his own fault. However, it's not until much later in the game when he finally learns what he had actually unleashed, which was the Karsite Weave that he can have a true epiphany of just how badly he'd screwed up, and (depending on how the player nudges him) put his hubris to bed for good. Alternately, the player can make this a Subverted Trope by encouraging the most extreme of Gale's ambitions, resulting in him obtaining godhood.
• Child Prodigy: Gale was profoundly gifted with magic from childhood. Although much like a Former Child Star, he's fallen hard from his glory days and isn't dealing with it as well as he might outwardly let on.
• The Chosen One: Gale is a prodigious wizard, to the point that the goddess of magic, Mystra, briefly took him as a paramour. She cut all ties with him after he made almost the same mistake that drove Netheril into ruin and got that orb stuck in his chest.
• Close to Home: Gale will rant at length about his disgust with Kagha's treatment of Arabella. When he remarks bitterly on how youthful folly doesn't deserve such harsh punishment, it's clear he's also talking about his own past.
• Comical Overreacting: His disgusted freakout at spider-licking is most infamous, but Gale also isn't above "jokingly" threatening to blow himself up in response to more mundane annoyances. For example, this gem if he's pushed to go onstage with Dribbles the Clown:
  Gale: You truly are testing the patience of a man who could level a city if he wished, you know.
• Complexity Addiction: The Player Character can accuse him of this with his resurrection protocol. Gale retorts that it's necessary to get people interested.
• Covert Pervert: In contrast to his otherwise bookishly oblivious demeanor, Gale does drop a few lines indicating a particular enthusiasm for (giving) oral sex.
• Crazy-Prepared: If he dies within the first two in-game days, he'll have a magical projection prepared that will guide you through a process to revive him.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Should Gale proceed with a suicide attack against the Netherbrain in Act 3, he will magically transport the rest of the party to a safe distance, an action otherwise unavailable in gameplay. Averted with the Netherese Orb itself, which at a certain point can be triggered from the regular actions menu.
• Dark Secret: He's got both a mind flayer parasite in his head and a Fantastic Nuke leftover from the fall of Netheril in his chest that will explode — and take most of the Sword Coast with it — if not regularly "fed". His reaction to Friendship Moment below implies that revealing that last one has already burned a bridge or two.
• Deader than Dead: Using the Netherese Orb annihilates him so thoroughly that in the epilogue, his recorded message tells you that not even his usual methods for reviving himself can work, as no traces of his physical or spiritual essence can be found anymore. His magical projection will also say the same thing if he attempted to usurp Mystra and got disintegrated for it.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's quick to joke and tries to keep things light, despite being very aware of how precarious your — and his — situation is.
• Deal with the Devil: He's the most open to making a deal with Raphael of the group. If the protagonist doesn't help him find magical artifacts to feed on, he'll make one behind their back. But in later acts, once it becomes clear that Raphael wants the party to deliver the Crown of Karsus that's sitting atop the elder brain to him, he would strongly discourage the player character from accepting his deal as he also wants to lay claim to the Netherese artifact, regardless if he intends to return it to Mystra or to keep it for himself to become a god.
• Death Seeker: When Elminster informs him of Mystra tasking him to use his orb to destroy the Absolute, Gale is remarkably resigned to the mission and will go through with it unless convinced otherwise.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Unlike most high intelligence, low wisdom characters, with Gale it is not Played for Laughs. For one thing it has led to some costly mistakes, ones that you would only make if you were exceptionally skilled at magic and very unwise in its use. He has a magical nuke in his chest that threatens to destroy him and much of the Sword Coast unless he does some very particular and risky things. And then there is the fact he can suffer some Aesop Amnesia and attempt the same experiment that led to said magical nuke being in his chest. Unless the player helps remind him of his past mistakes, he'll make them all over again without realizing it.
• Deity of Human Origin: If Gale was able to reforge the Crown of Karsus after defeating the Netherbrain and keeps it for himself, he would end up using it to ascend to godhood as the god of Ambition. In the epilogue, he states that in the months that have passed since the Absolute's downfall, there have already been a number of temples and shrines built in his name all across Faerûn.
• Destructo-Nookie: Out of fear of this, a romanced Gale will indicate that sex is off the table in Act 1, as too much "excitement" might destabilize the orb. Once the orb is temporarily stabilized in Act 2, however...
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: Gale will enthusiastically propose marriage to a romanced player even if the latter has become a full-blown illithid. Certain dialogue options also imply the player's transformation hasn't remotely hindered their sex life.
• Divine Date: Mystra, the goddess of magic. Although considering Mystra’s history and the fact that Gale himself says he first met her when he was a child, there are some disturbing implications there even beyond the inherent power imbalance.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: One truly ambitious choice Gale can go with on ascending to divinity, is to try and usurp Mystra as the God of Magic. It results in him being swiftly destroyed by the far older and more powerful goddess.
• Dying Alone: He mentions that if he can’t find a way to disable the Netherese bomb, he’ll go to some far-off corner of Faerûn or the Underdark to ensure few-to-no others die in the blast.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Like Wyll (although not to the same extent), he has an example within the same game. He's subjected to becoming noticeably weaker during his introduction compared to how he was in early access, as he gets trapped in the portal he created to escape the crashing Nautiloid and requires the Player Character to rescue him. His romance arc was also overhauled to have him be far more up front about his orb issue, rather than holding back until after you've potentially already slept together, and to push physical intimacy much further down the timeline (originally, you could sleep with him at the party; now Tav and Gale won't get it on until Act 2). In general, his Manipulative Bastard tendencies are mostly absent or toned down.
• Face Death with Dignity: Should Gale go through with his suicide attack in Act 3, he will greet the Netherbrain with the utmost calm and decorum, even politely introducing himself before nuking it and himself into oblivion.
• Fake Wizardry: Discussed. Gale is one of the few companions who reacts neutrally to Dribbles the Clown's stage show — not because he thinks Dribbles is in any way good, but because he finds a terrible clown far less offensive than stage performers who attempt to pass simple tricks off as real magic. (Actually being sent onstage with Dribbles is another matter.)
• Fantastic Nuke: Gale has not one, but two unwelcome guests in his body: in addition to the mind flayer tadpole, he also has a Netherese Destruction Orb in his chest capable of wiping out a city — and given that he's still worried about collateral damage even out in the middle of nowhere where the game begins, probably a lot more. He can do this in either the climax of Act 2 or Act 3.
• Foreshadowing: One of the few non-evil actions Gale disapproves of (and may outright scold the player for) in Act 1 is attempting to destroy the Necromancy of Thay, hinting that he hasn't fully mastered the temptation that dangerous magical items represent.
• Friendless Background: While Gale is perfectly sociable, he struggles to make actual friendships. He admits that after his fall from grace with Mystra, almost no one came to visit him, let alone helped him.
• Friendship Moment: Can have one with the Player Character if they affirm that they’ll stand by him and help him get rid of the orb. His tone makes it clear how grateful he is to finally have an ally after dealing with it alone for so long.
• Genius Burnout: The Netherese orb induced this most directly. However, there are implications that even aside from that, Gale has invested so heavily in living up to his potential that he's neglected almost every other area of his life and is secretly miserable for it. He has little sense of his own identity outside of being a great wizard, has no real friends other than Tara, and shows signs of near-suicidal depression. In the extended epilogue, the strongly implied happiest ending for Gale is settling into a humbler, more balanced life as a professor at Blackstaff Academy.
• Gentleman and a Scholar: On top of being a Gentleman Wizard, he's also a brilliant scholar, a dapper and genial wine connoisseur, amateur poet, and Kindhearted Cat Lover.
• Gibberish of Love: Gale's Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness can run away with him very awkwardly in his attempts to convey his attraction toward his love interest.
• Glass Cannon: Gale is likely to remain one of the squishiest of your party members, but as he levels up, he can develop an arsenal of offensive spells (such as Artistry of War, Disintegrate, or even hopped-up Magic Missiles) that deal ridiculously high damage.
• Heroic Neutral: At the time of his abduction, Gale had spent a year in seclusion and was far more preoccupied with managing his condition than with any active heroics (and was ready to die in some far-off corner of the world if he could no longer manage). Getting tadpoled forces him into conflict against the Absolute, making him a spectacularly bad choice of abductee given his unique ability to bring them down.
• Heroic Suicide: Mystra comes up with a way for Gale to fix his orb problem and the Absolute problem in one go: she sends him a charm (via Elminster) that will hold back the orb's power until he chooses to blow it up, with the intent being that he find the Elder Brain and suicide-bomb it to dust.
• Hidden Depths:
  • If he looks into the Magic Mirror in the Blighted Village, it will show that despite "Gale's Folly", he still dreams of becoming a god in his own right. He also shows surprising malice in his desire to see his rivals humbled, and some Yandere leanings in wanting to create a safe haven for him and his sweetheart. Just the two of them. Alone. Forever.
  • Certain dialogue options can reveal that despite his generally upbeat demeanor, he genuinely believes the world would be better off if he were dead.
  • He takes Mystra's demand that he sacrifice himself surprisingly well. Noting that it offers him redemption, and that knowing when he'll die removes the uncertainty and gives him peace.
  • There are also several hints Gale has an artistic side: he composes poetry, frequently compares his use of the Weave to a musician playing an instrument, and uses illusion magic to conjure images of cosmic beauty during a few key character scenes. Should he settle with the player in Baldur's Gate as of the playable epilogue, he will take up crafts such as painting or knitting.
  • Gale's romantic storyline in general is a case of Big Ego, Hidden Depths. For all his pride in his intellect, he has little self-worth otherwise. The idea that his partner might actually be in love with him as a mere man (as opposed to a mighty wizard) is one he struggles to accept. Once he does, however, he falls in love very deeply, and turns out to be one of the most accepting love interests if the player character becomes a mind flayer, stating that it only deepens his love as it is a reminder of their incredible sacrifice.
• History Repeats: He recounts Karsus's Folly — when the ancient Netherese archmage Karsus destroyed his empire by trying to usurp the power of the goddess Mystryl — and draws a direct parallel to his own situation, calling it Gale's Folly. While Gale wanted to restore the power his goddess^note known then as Mystryl, now as Mystra lost , he admits that the damage he might still cause for it makes the distinction academic at best. If you push him towards claiming the Crown of Karsus for himself instead of delivering it to Mystra as ordered, the ending strongly implies that he'll end up retreading Karsus' path to ruin, thus truly repeating history.
• Home Sweet Home: Gale really wants to go home to his tower in Waterdeep and curl up with his books, his tressym, his wine, and (if applicable) his love interest. Come the Playable Epilogue, if he survives and remains mortal, his default ending is to do exactly that, becoming a happily Retired Badass professor.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Once a wizard of such skill he was The Chosen One and lover of the deity of magic, Gale lost it all after a catastrophic overreach. Lorroakan states the trope almost word-for-word when snarking at Gale.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Gale himself may be utterly exasperated with Elminster, but should the player character tell Elminster to "hit that country road," Gale will be outraged.
• Irony: If a player asks a romanced God of Ambition Gale to be with them once more, Gale initially responds with "All in good time." Those are the exact words Mystra says to him if he expresses a wish to love her again, showing how ascending to godhood has made him similarly fickle and condescending towards the goals of mortals. He will even mock the player for their impatience if they ask him this.
• I Just Want to Be Special: A major crux of Gale's character is his need to prove his worth. Despite being a genuine prodigy when it comes to magic, even becoming the lover of a goddess, he still felt inadequate and pursued Karsus' legacy in order to validate his worth to himself and Mystra, something that ultimately comes to bite him in the ass when Mystra abandons him and he's stuck with a magical orb that's more or less a nuke waiting to go off. A major part of his Character Development is learning he doesn't need to prove himself and that he's good enough as he is.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Underneath his intellect and ego, Gale is quite lonely and insecure; he clings to his status as a great wizard precisely because it's his main (if not only) source of self-worth. This becomes particularly apparent if he is chosen as a romantic option. All of his attempts to flirt with or impress you involve showing off with the Weave; and if you comment that you value him as a person rather than for his abilities, Gale is genuinely taken off guard, as if that possibility had never before occurred to him.
• Insufferable Genius: Like all great wizards, Gale has an ego to the point of hubris, and frequently boasts about his intelligence and skill. The player character can tolerate this or call him out on it.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: A subtle variation on the trope; while Gale is friendly and kind, he also reveals that while he's had numerous acquaintances, he has almost no real friends.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: When describing himself, he brings up the fact that he has a cat as a point in his favor. He also mentions that as a child, his parents wouldn't let him have a kitten, so he conjured a tressym, which he fondly recalls by name as a "beautiful creature". And, as noted under Nice Guy below, he is a generally decent fellow who prefers to follow a morally good Tav and objects to evil actions like razing Silvanus' Grove.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • If the player fails all of their rolls to rescue him from the portal, it is implied Gale remains stuck there until he finally explodes and dies.
  • If he detonates the Orb in the final battle to stop the Netherbrain, a projection of him will appear at your camp in the epilogue, explaining that with both his physical form and soul completely erased from the mortal plane, there's no way to bring him back.
• The Last Dance: Invoked by Gale himself as the reason he so readily accepts Mystra's charge. The Netherese orb has been slowly destroying him for a long time; being given a clear end point with a purpose comes almost as a relief.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Give him an order and he might wish for "the dice to roll in [his] favor", in a game that's all about rolling dice and hoping for favorable outcomes.
• Love Redeems: Gale may be one of the most straightforward cases among the companions, as his major choice can play out very differently for a romanced player versus a non-romanced one. A non-romanced player may struggle to dissuade him from pursuing the Crown of Karsus, but a romanced player can get him to drop it almost immediately simply by reassuring Gale that he is loved as he is. And unlike some other companions where the player must pass a high speech or insight check in order to talk them down, Gale will listen to his romanced partner without any checks at all.
• Love Revelation Epiphany: His romance path is unlocked by the player choosing to capitalize on their momentary mental connection through the Weave to send him the idea of the two of them as a couple (depending on how bold the player is feeling, either holding hands on a romantic walk or kissing). The Narrator describes his feelings returned through the psychic connection as being first startled and confused, but finally settling on elation. Notably, while his approval gets a reasonable boost either way, the boost for imagining kissing him is double that for holding his hand; elation indeed.
• Love Triangle: Given how prominent his divine ex-lover Mystra is in his personal quest, this is touched upon if you choose to romance Gale. However, this is ultimately subverted. It becomes very clear that Gale and Mystra's relationship was an unhealthy one that neither has any desire to rekindle.
• The Magnificent: He admits that he goes by "Gale of Waterdeep" as he thinks it sounds more impressive than his given name. In a romanced Gale's "good" ending, he reverts to "Gale Dekarios", admitting "Gale of Waterdeep" sounds pompous — a sign that he's genuinely brought his ego under control.
• Master of Illusion: Gale makes heavy use of Illusion School spells in cutscenes, such as his death protocol, sending messages to others, or checking his face. If he becomes a professor at Blackstaff Academy, he specifically teaches a class on Illusion magic. Gale's use of magic in story and cutscenes all point to the Illusion School as his "canon" subclass.
• Merlin and Nimue: He was the Nimue to Mystra's Merlin. In a smaller scale repetition of the cycle, his romantic arc also begins with him in the Merlin role, giving you lessons on channeling the Weave.
• Morton's Fork: Comes into play if the player sacks Silvanus' Grove. Like Karlach and Wyll, Gale is disgusted and wants to leave the party over it. Unlike Karlach and Wyll, Gale has a Fantastic Nuke sitting in his chest that will devastate the Sword Coast if it goes off. The player can use this against him when persuading him to stay, pointing out Gale won't survive if he goes off alone (which in turn will cause the orb to detonate). Gale is thus faced with two "choices" that both end with him being an unwilling party to mass murder.
• Mundane Utility: Early in Act 1, he can be seen at camp using a Mirror Image in lieu of an actual mirror to check his appearance.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • If the player opted to sack Silvanus' Grove, Gale has an emotional breakdown afterwards, wracked by guilt for going along with you.
  • In Act 3, Gale is potentially horrified when he is informed by Mystra of the true nature of his affliction, that it is the Karsite Weave, and may almost immediately back down from his ambitions for the Crown of Karsus.
• Nice Guy: Overall decent despite his ego, and approves of selfless behavior from the party. He even states that the reason he trusts you is because you do things like defuse arguments and be nice to children. He's also the only companion who doesn't protest if the player chooses to break up with them, although he's clearly hurt.
• No-Sell: If the player tries to use the tadpole to push into Gale's mind before he's ready to share, he can shut them out immediately thanks to his high mental defenses. He'll also be furious at the attempt.
• "Not So Different" Remark: When asked how he feels about having a vampire in their party, Gale acknowledges that he himself isn't exactly safe or convenient to keep around either and has no standing to judge.
• Oblivious to Love: Should the player envision something romantic during the Weave lesson, Gale will be taken by complete surprise (though not unpleasantly). His obliviousness is also hilariously shown if the player presents him with Halsin's proposition for a three-way.
  Tav: How would you feel about adding a third person to our relationship?
  Gale: What? Like a child? I'm not sure I'd consider myself father material...
• Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date: A romanced Gale will conjure a magical version of this for a key conversation in Act 3.
• One True Love: If romanced, this is very much Gale's mentality and approach. Emphasis on one — of all romantic options, he is one of if not the most hardline monogamist and reacts poorly to even a hint his love interest doesn't feel the same way. With that said, he gives as much devotion as he expects in return, perhaps best demonstrated in the ending where he proposes marriage. He will do so just as enthusiastically whether the player has become a mind flayer or not. If asked if he could really accept the player's illithid form, he seems perplexed as to why that would be an issue.. In the endings added with Wither's party, a romanced Gale that has ascended to become the god of Ambiton will offer to bring the chosen avatar back with him and ups them to similar status in the process, simply because he loves them.
• Overrated and Underleveled: When you meet him, Gale introduces himself as a talented wizard and you later learn that he is gifted enough to have once been the chosen of the Goddess of Magic, Mystra. However, he starts off in the low-levels which doesn't back his claim.It later turns out to be a Justified example. During a meeting with Mystra, Gale learns that the Netherese orb wasn't carrying her lost magic, but rather the remnant of Karsus' Weave from his brief moment of godhood. When he took in the orb, Gale's magical talent was the first thing it consumed, which explains his low levels at the beginning of the game.
• Power is Sexy: In Act 2, a romanced Gale will (rather awkwardly) blurt out that he's extremely turned on watching you kick ass in battle.
• Power Perversion Potential: His Optional Sexual Encounter can make full use of his abilities with the Weave, culminating in conjuring multiple versions of himself to more thoroughly make love to his partner.
• Pre-Climax Climax: Gale is spurred to consummate his romance (emotionally and physically) by the realization that his Heroic Suicide may be very soon impending.
• Pungeon Master: Part of his death protocol involves playing four notes on a flute. The notes needed are D, E, A, and D.
• The Professor: He'll likely serve as The Smart Guy of the party by default, with a starting Intelligence score of 17, and has a tendency to deliver information about Faerûn and the Weave as lengthy lectures, which the player can call him on. In one of his possible endings in the Patch 5 epilogue, Gale has literally become a professor at Blackstaff Academy and is happily dedicated to his research.
• Rage Breaking Point: All that stoicism and acceptance of Mystra's orders finally gives way in Act 3, as his reawakened desire to live also awakens a tremendous anger over being ordered to kill himself in the first place. He all but explodes at the player if they try to talk him out of pursuing the Crown of Karsus, which Gale sees as his only hope of being saved from the orb and/or vengeance for being abandoned to deal with it.
• Real Men Cook: Gale is the group chef and makes multiple references to his previous culinary endeavors, including making his own hundur sauce and sumptuous roasts.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: In the epilogue if he returns the Crown to Mystra, he becomes this as a professor at Blackstaff. While he might gripe about his students, he says they're exceptionally bright and offers Tav/The Dark Urge to come with him to Blackstaff to help him with a new lesson. If the Player Character turned into a mind flayer and expresses worry that the students might not like them, Gale assures them and says he taught his students to be very open-minded.
• The Resenter: While openly regretful of his actions and saying that Mystra casting him out was a justified punishment for them, should he find the means to recreate the Crown of Karsus, he'll admit during his Motive Rant that he actually resents Mystra for abandoning him over what he considers a "youthful folly", and actually believes that the gods are fickle and unworthy of worship. Should the player talk him out of trying to go through with it, he'll admit that his desperation to cure his condition caused him to act rashly.
• Riches to Rags: Gale jokingly describes the orb in his chest as "one of the most expensive hobbies there is" and admits he was running out of magic items to feed the Netherese contraption (by saying his tower had "never been so free of clutter") to the point he was reduced to sending his familiar to steal some in the city, implying he had sold or used a great deal of his posessions by then.
• Sad Clown: He deeply regrets "Gale's Folly", but you'd never know it from how much of a wisecracker he is. You can call him on it after he rebuffs your initial attempts to get to know him with light-hearted humor.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Zig-zagged. Patch 5 updated the ending where Gale uses the orb but Raphael remains alive. If Gale uses the orb in the final battle, he succeeded in destroying the Absolute. However, the Crown of Karsus remains undamaged, which allows Raphael to go and claim it for himself.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: He flexes an impressive and needless vocabulary. He even lampshades it in one conversation when due to melancholy, his vocabulary is noticeably more grounded and he apologizes for not being the eloquent speaker that the player has gotten to known and possibly love.
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Somewhat bizarrely, given that Shakespeare doesn't exist in Toril, Gale is fond of quoting him^note though canonically — if very rarely acknowledged after 2E — people have gone between Toril and Earth, so it's not impossible that some of Shakespeare's works have ended up in the Forgotten Realms. One of his start-of-turn quips is Puck's "What fools these mortals be!", and if clicked on enough he'll spout "All the world's a stage..." Despite the Fridge Logic, the habit is an effective way of characterizing Gale as well-read and somewhat pretentious.
• The Shut-In: After his affliction with the orb, Gale locked himself away in his tower for a year while he dealt with its effects (and, he admits, wallowing over his downfall). In a bit of spectacularly bad luck, his abduction and tadpoling appears to have taken place the first time he had left his tower for any significant length of time.
• Smart People Play Chess: There are a couple of instances within the game where Gale is shown to be well-versed in playing lanceboard (the Faerûnian version of chess):
  • In Act 2, upon seeing Mol and Raphael playing lanceboard within the Last Light Inn, Gale can provide some suggestions for Mol to turn the tables against the devil and win the game.
  • In Act 3, one of the trials within the Wyrmway requires the party to win a game of lanceboard in just two moves only. If allowed to, Gale can offer a solution for them to easily pass the trial.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Although he generally tries to be well-mannered, Gale is a bit of a dork whose Insufferable Genius tendencies get the better of him sometimes. It's played for laughs in that some of his attempts to socialize are amusingly awkward (such as his ramble about the player's "musk"). It's also played for drama, as it's implied his time as Mystra's chosen stunted him socially, and that at least some of his bluster is because being The Smart Guy is the only way he knows how to connect with people. At the tiefling party, he even admits his social skills are rusty after a year in isolation.
  Gale: Spending time in your company, I realize I may have left the better part of my wit and sensitivity in my tower.
• Squishy Wizard:
  • Very, very squishy. Gale has apparently died hundreds of thousands of times in early access, more than every other character (possibly combined). It doesn't help that the AI prioritizes attacking characters with the lowest armor class, and, in Early Access, he's the only party member who can only ever equip clothing. Downplayed in that he's actually pretty sturdy for a wizard: his Dexterity and Constitution are above-average, and his access to Abjuration magic and defensive spells like Mage Armor give him about the equivalent of "leather armor and a shield." He's also recruited at level 2, while the other characters are typically late level 1. Finally, the full release of the game gives humans and half-elves a racial trait (Civil Militia) that grants proficiency with light armor and shields. While he won't be able to capitalize on it, it does at least let him use Mage Armor with a shield to become more durable.
  • In a twisted bit of irony, he was also the enemy with the most Total Party Kills for a while in Early Access — players often reacted aggressively to his sudden first appearance, and he'd wipe out the entire party with Burning Hands.
  • Outside of gameplay, Gale is also the companion seemingly most prone to mundane ailments. He has a few side comments complaining about back pain and aching joints, and in side banter with Wyll, mentions once being hospitalized for weeks with an illness.
• The Stoic: Gale can use the tadpole connection to show the player exactly how awful the Netherese orb feels, something he's heretofore masked with easy humor. He accepts Mystra's suicide mission with similar outward ease, but a very high rapport player can get him to admit that he's actually terrified.
• Talking Down the Suicidal:
  • Gale is very determined to perform the Heroic Suicide Mystra has ordered, and it's up to the player to talk him out of it. During what Gale believes to be his last night alive, he will seek out the player to keep him company before he dies. He is very susceptible to being talked down if the player appeals to him as a friend or as a lover, and reminds him there are things Worth Living For.
  • This can also be averted, as the player can choose to fully support Gale's decision to die.
  • It can also be inverted late in the game, as the player can pass a persuasion check to talk Gale back into sacrificing himself even after he's decided to live.
• Team Chef: Multiple ambient companion dialogues reference the fact that Gale is the one who prepares food for the group every night.
• Token Good Teammate: If you're playing a run where you join the goblins in sacking Silvanus' Grove, he becomes the only good-aligned companion to stay in your party afterwards (clearing a persuasion check), as both Wyll and Karlach will leave in disgust.
• Too Clever by Half: Gale's in the kind of pickle you can only get into by being extremely good at magic: Because he was strong enough to conjure Mystra's lost power, he assumed he was also strong enough to channel it. As Fantastic Nuke and Why Am I Ticking? can attest, he was not.
• Undying Loyalty: Once Gale commits to a love interest, he commits.
  • He will happily remain with his love interest even if they become mindflayer.
  • The "undying" part is near-literal in fact; if a romanced Gale dies in combat and "Speak with Dead" is cast on his corpse, he indicates he will be waiting for his partner in the afterlife.
  • As of Patch 5, after Withers' party if he became The God of Ambition he'll also offer to do the same for the player, so they can remain together forever. If the offer is accepted the player returns to Elyisum with him, ascending the player to godhood in the process.
  • One of the few ways to get dumped by Gale is to cheat on him with Mizora. If the player tries to argue that surely he must have been tempted, he's completely taken aback by the suggestion.
  Gale: No, of course not! Why would I want anyone but you...?
  • Gale also isn't impressed if the player dumps another potential love interest for him too quickly, commenting that your sudden change of loyalties is not a quality he admires.
• Unequal Rites: Gale usually averts this by being respectful of other casters and acknowledging that forms of magic outside of his expertise are just as legitimate. However, if other casters try to prop up their form of magic as superior, Gale will respond in kind.
  Sorcerer Tav: Bet that took hours of preparation. I can do it without thinking.
  Gale: And I can pass water without thinking, but that hardly makes it magic.
• Why Am I Ticking?: The Netherese Destruction Orb in his chest will vaporize him and a large portion of everything around him if and when it goes off.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: If you continuously disregard Gale's need to feed on magic items, he will eventually announce that he found another solution to his predicament, and that he no longer needs your help. If you pass a skill check, you learn that his solution was to make a deal with the cambion Raphael to remove the Netherese Destruction Orb from his body. Either way, he will leave your party afterwards, and he will never come back.

Karlach

Karlach Cliffgate

Fury of Avernus

Voiced by: Samantha Béart (Full Release), Shala Nyx (Early Access)

"Lately I have gotten used to being called the 'devil'."

Race: Zariel Tiefling
Class: Barbarian
Background: Outlander
Place of Origin: Baldur's Gate

A former champion of the archdevil Zariel and veteran of the Blood War, Karlach's battle history is written across her body in scars, burns, and tattoos, all serving to paint the picture of a legendary warrior filled with unyielding resilience. Having finally escaped from the Hells and the endless war between devils and demons, Karlach is determined to live her life to the fullest... And perhaps take revenge on the man who sold her to Zariel years ago.

---

• 100% Heroism Rating: Within the team itself at least, Karlach is the only origin member that is universally liked and admired by the rest of the team, and never falls into the insults or outright hostility some of the other members fall into. Even the conflict of her initial introduction is purely down to Wyll being misled as to who she truly is, something Karlach doesn't hold against him, and quickly bonds with Wyll if he spares her.
• Ambiguous Situation: How much of Karlach remains if she becomes a mind flayer? Withers and Mystra claim that mind flayers have no spirits and thus it's possible that the 'Karlach' that comes after being transformed is just the parasite with her memories. She also acts differently, speaking with much more refined language and mannerisms. However, Withers refers to her still being the same person despite her transformation and, in a cut epilogue narration, states that her 'spirit singeth, even in thy form, so changed'.
• Affectionate Nickname: Cheerfully refers to people she likes, mostly the PC, as "soldier".
• Amazonian Beauty: As befitting her barbarian class and a seasoned veteran, Karlach is tall and well-muscled and is depicted as attractive because of her strength. Shadowheart comments on how Karlach's arms look strong enough to carry her to safety should the need arise.
• Anger Born of Worry: If romanced, her reaction to Tav accepting a tryst with Mizora comes across like this. She doesn't mind having an open relationship, but a servant of Zariel is another matter. After her past experience, she doesn't the want the Hells to get their hooks into someone she cares about.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Her infernal engine is a hell of an asset for her in battle, but maintaining it and keeping it from killing her requires her to visit a mechanic. She's got nothing on Gale, though.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Zigzagged. Her body is heavily scarred and modified with infernal machinery, but her face is both conventionally attractive and free of any scarring. Put any armor other than her default outfit on her and you've got yourself one hells of an Amazonian Beauty tiefling.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Gets a moment of this if you "volunteer" her as Dribble's assistant; before going up on stage, she'll quip "This had better be violent or sexy or both." It's the former, as it turns out Dribbles was replaced with a shapechanger who attacks whoever goes on stage.
• The Berserker: Comes naturally with the barbarian class— even moreso if specced into the Berserker subclass.
• The Big Guy: Tied with Lae'zel for the highest starting strength score in the party, and as a Barbarian she does the most damage and has the most Hit Points. She's also tall and broad-shouldered enough to dwarf every companion except Halsin.
• Big Red Devil: She's a tiefling, so this comes with the territory. She's also one of the more fiery members of her kind, in no small part due to her infernal engine.
• Blue and Orange Contrast: Her fiery aura is normally orange, but turns blue in moments of intimacy.
• Bodyguard Betrayal: Inverted; She was once Enver Gortash's bodyguard, who then sold her to Zariel.
• Body Horror: In addition to her downright gruesome scarring, she's got an overheating demonic engine for a heart that glows bright enough to silhouette her ribs against her skin.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The game can end this way for Karlach if the player character and/or Wyll chooses to accompany her back to Avernus to prevent her infernal engine from killing her. Upon arrival, they are soon met with Zariel's forces determined to reclaim her and the adventurers charge towards their infernal foes.
  • Softened slightly with the epilogue, where the PC and Karlach return from Avernus for a night, showing that they can visit, and Karlach mentioning that they found blueprints for an upgrade that could allow Karlach to leave permanently. And their dialogue, both with each other and with other characters, shows that while their life isn't easy, they're happy with each other.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: During your second playthrough and beyond, she has a rare random conversation trigger to show you some "devil magic" interogation method which consists of a non-violent technique torturers use to gleaning the truth out of someone. If you agree to it she will ask a few test questions, finding it odd when the ability triggers when she asks and is given your player characters name, despite knowing the answer is right. She delves further into this, having a minor freakout as the weave of reality and the metaphysical opens up to her sight, seeing her reality as fixed lines of potential permutations mixed in with chaos. Cue her suddenly turning to look straight at the screen, at US and addressing us directly to ask about our nature, how many cycles of events have we gone through and then, after squashing down her existential crises, she asks us the most important question of all to her, Are you having fun? The entire scene is very non-sequitur but heartwarming and wholesome. At the end she goes back to addressing the group and player character, who is left very confused even after she shrugs it off.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Karlach is a tall, buff Blood Knight, but she's also friendly and pleasant to talk to. Her romance arc in particular shows her to be Endearingly Dorky about her feelings for the player character, with her practically shouting her Love Confession out of enthusiasm before flusteredly admitting that she'd been dying to say it.
• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: She starts out wielding a greataxe, which is, conveniently, the most mathematically effective weapon for a barbarian thanks to having the highest critical hit damage in the game when combined with their various Critical Hit Class bonuses.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: Her infernal engine makes her skin too hot for anyone to safely touch, making physical intimacy more-or-less impossible for her. Performing maintenence on it enables her to eventually overcome this. Even before this, temporary measures can allow moments of physical intimacy, but not long enough for this trope.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Approves of heroic deeds, and sees protecting anyone in need she comes across on her journey as her duty.
• Covered with Scars: Her time fighting in the Blood War has left her covered in scars and burns, to the point that her right side is disfigured.
• Critical Hit Class: She's a barbarian, a melee class specialised in delivering gigantic critical hits. Brutal Critical increases the number of extra damage dice she rolls on a crit (particularly useful with greataxes like her starter weapon, which do 1d12 damage per hit and therefore benefit greatly from getting more d12s to roll), and Reckless Attack gives her advantage on attack rolls, increasing her odds of getting that magic natural 20.
  • This also means Karlach benefits immensely from a three-level multiclass dip into Champion Fighter for the signature Improved Critical Hit feature, which reduces the critical hit threshold by 1 and makes them happen quite a lot more often. It's fairly easy for the player to justify this dip in-story as well, given Karlach's obvious physical prowess.
• Cute Monster Girl: She's an attractive tiefling, and has an upbeat personality.
• A Date With Rosie Palms: If you bring up romance in any capacity, she will provide ample hints that this is part of her way of dealing with the fact that she can't safely touch others. Actually hooking up with her will only make it worse until she can get the infernal engine upgraded.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Pollyanna. Karlach's cheerful Boisterous Bruiser attitude wins her a lot of fans, but it doesn't stem from a place of genuine happiness but rather having no real other way to confront her trauma and her uniquely terrible situation. When she is informed that the infernal heart in her chest is breaking down and means either a painful death or an inevitable return to Avernus, this facade cracks a bit and the vulnerable woman underneath appears. Her "big kid" qualities also stem from a dark place, as Karlach is a young woman in her early twenties who has spent well over a decade fighting some of the most vicious and destructive conflicts imaginable.
• Demon Slaying: She is known for slaying countless demons back when she was serving Zariel in the Blood War.
• Desecrating the Dead: Should the player kill her on behalf of the "Paladins of Tyr", they will cut her head off and present it to them as proof of the deed. The sight of Karlach's severed head is particularly grisly.
• Despair Speech: After the party defeats Gortash, who was responsible for her enslavement to begin with, rather than being happy to have gotten revenge on the one who hurt her, all Karlach realizes is that Gortash being dead (and dying unapologetically, at that) doesn't actually fix anything about her current situation, as she's still going to die from her infernal engine. This leads her into a heartbroken rant where she rages at the injustice of what happened to her, and how her receiving a fiery death while all of her friends get to enjoy life without her is her "reward" for having survived ten years of literal hell in Avernus, all because she trusted the wrong person.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Her Infernal Engine runs so hot that she cannot touch anyone for fear of accidentally burning them. Her personal quest involves finding a means to cool her engine down enough so that she can be close with others without fear of harming them. The first time an Infernal Iron is installed to cool her down, she can manage to get a quick kiss in: while she's still too hot for anything more, just that much is enough to elate her after being touch-starved for so long. Installing the second Infernal Iron will finally cool her down enough that she can hug you, and if you pursue a romance with her, make love with her, such that as far as she's concerned, it makes the fact that her engine would still eventually kill her if she doesn't return to Avernus Worth It.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Much like Wyll, in that the early installment is an early access version of the game rather than a previous title. Karlach started not as a companion, but as a far more generic tiefling in a one shot quest, albeit one that ended with the implication she'd re-appear later as a major character. She had no ties to Wyll. She had a different voice actress, and was far more hostile and standoffish - far more the stereotypical personality one might expect from one fleeing hell, rather than the upbeat, friendly, Big Fun person she is on release. She gained her distinctive face later in early access, hinting that her character would play a major role and might be a late-game companion, though she still wasn't the joyous flaming barbarian she'd become until release. The decision to make her both a companion and an origin character was done fairly late in development which is why she's absent from a lot of the promotional materials, not even appearing on the game's default loading screen. Even Minsc and Jaheira, who join much later in the game than she does, appeared in trailers before she did.
• Easily Forgiven: She holds no grudge against Wyll for his repeated attempts to kill her once he realizes that she isn't a devil but a tiefling who was forced into working for devils. Particularly after he defies his demonic patron for her, causing him to be turned into a half-fiend. In fact, if you kill Mizora, which causes Wyll to be taken to hell where he will be turned into a flesh blob to suffer for all eternity, she will absolutely lay into you, yelling at you for what you've done.
• Face of a Thug: Look at her profile picture, then back at her list of tropes. Yes, the huge, terrifying Big Red Devil berserker who's Still Wearing the Old Colors from her time in The Legions of Hell is a charming Nice Girl and a steadfast hero. Don't worry, the other characters are just as surprised as you are.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Her entire character design is built around this, from her lopsided undercut to her shattered right horn and her default outfits. Considering most other companions have a largely symmetrical design, it serves to highlight both her free spirit and her long departure from civilized life.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: She has one of the lowest charisma stats among the party members, but she is highly charismatic in-game; she's naturally friendly, outgoing and fun-loving. She is the only party member that every other member likes.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: She keeps a teddy bear called Clive in her tent.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: If you accept Gortash's deal in Act 3, and tell Karlach that you genuinely trust him, she's utterly baffled by this, as she can't comprehend how a man who's already betrayed her once could possibly keep his word. This contrasts her with the Emperor, who was also screwed over by Gortash, but realizes that his offer is sincere, and thus encourages you to accept it. This is averted in the case of the Dark Urge, however, as she showcases a remarkable degree of loyalty and patience if they are open about their ugly impulses. Furthermore, Karlach can end up mending her rift with Gortash if played as an avatar, as Gortash will make the same offer of an alliance to her, and if she accepts it, he will commend her for finally understanding his point of view.
• The Heart: Her kindness and fun-loving nature easily wins her the affection of the whole party, even Token Evil Teammate like Astarion, Lae'zel and Minthara appreciate her presence.
• Hellish Pupils: Comes with being a tiefling. Her eyes are a blazing orange and have slit pupils like a snake's.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A non lethal variety, but if you have her in the party when your free Orpheus, she'll volunteer herself to become a mind flayer and wield the netherstones, arguing that both Orpheus and the player have much to live for, while she's about to die at any moment. The transformation prevents the infernal engine from killing her, but it's explicitly stated in the game that ceremorphosis destroys the soul, and it's unclear if the transformed creature can be considered the original person or an evolved version of the tadpole with the host's memories and personality. At best, this can be considered a slow death of personality for her as even free mind flayers are doomed to lose their more human traits; even by the end of the game she stops returning affection with a romanced MC like she used to..
• I Die Free: She would rather die in the upcoming days from her Infernal Engine melting than return to Avernus for another minute. The Party is much more concerned about her dying than she is, but Karlach makes it clear that fighting for Zariel is something she hated, and wants nothing more than to be free from.
• Incendiary Exponent: A side effect of her infernal heart is her entire body constantly being engulfed in flames. Unfortunately for her it's useless in combat while being just hot enough to make physical contact with friendlies impossible.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Karlach is this towards Jaheira and Minsc, having heard of their heroic exploits from the past century while growing up in Baldur's Gate and is now elated to have met the legendary heroes in person.
• The Lad-ette: Karlach is blunt, to the point, nearly impossible to disgust, and like any self-respecting barbarian, can drink copious amounts of alcohol — and even more questionable substances — with virtually no ill effects.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: Is easily the most foul-mouthed of all the potential companions.
• Last Girl Wins: Should you choose to romance her, as she's the last female Origin character you meet.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Casually mentions how she has an infernal engine for a heart, much to the bafflement and shock of the Player Character. When they attempt to ask her how she got it, she drops this gem:
  Karlach: But it's a bit early in the game to be getting into tragic backstories.
• Living on Borrowed Time: Her personal quest shows that her Infernal Engine makes it so she doesn't have long to spend on the Material Plane. This leaves Karlach with a few options, all of which are bad. She can either stay on the Material Plane and wait for her Infernal Engine to overheat and melt her fron the inside out, or she can go back into Avernus to cool it down despite hating the very idea of going back to Avernus on principle. A line in Patch 5's ending suggests that there may be a way to let her stay on the Material Plane if she pulls off a heist in Avernus, but it's up to the player if she even gets to that point, much less any further. Alternatively, Karlach can Take a Third Option by turning into a Mind Flayer, which involves a death of personality that comes with it, so it's not much of a benefit to her.
• Mama Bear: Develops this attitude toward the rest of the party and becomes fiercely protective of them. She even tells Tav to "stick close to Mama K" during exploration of a particularly dark cavern.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Averted, as she explains during a romance conversation. After receiving her Infernal Engine, she became an unwilling Celibate Hero, and decided to forgo masturbating as well. After two years of this, her pent-up lust expressed itself as a minor explosion which burned down her tent one night.
• Mercy Kill: If she becomes a mind flayer, she'll mention during the Playable Epilogue that she's maintained her new diet by making an arrangement with a healer; if a patient is beyond help, they're given the choice of a quick death at Karlach's jaws instead of waiting to die naturally with nothing but pain to look forward to.
• My Blood Runs Hot: Should Astarion bite her and suck her blood, he'll immediately start burning.
• Nay-Theist: Not a lot of attention is drawn to it, but Karlach's dialogue implies that she doesn't worship any god, likely due to her experiences. She even states that her likely fate after dying is wandering eternally in the Fugue Plane before eventually ceasing to exist altogether.
• Never Going Back to Prison: When Zariel sends some underlings disguised as paladins in service to Tyr to drag her back to Avernus, she makes it unequivacally clear that she is, to quote her directly, "NEVER! GOING! BACK!" Potentially subverted late in the game, as even with some help from Dammon to craft some insulation for her Infernal Engine, it simply cannot operate outside of Avernus without eventually melting down and killing her painfully from the inside out. It's possible to convince her to return to Avernus as a matter of survival, though she needn't go alone: either Tav or Wyll can accompany her and ensure that she at least has a True Companion at her side to greet the legions of Avernus. Also, an additional scene added in patch 5 for the game suggests that there may be a way to permanently fix her engine, if she and a companion can pull off a heist in Avernus.
• Nice Girl: Unstoppable Rage and Lady Swears-a-Lot tendencies aside, Karlach is one of the kindest and most genuinely good-hearted of the Origin companions, and consistently approves of heroic actions.
• One Head Taller: Than any character that doesn't have the Large body type she has. It makes her even more imposing than her hellish looks already do, plus it looks plain adorable whenever she kisses an average-sized character, not to mention a gnome or dwarf.
• Overrated and Underleveled: For a soldier with ten years of experience in the Blood War to the point she became The Royal Favorite of Zariel, Karlach should be well above level 1 at the beginning of the game. The explanation is that her infernal engine is malfunctioning outside of Avernus, which means she has to work back up on the Material Plane the hard way.
• Playing with Fire: Thanks to the infernal engine Karlach has for a heart, she's hot to the touch, to the point that even a quick tap of her skin is likely to burn anyone else. Her personal quest involves finding enough materials to cool this engine down enough for someone else to make contact without burning themselves.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: An unusually optimal playstyle for her. Barbarians benefit more than any other class from the Great Weapon Mastery feat, which lets them choose to significantly reduce their chance to hit in order to greatly increase their damage and also grants bonus attacks for scoring critical hits or killing enemies. Barbarians are a Critical Hit Class with Reckless Attack, which lets them re-roll misses at the expense of giving enemies Advantage against them, which means that Karlach can benefit greatly from the feat's advantages while mitigating its weaknesses in a way that Lae'zel or Minthara (your other NPC great weapon users) couldn't.
• Percussive Therapy: After the party takes out the so-called Paladins of Tyr who are hunting her, Karlach celebrates by going absolutely berserk on the tollhouse, smashing furniture and walls to pieces while screaming and setting the place on fire. A tooltip mentions that she's releasing "ten years of pent-up frustration", and she seems much happier after she calms down.
• Promoted to Playable: During early access she was initially just an NPC encounter, but she was so well received that come the official release she was completely reworked to a playable Origin character/companion.
• The Pollyanna: Downplayed, as she is genuinely The Berserker and sweary, but when calm, Karlach is extremely optimistic, sweet-natured, and friendly.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Inverted; Karlach is one of the two companions in your camp that's clearly on the good side and she has a red and black color scheme. She can be a counterpart to the default form of Dark Urge's White and Red and Eerie All Over this way, especially on an evil run on your part.
• Red Baron: Although mostly used in promotional material, you really shouldn't mess with someone called the Fury of Avernus.
• Royal Favorite: Zariel treated her with favoritism, which puzzled many, including Karlach herself, since as far as they know Karlach isn't special. Karlach suspects that jealousy of this favoritism is why Mizora detests her so much.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: If you side with the goblins and kill the refugees and druids for them, Karlach will leave the party. You cannot prevent her from leaving if you do this.
• Soldier vs. Warrior: She's the Warrior to Lae'zel's Soldier, having a comparatively relaxed demeanor and a less polished fighting style that focuses on aggression over technique. Unusually, they get along pretty well.
• Stepford Smiler: Behind her amicable, romantic personality is actually a deeply traumatized and scared woman. Considering her Infernal Engine could kill her if she gets too angry, it's implied she's had to force herself to look on the bright side of life lest she be reduced to ashes. If you choose to kill Gortash with her present, the bottled up pain of his betrayal and the subsequent 10 years fighting in the Hells comes gushing out all at once.
• Square Race, Round Class: Downplayed, but as a tiefling she gets racial spellcasting ability (specifically the ability to cast to Smite spells that add extra damage to a melee attack) which clashes with her default class, Barbarian, whose main feature is the ability to Rage, which prevents spellcasting while it's active. Her other racial abilities, Darkvision and resistance to fire damage, are still perfectly useful, though.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: She has the Large body type. Any player character that doesn't will be at least half a head shorter than her, forcing them to stand on their tiptoes and Karlach to bend down to them while sharing a kiss. Gnomes, dwarves and halflings barely reach up to her navel, taking the trope to its fantastic extreme.
• Unkempt Beauty: Exaggerated. She's a barbarian with years of service in The Legions of Hell, which means she's (a) an imposing Amazonian Beauty in her physical prime, and (b) the recipient of enough scars, mutations, and weird demonic prosthetics to stray into Body Horror territory.
• Unstoppable Rage: Aside from the usual for her class, she also unleashes ten years of pent-up rage on the nearby furniture after killing the fake paladins who were tailing her. Once her target is dead, she promptly smashes the entire arena where the target was fought, without the player being able to control Karlach or stop her from doing it.
• Vegetarian Vampire: Becomes a mind flayer version of this if she undergoes ceremorphosis to save Baldur's Gate. Karlach will explain that she has an arrangement with a healer for the terminally ill, and approaches select patients when their situations deteriorate. Her new mind flayer powers ensure that she can painlessly euthanize them if they consent, and she retains much of their memories, becoming a kind of repository for all those she has devoured.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Despite being the one responsible for her heart being replaced by a machine that's killing her, killing Gortash brings her no satisfaction because at the end of the day it changes nothing about the fact that she's still Living on Borrowed Time. She's actually a lot happier if she sees Gortash get one-shotted by the Absolute, which can ironically only happen if you allied with him despite her objections.
• You Are Worth Hell: The only way she can survive the end of the game (without turning into a mind flayer) is if she returns to Avernus after the final battle. Should she be convinced to do that, a romanced player and/or Wyll (if he chose to become the blade of avernus) can choose to come with her to keep her company and help protect her from Zariel's forces.
• Younger Than They Look: Dialogue implies she was sold into infernal slavery well before she came of age, ten years before the events of the game, which would place Karlach in her early to mid-twenties, although her bulk and battle scars make her look quite a bit older.
• Your Days Are Numbered: The Infernal Engine that makes up her heart is too hot to function in the Prime Material Plane. It's slowly melting and the only way it can properly function is to return to Avernus. Karlach is perfectly fine with leaving it to melt as it means she dies free.

Lae'zel

Lae'zel

Ferocious Warrior

Voiced by: Devora Wilde

"Who am I? Your only chance of survival. And you mine, though it pains me to say it."

Race: Githyanki
Class: Fighter
Background: Soldier
Place of Origin: Crèche K'liir (a.k.a. Stardock)

A fearsome githyanki warrior, considered ferocious even by her own people. Lae'zel now faces the prospect of becoming the very monster she's been raised to destroy.

---

• Anti-Hero: While La'zael may come across as ruthless and cruel, she's lawful neutral at worst. She never lures any people to their deaths, and she doesn't torture anyone. She's just guarded because she grew up in an evil cult and frankly came out of it much more well adjusted than, for example, Shadowheart. Lae'zel is also not actively a murderer. In fact, she says she thinks murder is pointless if you play as the Dark Urge. On top of that, her character arc can culminate with her either choosing to become her own person or joining the fight to free Githyanki from Vlaakith's control.
• Babies Ever After: If she still has the gith egg from Crèche Y'llek in her inventory at the end of the game, and turns against Vlaakith, the epilogue will reveal it has hatched. She names the resulting gith boy Xan, "freedom," and vows that he will have the freedom to choose his own path in life, either raising him herself if she remained in Faerûn or entrusting him to other followers of Orpheus if she went to war with Vlaakith in the Astral Plane.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Lae’Zel dreams of riding a red dragon into battle and wielding a silver sword. Unless you persuade her into staying loyal to Vlaakith despite seeing Orpheus, she will achieve this goal at the end of the game. She gets the silver sword by finding out the truth behind Vlaakith, that she’s nothing more than a usurper who stole her throne from Mother Gith herself, painfully upending her whole existence. She is then gifted a dragon by Orpheus - but either because Orpheus will make the ultimate sacrifice of becoming a Mind Flayer to save the world from the Grand Design, or because one of her most loyal allies made that sacrifice (or if Gale uses his Fantastic Orb through a series of specific Guide Dang It! steps). Whatever happens, it’s a very bittersweet moment.
• Best Her to Bed Her: She's a firm believer that her mates have to be as strong or stronger than her, as per githyanki culture. The first time she hits on the player is because their strength turns her on. This comes up often during her romance until she actually causes you injury when invoking it. She then utters a Declaration of Protection instead.
  Tav: My bruises still sting from our battle.
  Lae'zel: Exquisite, isn't it? The pain is a mutual promise branded on our flesh and bone. Inside your every wound lives my obsession. Inside my every wound lives your passion.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: When your party suffers their first brush with ceremorphosis, Lae'zel decides that she would rather die as herself than be consumed — and offers this same mercy to the rest of you. The player can talk her down, but even then she insists that if you haven't improved by morning, she will kill you all.
• BFS: Encouraged as a weapon for her via Player Nudge. Greatswords are amongst the best weapons for fighters due to their high, consistent damage, and githyanki warriors are famous for their ornate silver greatswords (many of which you will be able to loot, and some of which have racially-exclusive bonuses). It's probably not a coincidence that her profile picture has her wielding one.
• Blood Knight: She greatly enjoys combat and bloodshed, as expected of a githyanki warrior. Her romance scene even starts with her lustfully recounting how many kills the player racked up during the fight in the Goblin camp.
• Brutal Honesty: In a game filled with enigmatic companions who are keeping tons of secrets, she's notably the one who's most upfront with the player, even if her suggestions and opinions are often brutally harsh and/or morally reprehensible.
• Child Hater: She's the only companion who disapproves of saving the tiefling child Arabella. She has no sympathy for the githyanki youth who are killed during their training for being "weak", and she scornfully remarks, when asked about the differences between githyanki and human biology, that she couldn't imagine enjoying sex if she knew she risked getting pregnant from it.
• Crisis of Faith: Lae’Zel starts the game having been raised in Vlaakith’s cult for her entire life. In a few short months, she learns Vlaakith doesn’t know anything about how to stop mind flayers and that ‘tadpole purification’ means killing the infected, has Vlaakith order her knights to ruthlessly hunt her, and learns that Orpheus was alive the whole time and thus all the ‘heretical’ stories about Vlaakith sacrificing Gith to the hells were in fact true.
• Cultural Posturing: Lae'zel believes that githyanki are simply better at everything than all other races, from warfare to statecraft to child-rearing. It gets particularly silly when she insists, completely earnestly, that githyanki noses are superior to the "inelegant lumps of flesh" that other species have and takes umbrage at the description of githyanki as a "humanoid" species.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: The Proud Warrior Race Girl. The githyanki are a proud, dogmatic and fiercely militaristic and xenophobic race (effectively interdimensional fascists via He Who Fights Monsters), and Lae'zel is deeply invested into their culture... but by their standards she's practically a Wide-Eyed Idealist. It comes to the point where Lae'zel actually begins to get cognitive dissonance when faced with the ever-increasing evidence that her fellow githyanki's "purification protocol" for ghaik infectees is just murdering said infectee, rather than doing anything to help. Sure enough, they eventually fully turn on her, despite Lae'zel potentially bringing them the weapon. And yet, in spite of this, Lae'zel manages to convince herself that this must be some kind of test of Vlaakith. This is despite the player character already having realized what she hasn't — no matter what Lae'zel did for Vlaakith, her queen had ordered Lae'zel dead. Lae'zel's obsession with her culture and inability to deal with how paradoxical it is end up making her look pretty pathetic, but there's an element of tragedy to it too. Lae'zel shows how cultures like these are far less stable and cohesive than they might appear, and that they breed individuals who struggle to think for themselves in spite of their incredible martial prowess.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Part of her romance arc involves this. She's initially hostile toward Shadowheart for a few reasons, such as being a non-gith and stole a githyanki artifact, but Lae'zel does warm up to her eventually. She's equal parts baffled and horrified when she sees how much Shar and her cult demand of Shadowheart and what it costs her, even though she's a devout follower. If Shadowheart turns away from Shar and converts, Lae'zel becomes considerably more friendly with her.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Most githyanki are outsiders to the Material Plane, so Lae'zel is as unfamiliar with its customs and inhabitants as she is devoted to her own culture. For example, the devs mention that she'd be confused if you protested her sleeping with someone else if romanced, because the gith don't practice monogamy.
  Wyll: Lae'zel, have you ever performed a good deed just for the sake of it?
  Lae'zel: I have performed tasks well and efficiently. Is this what you mean?
  Wyll: ...Not exactly. But you've answered my question.
• Do You Want to Copulate?: Lae'zel doesn't mince words when she's interested in a sexual partner. There's a reason sex speedruns were based around her character.
• Dramatic Irony: If the player confronts Voss in Act 1 without Lae'zel in the party, she will remark that she is impressed you survived, as a lesser person would have been dead on the road after an encounter with her kin. Should the player fail to recruit Lae'zel in Act 1, this is precisely her fate: she will be found dead on the road near the northwestern gate, having presumably been killed by her own kin.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Like the rest of the companions, Lae'zel doesn't approve of Mystra commanding Gale to sacrifice himself by detonating the Netherese Orb to take out the Absolute. She even unfavorably compares her to Vlaakith, although the comparison isn't too far off the mark, given Vlaakith's attitude towards her "children".
  • For all her problems and tensions with Shadowheart, Lae'zel expresses nothing but confusion and fear for her during Shadowheart's personal quest, finding the lengths the Sharran priesthood go to test her unwarranted as even she can tell right off the bat Shadowheart has been nothing but a loyal follower of her goddess.
  • If the Player Character is the Dark Urge and has been indulging their instincts, Lae'zel is one of the harshest voices of condemnation in the party about their behavior and warns them to keep their hunger in check.
• Evil Virtues: She's harsh, xenophobic, quick to violence, and fanatically dedicated to her people's inter-planar crusade. She's also loyal, honorable, and courageous to a fault.
• Fantastic Racism: Towards all non-gith and quite overt about it. Though by githyanki standards, her willingness to work with other races and her apparent sincerity in seeking a cure for the entire party makes her remarkably inclusive.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Shadowheart. Shadowheart doesn't have the highest opinions of githyanki in general, and Lae'zel is suspicious and hostile of Shadowheart because her artifact is a gith relic. Suffice to say, the two get into frequent arguments and will threaten to kill each other unless you get involved. That said, they do eventually soften up around each other, particularly after Lae'zel realizes how Vlaakith is far from the ruler she expected her to be and Shadowheart is abandoned by Shar.
• First Girl Wins: Lae'zel is both the first companion you meet as well as the first female companion you meet. This trope goes into full effect if the player chooses to romance her.
• For the Evulz: If you sell Astarion out to the monster hunter Cazador hired to track him down, she calls you out for being selfish and shortsighted, since you need all the help you can get, but still approves of just how cruel it was nevertheless.
• Hidden Depths:
  • If you dive into her thoughts, you'll find that her greatest fear isn't actually turning — it's insignificance.
  • Lae'zel describes at length (and with great pride) the vast stores of knowledge the githyanki have collected in their libraries, implying some Bookworm tendencies (or at least, more appreciation for Bookworm tendencies than her warlike demeanor might suggest).
• Hypocrite: She's abrasive, and dismissive of everyone around her who isn't of use to her. She dislikes helping other, or being merciful. But whenever she's treated the same way she reacts poorly and assumes something must be wrong with whomever she's talking to, despite the fact that she'd do the exact same if the positions were reversed.
• I Choose to Stay: She can make this choice in one of her endings, declining Voss' offer to return to the Astral Plane in favor of staying in Faerûn to fight Vlaakith's forces there.
• In Love with Your Carnage: If the main character chooses to kill the goblin leaders, talking with her at the party that night will have her say that the main character stinks of blood, violence, and death and she is incredibly turned on by it. If the main character hasn't already committed to spending the night with someone else, she'll proposition them.
• Intro-Only Point of View: La'ezel features prominently in the game's opening cutscene and the prologue mission where you escape the Nautiloid, but unless you pick her as your Avatar, she won't be any more relevant to the overall plot than the other Origin companions. You can even play the rest of the game without properly recruiting her, or even after killing her partway.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Lae'zel carries herself like a queen, exudes an aura equal parts confidence and arrogance, and clearly expects the rest of you to fall in line behind her. Even her name is "proud, regal even" according to Voss. She's also terrified that she'll never accomplish anything in her life, to the point that it overshadows her fear of becoming a mind flayer.
• I Reject Your Reality: Each time she is confronted with signs that githyanki society and her queen would kill her in an instant rather than save her, she dismisses it as whoever or whatever she's talking about being corrupted and someone up the hierarchy from them will clearly fix this. The player can call her out on this after Vlaakith herself sicks her inquisitor on her and Lae'zel decides this must be a test for faith from Vlaakith. She can only reply she needs time to think this over.
• Jerkass Has a Point: She is very single minded on removing the tadpole early on, and will disapprove of you taking actions which delay this. However, considering that early on, you don’t know about the Astral Prism or the fact the tadpole is modified, and therefore you could turn into mind flayers at any moment, she definitely isn’t wrong that it needs to be your priority.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Lae'zel disapproves of pretty much everything that doesn't involve removing the tadpole, which she will make excruciatingly clear to you. Loudly. And often. That said, she is a fiercely loyal woman to her companions should she be treated right and is rather appalled by the Dark Urge giving in to their bloodlust.
• Join or Die: She gives the player this ultimatum when they meet after escaping the Nautiloid. This is no idle threat, either, as she will turn hostile toward the party once she's freed if they don't side against the tieflings harassing her.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • If you fail to talk down Lae'zel and Shadowheart during their confrontation over the artefact and they agree to duel at dawn, Shadowheart will slit Lae'zel's throat just before sunrise.
  • This is also Lae'zel's fate if the player never recruits her in Act I. A return to the first zone will reveal that she has evidently attempted to travel to the githyanki creche alone, as her bloodied corpse is found at the northwestern gate where the githyanki patrol is first encountered.
  • If Lae'zel remains loyal to her Queen, she ultimately ascends as she desires - meaning she's killed and her soul consumed by the Lich-Queen. In the epilogue, Withers will confirm this is what happened to her.
• Lightning Bruiser: She can equip the heaviest armour and joint-heaviest weaponry of any Origin character, with only Minthara matching her amongst your recruitable NPCs, and her githyanki psionics and the Action Surges she gets for being a fighter make her extremely mobile and extremely capable of dishing out absurd amounts of attacks in a single turn, or increasing her jumping distance to easily close the gap. With the right equipment, she can also be hard to attack magically thanks to the many githyanki exclusive items that give bonuses to mental stats, making her really hard to kill. This is taken further if made a Champion fighter, which does away with special abilities in favor of making her good in battle overall, and letting her crit easier.
• Literal-Minded: Much of her banter tends to involve her taking statements at face-value due to lacking the understanding of what someone means. Demonstrated in this bit of party banter.
  Shadowheart: So, have we buried the hatchet, Lae'zel?
  Laezel: No. Why would I bury a weapon? Is it broken?
  Shadowheart: It's a metaphor.
  Lae'zel: I do not know your metaphor, but if you need help digging, I will find a shovel.
• Language Equals Thought: If she is the one who gets kidnapped by Orin in Act 3 and is successfully rescued afterward, she will have a camp conversation where she reveals that the closest term in the Githyanki language to "thank you" literally translates to "may your enemies suffer exquisite agony" but there's no term for simply expressing gratitude.
• Lying by Omission: Lae'zel's blind obedience to githyanki protocol ironically helps the party in the first confrontation with Kith'rak Voss. Voss will point-blank demand the Astral Prism, only for Lae'zel to focus so single-mindedly on "purification" as the top priority that she bypasses the question entirely. She is so Literal-Minded that it's questionable whether she is intentionally lying, but it has the same effect either way.
• Magic Knight: Downplayed. Multiclass mage/fighters and fighter/psions^note A combination they call "gish", which has since become an out-of-universe slang term for mage/knights across D&D and other tabletop RPGs are common among githyanki, and she naturally gains a number of innate racial Psychic Powers as she levels up, along with those granted by the parasite. As a 5th edition fighter, she can also become an Eldritch Knight and gain access to spells and cantrips, but her average INT means she's not the best at it unless you specifically choose to have Withers respec her for a better starting stat balance.
• Multi-Melee Master: As a fighter, she's the only companion who starts out proficient with all weapons. And since she has the highest strength score, and thus the highest carrying capacity, she'll probably be the one carrying all those heavy-yet-sellable weapons you find. Though this can also see practical usage, if she's carrying the right weapons to quickly switch between damage types and exploit different vulnerabilities.
• Noble Demon: Githyanki are generally considered brutal, xenophobic raiders and slavers who still have a deep sense of martial honor and courage. Lae'zel is no exception, starting off rude and distrustful but quickly becoming one of the most loyal members of the party if you treat her well. She's also genuine about wanting to cure the rest of the party of their mind flayer parasites rather than simply using them purely for her own gain.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Mean of Early Access' three "evil" companions; while she's a genuinely honorable and loyal companion who seems sincere in wanting you all cured, she's easily the most abrasive of the group, bossy, short-tempered, and utterly disdainful of anyone and anything not githyanki. The release version shifted the Mean role mostly on Astarion's uncompromising selfishness and cruelty, making the still highly abrasive but loyal and honorable Lae'zel the In-Between. Astarion also more broadly disapproves of "good" choices, while Lae'zel can be supportive of choices that display honor or loyalty.
• Odd Friendship: Some of her nicest, least confrontational party banter is with Nice Guy nerd Gale, as she responds positively to his genuine curiosity about the githyanki. She even attempts to joke around with him!
• Pair the Spares: If not romanced, she will sleep with another member of the party that the player hasn't romanced, though it's made clear that casual sex is the only thing she's after. Amusingly, if the player inquires about it after, she'll be quite satisfied with Astarion's performance and quite unsatisfied with Wyll. She'll also try to sleep with Gale, but he spends so much time talking to her that it ends up not even happening.
• Perpetual Frowner: Her most common facial expression is a disdainful scowl. The only alternatives she's capable of is an enraged scowl when provoked, and a look of surprise and utter reverence when faced with githyanki that're really high up in their hierarchy.
• Pet the Dog: She will approve of talking Wyll down from killing Karlach.
  • She will also question the necessity of Mystra's order that Gale use the orb in him to blow up the Absolute, killing himself and who knows how many others in the process. She notes that his brilliant mind, along with the rest of the party's talents, surely are enough and that Mystra should have more faith in them. It's shockingly complimentary for one who usually has nothing but barbs ready.
  • If Karlach becomes an illithid, Lae'zel will admit that for the first time she's happy to hear a Mind Flayer will live, because doing so saved Karlach.
  • Normally, Lae'zel and Shadowheart get along very poorly, but if Shadowheart abandons Shar, Lae'zel becomes more friendly towards her and encourages her to take revenge on Shar, and says that Shar never deserved Shadowheart's devotion.
  • When talking to Danis and Bex, the tiefling couple who want to get themselves a pet cat in Baldur's Gate, and while most of the options are dismissive, she can ask about it and eventually one of the options is to express approval to their choice in the most githyanki way possible.
    Lae'zel: A vermin hunter? I approve.
  • Should Astarion ascend, Lae'zel won't be too happy with it, noting that githyanki seek power in order to strengthen the collective, not for individual gain. Depending on how her story is progressed, she will then note the party as an example of a collective whose strength she values.
• Pragmatic Villainy: She's one of the few party members who doesn't object to evil actions on principle, but does consider over-indulgence to be wasteful, particularly if using The Dark Urge origin.
  Lae'zel: Many a good warrior savours the sccent of blood in the air. There's no shame in a capricious murder now and again. Too many, though, and you waste energy and dull your weapon.
• Proud Warrior Race Girl: Both gith races are ancient foes of mind flayers, and the githyanki are the ones known for their brutality. Lae'zel is as brusque and quick to violence as is expected of a githyanki soldier.
• Psychic Powers: A racial trait among gith, all githyanki start with the Mage Hand cantrip and can cast the Jump spell at level 3.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When he tries to have her executed, Lae'zel assumes Kith'rak Voss is a traitor to Vlaakith. She's correct, but that had nothing to do with it, he was simply acting as a Kith'rak would — and offering her a quicker death than in a Zaith'isk. That said, Kith'rak Voss IS a traitor, as he's secretly a supporter of the Son of Gith.
• Sex Goddess: She's very confident about her sexual prowess, and often brags about it. Given how utterly spent the player is the morning after they sleep with her, it's not just empty boasting.
  Narrator: Your whole body aches. Even your tongue is tired.
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • Lae'zel acts like an experienced warrior destined for greatness and is better than everyone around her, even considering herself her "Queen's chosen". Turns out she's a nobody in githyanki society, still living with her crèche in the Material Plane instead of the Astral Plane home of githyanki "adults", implying she hasn't completed her Rite of Passage and thus is still considered a child. When she interacts with Kith'rak Voss and his patrol, he even addresses her as "child" and puts her down for overreaching her station when she starts making demands.
  • This even colors her view of her own culture. Lae'zel will proudly talk about how she had to kill some of her clutchmates when training as a child because they were weak and how that's how her culture operates. She'll constantly suggest the player should kill people for pragmatic reasons or because they are weak. She'll disapprove of the player helping the weak. But whenever someone else in her society turns around and treats her as equally disposable, Lae'zel assumes they must be corrupt. She similarly reacts poorly when her people see her as not worth helping or saving despite the fact she reacts the same when she's on the other side.
• Soldier Versus Warrior: She's the Soldier to Karlach's Warrior. Lae'zel is cold, reserved, and disciplined, with training that makes her more tactically flexible in battle at the expense of raw damage. Unusually, Karlach is one of the only party members that Lae'zel doesn't hold in total disdain.
• The Team Normal: Everyone in the party is some kind of unique being, ranging from a servant of a god like Shadowheart and (at least slightly) Gale, to having enhanced abilities or features because of something thrusted upon them (Astarion and Karlach for instance). Lae'zel by contrast is a normal gith warrior who happened to end up becoming involved in the events of the game by chance. Even by the standards of her people, she is a near Magically Inept Fighter, and as she opposes mind flayers, she's more likely to not use the tadpole powers, making her pretty much the most normal warrior of the group.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She says as much herself about being forced to work with "lesser races" in general, but it's especially prevalent with Shadowheart. They're so diametrically opposed to each other that almost every choice that raises one's approval will lower the other's. Even things she normally approves of -- like prioritizing removing the tadpole above all else -- will earn her disapproval if Shadowheart recommends it and you agree. That said, depending on the Character Development Lae'zel and Shadowheart undergo, they can become friendlier and learn to respect one another. Especially if Lae'zel becomes disillusioned with Vlaakith and Shadowheart abandons Shar for Selune.
• Token Heroic Orc: If she is the Player Character avatar, she can be portrayed in this light. Yes, she's a githyanki, but she can be made to lack her kind's xenophobic attitude. Subverted if she's an NPC companion otherwise, in which case she's proud to be githyanki and won't hesitate to remind you. Depending on her Character Development, even her NPC can become much more heroic, especially during act 3, where she will oppose most evil actions.
• Training from Hell: If Tav is also a githyanki, she'll remind them that your people's basic training involves beating, burning, and poisoning.
• Tsundere: Despite being the most outwardly hostile of your party members, she's actually by far the easiest to get on her good side and subsequently to romance. If you do romance her, then she's harsh type definitely, as she's constantly abrasive towards you until you defrost her in which you get to see her sweet side.
• Uncertain Doom: If Lae'zel does not turn against Vlaakith and returns to her people on a Red Dragon, there is a short cutscene where she prepares for ascension before Vlaakith herself-surrounded by undead Githyanki, as Vlaakith levitates a sword over her head. In the epilogue, Withers states that he could not locate Lae'zel if she was loyal to Vlaakith, and elaborates that ascension is consumption by the lich queen.
• Undying Loyalty: As a githyanki, she is exceedingly loyal to Queen Vlaakith and her race as a whole. Her experiences throughout the game and witnessing the githyanki's general Jerkass attitude for her own eyes and being on the receiving end by association with the party shakes her loyalty, but she's convinced her faith is simply being tested...until Vlaakith orders her and the party's deaths. Her loyalty is also further tested when she meets Prince Orpheus, another royal githyanki. Depending on how you end her personal quest, Lae'zel will either still be loyal, but now fully aware her people are nowhere near as "perfect" as she once thought or hunted down for assisting Orpheus for killing Queen Vlaakith.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: The githyanki equivalent, anyway. Lae'zel fully buys into her culture's internal propaganda and is blind to their more unsavory ways, particularly the more "Lawful Evil" aspects of Githyanki culture or how anyone higher up their tight social ladder tends to view those beneath them as completely disposable. She believes that tracking down her people is the best way to get rid of the tadpoles, and is horrified when Kith'rak Voss — the Dragon Rider in charge — merely orders his soldiers to execute her and the party, refusing to believe that any true githyanki of his rank would even consider such a thing and instead rationalizing that he must be a traitor. When the cure is revealed to be designed to kill her, she assumes someone must've tampered with it, and that the Creche's inquisitor will resolve this. When Vlaakith orders said inquisitor to kill her (after promising Lae'zel "ascension"), she decides it was all a test of faith from her Queen. Only after reflecting on this for a while does she finally start coming around to the idea that maybe it was all a lie.
• Would Hurt a Child: Implied. She disapproves of saving the tiefling child Arabella, and of you calling Kagha a monster for threatening or killing the girl.
• Younger than She Looks: Implied. While gith ages are admittedly hard to gauge relative to humans, Lae'zel certainly talks and carries herself like an experienced warrior — But then when you meet a gith patrol, Kith'rak Voss derogatorily calls her "child" and she doesn't correct him, although this may be at least partially out of deference to his rank. Her official age is stated to be 22, which is relatively young. Further complicating matters is the fact that githyanki are usually raised on the material plane until they prove themselves worthy of being called adults, and then migrate to the Astral Plane — where time as we understand it stops passing — and they can go for hundreds or even thousands of years without aging. It's noteworthy that her origin cinematic explicitly states that she is undertaking her coming-of-age ceremony, so its unlikely that she is older than her very early twenties at the most.

Shadowheart

Shadowheart

Loyal Warrior

Voiced by: Jennifer English

"We're in this together, but I'll happily go it alone. My faith will keep me company."

Race: High Half-Elf
Class: Cleric (Trickery Domain)
Background: Urchin (Early Access), Acolyte (Full Release)
Place of Origin: Baldur's Gate

A half-elf cleric of Shar, the infamous goddess of darkness and loss. While out on a secret mission that killed the rest of her team, Shadowheart was captured by the mind flayers and infected with a tadpole. Now beset by enemies on all sides, her faith in her goddess will be tested throughout her journey.

---

• Affably Evil: She's a worshipper of Shar and can act haughty at first, but netting her approval — which can be done via good deeds and talking your way out of fights — can lead to her being very kind and almost sweet to the player. She's also very grateful if they save her from the Nautiloid. The evil part can be removed if she spares the Nightsong and converts to Selûne.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She has long dark hair and usually acts very aloof and haughty.
• Amnesiac Hero: She eventually reveals that a large part of her memories were taken/suppressed by the Sharran church for the sake of her mission. She's pretty sure she'll get them back if she succeeds. You later learn that she's actually had her memories wiped numerous times during her training with the priesthood, including torture sessions where she unknowingly hurt her parents.
• Animal Lover: Kindness to animals is a sure way to get approval from her, and in the Epilogue playing a route where she rejects Shar sees her settled into a farmhouse full of pets.
• Anti-Hero: Shadowheart is a devout Sharran with a strong sense of duty, seeking to carry out Shar's will with almost single-minded fervor. Fitting for someone of her faith, Shadowheart holds the goddess Selûne and her followers in extremely low regard. Regarding personal matters, she's known to be secretive and private, not abiding her boundaries being disrespected. However, despite her fanatical worship of Shar and initial coldness, she's one of the nicest companions in the game and can ultimately become an outright hero by rejecting Shar and turning to worship Selûne instead.
• Armor-Piercing Question: All a morally good Tav with high approval has to do to induce the doubt Shadowheart already experiences towards Shar during her pivotal choices is ask whether Shar's path is what she really wants. Trusting her leads to the same outcomes as persuading her.
• Awful Truth: As she learns in Act 2, Shadowheart is not a street urchin nor was she adopted into the Shar priesthood. She was actually an initiate of Shar's sister and rival deity and was in fact kidnapped alongside her parents. Her memories were wiped afterward. Learning this breaks Shadowheart immensely; while she does break away from the Shar priesthood and is promptly condemned by her former goddess for it, she has no clue what to do until she learns her parents are still alive and held captive.
• Believing Their Own Lies: A persistent subtext throughout Shadowheart's lines where she shares the specifics of her upbringing in the Coven is that she's not trying to convince you, but herself.
• Berserk Button: Attempting to make light of her phobias is a surefire way to set her off.
• Break Them by Talking: One reason Shadowheart respects cunning and diversion from the PC is that her training taught her that the most effective torture exploits fear of pain and loss more than pain itself.
• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: Played with. She's certainly not brutish by any definition of the word, but the most effective weapons she's proficient in are maces, flails, and morningstars, which are certainly vicious enough to be appropriate to her Religion of Evil (even if she wouldn't see it that way). Subverted in that the weapon given by her personal quest, regardless of how you solve it, is a spear; a more "refined" weapon.
• Call to Agriculture: If Shadowheart rejects Shar and saves her parents, the epilogue reveals that the three of them (and the Player Character if she was romanced) have settled down in an isolated cottage, surrounded by night orchids and accompanied by several pets.
• Casual Kink: Probably has the most "hints" of the companions:
  • Her response to watching your cleansing at the hand of a Lovitar priest is to praise the priest's whipping technique and ask him to leave something of you for her.
  • Of the romanceable Origin companions, while she's not the only one willing to engage with the drow twins in Sharess' Caress, she's by far the most enthusiastic; She quickly adapts to the body worship roleplay, and the DM describes the orgy as "The night skips on, filled with fantasies Shadowheart seemed all too primed to suggest" in the fade to black. Participating in this orgy also grants her Inspiration.
  • She's quite commanding in all her sex scenes, though it's even clearer if she became a Dark Justiciar. In the latter case, she can also berate a player for being "too gentle" depending on dialogue choices.
  • If you figure out that a deceased dog's collar is tied to a magical food dispenser in the Arcane Tower, most of the companions keep their reaction fairly close to the facts. Shadowheart?
    Shadowheart: Well look at that, self-service for a pet. Or other collar-wearer, I suppose...
  • Should the party rest in the grove immediately after talking to Nettie, Shadowheart can ask Tav what they'll do if she starts turning; Tav can reply that they'd tie Shadowheart up long enough to find a cure. While her initial reply is more serious, reiterating that she'd "just kill you," her parting remark is more cheeky:
    Shadowheart: Anyway, get some rest. Try not to dream about tying me up.
  • If you romance both her and Halsin, she is very open to the idea and her one condition is that you tell her all about "climbing Mount Halsin" after you do the deed. If he also participates in the aforementioned orgy, she will admit she thought about inviting him for a threesome multiple times and outright dreamt about it at least once. In idle banter she will also tease him about his shapeshifting Power Perversion Potential.
  • Her reaction upon finding out Astarion is a vampire spawn:
    Shadowheart: Maybe we could get him to wear a bell? Dissuade any night-time prowling.
  • A possible line from her when playing the flute as part of Gale's resurrection protocol:
    Shadowheart: Pretty tune. You're better with your mouth than I would have figured.
  • If you follow the suspicious sound in Moonrise Towers and reach into the hole you find as a result, once you pull yourself free, Shadowheart has this to say. For bonus points, she smirks during the latter half of this sentence, making it clear the entendre was not lost on her:
    Shadowheart: Careful, in future - you can't just stick your hand in every strange hole you come across.
  • A potential bit of late-game banter between her and Gale:
    Shadowheart: Why must the Dead Three be so obvious and ugly with their decor? Blood and bones. Bones and blood. Pointy nonsense. At least Shar had some panache.^note Or "Now Lady Shar - she has panache.", depending on whether she spared or killed the Nightsong
    Gale: As did Mystra's home on Elysium. Her ribbed vaults and buttresses created a magic entirely of their own. Not to mention her pleasure domes...
    Shadowheart: Heh. 'Pleasure dome'.
    Gale: It's a perfectly legitimate architectural feature!
• Chekhov's Gun: That relic she's carrying around? Yeah, turns out it's not only a very important githyanki artifact, but it's also the only reason why none of your companions have turned into mindless thralls as the being trapped within the artifact is shielding their minds from the tadpoles, and by extension, the Netherbrain.
• The Chosen One: She was chosen by Shar to be her champion and proof that she can corrupt her sister Selûne's most faithful. Whether or not she becomes this, is up to the choices of the player.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Depends. It seems Shadowheart doesn't want to share you with the characters that are available as an origin, but allows you to have relationships with some of those that are not. Also, if you haven't yet seen her final romance scene before trying to engage in an orgy with her and two courtesans at a brothel, she'll object on the grounds that she wants your first time to be just her and you; but if you bring her after that scene, she's 100% on board.
• Combat Medic: Clerics are this pretty much by default, combining basic healing spells with decent combat abilities. Her Trickery domain means she doesn't excel in either of the two, but it's still the best you'll get unless you're playing a Life domain cleric yourself, who are the true healers in the D&D class system but not available as a companion. Shadowheart being the first permanent party member you can recruit gives her bonus medic points. That said, you're free to respec her into a Life domain cleric to strengthen her healing abilities, which even serves as Gameplay and Story Integration if she became a cleric of Selûne in Act II.
• Combat Pragmatist: When Shadowheart and Lae'zel eventually clash over the former having an artifact belonging to the latter's people, if you ask them how they want to resolve the issue, Lae'zel suggests trial by combat, which Shadowheart accepts. Lae'zel taunts Shadowheart by telling her to be ready to duel at the break of dawn. Shadowheart does so by getting up before Lae'zel does and attempt to slit her throat before everyone wakes up. Fortunately,you are awoken by the commotion and can make the two come to a truce.
• Cosmic Plaything: Shar's, more specifically. Despite having hundreds if not thousands of devotees all across Faerun, Shar really wants to make Shadowheart her most devout priest. Every time Shadowheart has faltered in her training or had doubts, Shar always dragged her back and wiped her memories. Its telling that her most screwed up test for her 'follower' is to have her kill her own birth parents. Even in the quest route where Shadowheart rejects Shar, she still presents Shadowheart with the choice of killing her parents as doing so is the only way to be free of her; a final "screw you", to put it lightly. Keep in mind, Shar did all of this just to prove to her sister that she could corrupt her followers. It never had to be any Selunite in particular, Shadowheart was just the unlucky girl Shar chose for her "experiment".
• Crisis of Faith: She was raised by the church of Shar, so is loyal and devout, but has recently come to question their more overt cruelties. She finds Shar's teachings comforting, but there's a kindness in her that she herself is surprised at. The game itself even lampshades this, stating how the game will test her faith in Shar. Her personal quest can potentially end with Shadowheart being abandoned by Shar because she's too empathetic and kind, which ironically makes her an ideal follower for Shar's Arch-Enemy and rival deity Selûne.
• Dark Secret: She's a cleric of Shar, goddess of darkness, a banned Religion of Evil. She's not remotely ashamed of it, and believes she has every reason to mistrust others.
  • Her actual nature, that she was raised as a Selûnite, but kidnapped and brainwashed into a Sharran, and that her parents were alive and being tortured by Sharrans, is one to her.
• Dating Catwoman: The player can romance her even if they're good-aligned or a worshipper of Selûne, which would normally make Shadowheart close to an Arch-Enemy. Ironically, she's such a Minion with an F in Evil that it's easier this way. The trope can also be subverted if Shadowheart ends up converting to Selûne herself.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Fundamentalist, and possibly also The Sacred Darkness. Shadowheart is a Cleric of Shar, mistress of the night and goddess of darkness, loss, sorrow, misery, bitterness and entropy. She has sacrificed much in the name of her goddess and vehemently rejects and opposes other gods especially Selûne, which causes friction with a Selûne-worshipping Tav and to a lesser degree with the rest of the cast. Shadowheart claims that her faith brings her comfort but in truth, she is terrified of Shar and is mostly going along with the vile religion out of sheer fear of the goddesses' wrath and the promise that her memories will be returned upon completion of her holy mission. Upon learning that she was in fact raised by kindly worshippers of Selûne and kidnapped and brainwashed from a young age to be The Paragon of Shar, Shadowheart's faith is shattered and she falls into a deep depression and sense of humiliation that the "moon-witch" she has spent her entire life condemning is her real goddess.
• Decoy Backstory: Shadowheart claims that she was an orphan who was adopted by the Sharran temple. However, if she confronts the Nightsong in Act 2, the Nightsong tells her that this isn't true. Choosing to spare the Nightsong reveals that she was in fact the daughter of a pair of Selune worshipers and all three of them were captured by Shar's clergy on the eve of Shadowheart's initiation into Selune's service. Shadowheart's memories were magically erased in order to try and mold her into being the perfect champion for Shar.
• Deuteragonist: Downplayed — but in any playthrough where she isn't chosen as the protagonist, she still plays a major role due to holding the artefact keeping the party safe from the influence of the Absolute, is the only party member that forcibly joins your party even if you refuse her (due to the plot necessity of said artefact). She's also the only character outside the Dark Urge whose backstory ties into the main plot. Her stealing the artifact is what prompts both the Cult of the Absolute and the Githyanki to clash with one another, leading to the prologue and the start of the game.
• Does Not Like Spam: When initially resisting eating the Noblestalk mushroom, Shadowheart comments that she's not a fan of mushrooms in general.
  Shadowheart: I think it's because of the gills.
• Dramatic Irony: If you're romancing her as a Selûnite cleric, one dialog choice lets you ask her if she thinks Shar would disapprove of them being together. Shadowheart's response is to theorize that Shar wants her to convert you, and would be keen to see her lure a Selûnite into the darkness. Turns out this is exactly what happened to Shadowheart, who was raised as a Selûnite until she was kidnapped by Sharran cultists during her Rite of Passage. In addition, if you end up turning her away from Shar, then you've basically done exactly what she theorized Shar wanted her to do, just with the opposing goddess.
• Drowning My Sorrows: If you help the goblins kill the refugees, you'll find Shadowheart getting absolutely shitfaced afterward trying to forget what she just did.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the earliest phase of the beta, Shadowheart was far more standoffish and actively evil. Helping people would constantly lose you approval with her. This was a complaint with several of the starting companions, and this was toned down in some of the earliest patches when the initial feedback was that everyone but Gale and Wyll were too villainous. Shadowheart however is notable as by the final release, it's very obvious from the get go she's a Minion with an F in Evil and actually a fairly caring individual.
• Eating the Eye Candy: If you strip without turning around in her sex scene, she clearly enjoys every second of ogling your character.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As a cleric of Shar, she's no stranger to theft, betrayal, and/or murder, but she doesn't support acts of random or wanton cruelty, and she does have lines she isn't willing to cross. This is brought up in Viconia’s observations of Shadowheart, where she is bemused at how unsuited Shadowheart is to Shar worship.
  • Slaughtering the helpless tiefling refugees, including the children, upsets her so deeply that she tries to drink herself unconscious.
  • She'll be horrified at Kagha for killing Arabella simply for stealing. If the player acts surprised that she cares, she'll be offended that they think so low of her morals.
    Shadowheart: Do you truly think I'm that callous? A young life snuffed out isn't so easily shrugged off.
  • She's horrified that Mystra is demanding Gale sacrifice himself to kill the Absolute.
  • She'll shout that Lae'zel is about to die if you let her stay in the zaithisk purification.
  • She'll be horrified if you kill Isobel and cause everyone in Last Light to die from the shadow curse. This is especially notable since she, as a cleric of Shar, is upset with you when you kill a cleric of Selune, her goddess' most hated enemy, because of all of the collateral damage you cause while doing it. She is, however, apathetic to Isobel's fate if she dies as an indirect result of her killing the Nightsong, as she'll simply accept this outcome as a consequence of her Goddess's will.
• Evil Costume Switch: If she becomes a Dark Justiciar she alters her hair cut to more mirror her image of Shar. It's a more subtle change than if she turns on Shar, with her adding a parting to her hair and narrower bangs.
• Fantastic Racism: While Lae'zel just looks down on everyone regardless of race, Shadowheart is generally accepting but has some hostility towards the githyanki, derogatorily referring to them as "flat-noses". If you play as a gith yourself, unless you saved her on the Nautiloid, you have to pass a Persuasion check just to get her to join you at all. This is partly justified by the fact she's carrying an artifact stolen from the githyanki while on a mission that resulted in losing the rest of her squad; presumably, she views githyanki as enemy combatants and is hostile towards them as a result. She herself receives the brunt of Lae'zel's own bigotry compared to everyone else, and when you encounter githyanki soldiers with Shadowheart in your party they'll single her out for sniping, so the bigotry seems to go both ways.
  • Downplayed if you play as a Drow, but at the beginning she’ll say you’re ’not the kind of company she’d keep willingly, but that you’ll do’. Considering how Lolth-Sworn Drow look down upon surface elves and half-elves, she’s probably right to say that.
• Faux Action Girl: Downplayed and not really a reflection of her character in-story; though as a cleric she's a Combat Medic, and especially as a Trickery Domain cleric she's oriented more for rogue-like underhanded combat than purely healing. However, it's been noted that for some reason, Shadowheart has atrocious luck with her combat spells and weapon attack rolls, with many players reporting her missing or failing to hit her targets the majority of the time. Why this is exactly is unclear^note Trickery Domain is generally seen as the weakest overall cleric subclass, and with Shadowheart being more magic focused, likely she doesn't have enough support from her class features to stay consistent, given other cleric subclasses tend to focus on things she would benefit more from., but its become so notable that Larian themselves noted she actually has the highest number of deaths than any other companions. Still downplayed, as she still works well as an effective healer, and her poor attack rolls can be mitigated with AOE spells or passive damage spells like Spirit Guardians.
• Fire-Forged Friends: She's not initially keen on traveling with you despite having the same goal, and she is definitely not thrilled to be around Lae'zel or the Player Character if they play a githyanki, though she does come to befriend them at high approval. As you progress through the game, she slowly becomes more and more friendly with the party, or slightly more tolerant of Lae'zel in the latter's case. Some of Shadowheart's hostility with the gith stems from having lost many of her comrades when they stole the artifact, and Lae'zel herself similarly distrusts Shadowheart because of her possession of a gith artifact. They do eventually soften up around each other as you progress through their personal quests.
• Foil: To the Dark Urge. Both are part of a cult to an evil god, and are said god's champion. Both have memory loss. Both struggle with their nature vs what is expected of them - The Dark Urge's violent impulses vs their attempts to be civilized, while Shadowheart's inner goodness clashes with Shar's ruthlessness. Both learn shocking truths about their origins. Both of them are involved in the game's backstory. Dark Urge having helped create the Absolute, while Shadowheart's actions set the prologue into motion. Both do not use a traditional name. Both can struggle and cut ties with their cult.
• Foreshadowing: For a follower of a religion who practices pain and suffering, Shadowheart can be surprisingly empathetic, being a Friend to All Children and friendly to the avatar character when at high approval. Looking at her character as a whole, she really doesn't fit in with Shar's Religion of Evil despite being a devout follower. Unsurprisingly, her personal questline can end with her converting to the Selûnite faith when she refuses to kill the Nightsong and is subsequently abandoned by Shar because of her empathy.
  • When Shadowheart shows you the memory of when she was taken in by the Sharran priesthood, if you pass a religion check (or previously read a scroll that explained this), you remember that a Selûnite initiation rite involves leaving the initiate alone in the wilderness for a time, similar to the situation Shadowheart finds herself in. You can also notice that young Shadowheart appears to be wearing a Selûnite pendant, all implying she was training to be a Selûnite priest before the Sharran priesthood took her in. She indeed fits much better as a Selûnite priest and becomes one depending on how you handle her storyline.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: If Tav has been romancing her when they encounter the Nightsong, Shadowheart is faced with this as becoming a Dark Justiciar requires giving her whole heart to Shar; leaving no room for anything, or anyone, else. At this point, unless Tav actively encourages her to kill the Nightsong, Shadowheart will almost certainly take the "Friend" path and toss away the spear. Furthermore, even if Shadowheart does kill the Nightsong, she's more than willing to indulge in Loophole Abuse to continue the romance provided Tav can adjust to that.
• The Fundamentalist: Due to being a follower of Shar. At the beginning, she despises all the deities other than Shar in general, but especially Selune. She's very hostile towards her followers, due to them essentially being the rival faith to her Shar worship. This is actually a case of Boomerang Bigot at play, as Shadowheart is actually the daughter of Selunites who was kidnapped as a child and brainwashed. Her hostility towards Selune causes her to butt heads with Isobel when they first meet, who snipes back at her in return. If you convince her to spare the Nightsong and, subsequently, cause her to be rejected by Shar, she'll convert back to Selune, dying her hair silver in tribute, and turn firmly against the Sharran cult.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Shadowheart's Friend to All Children status is more than a little weird given the goddess she worships... Until you consider the fact that she has the Urchin background and can at one point explicitly tell you that she lived on the streets until Shar's church took her in. In that case, you could very easily argue that seeing young kids struggling like she had to makes her want to help them like she would've wanted someone to help her. This changes in the game's full release, but the trope still applies as she now has the "Acolyte" background and is a cleric.
  • Shadowheart's starting, religiously-decorated armour is the heaviest you can wear without incurring a Stealth disadvantage, barring magical enchantment. This makes sense, given her training.
  • Shadowheart's default Dump Stat is charisma. She's a miserable liar, terribly prickly, haughty, and often unpleasant, at least until you get on her good side. She doesn't really attempt to lie to the player about her worship so much as warn them to back off if they pry. Charisma is also tied with force of personality and self-awareness and conviction, something she is shown having trouble with at times. Which ties into her not knowing her past and that her being a follower of Shar is not what chose to be. Her entire identity is a lie.
  • Even after abandoning the worship of Shar, Shadowheart's chosen class clerical deity will remain Shar and can't be altered even when respeccing with Withers. It doesn't change to Selûne until you complete her personal quest.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • After switching to worshipping Selûne, Shadowheart will retain the Trickery Domain, despite this not being a Domain of Selûne. It's so any player who might've become used to her Trickery Domain powers wouldn't find themselves suddenly no longer having those powers. However, you're free to respec her to a more suitable domain like knowledge or life, if you so desire for roleplaying or gameplay reasons.
  • Her first romance scene always takes place on a cliff overlooking a vibrant forest under a clear night sky, even if you're currently camping in the Underdark or the Shadowlands.
  • The dryad in the Planar Circus in Baldur's Gate always describes Shadowheart as black-haired even if this is no longer the case.
    • Related to the above, her character picture never adapts to her change of hair color.
  • Shadowheart's remarks in the Dark Justiciar temple in Act 2 and her coven in Act 3 imply that she's received extensive training in infiltration and psychological torture, but she herself is not proficient in Stealth, Sleight of Hands, Deception, Intimidation, or Performance, which would probably be the skills described. That said, she also mentions receiving a lot of punishment for failing training lessons, so perhaps her not being proficient in these skills simply means she never quite got the hang of them.
  • The Inspiration granted from events tying to the Acolyte background don't take the deity involved into account, and there are no fewer than two instances where Shadowheart can gain Inspiration from events involving Selûne before she has a chance to renounce Shar, both of which she expresses clear displeasure of.^note Opening the chest in the Selûne shrine near the Owlbear nest, and seeing Isobel's ritual protecting the Last Light Inn.
• Given Name Reveal: Finishing Shadowheart's personal questline will reveal that her real name before she became a Sharran was Jenevelle Hallowleaf.
• Good Costume Switch: If she becomes a Selûnite, she may dye her hair white-blond.
• Good Counterpart: Becomes one to her Evil Mentor Viconia if she chooses to spare the Nightsong. Viconia had the chance for redemption and refused to change, as Minsc bitterly points out. Meanwhile, Shadowheart can successfully turn from Shar and become a Selunite cleric.
• Good Feels Good:
  Shadowheart: Never gave (tieflings) much thought. Certainly not that bunch in the grove. And yet, we came through for them. We saved their lives... Odd.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: She has a thin horizontal cut on her right cheek that reinforces her Lady of War credentials without detracting much from her good looks.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's a good person at heart despite the Sharran church's best efforts to corrupt her, and she shows it by dyeing her hair blonde if she becomes a cleric of Selûne.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Shadowheart's father was a high elf, while her mother was a human.
• Healer Signs On Early: Downplayed. She's the first potential companion you can encounter and recruit after the nautiloid crashes, and the only one who starts out with healing spells. However, while all 5e clerics have access to healing spells, the only subclasses meant to function as healers are the Life and Grave domains, of which only Life is available in-game. Shar's subclass, Trickery, is meant to be more of a Stealth Expert and Master of Illusion.
• Hearing Voices: If the protagonist doesn't recruit her, she'll eventually find her way to their camp, raving about how whispers in her head have been driving her there. She'll attempt to pull a knife on them, and they have to either talk her down or kill her.
• Heel–Face Turn: If you convince her to spare the Nightsong, she’s abandoned by Shar and switches to becoming a cleric of Selûne.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Believes that Shar, and by extension her followers, ultimately seek to bring down a corrupt establishment both on Toril and in the heavens, breaking the chains the world uses to weigh down mortals and gods alike — Chains like love, hope, the past, the future, the lives of the 'heretics' they fight... Pretty much everything that doesn't involve Shar and/or worshipping her. The player character can sympathize with her views, recognize the ideals behind them, or reject them outright.
  Shadowheart: Most fear the dark, like children, because in darkness they see their fears reflected. But Shar teaches us to step beyond fear. Beyond loss. In darkness we do not hide — we act.
• Hidden Depths: She doesn't have the Animal Handling talent herself, but Shadowheart seems very fond of all things four-legged — being nice to critters always raises her approval.
• Hollywood Spelling: Played for Drama. She can't remember her original name, after she took the name 'Shadowheart' to honor Shar. When she learns she was born Jenevelle Hallowleaf, she laments that her attachment to that name is so far gone, she had to look up how it was spelled.
• Hypocrite: She asks you to be open-minded to her religion while she looks down on others for simply not being hers. Initially.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Her justification for slitting Lae'zel's throat before sunrise, should you fail to talk them down during their confrontation over the artefact.
• Illegal Religion: Worship of Shar is restricted and/or banned across much of Faerûn for very obvious reasons.
• Implied Death Threat: Should you fail the Persuasion check to try to convince her to not kill the Nightsong (or choose the dialog choice that doesn't involve that check but still pleads that she not do it), she'll respond by saying she'll step over your corpse to fulfill Shar's wishes if need be. If you don't back down, you'll find she's not bluffing as initiative is rolled.
• Important Haircut: She cuts her hair into a more flattering style shortly after her choice with the Nightsong. The style remains the same regardless, but if she chooses to abandon Shar then she also dyed her hair blonde.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • When approaching the remains of a tavern in Act 2, she has a chance to quip that she could use a drink after exploring all these ruins.
  • As the party meets up after the Absolute is defeated, she mentions that after all that, she needs "a drink in each hand and one more on the table.
• Informed Attribute: Despite being a worshipper of Shar, it’s hard to describe her as evil. She generally approves of kind actions and avoiding fights and it’s rare to get approval from committing evil acts around her. She also has far more firm moral standards compared to Lae’zel and Astarion since she Wouldn't Hurt a Child and feels awful if the player chooses to side with the goblins over the refugees. Unsurprisingly, these qualities don't make her very suited to be a Sharran priest. A Selûnite priest, on the other hand...
• Interface Spoiler: She's initially very cagey about which god she worships, and will only open up to you after you build up enough of a rapport with her... Or you could just open her status screen and scroll down to the "tags" subheading. Patch 6 just moves this info to the top of her character sheet.
• I Owe You My Life: If you save her on the Nautiloid, she will say this almost verbatim and bring that debt up in later conversations. This even goes for a githyanki character, who she normally hates.
  • As The Dark Urge, if you reject Bhaal, she’s genuinely near the point of tears saying that she would be worm food if it weren’t for you.
• It's Not You, It's Me: If you pursue other romances while trying to romance Shadowheart, she will break things off using this excuse. Its particularly poignant if you are romancing Wyll, as Shadowheart claims that even if they love her and Wyll equally, Wyll's associates and friends will not take kindly to you, Wyll's lover, being involved with a Sharran priest.
  • Subverted with Astarion. She ends things with you for Astarion’s sake, hoping that you can give him the solace he needs.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Related to the above, Shadowheart will cite this as another reason for why she chose to break things off with you if you pursue someone else, admitting that there is no hard feelings and that you deserve to be happy. Apologizing afterwards would even have her tease you for it.
• Jerkass Has a Point: If a Selûnite cleric player helps themselves to the Selûnite offerings in the owlbear cave, Shadowheart snarkily comments that's an odd way to show respect for their deity. For all that she can be rude and disparaging about Selune worship (hence the "Jerkass" part), none of the dialogue response options offer a particularly strong counterargument.
• Lady of War: She's a capable and versatile Magic Knight who carries herself with elegance and a haughty grace. Exactly how haughty depends on how you approach her personal quest, but the grace remains regardless.
• Light 'em Up: Ironically for a cleric of darkness, she's your primary NPC source of Radiant damage, making her very useful against undead and fiends (demons and devils). She starts out with the Sacred Flame cantrip and the Guiding Bolt spell, and her toolkit only gets more diverse and powerful from there. Going for the 'good' path of her personal quest, where she converts to worshipping Selune, the goddess of moonlight, will naturally make her even better at dishing out Radiant damage via equipment and spells.
• Loophole Abuse: If she kills the Nightsong at Shar's command, Shadowheart will become conflicted about continuing her romance with the player, as her devotion to Shar would mean that she must fully commit herself to her Goddess at the cost of everything else (which the Nightsong even warns her about). The player can try to continue the romance nonetheless, in which case she'll engage in this trope, even pointing out that it's a widespread practice among Shar's followers, as otherwise they'd be an outright celibate order. If she kills her parents as part of Shar's final test, she'll separate from the Player Character, but leave an open invitation to the House of Grief where they can reconnect, and will happily get intimate with them once more during the Patch 5 epilogue.
• Luke Nounverber: Possibly some kind of Sharran title, but the only name she'll give you is "Shadowheart". Her true name, Jenevelle Hallowleaf, is revealed at the end of her arc, but she refuses to use it stating that "Shadowheart" has become a part of her — and she doesn't want to forget it, not anymore.
• MacGuffin: She has a mysterious puzzle box inscribed with strange runes in her inventory. The artifact itself is more or less irrelevant. What's inside it is what's important, and it's something that all major parties are very interested in getting their hands on.
• Magic Knight: As a cleric she epitomizes this trope by being proficient with various weapons, shields, medium armor, and magic both offensive and defensive. Her stats push her mainly towards magic though, so she's usually more effective slinging spells from a distance rather than cracking skulls in close combat, although short-ranged spells like Spirit Guardians work well to make the most of both aspects.
• Malicious Misnaming: She tends to refer to Selûne as "that/the Moon-Witch." If she converts to the Selûne faith, this fades away and refers to her new goddess in a more respectful manner.
• Master of Illusion: Her high elf ancestry and her classing as a Trickery cleric means she starts out with multiple illusion spells.
• Master of None: She suffers badly in this department stat wise, prompting many players to respec her at the earliest convenience for a more concrete party role.
• Meaningful Name: Invoked at the end of her personal questline if she rejected Shar, as she explains that there can be no shadow without light.
• Meaningful Rename: She chose the name "Shadowheart" to honor Shar. Subverted if she learns her original name; she chooses not to retake it and continues going by Shadowheart.
• Minion with an F in Evil: It's pretty apparent that Shadowheart is incredibly mellow for a cleric of an evil goddess like Shar. It becomes even more apparent as the player explores old Sharran ruins and finds what actual clerics of Shar engage in — torture and worse. Meanwhile, Shadowheart approves of saving people and even shows concern for her fellow party members over time.
• More than Mind Control: Canonically, Shar is widely known to be a selfish, evil goddess of darkness and destruction, and her worshipers regularly kidnap, torture and murder non-believers, if not worse. Shadowheart claims to have been raised by the Sharrans since she was a child and firmly believes Shar to be The Sacred Darkness, but even she notices that she's much softer-hearted than the average Sharran^note If the player calls her explanation of Shar's doctrine comforting, she flat-out admits that many initiates "break" before feeling comfort. Newcomers to the world of Forgotten Realms might take her at her word, but those familiar with Baldur's Gate lore will know she's either hiding something or been duped. Her personal quest reveals it's a mix of both: Shadowheart was an initiate for the Selûnite faith when the Sharran priesthood abduced her and her parents, then wiped her memories before making Shadowheart into a Sharran trainee, with the purpose of proving to Selûne that Shar can corrupt any of the former's followers.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Should she spare Aylin, she’ll become wracked with guilt over betraying her goddess Shar.
• Mythology Gag: An elven cleric of Shar who A) is more noble than you'd expect and B) has an unusually positive interpretation of Shar's creed? Girl's basically Viconia DeVir 2.0. Interestingly enough, the game later reveals that Shadowheart's superior is none other than Viconia herself.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Lae'zel, herself from a Lawful Evil warrior culture, thinks "Shadowheart" sounds like a strong name, which is pretty much the nicest thing the two of them ever have to say to each other.
• Nice Girl: Leans towards this despite her deity of worship. Outside of her interactions with Lae’zel, she’s generally polite (if lightly teasing) to the other party members and approves of kind acts, particularly towards children and animals. Choosing to embrace Selune has her fully transition into this while staying with Shar severely dims her kindness.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Nice of early access' three "evil" companions; while rather standoffish and savagely pragmatic, she mostly prefers avoiding fights if you can help it — so as not to delay your mission to get the tadpoles out of your heads — and approves of you being nice to animals and/or children.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The details of her quest to steal the Astral Prism from the githyanki are never revealed, but considering how ruthless and single-mindedly determined they are in trying to recover it, it's virtually guaranteed to be have been one hell of a mission.
• Older Than They Look: Records found in a Sharran temple indicate that she’s at least 40 years old, and likely older given how old she was when taken by them, but she appears to be in her twenties at most. Justified since she’s a half-elf who have a lifespan of 180 years. Her official age is stated to be 48 years old.
• Once More, with Clarity: When Dame Aylin reveals the truth to Shadowheart, she shows her the wolf scene again, only this time, revealing the wolf was actually her father trying to protect her.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: Zigzagged, seeing how it depends on how you handle her Character Development through Acts I and II, but the game seems to nudge players towards convincing her to turn away from Shar and return into Selûne's fold. Pull this off and you successfully destroyed decades of work in grooming Shar's Chosen just as she was about to become the holy warrior and leader of Shar's church Shar herself wanted her to be.
• Perky Goth: Downplayed, but at the beginning, her raven hair, penchant for dark clothes, and worship of a goddess who is associated with darkness and the night definitely marks her as a goth, but while she's quite haughty at first she's ultimately quite a friendly and easygoing woman with a penchant for snark. As part of her character development if she converts to Selune, she actually becomes much more perky, but with it far less goth, even dying her hair silver-blonde. If she commits to being a Sharran, she becomes more hardened, but still has a soft spot for the Player Character.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Literally. Alongside Wyll and Gale, petting Scratch the dog is the easiest way to raise her approval.
  • She approves of saving Arabella alongside the other good-aligned party members along with teaching a training tiefling on how to be a better swordsman.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Unlike Lae'zel or Astarion, Shadowheart approves of talking your way out of fights and avoiding conflict — not (usually) on any moral grounds, she just prefers to avoid taking unnecessary risks or delaying your mission to remove the mind flayer tadpoles. If the player justifies walking in on a bugbear and ogre couple as trying to stop a potential threat, she just scoffs that all they did was turn it into a definite one. As far as good deeds go, while she generally supports helping people in need, she disapproves of providing that help without expecting anything in return, unless you're helping children or animals.
• Properly Paranoid: She was raised by the church of Shar, a Religion of Evil outlawed throughout much of Faerûn. There are good reasons for her distrust of others, and she's unapologetic about hiding it from you. She's also usually right about assuming the worst — if Shadowheart warns you that she's suspicious of someone or their motives, it's probably a good idea to listen. And even if she doesn't openly voice suspicion, expecting the worst from others and erring on the side of caution will generally garner her approval.
• Proud Beauty: If you tell her she's beautiful in her first romance scene, she just says "I know" with a confident smile. The same can happen in her second romance scene.
• Religion of Evil: She's a cleric of Shar, goddess of darkness and loss, sworn to oppose any disciple of Selûne, Shar's twin sister and Arch-Enemy.
• The Sacred Darkness: Believes that Shar is ultimately much kinder and nobler than the "heretics" have written her off as. Shar really isn't, but if she's ultimately rejected by Shar for being too merciful, the actual noble darkness-related deity, Selûne, happily takes her in.
  Shadowheart: (Shar)'s my mother. She nurtures me, cares for me, loves me.
• Sadistic Choice: Kill her parents and be free of her curse that lets Shar cause her agonising pain, or free her parents but still have Shar’s curse
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Shadowheart will permanently leave the party if the player allows Balthazar to capture the Nightsong, since Shadowheart has been tasked with killing the Nightsong by Shar.
  • She will do the same if you save her parents and then immediately murder them.
• Secret Test: Shadowheart thinks Raphael is categorically untrustworthy, and that it's unreasonable to consider his offer to remove the tadpole, at least without knowing why he's so interested in it. However, the player wouldn't know this, because the way she discusses it is by playing dumb and asking the player what they think. Tav only learns of her very strong opinion on this if their answer is unchanged after being badgered twice by Shadowheart, after which she approves if Tav agreed with her.
• Self-Made Orphan: If she remains a follower of Shar, her questline can end with her killing her parents with her own two hands. The same can happen if she turns to Selune, though in that scenario her parents encourage her to so she can be freed from Shar’s curse.
• Skinny Dipping: Her second major romance scene should she abandon Shar involves doing this on a moonlit beach before her and her chosen partner consummate their relationship in the sand.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: If you romance Shadowheart as a Selúnite cleric, her romance will have elements of this.
  Shadowheart: What's your game, exactly? A Selúnite bearing gifts sounds like a trick if I ever heard one.
  Tav: Just accept the gift and kiss me like you hate me.
  Shadowheart: Easily done. How am I ever going to explain this in my prayers...?
• Sole Survivor: Of the mission she was sent on pre-abduction, apparently a mission at the behest of Shar herself.
• Street Urchin: She lived on the streets of Baldur's Gate as a child before the Sharrans took her in. Or so she is led to believe; in reality she had a happy homelife with her parents until she was kidnapped and brainwashed.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Her approval of you determines how much is sugar and how much is ice at least towards you. Whereas for everyone else it tends to vary from aloof haughtiness to calm affection.
• Survival Mantra: "I must not fail." Spoken during her Origin intro, several times when she's under pressure to discuss her mission to deliver the artefact to Baldur's Gate, as well as during one of Shadowheart's barks when you switch to controlling her. Doubles as Foreshadowing since the actress' delivery of the line (thinly-veiled panic) hints that Shadowheart may be driven in part by fear of Shar, rather than loyalty to her.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • With the player character if they worship Selûne, since they get dialogue options to distrust or outright hate her once they find out she’s a cleric of Shar. She'll mock them back if these options are picked, and even if they aren't will still disparage their religion to their face.
  • Especially with Lae'zel. They're so diametrically opposed to each other that any decision that raises one's approval almost always lowers the other's. It doesn't help that Shadowheart hates githyanki in general.
    • That said, depending on the Character Development Lae'zel and Shadowheart undergo, they can become friendlier and learn to respect one another. Especially if Lae'zel becomes disillusioned with Vlaakith and Shadowheart abandons Shar for Selune.
• That Man Is Dead: Regardless of how her questline ends, Shadowheart will refuse being called "Jenevelle". If she converts to Selune, she says that she can't bring herself to use her old name after all the suffering she's endured, instead opting to use the name the Sharrans gave her and redeem it in her new goddess' name.
• Token Good Teammate: Not so much to you as to the Church of Shar as a whole; even she's a little confused by her compassion for others and her desire to justify Shar as The Sacred Darkness when most of her clergy just hates everything. She’s also the least cruel of the three "evil" companions, and approves of you taking care of animals and being nice to children. One potential end of her questline sees her abandoned by Shar precisely because of this trope.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She's afraid of wolves, and has a unique passive about being frightened near them if she fails a will check. This is due to a encounter with one when she was a child, where she had to be rescued by worshipers of Shar. The wolf in question was actually Shadowheart's father, who, in addition to being a high elf and a cleric of Selune, is also a werewolf. The Sharrans' brainwashing included erasing Shadowheart's memory of the wolf's identity so she would think their kidnapping was a rescue. As of Patch 4, she loses this fear if she recovers the true memory of her kidnapping.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Implied. She usually approves of the player being nice to kids, and part of what makes her hit the bottle so hard during a goblin party is that so many of the refugees killed were children. She also reacts poorly if the player fails to save Arabella and gets offended if the player says it's unexpected of her. Downplayed however, as she'll state that the party shouldn't get involved when they find out Arabella is in danger, and she'll approve of the player saying that harsh punishments are necessary when talking with Kagha about the situation.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: She has a wound on her hand that doesn't heal, and occasionaly flares with pain every now and again. Shadowheart claims it is a "gift" from Shar to remind her of her purpose, though even she doesn't quite understand why the wound flares up in certain occasions such as a broken statue. It's all but implied the wound is actually Shar's "leash" on Shadowheart. It's later revealed the random bouts of pain Shadowheart experiences are actually the pain her parents feel at that moment. The wound can be healed if Shadowheart breaks the curse over her, but not without a heavy cost to pay for it...

Wyll

Wyll Ravengard

A Living Legend

Voiced by: Lanre Malaolu (Early Access), Theo Solomon (Full Release)

"Damnable roach. Provoke the Blade... and suffer its sting!"

Race: Human
Class: Warlock (Fiend Patron)/Ranger (Hunter)
Background: Folk Hero
Place of Origin: Baldur's Gate

Born into nobility in Baldur's Gate only to be exiled due to his unholy pact with a cambion, Wyll soon made a name for himself across the Sword Coast as the heroic "Blade of Frontiers". Having already escaped the mind flayers, Wyll now seeks to escape his fiendish patron before her price becomes too much for him to pay.

---

• Anti-Hero: Downplayed. He's one of the most well-intentioned and selfless Origin characters, but he still made a Deal with the Devil, and is hunting Karlach at the behest of his patron.
• Babies Ever After: If he chose to remain in Baldur's Gate and become a Grand Duke, Wyll will adopt an orphan girl named Lily Aurora Ravenguard. If he became a heroic ranger, on the other hand, "Lily" is the name of his wolf companion.
• Bad Liar: His attempts to deflect about his eye being a sending stone, or having more reason than just general heroics to go after the goblins, are hilariously bad.
• Badass Normal: Becomes this in the ending if he breaks his pact with Mizora. The player can ask what he’ll do once he loses his powers, and he states he’ll have to make do with his father’s training in the bow and sword.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Heroic/good-aligned warlocks are generally a straight example of Dark Is Not Evil, since they use their powers to help others rather than just serve their patrons' whims. Wyll himself bartered away his soul to an honest-to-gods fiend in order to better protect people.
• Blue Blood: Comes from a Baldurian noble family. He's actually the son of Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard, though their relationship has been estranged ever since Ulder found out about Wyll's pact with Mizora.
• Broken Pedestal: Learning the Emperor is Balduran. Wyll and his father were clearly very close before Wyll took his pact, as can be seen when Duke Ravenguard learns the truth about Wyll, both clearly love Baldur’s Gate and hold the name of Balduran dear to their hearts. To the point where Wyll’s companion quest has you seek out Ansur, Balduran’s dragon (and as we learn later, his ex-lover). Upon finding out who Balduran is now and what he did to Ansur, Wyll is visibly gobsmacked learning that one of his personal heroes became an illithid.
• Brought Down to Badass: If Wyll rejects Mizora's attempt to renew his contract, he starts losing his warlock powers after the defeat of the Absolute. He comments that he'll have to make do with the training his father gave him, though just slowly losing access to his magic doesn't mean he can't still kick ass.
  • Subverted when he becomes a ranger to compensate.
• Buffy Speak: He seems to enjoy coming up with goofy idiomatic phrases and colorful names for things, like calling your parasites "brain-bugs" or passing along "words of wisdom" he just made up.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: If you romance him, a flashback of Mizora will kill the mood when you try to hook up, and he'll resignedly decide that he can't offer you either his heart or his body until he's free of her. (This doesn't end the romance, it just means there's no sex scene.) Downplayed, since he can be slept with if you pass a Persuasion check.
• Casanova Wannabe: Flirts with both Lae'zel and Shadowheart and utterly fails: the former just taunts and insults him, while the latter points out that she heard him flirting with Lae'zel and will not be second fiddle to the likes of her. And the one time he manages to not strike out, when romanced, well... see above.
• Cassandra Truth: The circumstances behind his becoming a Warlock and his subsequent exile from Baldur's Gate involves this: Mizora guided Wyll to a group of cultists attempting to summon the wicked dragon god Tiamat, and offered him the power to stop them and save the Gate in exchange for his soul. Wyll accepted and wiped out the cultists, then tried to tell his father, Duke Ravengard, about it. The Duke saw Wyll in Mizora's company, but the terms of the pact prevented Wyll from explaining her role in saving the Gate. When he tried to show him the sight of the battle, but all signs of the battle had been removed, making it seem as though it never happened. Ashamed of his son, whom he saw as having sold his soul to a devil for no good reason, Duke Ravengard cast Wyll out of the city.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Wyll sold his soul for power to save Baldur’s Gate from Tiamat’s cultists. Zariel had been scouting him out because she knew he was exactly the kind of person who would make that deal.
• Dance of Romance: He's quite fond of dancing and has lots of practice thanks to his noble upbringing, and the scene in which the PC can officially start a relationship with him involves the two dancing together, which can then lead into a kiss.
• Dark Secret: He made a Deal with the Devil to become a heroic Hunter of Monsters.
• Deal with the Devil: Wyll's magical abilities stem from a pact he made with a cambion named Mizora, but now he wants out.
• Demon Slaying: Part of his pact with Mizora involves him hunting down devils and demons for her, which gets him into conflict with Karlach, since she's one of Mizora's targets.
• Discard and Draw: In the epilogue where he escapes the pact, Wyll uses his training and what little magical ability he had to become a ranger, and is still strong enough to survive six months in Avernus. He can casually mention making "splinters" of a Bone Devil.
• Dragged Off to Hell: If Mizora gets killed in Act 2, Wyll will go down with her.
• Dynamic Entry: Makes a genuinely impressive one the first time the player's party meets him at the Emerald Grove, where he leaps into battle, disarms and slays a goblin, and then fires off a spell. (Subverted in Early Access before the cutscene was implemented: he often lept too far and knocked himself out after shouting his catchphrase.)
• Early-Installment Weirdness: An odd example in that it happened in a single game due to rewrites between Early Access and the final release. In Early Access, Wyll's patron Mizora seemed to have disappeared... which was a problem, because he was looking to escape his contract with her, and his conflict with the goblins was very much personal due to them being responsible for the incident that prompted him to make his pact in the first place. In the final release, while he still opposes the goblins, Wyll no longer has a personal history with them, and Mizora is most definitely around albeit as an Astral Projection initially, since she still does get captured and will show her displeasure with Wyll if he refuses to kill Karlach, turning him partially — and apparently permanently -into a half-devil himself (which isn't great for Wyll, given his reputation as a noble hero across the realm). He also is less boastful about his accomplishments and more conflicted about his contract (compared to his originally unambiguous regret) in the final release.
• Easily Forgiven: Karlach is quick to forgive him for pointing a sword at her and hunting her down, since she knows he's being used by Mizora, and he's an otherwise pleasant fellow whose values align with hers.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Wyll is one of your nicest and most morally upright companions, but — in a holdover from his Early Access characterization — he detests goblins. In their camp, he urges the player to attack their leaders on sight (bordering on Leeroy Jenkins) and gives approval if the player does exactly that.
• The Exile: Became this from Baldur's Gate due to his infernal pact with the cambion Mizora, even after using said pact to defend the city from the Cult of the Dragon years ago. Despite this, he still found new life as a wandering hero and monster hunter. Completing his personal questline, especially with his father Ulder Ravengard alive and well, will cause him to end up being welcomed back to the city as a hero for all the sacrifices he had made to protect it.
• Eyepatch of Power: His right eye is made of colorless white glass and has several scars running across it. The power part — aside from his skill in battle — comes into play if you figure out it's a magical item, specifically a sending stone.
• The Face: He's your only recruitable NPC with Charisma as their primary stat, and his Warlock passives can make him even better at Persuasion, Intimidation, and Deception if you so choose. If you're a good-aligned character who hasn't invested heavily in Charisma yourself, then you'll be relying chiefly on Wyll to do the talking for you. If you're an evil-aligned character who's chosen to alienate him, then all you've got as a consolation prize is Minthara, who has Charisma as her secondary stat.
• Face of a Thug: If he undergoes the Forced Transformation below, he develops a look of an individual heavily corrupted by devils...which he is, but it's precisely because he's refused to debase himself before Mizora, remaining a fundamentally noble individual.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Played with. He's definitely got the power to back up his reputation as the "Blade of the Frontiers" (or at least he did before the mind flayer tadpole apparently sapped his strength). But the power he uses to perform his noble deeds comes from a very not noble source, aka a powerful devil named Mizora. Even though he is by and large a pretty genuinely good guy, he also very notably keeps the source of his powers very close to his chest.
• Famed In-Story: He's fairly well-known by some as a successful monster hunter with equal tenacity, given how he pursued Karlach aboard the Nautiloid while the ship was being assaulted by both infernal and githyanki forces.
• Fate Worse than Death: If Mizora gets killed in Act 2, a horrified Wyll will be dragged down to Baator with her. If Karlach's statement is any indication, Wyll will suffer as a tormented blob of flesh in the Hells forever.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Subverted. Wyll quickly realizes that Karlach is not evil, simply another poor soul being used by devils, and gets along very well with her since she's just as gung-ho about doing good as he is. The feeling is reciprocated, as Karlach also finds him to be good company despite their first meeting involving him pointing a sword at her. He can even go to Avernus with Karlach when her infernal engine cannot support her anymore and protect her from Zariel's henchmen.
• First-Episode Twist: At the very end of Wyll's act 1 quest, if he spares Karlach, Mizora will punish him by turning him partially demonic, permanently giving him large horns, a blackened eye, and rather bumpy skin for the rest of the game. Most players will likely experience this twist since the game pretty obviously pushes you towards sparing Karlach and you do not have to try hard to convince Wyll it's the right thing to do. None of the promotional material shows any of the above spoiler, despite happening so early on.
• Forced Transformation: If Wyll chooses not to kill Karlach, Mizora will punish him by turning him into something like a tiefling, with horns, bumpy skin, and a blackened eye. He takes it pretty well, all things considered.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Part of his romance arc is proposing to the player character, after knowing them for a few weeks at best. Given the heavy storybook-romance feeling of his romance, this is rather fitting.
• Friend to All Children: Wyll is a kindly, encouraging teacher to the tiefling children at the Grove, and gives approval when the player shows similar kindness.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The charisma score, Wyll's best stat, measures a character's ability to interact with others. It includes factors like confidence and eloquence, affects Deception, Intimidation, Performance, and Persuasion checks, and can represent a charming or commanding personality. Due to the ability to easily influence Wyll into using the tadpole powers (see Hidden Depths below), some view Wyll as too weak-willed to justify such a high Charisma score.
• Glory Hound: Some of the group accuse him of this, due to his "Blade of the Frontiers" reputation and penchant for drama.
• Graceful Loser: Should the player turn him down for a kiss during his dance scene in Act 2, Wyll is clearly crushed, but will apologize the next day for potentially misreading the situation.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Deconstructed. Wyll's sacrifice, selling his soul to Mizora to stop the cult of Tiamat, is all in his backstory, and instead of his big glorious moment, we just get to see the fallout. It's an interesting examination of what making sacrifices really costs.
• Hero of Another Story: Wyll was among the heroes who defeated the Cult of the Dragon to prevent Tiamat's summoning, as told in Tyranny of Dragons, though he's absent from the campaign itself as he would presumably be replacing one of the player characters.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Similar to how quickly he accepted Mizora's pact, he also accepts the powers the tadpole grants without question, showcasing a pattern of risk-taking behavior and a willingness to seek out more power regardless of the cost to himself, although he does caution against falling for the temptations and agrees with Shadowheart to avoid using said powers without properly understanding them. He's also immensely wary of Raphael's attempts to tempt the party, showing that as reckless he can be, he's not completely gullible.
  • Wyll becomes extremely upset if he learns the tiefling child Mol has made a deal with Raphael, specifically decrying that Raphael took advantage of one so young. Given that Wyll's own pact was struck when he was a mere teenager, it's implied he's emotional about his own situation as well, even though he otherwise purports not to have any regrets about taking Mizora's initial deal.
• Horrible Judge of Character:
  • Wyll believed Mizora, a cambion and fiend of Hell, would only send him after actual evil monsters. While he had suspicions some of his targets might not be evil at all, it takes meeting Karlach for him to realize Mizora is simply using him for her own benefit and sincerely apologizes to Karlach and the avatar for his foolishness. If he fulfilled his bargain and killed her, he will initially try to vainly evoke his titled cheer and heroic bravado in a hollow attempt to convince himself he had just struck down yet another devil like he has so many times before. When meeting Mizora, however, he drops the charade and lambasts her for sending him after a normal tiefling. Despite Mizora saying the world is better off, when you speak to him later he will acknowledge Karlach was just an innocent tiefling, and mournfully admit to himself his terrible deed of having hunted down one of Zarial's suffering victims.
  • Averted if Wyll is asked his assessment of Duke Stelmane and the Emperor's alliance. He regards the Emperor as manipulative, speculates he made the Duke "an offer she couldn't refuse," and suspects there was more to Stelmane's ailments than an ordinary stroke. All of this is revealed to be dead-on accurate in a later cutscene.
• Hunter of Monsters: A monster hunter by trade, Famed In-Story throughout the Sword Coast as a hero whose reputation precedes him.
• Irony: Among the party members, his base Charisma is among the highest, yet his attempt to flirt with the female party members are all quickly shot down.
• King Incognito: As early as Act 1, you can learn that Wyll is actually the son of Ulder Ravengard, the Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate. Even Baldurian player characters with backgrounds associated with the affluent citizens of the city don't even know that Ulder had a son. And that's before you learn that Ulder exiled his own son from the city due to his infernal pact with Mizora, despite Wyll's good intentions for doing so.
• Knight Errant: In the Patch 5 epilogue, depending on choices made throughout the game, Wyll can become a Ranger who travels from town to town slaying all manner of monsters.
• Large Ham Title: Invoked. In a bit of side banter, Wyll can suggest more impressive epithets Gale might go by (similar to his own "Blade of Frontiers"). Gale will demur with a comment that their group has already reached a maximum limit of theatrical titles.
• Loophole Abuse: On the receiving end of this from his patron. Wyll protests killing Karlach because Mizora asked him to kill demons and devils and Karlach is a tiefling. Mizora then proceeds to quote a clause and section of their contract that either Wyll knew nothing of or skimmed over when he entered into a contract with Mizora that specifically states he must kill not just fiends, but also anyone heartless, and while in the moral sense Karlach is anything but heartless, in a literal sense her heart has been replaced by a magical mechanism. As such, Mizora punishes Wyll for his breach in the contract and puts him through a Forced Transformation. That said, it's implied Mizora's punishment has less to do with loopholes and more to do with spite, as Karlach was Zariel's favorite.
• Missing Mom: Wyll's mother died while in childbirth with him, leaving him to be raised by his single father.
• My Nayme Is: Wyll claims in a banter with Shadowheart that his father named him after his (Wyll's) great-uncle, although he just thinks his father didn't know how to spell.
  Shadowheart: So, Wyll with a "y" — Why?
  Wyll: "Y", that's right.
  Shadowheart: But why?
  Wyll: Why "y"? A great-uncle's name, my father said. But I just figured he couldn't spell.
• Nice Guy: Has a pleasant, cheerful disposition, and is met at a refugee camp where he divides his time between teaching the kids to fight and fending off attacking goblins. He also seems to have made his Deal with the Devil out of a genuine desire to help people, rather than to be famous or even just the power for its own sake.
• Not So Above It All: Although he's one of the most genuinely honorable and noble among your companions, Wyll isn't above giving approval if you heckle Dribbles the Clown — or push someone else into going on stage with him.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Invoked. It's a plot point that, as a party member, he's not nearly powerful enough to have accomplished all his supposed feats. It appears that his abduction — and subsequent infection with the mind flayer tadpole — has sapped his powers.
• Punished with Ugly: It's subjective how "ugly" he actually is, but Wyll's Forced Transformation certainly leaves him feeling as if this has happened to him. He's too ashamed of his own appearance to join the tiefling party, and elsewhere, characters like Zevlor or Counselor Florrick (who knew him pre-transformation) will react in shock to his new appearance.
• Rebel Prince: Wyll is the son of a grand duke, but his pact with Mizora led to his disownment and exile. Even aside from the pact, Wyll's dialogue frequently suggests he chafed against the political maneuvering required of someone in his father's position, and that he is far happier as a monster-slaying adventurer.
• Red Baron: The Blade of Frontiers. If he's turned into a half-devil by Mizora but continues to resist The Legions of Hell, he assumes the title of "Blade of Avernus" instead.
• Rugged Scar: Along with his missing eye, he's got several deep claw marks along the sides of his face and neck. He's apparently covered with them.
• Royal Rapier: Wyll's signature weapon is a rapier, which warlocks and humans are not normally proficient in, but is a fitting weapon for the son of a duke to be trained with.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • Mizora offers him one in Act 3 regarding his father, Ulder Ravenguard, should the player not know where he was taken to. Either Wyll continues his pact and makes it eternal and serve Zariel in exchange for the location of his father, or break his pact and be free, but Mizora will not reveal his location, effectively condemning his father to death. Wyll can be convinced to break the pact and find his father outside of Mizora, but he's unsure which to do given he wants to save his father and be free of Mizora.
  • If Ulder Ravenguard isn't rescued from the Iron Throne and subsequently dies, Mizora will offer one of these to him. She can either resurrect his father, but damn Wyll to an eternally binding contract... or they can break the pact, but Ulder will stay dead. Whichever one happens is up to Wyll/the player.
• Swashbuckler: Wyll actively attempts to embody many of the conventions of a swashbuckling hero: he's a free-spirited do-gooder who selflessly defends the downtrodden, he fights with a rapier by default, and he's got a penchant for bombast and showmanship.
• Token Good Teammate: Wyll's not only one of the nicest companions, he's also the most genuinely heroic. If you sell the Emerald Grove out to the goblins, he's the only one other than Karlach who either leaves the party to fight you to protect the refugees or storms out in disgust after the fact. Furthermore, should you embrace your Bhaalspawn heritage as the Dark Urge, Wyll is the only one who will join Minsc and Jaheira in trying to stop you, which even Karlach can't bring herself to do.
• Tongue-Tied: Due to his pact with Mizora he can't actually disclose the circumstances that led to him making it until she gives him permission to. Indeed if he should try, the words seem to stop in his throat.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He claims to have been "a steadfast dagger in (his) father's side" when he was young, and apparently wants his forgiveness for it. It later turns out that discovering his pact with Mizora caused his father, Ulder Ravengard, to exile him from Baldur's Gate; Wyll has since then wanted to prove to his estranged father that he can still be a hero.
• You Have Failed Me: Downplayed. If Wyll spares Karlach, then his patron Mizora will later pull a Loophole Abuse to put Wyll through a Forced Transformation as punishment. A player character that succeeds in an Arcana check can point out to him that Mizora could've claimed his soul for breaching their contract, and Wyll responds that the only reason she hasn't done so is because she still has a use for him.

---