“Those gods who do not wish to go along with your plans will be enslaved or destroyed, I assume,” Myrkul said suspiciously. “And you will use Mystra’s power to accomplish this.” “Of course,” Bane said. “But we are already allies. Why speak of such things?” “Indeed,” Myrkul said.

Myrkul: Bane is an untrustworthy idiot who will inevitably betray me and - more importantly - can't plan for shit in a way that drives me absolutely insane with rage. Myrkul: So obviously I will ally myself with him and go along with this plan he proposes.

I would honestly pay for a book that is nothing but the Dead Three locked in a room with each other. I remember nothing concrete from the Avatar series except for Myrkul suffering Bane's company and Bhaal suffering the consequences of those two idiots (I live forever with the scene of Myrkul, nursing a headache, threatening to drop Bane down a ravine if he doesn't stop screaming in his ear).

Player: Examine Gortash's body language and expressions. Can you trust him? Narrator: *You note a flicker in Gortash's eyes. You have already destroyed that which he held dear. His promises are empty ones.*

Huh, never saw that before. It's from completing the side quest to shut down his plan and free the Gondians from the Throne: I assume "that which he held dear" means his Steel Watcher operation, not the building itself (The Iron Throne was gone long before he was born).

It's an interesting wording, I like the emotional investment that went into the Steel Watchers and this world domination plan. Something something abusive childhood marked by shame and lack of control, and pride in his adult accomplishments reclaiming those things.

OK, so apparently we mustn't pick up salt shakers around Astarion:

"The folk habit of tossing salt over one's shoulder to ward off evil or misfortune has no direct usefulness against undead, but it is born of tales of fleeing adventurers tossing salt behind them at pursuing undead. Contact with even a handful of salt will cause undead who have a tangible presence to recoil for one round (the contact will cause the salt to be consumed, in cold, non flammable "blue flames"). [...] Vampires especially fear salt, and will seek to slay any beings carrying it."

On the other hand I do kind of want to do a challenge run where you have to kill Cazador using only table salt. (It only does 1d4 damage per pound, so that could take a while. Or some strategy... maybe if you open a portal to the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Salt. Yes, that exists.)

(Salt also nullifies vampiric powers if poured over their grave, which is more useful.)

"Another talent [Greater Vampires] may employ is to summon minor demons to serve them for up to 24 hours." - Lords of Darkness

Oh, I forgot that.

Hey, Lord Ascendant, where are the infernal minions? I'm just saying that would've been helpful during some fights and I expect infernal minions on demand in that playthrough now. Double check the contract: "If you are a vampire and have recently been altered by Forces of Darkness(TM) you may be entitled to your very own minions of Hell."

I want a pit fiend.

I don't think the Ritual of Ascension was based on Greater Vampires in the slightest (also demons and devils are different things), and the writers probably don't even know about them, but hey. Free minions.

...ok, so I confused the reflection lore by remembering a different bit of old D&D lore (like, AD&D old, I think. Possibly 1e?) from another source. My bad. I should double check before talking.

FR vamps do not have reflections. But the good news is that you can use illusion magic and/or enchant mirrors to reflect them:

"Jonathon has been screening the adventurers who frequent the inn to try to find a party tough enough to deal with the threat. He will not give away the fact he, himself, is a vampire. And a magic mirror in his establishment helps his ruse; it is magicked so that Jonathon casts a reflection in it."

Have they restored Gortash's Durge-specific dialogue lines yet? I kind of want to play, but I'm still holding off until I can do the proper Act 3 divorce arc. What even is the point without "I always liked you too"? What even.

Scouring a Q&A archive for realmslore, as I am wont to do, and seeing people being semi-officially (officially?) directed to Lords of Darkness when they ask about Realms-specific undead lore even in the 5e era is amusing, and also validating (I love that book. I love how creating tomb guardians/mummies works in the Realms: it's so fucked up. I love the Bhaalist mummy and his relationship problems. I want my Bhaalist to get mummified.)

But anyway the concept that that lore holds in 5e Toril is darkly hilarious to me for reasons, because you'd be applying this to BG3:

Greater and Lesser vampires: Toril does in fact have rare daylight walking vampires! They're created when a succubus kills you by kissing you (ie draining your life force and consuming your soul during make out sessions/sex) and then your corpse rises again as a soulless undead horror that can walk in sunlight. Other than the daywalking a greater vampire is exactly like a normal vampire.

And I'm just... You can get your soul eaten by a fiend in game: can you imagine Astarion's reaction if - after being dumb enough to get fucked to death by Haarlep I know they don't kill you in-game, humour me - you came back as a vampire able to walk in the sun right off the bat? Either he's going to be insanely envious (why do you get everything he wants through an act of terminal stupidity), or he's going to be extremely put out that he isn't special. "There are no vampires like me" Are you sure babe? Bet?

Also as far as Toril is concerned with undeath in its own setting: undeath is evil, as are all of it's sources and all acts of inflicting it upon somebody (except for Baelnorn), but the undead are people and a bit more complicated. Not necessarily terribly nice people, who are monsters and sometimes have to do horrible things due to their nature, but they have control of their actions do damage control and decide not to be total bastards. (Most are total bastards). There are folk stories and legends of protective ancestors and helpful undead, and some undead hunters are wont to let "sleeping undead lie" if they're not bothering anyone. Interestingly I also saw something today that some undead hunting is actually done by undead, who don't appreciate other, less pragmatic and/or morally inclined undead being more evil and destructive than they need to be ("‘nuisance’ undead") and risking encouraging hatred/fear of the undead and angry mobs amongst the living: do you mind, some of us are trying to unlive in relative peace here. How is a Lich supposed to study with clerics breaking down their door, you animals?? Different source again, but D&D's token "good" vampire is a Torilian native (and by "good" I mean Chaotic Neutral and messy, and currently being warped and tormented by the Dark Powers of Ravenloft who enjoy a good chew toy). Toril does have another "good" vampire in official material, but he's been cursed to be Lawful Good and would explicitly go back to being a monster if you lifted that curse, so methinks he doth not count.

"Myrkul [compared to some gods, is autonomous] obeys no one but is influenced by Bhaal and Bane..."

I love this weird connection the Dead Three have with each other and how it never seems to go away completely. I don't think co-dependency is quite the word for it, but they're just utterly toxic for each other, keep fucking each other over, and somehow they keep coming back to this alliance. For some reason the opinion of the others holds sway!

Like Bane is... Bane. He thinks he doesn't need anybody and everyone is subservient to him! He's allergic to his own capacity to enjoy things or feel emotional attachments to people. He just fundamentally can't compute when he cares about someone. Why is he upset they're dead? Bane doesn't know! He also only got as far into the Time of Troubles as he did because he has Myrkul backing him up. He still kind of depends on the other two and at least once upon a time had respect for Bhaal.

Bhaal needs the other two to keep his murder hoboing in check, and they seem to be the only beings in the universe who can (or are permitted by Bhaal) to do so. Myrkul left him unsupervised for a week once and Bhaal ended up getting distracted trying to kill winged ponies and then got killed, ruining his and Myrkul's plan.

Myrkul, by all accounts, is shooting himself in the foot every time he agrees to work with these idiots and he keeps doing it. Some descriptions have assigned gods mortal-like feelings, wants and needs, so like, is he lonely or what? Myrkul's charisma is abysmal by mortal standards; by divine standards a landfill of rancid trash has more appeal (he spent the last stretch of the Time of Troubles in a sewer, talking to zombies and himself). Bhaal is basically his only friend in existence (Bane is... there. Myrkul doesn't exactly like him, and yet he still works with him.)

The last time these idiots cooperated Bane destroyed Bhaal's worshipper base and got himself killed and thus left Myrkul in a mess, then Bhaal got killed due to murderhoboing and left Myrkul even further in this mess, and somehow the 15th century rolled around and these three agreed to work together again. Working together worked so well last time! What is wrong with you.

"Some of [Myrkul's] worshippers are powerful undead (liches, vampires, and the like), whom he works with and champions the aims/causes of."

I'm enjoying that implication that greater undead can call up Myrkul and be like "I have an evil plan!" and Myrkul absolutely loves these evil plans and is happy to fund them. Old Lord Skull supports your dreams of becoming a dread tyrant, little vampire/lich/mummy/whatever!

Hm, I wonder if the Myrkulite reverence for the undead is something they picked up from their god? Myrkul why do you prefer the dead to the living. What was your childhood. What is your damage.

In terms of religion, vampires apparently either throw in with Myrkul (most undead with religious inclinations go for him, apparently) or there's this phenomenon that tends to occur amongst the random non-deity worshipping cults that sometimes crop up (like beholder cults):

"There are vampires [in the Realms] who worship powerful undead they don't really understand, because that undead being helped them once (in hopes that said being will help them again)."

Vampires: "We have no real idea what this eldritch dark force of death is, what it wants, or what the ultimate price it asks of us will be, but it does things we like when we press the button, so we'll keep pressing the button!"

"Portfolios are [a mortal's] way of trying to understand what genres/fields of endeavour/concepts/professions/topics [the gods] seek to dominate, [...] "Lord of the Dead" is one of these. All deities compete, and Myrkul, Kelemvor, Velsharoon, and Bhaal are all "fighting for turf" here. So too, could Jergal be, if he was interested in fighting." - Ed Greenwood

I'm so glad to know that these idiots are having as much of a headache over the frankly absurd degree to which death - as a concept - has been divided and passed around to so many weirdos. They deserve it.

Considering Jergal is the one who set up this mess in the first place, I imagine him just watching the others and eating... whatever the equivalent to popcorn is for undead insect people turned gods.

...Did not read Vampire of the Mists expecting to walk out with the likely not Realmslore or larger D&D compliant headcanon that Bhaal invented vampirism, but here we are.

Right so there's a solid chance that this was the Dark Powers that govern the Ravenloft setting, and Strahd has multiple backstory variations (I think?) butI mean, gods can present themselves a little differently to different worlds, the slight shift in focus of murder+ isn't that odd. Bane has in fact been dabbling across the planes since pre-Time of Troubles, so the other two idiots could definitely have gotten in on it. And - in one version of this story - the origin of vampirism is a voice that sounds like death, describes itself as:

"...every nightmare every creature has ever had. I am the dark thoughts of murder and treachery, of fear and lust and obscenity and violation. I am the cutting word that kills the soul and the bloody knife that kills the body. I am the poison at the bottom of the cup, the noose around the thief’s neck, the cry of the wronged, and the shriek of the tortured. I am the lie. I am the black pit of madness. I am Death and all things worse."

(And you know, Bhaal definitely has lust, obscenity and violation going for him recently. And a little earlier, what the fuck is with the attraction spell sir.) and then says use a dagger - wielded by an assassin cult with the name "Ba'al" in it, whose symbol is a bloody skull, who run protection rackets and seek political power - and go commit a murder for me (enjoy it).

And be transformed one of the most deliberately murderous undead - the most human and able to grasp the horror they inflict, sustained by acts of murder, whose instincts work a lot like Bhaal and the Bhaalspawn, tbh.

Like, Toril is part of the background in this novel, but I don't actually think this was deliberate. I am still maybe going to keep the idea on the shelf. But Bhaal, if I find out you've been doing dimensional-temporal shenanigans and created Strahd (and thus, according to some accounts, invented vampirism itself)...

(It's also kind of funny to imagine Bhaal creating the first vampire and amusing himself watching, and then suddenly these mists descend and yoink all of Barovia off the map. "Huh. Weird. Anyway! Hey, Myrkul, look what I invented!")

Self-indulgent OC moments, but Wyll would be so disappointed to actually meet Gorion's Ward in my Realms. Never meet your heroes, I guess.

It's kind of like if you took the basics of Gortash and Ascended Astarion and distilled them into a 2'11" lesbian hellbent on controlling the world so it can't hurt her anymore, who also thinks failing to return library books should be a criminal offense... I mean as a character she predates them by a decade, but eh.

Durge: "I am born of the Lord of Murder. I am a Bhaalspawn." Wyll: "Hells - it explains so much. Listen to me. I knew another like you - Gorion's Ward, one of Baldur's Gate's great heroes. Bhaal's blood ran through their veins too. They burned away their own darkness with their own inner light. They chose courage, they chose honour - and so can you."

I appreciate that Wyll is always willing to discard common prejudices and support the party's resident monsters in becoming better people.

BUT ignoring the fact that Charname can be played very differently to that description (ah, the power of bards and a century of PR to bury all the bad shit you did):

If you're going by WotC's version of the story? That dude was a) a raging asshole to my recollection, and b) turned out to have failed to break free of his fate and was an unwitting pawn of Bhaal all along, and then died in a fight to the death with a sibling and unleashed the newly reborn Lord of Murder, who proceeded to go on a killing spree in the Gate a decade or so ago.

Not sure invoking that guy is really all that encouraging if you're trying to give an example of how Bhaalspawn can successfully resist their father/nature. It's one of those moments where I wonder if all the writers had access to the information on previous games and adventure books that inform the backstory of BG3.

I have decided to substitute the game-given lore about Orin's dagger (which doesn't fit timelines or other sources about Bhaal's backstory) for other, more fun, daggers related to Bhaal, the Dead Three and Jergal as a personal headcanon:

"Jathiman [one of the crown sorcerers of the Netherese city of Rdiuz, the city Bhaal served as spymaster and assassin, and the guys Bane was also employed by] set about creating a method to kill gods and seize their power, both in order to kill Anubis and in preparation for the planned conquest of the planes. By studying the fragments of the dead god that had been seized, Jathiman was able to deduce how such divine entities might be slain. Under Jathiman’s leadership, each of the seven crown-sorcerers then founded a cult among populace of Rdiuz designed to worship them. In the Year of Chilling Laughter (-439 DR) the Crown-Sorcerers of Rdiuz used this nascent worship, combined with the fragments of the dead god they had recovered, to create the god-killing seven daggers of Rdiuz. It was at this point that Jergal, the Lord of the End of Everything intervened, concerned that the Crown-Sorcerers might interfere with his plans for the revised Ascension ritual. Under cover of darkness in the Year of Dripping Daggers (-438 DR), the Pitiless One stole the seven daggers of Rdiuz and murdered all the cultists, transforming them into ravenous ghouls." - Lord of the End of Everything

(This did nothing to discourage Rdiuz from trying to conquer the gods fyi)

Anyway. After Karsus and Jergal ruined everything, accidentally murdering Mystryl and destroying High Netheril, Jergal started using Bhaal and Bane as pawns in his other schemes, and using nightmare visions to direct them to collect said god-killing daggers.

Bhaal himself wielded one of those daggers as a mortal.

I just think it would fun if it was that (deity killing) knife.

I love looking between the lines of Gortash and Durge's shenanigans and it's like "trip to the eighth layer of hell - a frozen wasteland of pure evil- to rob Mephistopheles - one of the most dangerous beings in existence", and also "trip to the inhospitable, aberration filled nightmare world 10+ miles beneath the earth that often drives people insane with horror, where the air is toxic, and the place is half-way into the Shadowfell, to play diplomat with a city of squid people who want to eat our internal organs/enslave us, ruled by an omnipotent being that can crush our brains into goo without effort any second now".

These two had some ridiculous adventures. At least Ketheric doesn't need to breathe, so that might've made the Lowerdark trip easier.

Is it ever revealed what Gortash got out of trading Karlach to Zariel? I’d assume it would be related to some sort of mechanical know-how he’s an artificer in my heart even if the game doesn’t really have that class option but also. My hc is that it’s directly related to him becoming Bane’s Chosen. The gods were picking their Chosen around this time, I think, and it would make sense that betraying a subordinate that trusts you with their life to a miserable existence of serving a tyrannical hell queen, in exchange for ambition serving power, would make Bane very happy. I could just be behind on my game lore, but I’m less familiar with how Gortash came around to Bane worship than I am with Durge/Orin (though those are rather obvious) and Ketheric.

Now that I’m typing this, I’m also confused about the mindflayer colony underneath Moonrise. How long has it been there? Did the Dead Three Chosen put it there intentionally, or was it just there and the Dead Three had a lightbulb moment? “Fellas, I know we’ve been plotting this world domination thing, and it’s just occurred to me that Shar has a guy whose house is overrun with Mindflayers. Should I dig him up?” -Myrkul in the groupchat

The fact that the Emperor/Balduran went there and was turned into a mindflayer really really muddies the timeline for me. Honestly, making the Emperor Balduran fucks up a lot of things, lore wise.

I'm pretty sure it's said somewhere that he got the schematics for the infernal engines, such as those in her chest, which he used to build the Steel Watchers. Not sure if that's in my head though. I don't think the game ever mentioned how Gortash converted to Bane, and information we might find on it isn't exactly reliable because the man's autobiographical notes are out of sync with other in-game information we find on the chosen, so anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt as half-truths and self-PR.

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I don't think the colony has been directly under Moonrise for very long, though if you overlaid a map of Faerûn and the Lowerdark they might be in similar spots geographically (10-ish miles away, vertically).

Illithid primarily live in the Lowerdark; 10+ miles beneath the earth in conditions that are utterly inhospitable to most forms of life, including humanoids, half-way into the Shadowfell, in a lot of places, and would largely traumatise you beyond functioning if it didn't kill you. Small outposts occur in the Middledark, 3-10 miles down. You can find illithid in the Upperdark (extending from between the surface and the Middledark), but this region is mostly a trading zone, not really inhabited by the Underdark races in a settlement capacity. It's also the layer from which slave-taking raids are sent, which might account for Balduran. Maybe.

So the illithid colony moving into the Upperdark and building a colony directly under Moonrise is kinda weird. I guess there are some really good sea caves under that building because illithids hate the surface and the sun so much.

In a divine capacity, illithid are Ilsensine's domain, the Dead Three don't have a lot of sway here (and mind flayers don't often go in for religion - especially not for the gods of thralls.) If any of the Three had the idea to use mind flayers though, I'd expect it to be Bane (they're closest to his domain in theme).

I have genuinely no idea what's happening here, I don't think this much thought went into it. I would assume it works like this: Gortash and Durge eventually settled on "mind flayers" during the world domination brainstorming sessions (before or after acquiring the Crown of Karsus, who can say... Who even told them that existed, again? Was it mentioned in some texts somewhere? Were the Dead Three aware of it (Bhaal being Netherse, Bane having worked there)) And then they'd have to go deep beneath the earth - possibly all the way into the Lowerdark - somehow not die to a million hazards, get into an illithid city without dying or being enslaved, and then convince an Elder Brain to join the plan. Then the colony starts climbing upwards, as per the plan, and migrates to the Upperdark under Moonrise. Being situated over the sea, sea caves down there might provide a suitable environment for them (they need damn, dark, briny caves).

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"Suprirse! Balduran is your mind flayer "ally"!" does feel a bit thrown in.

I'm still a bit surprised by the decision to make Balduran an elf, which could be canon to be fair, I've never seen anything on the guy, but I have always pictured him as human considering his namesake city is very much a human Tethyrian/Chondathan settlement. The elves were more populous back then, but the settlement was founded by humans and they very much do dominate and have for a while.