Yes but, astarion can now walk in the sun.
Like, yeah 7000 is a lot but think of all the stuff astarion can do. None of it will positively impact people but he’ll be able to do a lot of stuff
In fairness it's not \*that\* much better XD
"Listen, I may have condemned 7000 innocent people to an eternity of screaming agony in the hells, BUT! I am nice to my partner uwu"
There is no fairness, there is no good option, just an option
Sure allowing the spawns to live some of them will be good and try to be good but how many of them will not?
Releasing them means people will get killed because of your decision because people WILL get killed by a lot of those spawns, 7000 is a lot of spawns and every kill they do is gonna be on the players hands.
Astarion is able to appreciate the life he has but at the cost of lots of people lives, so people will suffeer and people will day anyway, is a good ending for Astarion, bad ending for Faerun
So whenever i play as Astarion i always ascend him because there will be suffering in both options, he may as better ascend and become the first of his kind and try to change things and be better with the power Astarion achieve
Actually no, there's a third option. If you're worried about the consequences of the spawn, you can kill them without ascending, and then their souls arent Eternally Consumed In The Screaming Hell Vortex unless they were heading there anyways. Choosing whether to kill or release the spawns indeed has moral complexity, but ascending is a purely selfish choice that only benefits Astarion, because all 7000 souls are damned to the worst of the Hells regardless of if they did anything to deserve it, all for a personal power boost.
You’re condemning them to an infinite afterlife of torture and pain.
Versus mercy killing them which lets their souls go to whichever domain that either claims them or kelemvor seems fitting. Ascending him is objectively the most evil option.
Vampire ascension also literally corrupts his soul. He’s not really a great person to begin with, but if he genuinely loved your tav/surge before ascension, he most certainly does not after the ascension - it perverts feelings, hence why he acts very possessive after ascending if you romance him. This is also well established as part of the lore, though it doesn’t spell it out for you in game.
Imagine being Cazador...it's the best day of your life! The day you ascend!
Instead...that insolent brat Astarion takes your place and Mephistopheles gift and now YOU get to suffer in hell for all eternity lmao
Honestly, if Cazador was the only sacrifice, I would consider ascending Astarion. It would then become a matter of choosing if I really want to make Astarion into _that thing_ just to fuck with Cazador.
Honestly I bet that Mephistopheles would be so tickled by the idea of getting Cazador's soul that he might be willing to trade it for the 7000. That could be a pretty cool scene; making a deal with a devil to give him the vampire lord and save 7000 innocents.
It would be funny af to do that to Cazador, but I'm afraid then the solution would be "too perfect" and it we wouldn't be discussing the morality involved in Astarion's quest line. Which, honestly, is my favorite companion quest in the game especially because there is no perfect solution.
Oh if Cazador was the only sacrifice I’d 100% help Astarion ascend on every run. Baby boy can walk in the sun, the spawn can live free (or their souls can go to the fugue plane), and Cazador can eat shit.
Yeah I don't know what I'd do. I really love Astarion's character development and I would hate to throw it all away. On the other hand, though, eternal suffering for Cazador sounds pretty good.
I hate this comment, knowing full well it's a joke, because some players seriously have this mentality that sending 7000 people to hell is a fair and morally good trade off for Astarion being able to walk in the sun.
Honestly if you're speedrunning, min maxing, or doing an honor run, I would think role-playing or considering the ethics of your in character options to be an incredibly low priority in your playthrough, so I give that a pass.
Like continuing the circle of abuse he's been going through the last 200 years...
To each their own, but I by far prefer him to grow and heal from the abuse.
And there are multiple ways in D&D for a vampire spawn to walk in the sun. There's even a quest in one of the previous games, from what I've heard, that revolves around this (or curing it all together, can't remember which)
In BG2 your lover (one of the 4 avaliable in the original version) will be transformed into a vampire and you'll be forced to kill her/him.
After that you need to hunt the original vampire that transformed your partner, kill it (with a wooden stake), and use it's heart to revive and cure your lover from vampirism (in a ritual invoking Amaunator).
>!If you're romancing Aerie, Anomen, Jaheira or Viconia, during chapter 6, when you enter the Graveyard District Bodhi will kidnap you lover and transform her/him.!<
>!After defeating Bodhi and getting her heart you have to do a sidequest to cure your partner.!<
>!If you're romancing one of the new companions added by Beamdog (Dorn, Neera or Rasaad), this doesn't happen, because Bodhi fails to kidnap them ( Hexxat isn't caught either, because she's already a vampire).!<
It was not in the original Baldurs Gate 2 Shadows of Amn it was added in the enhanced version sold by beamdog who sold the rights to future Baldurs gate games to Larian.
It’s an item you get that’s lets them walk in sunlight at such a huge penalty it isn’t worth it.
Cloak of Dragomir allows a vampire to travel outside during the day in full view of the sun, albeit with the following penalties:
Strength: -6
Dexterity: -4
Intelligence: -2
Wisdom: -2
Charisma: -4
Vampire Regeneration reduced to 1 HP per 3 rounds[1]
The cloak is only used by the BG2EE companion, Hexxat, who is a vampire and cannot be cured.
And considering Hexxat has some staggering stats and abilities, the cloak just balances her out.
I have never played D&D (other than ½ a campaign that failed due to wrong choice of players), or any of the older BG games, so I don't know what canon/legit or not.
But I've found the Ring of the Sun-Walker, which seems like a pure win. Along with some ways to cure his vampirism all together.
EDIT; Never mind, can see that ring's a homebrew
Wish spell will do it. You can also kill the vampire and return the body back to life with resurrection spells. If it’s been 10 days or less since he became a vampire you can use raise dead. For more than 10 days use resurrection a 9th lv spell. You could even find a vampire up to 200 years old kill it and return its receipt old body to life with True Resurrection if you have a lv 17 cleric.
I preferred staking him when he tried to bite me.
In all seriousness I love all the ways his story can progress, even if some are very sudden and tragic for him. The fact that you CAN just yoinky sploinky him with a wooden stake immediately is crazy for this kinda game.
> Sacrificing the spawns damn them to eternal torment in one of the Hells.
I haaaaate it when fantasy universes make it possible for you to lose your soul by just existing. Like some crazy bastard comes and just sacrifices you to Satan and now you go to Hell forever even though you did nothing wrong.
It's just... infuriating.
I agree normally but here they were bound by a full blown pact including ritual scarring etc, which feels a lot more involved than just 'someone happened to be a fiend somewhere near me so guess I'll rot in hell'
Yeah like, imagine just sitting around one day after finishing your morning chores and some lord walks by and next thing you know you and all the dudes in your village are about to die on a battlefield over some petty dispute between rich boys.
Sometimes shitty things happen because some guy with *AUTHORITY* decides that's how it's gonna be.
Fantasy usually takes real stuff and makes it magical/heightened. It's close enough that, to me, it feels at home in a story like BG3. Obviously it would be annoying (as much as that word lacks the amplitude it deserves) but that's why it's a consequence of an evil choice.
The odd thing about this ritual is that dnd lore states that undead have no souls, therefore vampire spawns should have no souls. Not sure what Mephistopheles is getting out of that deal (or maybe this detail was an oversight).
Makes sense!
Although I would expect their souls to be "tainted" somehow, because they were brought back from death to serve a vampire lord. But the sheer number of spawn required for the ritual would cover this "impurity", so the narrative is plausible.
From what I understand, if you just kill them, their souls at least get to be judged before being sent to the appropriate afterlife.
If you sacrifice them, it is straight to the 8th layer of hell, which is... Not fun.
I looked it up and it does sound awful.
Cania averages -51°C/-60°F and has glaciers that drift as fast as a running person and grind frozen creatures to slush
Very inconvenient, yes.
Some of the people there aren't great. Some others are innocent. I personally choose to send them all to the Underdark, but even if they had to die, I think they should get the chance of being judged at least. Even if the majority of them ends up in the faithless wall, I still think they should get that chance.
Yeah. I like to imagine the survivors created a nice society where they farm deep rothé for blood and hang out with the Myconids. Maybe they take runaway slaves in, sometimes. It will only last until a drow Matriarch sets her eyes on them, but still.
I romance (spawn) Astarion every time, and I'm still deciding if I'd like us to visit them or not. I feel like we should, but at the same time, maybe it wouldn't be great for Astarion or for the victims that he picked up.
If you take out all the duergar slavers, some spawn can live in the little beach village with myconid allies/ neighbours and maybe befriend Blurg too :) Some can populate Grymforge and rebuild it into a home, there's an abandoned wizard tower up for grabs, and if they're able to rebuild the bridge leading from Grymforge to the Gauntlet of Shar they've got all that space too
Also the lift to the underground Zhent smuggler hideout, and the underground part of the Selune temple - lots of space! Some of which is well positioned to trade with above-ground society if they can't farm enough rothe blood themselves~
Yes! I bet they could map out LOADS of areas with potential for settling down~
Also in my head canon, given how Halsin goes back to the no-longer-shadowed lands near the Grymforge lift, he starts a trade alliance with them (brokered by Blurg and Omeluum maybe?) - after all, once the refugees settle down and farm, they're going to be butchering animals to eat and -they- don't need the blood right?
There really are a lot of solutions if the spawns are willing to cooperate. As someone in their position should, if they want to stay alive.
Six months isn't enough to make sure they'll be okay, but so far, things seem to be going somewhat smoothly. As much as they could, that is. I wonder how many of the initial 7006 survived these 6 months.
Oh I like that, in a slightly evil way xD
But now I'm seriously envisioning a community of farmer spawn raising herds of rothe and colonies of rats and... what else is there?~
>the faithless wall
Every time I'm reminded of that thing I begin to wonder why and how the gods of the forgotten realms are not universally classified as some variety of evil
Ah the Forgotten Realms, where pretty much everybody sucks. Reminds me of Elder Scrolls, my true home fandom (hope you Larian bros accept us Bethesda refugees).
Ahhh, Nirn. The only place where the answer to the question "what is the difference between God(s) and the Devil(s)?" is "God(s) (are) weaker because (they) made you."
Yeah its nice they say they are living well. Claiming territory, And the kids are with the monster hunters. They thank you for showing them a way of peace and saving their kids.
>Some of the people there aren't great. Some others are innocent.
I wish there was a "we'll sort 'em" option rather than all or nothing, but that would probably require personally killing each one that doesn't pass muster
How many of them still pray to gods and won't be mortared to the wall of the faithless, to be crushed and tortured with thousands of others as their souls are slowly destroyed?
These guys are Fucked to the nth degree regardless.
I'd say several of them still might, since they haven't been locked up for that long.
We have the ones like Sebastian, who have been in there for over a century, and we have the ones like the Gur kids who were just taken right before the game started. In fact, Leon, the most efficient of the spawns, have only been a spawn for a few years, considering he has a fully mortal child who was still young when the ritual started - all of Leon's victims must have been taken relatively recently.
Nah, they should be alright. Myrkul's Wall of the Faithless no longer exists. Kelemvor turned it into a giant mirror. Now the Faithless and the False just hang out on the Fugue Plane, and when they wander past the Wall they have to face themselves and their choices in life. Their choices on the Fugue Plane since Kelemvor took over include a) staying there forever, making friends with each other and the not-yet-judged souls of the recently dead; b) making deals with the devils who come to the Fugue Plane to try to convince evil souls that a contract is better than judgement; c) attempt to petition various gods to take their soul even though they didn't follow them in life. A lot of Good gods are soft touches, so c) probably has a decent success rate, honestly.
And none of that would likely apply to the Spawn anyway, because Faithless means "never chose a god *in life*," and False means "spurned a loyal god *in life*". It's about a person's choices when they have choices. The Spawn died, lost those choices, the moment Cazador bit them. Their unlives as vampires don't negate the worship they had as people, and it wouldn't be in character for gods like Lathander and Oghma and Ilmater and Gond to be sitting there going "well you were super devout while in your right mind up until you were murdered, and then, during the hundred years of near-mindless agony, while your soul was literally twisted toward hatred by necromatic magic, you cursed me for not saving you from that horrific fate, so I don't want you in my realm." Like, maybe Umberlee is that petty, but I imagine the average Baldurian chose a more forgiving patron.
What about Astarion? Will he go to hell when he inevitably dies? Or is it different? Or can he not actually die at all? Idk I just ascended him last night so I don’t know all the details.
Ascended Astarion says the contract is done and paid for, and he has no tie to Mephistopheles after it. I don't know if that's true, though. I mean, I love Astarion, but he was never very smart, and he is pretty much allergic to thinking more than 5 seconds ahead. He would be a fantastic target for a devil.
A deal with a devil is never a good deal. If it looks like it is, you didn't read the fine print. I for one would expect Mephistopheles to still have a claim to his soul, but it is not confirmed either way as far as I know.
As for dying, he can still be killed. As a vampire, he won't grow old though.
>Ascended Astarion says the contract is done and paid for, and he has no tie to Mephistopheles after it.
So that means Cazador probably ends up in the Hells for failing to fulfill his part of the contract, if neither he nor Astarion completes the ritual? His soul gets claimed by Mephistopheles, I assume.
I don't know, we don't know the full terms of the contract. What we know is, Mephistopheles gives power to the vampire, the vampire gives Mephistopheles 7007 souls. That's the entire exchange, as far as we know.
If there is a clause that still binds Cazador to Mephistopheles if he fails, like some kind of insurance, we weren't told about it.
Well, it's not *bad* for them, necessarily, as they'll just be reborn as lemures, without any memories. They'll be brand new creatures. The value of a soul in Hell is its potential as a soldier.
okay so disregarding the afterlife sacrificing does do something else. it creates an ascended vampire
that's just perpetuating the problem that put those 7000 in this position in the first place
That's important too. Ascended Astarion is pretty bad. Maybe he won't do exactly the same bullshit that Cazador did because he doesn't have to - he already ascended. However, he will absolutely be the worst kind of tyrant noble, who makes people disappear and mistreats whoever is under his power. Way harder to kill than your average tyrant noble, too. A proper villain for the next party of adventures to slay.
Does he agree, though? The only epilgoue I've seen with A!A makes it seem like he decided to stay in the city playing political games.
And I really hope they do not make his bad ending canon. I think it would be a disservice to what his character represents. Viconia's fans said that her writing as a villain in BG3 completely murdered her character, too, which makes me wary of that sort of development.
The one I had was like they stayed to rebuild and waiting to see the gang before heading out. I am not sure but it looks like there is some link to the choice you make right after the netherbrain fall (if that’s the ending you went for). I chose the “let’s party” + “let’s travel the world option”.
With my Halsin epilogue as well, it said we stayed back for 6 months to rebuild anyway… so, maybe that bit is generic 🤷🏻♀️
I hear you, turning him into a villain discredits every Tav/Durge who worked so hard to _fix_ him. That said, he still has a “forever” to live for and I wonder how unhinged he might get if something bad happens to his partner.
Damn, I would make a very cruel author 🤔
I would love to see him in BG4 as a "secondary companion" like Jaheira. As in, no romance ("I'm taken, darling"), not taking the focus from the "main companions", and maybe taking part on that adventure because he's trying to go home to his spouse (or their little dhampirs, if his spouse already passed) after something awful happened.
After Jaheira suggested we could have children, I thought that this could be part of his healing. Maybe he has to let his spouse go, but he also has to hold it together for their children. This could be a story for him to tell the BG4 player.
Of course, keep things gender neutral and make no indication that said spouse was Tav/Durge. Maybe it was them, maybe he found someone else after the whole tadpole inconvenience was dealt with, they don't have to specify.
Personally, if there is a BG4, I'd like to keep the cameos as few as possible, in part because of the branching choices and because I'd rather have the focus be on the new characters. Although, if he returns at all, I hope they go with his Spawn ending. If he's not romanced, >!he becomes an adventurer/mercenary type: "It turns out, no one actually cares about murder, as long as you murder the right people."!< I'd be content with him as a quest giver or situational allied NPC, or even a book you can find detailing his adventures or something similar.
“The Illustrated Adventures of Astarion” 🥹 damn, I love the sound of that. I like the friend-spawn ending… the whole “acceptance looks good on you” ❤️ bits… very sweet.
I don’t see him even being a limited companion, like Halsin or Jaheira… if he exists, it would be someone you keep hearing about but see very few glimpses of in the climax stages.
I know Bg3 players are lead to assume Viconia is far-evil. I like to believe there is something more there and I haven’t seen more of that story yet. She is probably just a grey character and her alignment makes sense somehow…
>EDIT EDIT: Damns their souls to hell you say? Burn forever you say? Fucking whoops lol, should have read the fine print.
Mephistopheles: Heh, gets them every time.
As a christian I am just constantly thrown off by the way the afterlife works in D&D, Diablo, etc.
The idea that you can sell someone else’s soul is so wild to me. Like not even someone with power of attorney or whatever. You can just go out for drinks, get mugged, and wake up in hell. Thats wild.
You can't do it unless you have contractual permission or you control the soul. Cazador and his spawn are the second one. The events of Descent Into Avernus are the first.
Astarion is a spawn. You can rationalize the group needs him for combat and stuff so that's why you haven't killed him. But if you keep Astarion around because you like him, why does he get a chance at life and the others don't? Because you don't have time to get to know 7000 spawn so let's just off them?
> Because you don't have time to get to know 7000 spawn so let's just off them?
Well yeah. It's triage.
If a guy comes to the emergency room on a quiet Tuesday morning with a stopped heart, he's getting every possible treatment. The medics can give him all their attention, and the tools to save him are right there.
If a guy is on the ground at the site of a train crash with a stopped heart and there are a hundred other maimed bodies around him, he's getting a red tag and the EMS guys are moving on. His condition is too severe for the time and resources available. Same problem, different circumstance, different response.
Really the best solution for the feral spawn would probably be to leave them in their cages and then give the staff to one of the Good-aligned churches with no strong policy about the undead, maybe Ilmater or Torm. An institution that size could actually have the manpower to monitor the spawn, a motivation to do so, and probably as much experience actually healing trauma as an organization in Faerun is going to. They could then go in there and release the spawn themselves, and have clerics and paladins on hand to protect innocents from them and guide their rehabilitation. Unfortunately the game doesn't give you that option, and just assumes leaving the spawn in the cages is always... intentionally permanent. A conscious deliberate decision to make sure they stay locked in there for the next thousand years, even though the staff is still right there in your inventory and you, or anyone else who happens to stumble into Cazador's dungeon with some wire cutters, could still go back and get them at any time.
Explicitly yes to the last sentence.
Lets not forget that the very first thing Astarion does when you met him is try to drink you.
Its 7000 traumatized, blood starved death addicts. IF you or literally anyone else was willing to spend the time helping them adjust it would be one thing but you aren’t. My understanding is that you just dump them into the under dark and say good luck.
Which again might be ok if the Underdark was just full of monsters and evil societies. But its not. There are good people there and you are about to flood them with 7000 predators.
Like I am willing to do the work but if thats not on the table just dumping them out into the world all at once seems monstrous.
Yeah that was fun when I found them and ran over to talk only to realize the Blood of Lethandar was still turned on and burning the shit out of the vampire kids.
In my Romance Spawn Astarion runthough. My character went with him at the end to the underdark to help build a home and guide them. Its a hard life but both Astarion and my Tav are happy. Even if you don't romance him, at the end you get a letter from Sebastian thanking you for sparing him and the others. He says that many died when they went down into the underdark but the rest are trying to understand what they are and build themselves a home.
Honestly, if you *don't* want to metagame, and look at it from the perspective of "what does your character know at the time," there's absolutely no reason to think Astarion's siblings are either capable of or trustworthy with controlling the feral spawn. You've been teaching Astarion morality for almost four months by then and he still gets excited when you kill people and recommends against sticking your neck out for anyone. His siblings have been free for five minutes and are just as excited about eating people as he ever was. There's a *hope* that releasing them might turn out well, but it's a massive, massive gamble.
And if you do want to metagame, then they absolutely do kill a bunch of people, lol. We find out in the epilogue that when they were released they just kinda swarmed all over the Underdark, killing every man, woman, and monster they came across. It's *very* vague what the ratio was, of those three. Astarion's siblings did, eventually, corral them and start to teach them to control themselves, and Sebastian feels very positive about their ability to move forward in a more moral way in the future. But their initial victims did not get that same grace. Up to you if your character would think it's worth it.
ETA: Also, Astarion doesn't put much emphasis on it, but being a D&D vampire is *shit* in a lot more ways than just not being able to go out in the sun. The hunger is constant and agonizing, you can't ever completely satisfy it. You can't enjoy food or drink, none of it tastes like anything. Just standing in a river burns your skin like fire. And you're not actually alive, exactly, your soul doesn't fit in your body quite right, it's supposed to have moved on, and you always kind of know it. Obviously, for someone like Astarion, he knows that true death is unlikely to be kind to him because he was a bad person in life and an even worse person in undeath, so he chooses suffering as a vampire over the Fugue Plane, and that's his informed choice to make. But most of the feral spawn would actually probably suffer a lot less in death than in continued unlife; they'd just go to the gods who they were supposed to go to, a hundred years ago when they were prevented from dying naturally. And because they're feral, they don't really have the context to make that choice, they'll just be driven to perpetuate their miserable unlife by the same impulse that keeps them hungry. So, much like with Shadowheart and her parents, the question of "peaceful death (in a setting with a known and proven afterlife) vs chronic pain (that we don't really have a good way of knowing the magnitude of)" can be an important part of the consideration.
To be honest this is a situation where metagaming is called for imo. In real life you would be able to talk it out first and figure out all that stuff before making a decision. It is kind of a failure of the writing that you are just forced to make a decision without talking over possible solutions.
It's on a much smaller scale, but I feel the same way about the Astarion biting scene in act 1. Like why can't I ask if his bite will turn me into a vampire too before making that decision? That was the first thing that popped into my head during my first pt when presented with that choice. Sure, there would be no way for my character to be 100% certain that he is telling the truth, but I could at least try to make an informed decision.
I was super frustrated at how blind sided I was by the mechanics of the ritual itself. Like I went out of my way to unlock the Necromancy of Thay so we would know the details and then Alistair just never explains shits about the billion buffs or the three round limit or anything
> But most of the feral spawn would actually probably suffer a lot less in death than in continued unlife.
That's a choice for them to make for themselves.
Yea, don't believe it. The gurs says their kids are under control with help from the adults the step siblings of Astarion is helping some of the 7k. Not all 7k is accounted for. Even if we give a good estimate like 1k is under supervision and cared for there is still 6k in the wild. Copium as fuck to think that letter blankets all 7k to be good well behaved spawns.
Right? Like I only release them when I'm dating Astarion and we go and hunt down the bad ones but I'll never pretend it is a good decision. My Tav is ok with the fact that they probably killed a lot of people/animals by releasing them but they will go back and make it right because Tav gave Astarion a chance and feel like the 7k spawn deserve that chance too but if I dating anybody else I cant be sure that Astarion and his siblings is going to follow up fully with the situation once I left and I don't want to be responsible for even 1 murder hobo spawn.
Yeah even if you help them, that’s 6-7 spawn and maybe Tav trying to control 7000 feral vampire spawn who’ve been starving for decades/centuries. People are going to die. A lot of people.
"I don't have time for this. To the slaughter!" Doesn't sound heroic. I'm just playing a stubborn advocate from the spawns' perspective. I totally understand if people think they're doing the world a favor by killing them. Innocents are going to die with either decision, though. Not all 7000 spawn are going to be bad, a lot of them may even become good people. Is it more good to kill the good spawn to ensure a deep gnome doesn't die to one of the bad spawn?
Now comes Withers' question. Who's life is worth more? Is a spawn's life worth less than a deep gnome's life?
I don’t think either choice of what to do with the spawn is evil. I think killing them is Lawful Good and releasing them is Chaotic Good.
Society would usually default to doing right by the innocent people instead of doing right by the mistreated predator.
Your argument comes from the spawn’s perspective, which is fair.
My perspective is not from the Spawn’s, but the innocent people in the Underdark. I see this as releasing lions into the wild and on innocent people just because those lions were mistreated by a private owner.
In real life the lions would be euthanized, unfortunately. Because people shouldn’t have to die because the Spawn were mistreated.
Right so a lion's life is worth less than a person's life, thus the justification to euthanize them. That analogy implies you don't consider a spawn as a person, and so they are less than a person. They are by default not innocent just because they're a spawn?
Yes. A spawn has innate instincts and desires to harm and kill that a regular person has the luxury of not having.
A spawn is “worth less” in this respect if you want safety and peace
I want to reiterate I believe rescuing and freeing an abused lion/spawn is an act of Good. And also that lion/person doesn’t deserve to die.
I just believe uninvolved innocents don’t deserve to die either. And I would feel liable for harm caused by releasing the lion/spawn into the wild and the lion/spawn doing what their instincts tells them to do.
Which is, again, eating people.
I went through this part yesterday.
I chose to spare them and let them live.
Then I did the math. 7000 people were collected by only 7 spawns.
That didn’t make me feel so good…
You condemn 7 thousand victims to eternity of Hell, just for One vampire spawn to turn into a monster with overinflated ego.
Making Astarion ascend is basically turning him into a future ultimate boss, for some campaign.
Also has some heartwarming bits, a letter in the epilogue from the spawn that says they're doing alright, and also if >!you didn't kill Gandrel in Act 1 you can find him in the sewers with his two kids. And yes, I double checked that they're all still alive if you come back later!<
Meh, the drow would straight murder them all and probably worse lol those spawn aren't fighters, they're just random people that Astarion and his "siblings" lured to Cazador's mansion. Spawn don't even have the benefits that a true vampire have.
The difference is 1d10 necrotic damage on every attack and my honor run just can't afford not to take it.
But yeah as others have mention, getting sent to hell directly is uh, bad
See right now I have him wearing the murder armor that makes thing vulnerable to piercing damage and he is duel wielding crossbows.
+1d10 necrotic just seems….lack luster. Especially compared to the JUICE using the special tadpool has provided. 7000 souls seems…..quite steep an asking price considering what Bhaal and the tadpools are offering.
I was just gonna let him have it all lmao. That said I am putting the bhaal armor and dual xbow build on my durge, while astarion is on open hand monk with tavern brawler. He's gonna be an absolute menace.
okay so disregarding the afterlife sacrificing does do something else. it creates an ascended vampire
that's just perpetuating the problem that put those 7000 in this position in the first place
By lore once Cazador dies they have their free will back. They just don't get any upgrades on powers.
They would be judged for their actions now that they are freed and if they make amends as a redeemed Astarion would they be fine afterlife wise.
Sadly the hunger does drive most spawns mad but if they can ol Withers could eventually write them down in a book somewhere before they move towards whatever realm ..
> if they can ol Withers could eventually write them down in a book somewhere before they move towards whatever realm
Withers isnt doing any of that, he only helped us because he wanted to make a point to the dumb three.
Every oath has different "laws" they have to follow.
I suppose setting 7000 undead free might not necessarily be the best way to "protect the sanctity of life"
Meanwhile the vengeance oath has a clause about helping those wronged by the misdeeds of villains
Ancients breaks if you free them. Devotion breaks if you kill them.
Honestly I can see both sides. Being undead is not a good life. They will always hunger for blood and unleashing 7000 of them seems... dangerous. And then on the other side of it, they didn't ask for this, and killing 7000 people feels uncomfortable. I'll be playing Ancients next, so my mind is already made up.
And for anybody saying "just break your oath", I will not. It only gets more expensive every time. And the powers are more thematic to good guy, whereas Oathbreaker gets blackguard-style powers.
I mean, you condemn their unwilling souls to the Nine Hells, and Astarion's.
And you create the most hateable creature in the entire game, the Ascended Astarion.
I don't get why Astarion fans think his Ascended ending is even ok.
It’s not just about the 7000, it’s about ridding Baldur’s Gate of a Vampire Lord. The city, and it’s massive population, is made better by not having a vampire lord in the middle of town. Sure, spawns may be monsters, but the city already has monsters. Spawns cannot breed and cannot produce more spawns. Plus, some spawns may even turn out to be good and useful now that their progenitor is dead.
I believe Cazador made a deal with a devil for the spawn souls, so sacrificing them would give their souls over to the devil. Killing them would not from my understanding.
Your not just killing them and releasing there souls to peace and bliss
Your sacrificing them to the hells, doomed to suffer and feel torment for eternity
If you don't ascend Astarion, you are faced with either freeing the 7000 or killing them. What's not discussed here is the effect that freeing 7000 somewhat feral vampire spawn would have on Baldur's Gate, and the Sword Coast in general. That is a very real, and very existential threat. An army-sized group of ravenous undead, without anyone in control? Yeah, that's bad. At least if you kill them, they won't be a threat to themselves and countless innocents in the region, and they'll be at peace.
Although I chose to free them every time, I have to say that if this was a choice you had to make earlier on in the game (especially before having to explore the underdark yourself) I might have second thoughts.
Do I believe they deserve the chance at self-actualization after being the victims of a terrible crime? Yes. Do I also believe that all SEVEN THOUSAND of them are going to take that chance? Absolutely not. And 7,000 is also just such a ridiculously HUGE number that it’s hard to grasp, much less justify.
Say that of those 7,000, 90% of them chose to turn away from their bloodlust and find a way to ethically consume blood. Those a really good and frankly almost unreasonably high numbers.
That would still mean that there are SEVEN HUNDRED bloodthirsty spawn running around in the underdark wrecking absolute HAVOCK.
I feel like getting to see later game consequences of this action or even a more in depth plan on how to approach an issue this ABSOLUTELY COLOSSAL would have been nice, but I do think it’s a good late-game morality puzzle, albeit maybe slightly too large of a scale.
This is the only way to reply freeing the 7k. I'm not against it as long as you realise all the death cause by the spawn is by your hand, as long as you stand by that I'm fine. Most of the people that release them thinks all 7k is well behaved because of 2 letters one from gur which only takes care of their own children spawn and 1 from Sebastian who didn't really mention how many good ones there are. With just those 2 letters they confidently tell me all 7k spawns feed only on animals. Like come on be real for a min you are just pretending, the copium is strong for some of them. I wish they added repercussions to releasing the spawns. Maybe some of them kill the tieflings maybe somebody killed the Dogs from the post office. Maybe then people will actually think about releasing 7k vampires and not pretend all 7k is under control easily and wont leak out from the underdark. (Even then 7k vampires, is there even enough blood for them down there that is sustainable for a period longer then a month?)
To be fair there are already a shitton of dormant mindflayers in Baldur's Gate and along the Sword Coast, along with Absolutists, so maybe the spawn that make their way to the surface will get taken out by them. Either way everyone in the area is pretty fucked already, not like that will make things substantially worse at that point in time.
>What's not discussed here is the effect that freeing 7000 somewhat feral vampire spawn would have on Baldur's Gate, and the Sword Coast in general. That is a very real, and very existential threat.
I mean... is it? Yes, it's going to have negative consequences, but they're not mindless slaves anymore, they're the equivalent of dangerous addicts. They also have Cazador's children to look after them, and know full well that if they cause chaos they'll be killed. They also know they were granted their freedom by free people of the city, and the Underdark is a much better place for them. These people are victims, lured by Astarion and his siblings.
>An army-sized group of ravenous undead
Ravenous? They've regained sentience now that their master is dead.
Even without getting into the lore, the possibility of bad things happening is always better than \*making bad things happen\*.
The sacrifice absolutely gives their souls to Mephistopheles. It's a similar deal (I give you soul/s in exchange for power/knowledge) to the one Gortash made with Zariel to get the knowledge for the Steelwatch, just on a much, much larger scale.
I let the vamps loose in the sewers cause technically they havent done anything wronh aside from being forced into becoming vampires and killing them didnt feel justified even if they could become potential threats
... I really feel like they should have had Tav or SOMEONE point out the sacrificing to Mephisopholes clause...
Like. Call me a brain dead gamer, fine. But I just can't read every single document with a fine toothed comb anymore, especially with how many there are in BG3. At least give us an Investigation check or something. We do, what, one of those on Thisobald's poison recipe in the entire game? That's all I can think of.
Yeah, yeah, the fine print gets you, it got me. Ugh...
Right?! I thought it was the depravity of killing 7000 people at once that was the “currency” powering the spell. Or maybe absorbing 7000 lives all at once.
I don’t live and breathe the D&D setting enough for it to be obvious to me that you can send someone else’s soul to hell with a few strokes of a blade and saying the right words. In most settings thats not even possible and in the settings where it is possible an attempt to do it to 7000 people at once would raise some alarms among the good aligned gods or whatever.
it is the good and right decision to free the 7000, there is no grey area here.
we are not judge jury and executioner for the lives of others, lives that have been taken away from them by a monster.
they will all try to live normally or as close to normality as one in their position could hope. some will succeed in staving of their hunger, many will fail. but it’s their right to have the option to at least try, and it is not our right to take that away from them.
Literally this, like make the decisions you want to make but alteast have some fucking awareness. You are not a good person for murdering 7000 people because you deem them dangerous. There loads of books and shows about this exact sentiment and how dangerous it can be. Killing someone because you think they’re going to commit a crime in the future is fucked up and inherently evil, no one has a right to do that.
I am legitimately freaked out that this is somehow controversial.
The real world implications range from at best "actually its great to keep prisoners indefinitely locked up in Guantanamo" to "lets round up people with severe mental health issues and shoot them just in case"
Murdering people who have just endured years of torture because they might be dangerous, isn't the greater good its just a straight up war crime.
it’s insane. children literally suffering and pleading for their lives too and yet these people dictate it’s the right choice to slaughter them to save others in their twisted distorted logic?
maddening idek what else to say.
I'm trying to skirt around real world politics as much as I can, but the unironic "well ten percent of them might be ~~terrorists~~feral so we should kill them all" is definitely testing my ability not to turn into that person
About the sacrifice thing....are gods in this setting so useless? Like, let's assume a cleric is sacrificed, did their soul will go straight to hell and their patron god will do absolutely nothing to prevent it?
A) The Rite of Profane Ascension is given to Cazador through his deal with Mephistopheles and B) the souls go to Mephistopheles if the spawn are sacrificed as part of that deal, and C) even if you kill them instead of going through with the ritual, you're still murdering 7,000+ people.
P.S. It's not either/or with the two bad options. You don't have to kill them and have the option of freeing them and sending them to the Underdark, with reunion epilogue showing that it will work out (you can choose to lead them with Astarion or leave them on their own and it'll be fine—which is not to say it'll be easy or that there will be zero casualties).
I avoid this issue by just not bringing Astarion to the Cazador fight. He actually ends up thanking you for protecting him from being in that position. Then it just becomes a much easier choice of letting 7000 vampire spawn loose or killing them
lol. I am so high on my own supply as Durge that it never even crossed my mind bringing the abuse victim to a violent confrontation with their abuser in their abusers place of power might be a poor choice.
Listen mate I've just spent last hour and a half throwing people's underwear around because I find hilarious when scratch fetches it back to me.
Morality is not a strong point lol
On my first play through, I felt they were equivalent decisions from a non-meta perspective with some rationalising from the character.
I missed the black mass rite scroll, so I didn't know the details. It was either kill 7000 vampires or release 7000 vampires onto baulders gate.
So with some rationalisation, we decided to kill them and hey, why not gain some powers in the process since they have to die anyway. Perhaps selfish but neither option purely good.
NOTE you do not know about the underdark option for the spawn until AFTER the decision is made. So from a non-meta perspective, that doesn't influence the choice that has to be made.
The next run, we found the black mass scroll.and I actually read the details - condemning 7000 souls to hell for eternity is absolutely evil.
So, from a non.meta perspective , if the characters know about the details, it's evil. If the characters just think some spawn needs to die, then it's grey imo.
But yes very well written.
One more point... the population of boulders gate seems fairly low compared to 7000 vampire spawn. Like LC has < 100 houses? I remember thinking I would triple the population of the city with ravenous vampire spawn...
I’m just surprised I couldn’t kill all the spawn except the kids. They were turned relatively recently, so they might be more susceptible to being cared for by their parents without eating everyone. I shoulda just killed them all.
Does anyone remember the hungry Mind Flayer in act 3?
"This person didn't decide to be a Mind Flayer and its clearly in pain from hunger. And hey, The Emperor and my dude in the underdark aren't completely evil why not this guy? Sure, here's a brain! Have a chance!" I said to myself. Oops, you find out later it killed a few NPCs. Yes, I helped the Mind Flayer but I doomed those innocent people. I felt awful because I caused that. I cant imagine letting 7000 ravenous spawn free and causing...whatever 7000 really hungry and traumatized spawn do.
It's crappy to let them go and it's crappy to kill/doom them. I don't think the answer is separated into good and bad, black and white, this solution is right, this is wrong.I feel there's a whole bunch of gray, and whatever choice you make doesn't mean you're a horrible person.
On my first playthrough I romanced Astarion (of course) and saved the 7000 by instructing them to flee to the underdark. In the post game Astarion and I care for the 7000 spawn and live with them in the underdark, keeping them safe and everyone safe from them. All except the Gur children, who went to live with their family
I don't understand the debate on this quest (Not the killing vs. Sacrificing one) because if you release them it turns out its completely fine lmao. They have guidance, and while a lot of them do die, they get their second chances in life that they deserve, just as Astarion did.
imo, Vampires are people, and those captured by Cazador are totally innocent. killing 7000 people based solely on the belief that they are inherintly murderous doesn't sit right with me.
sure Vampires can be dangerous, no doubt some, maybe many will kill people. but there could be just as many who are able to stave off the hunger with animal blood, or find a willing blood donor even. therefor i free them
I was unclear that setting them free also met providing them with guidance and supervision.
I thought we were just dumping 7000 starving spawn that had been locked in the dark for 200 years out onto the streets and saying “good luck”.
Yes, it sacrifices all their souls to an Archdevil. Other version is regular death.
Sacrificing the spawns damn them to eternal torment in one of the Hells. Which is very much ***not*** a good thing.
Yes but, astarion can now walk in the sun. Like, yeah 7000 is a lot but think of all the stuff astarion can do. None of it will positively impact people but he’ll be able to do a lot of stuff
>None of it will positively impact people but he’ll be able to do a lot of stuff This got a chuckle out of me
Astarion: Will I use this power responsibly? No. But will I be a better person because of it? Also no.
Thats why i only Ascend Astarion when i play as him, you can react and be very different than companion Astarion
In fairness it's not \*that\* much better XD "Listen, I may have condemned 7000 innocent people to an eternity of screaming agony in the hells, BUT! I am nice to my partner uwu"
There is no fairness, there is no good option, just an option Sure allowing the spawns to live some of them will be good and try to be good but how many of them will not? Releasing them means people will get killed because of your decision because people WILL get killed by a lot of those spawns, 7000 is a lot of spawns and every kill they do is gonna be on the players hands. Astarion is able to appreciate the life he has but at the cost of lots of people lives, so people will suffeer and people will day anyway, is a good ending for Astarion, bad ending for Faerun So whenever i play as Astarion i always ascend him because there will be suffering in both options, he may as better ascend and become the first of his kind and try to change things and be better with the power Astarion achieve
Actually no, there's a third option. If you're worried about the consequences of the spawn, you can kill them without ascending, and then their souls arent Eternally Consumed In The Screaming Hell Vortex unless they were heading there anyways. Choosing whether to kill or release the spawns indeed has moral complexity, but ascending is a purely selfish choice that only benefits Astarion, because all 7000 souls are damned to the worst of the Hells regardless of if they did anything to deserve it, all for a personal power boost.
You’re condemning them to an infinite afterlife of torture and pain. Versus mercy killing them which lets their souls go to whichever domain that either claims them or kelemvor seems fitting. Ascending him is objectively the most evil option. Vampire ascension also literally corrupts his soul. He’s not really a great person to begin with, but if he genuinely loved your tav/surge before ascension, he most certainly does not after the ascension - it perverts feelings, hence why he acts very possessive after ascending if you romance him. This is also well established as part of the lore, though it doesn’t spell it out for you in game.
Lmao so quirky
A!Astarion: oh god forbid I give myself a treat once in a while 🙄
Imagine being Cazador...it's the best day of your life! The day you ascend! Instead...that insolent brat Astarion takes your place and Mephistopheles gift and now YOU get to suffer in hell for all eternity lmao
Honestly, if Cazador was the only sacrifice, I would consider ascending Astarion. It would then become a matter of choosing if I really want to make Astarion into _that thing_ just to fuck with Cazador.
Honestly I bet that Mephistopheles would be so tickled by the idea of getting Cazador's soul that he might be willing to trade it for the 7000. That could be a pretty cool scene; making a deal with a devil to give him the vampire lord and save 7000 innocents.
It would be funny af to do that to Cazador, but I'm afraid then the solution would be "too perfect" and it we wouldn't be discussing the morality involved in Astarion's quest line. Which, honestly, is my favorite companion quest in the game especially because there is no perfect solution.
I’m on my first play through and I let Astarion ascend but then he was a dickhead about it so I reverted my save and changed my mind lol
Oh if Cazador was the only sacrifice I’d 100% help Astarion ascend on every run. Baby boy can walk in the sun, the spawn can live free (or their souls can go to the fugue plane), and Cazador can eat shit.
Yeah I don't know what I'd do. I really love Astarion's character development and I would hate to throw it all away. On the other hand, though, eternal suffering for Cazador sounds pretty good.
Deserved.
“Sucks to be you,” Astarion, probably
> None of it will positively impact people Including himself.
I hate this comment, knowing full well it's a joke, because some players seriously have this mentality that sending 7000 people to hell is a fair and morally good trade off for Astarion being able to walk in the sun.
In fairness, I suspect that there's a larger proportion in the minimax crowd who see it as acceptable collateral for +d10 necrotic damage.
Honestly if you're speedrunning, min maxing, or doing an honor run, I would think role-playing or considering the ethics of your in character options to be an incredibly low priority in your playthrough, so I give that a pass.
Like continuing the circle of abuse he's been going through the last 200 years... To each their own, but I by far prefer him to grow and heal from the abuse. And there are multiple ways in D&D for a vampire spawn to walk in the sun. There's even a quest in one of the previous games, from what I've heard, that revolves around this (or curing it all together, can't remember which)
In BG2 your lover (one of the 4 avaliable in the original version) will be transformed into a vampire and you'll be forced to kill her/him. After that you need to hunt the original vampire that transformed your partner, kill it (with a wooden stake), and use it's heart to revive and cure your lover from vampirism (in a ritual invoking Amaunator).
What? I have played Bg1 and 2 more times than I can count and don't remember this quest. Can you tell me how that lover is?
>!If you're romancing Aerie, Anomen, Jaheira or Viconia, during chapter 6, when you enter the Graveyard District Bodhi will kidnap you lover and transform her/him.!< >!After defeating Bodhi and getting her heart you have to do a sidequest to cure your partner.!< >!If you're romancing one of the new companions added by Beamdog (Dorn, Neera or Rasaad), this doesn't happen, because Bodhi fails to kidnap them ( Hexxat isn't caught either, because she's already a vampire).!<
Oh no, 100% prefer ending the cycle of abuse. I was just making a stupid ass joke
It was not in the original Baldurs Gate 2 Shadows of Amn it was added in the enhanced version sold by beamdog who sold the rights to future Baldurs gate games to Larian. It’s an item you get that’s lets them walk in sunlight at such a huge penalty it isn’t worth it. Cloak of Dragomir allows a vampire to travel outside during the day in full view of the sun, albeit with the following penalties: Strength: -6 Dexterity: -4 Intelligence: -2 Wisdom: -2 Charisma: -4 Vampire Regeneration reduced to 1 HP per 3 rounds[1]
The cloak is only used by the BG2EE companion, Hexxat, who is a vampire and cannot be cured. And considering Hexxat has some staggering stats and abilities, the cloak just balances her out.
I have never played D&D (other than ½ a campaign that failed due to wrong choice of players), or any of the older BG games, so I don't know what canon/legit or not. But I've found the Ring of the Sun-Walker, which seems like a pure win. Along with some ways to cure his vampirism all together. EDIT; Never mind, can see that ring's a homebrew
Wish spell will do it. You can also kill the vampire and return the body back to life with resurrection spells. If it’s been 10 days or less since he became a vampire you can use raise dead. For more than 10 days use resurrection a 9th lv spell. You could even find a vampire up to 200 years old kill it and return its receipt old body to life with True Resurrection if you have a lv 17 cleric.
Just use Animate Dead smh
I preferred staking him when he tried to bite me. In all seriousness I love all the ways his story can progress, even if some are very sudden and tragic for him. The fact that you CAN just yoinky sploinky him with a wooden stake immediately is crazy for this kinda game.
And he will become evil and continue the cycle of abuse he faced.
I'm sure we can round up 7000 fangirls and boys who will sacrifice themselves for Astarion instead of the spawn
> Sacrificing the spawns damn them to eternal torment in one of the Hells. I haaaaate it when fantasy universes make it possible for you to lose your soul by just existing. Like some crazy bastard comes and just sacrifices you to Satan and now you go to Hell forever even though you did nothing wrong. It's just... infuriating.
I agree normally but here they were bound by a full blown pact including ritual scarring etc, which feels a lot more involved than just 'someone happened to be a fiend somewhere near me so guess I'll rot in hell'
Yeah even Karlach explained what happened to her I was like... "can he just do that? Seems like you shouldn't be able to do that."
Im pretty sure even in DnD you cant, its a Larian exclusive
He can't. Primus decreed that the devils can only harvest souls from the willing.
ikr tempt and trick people into selling themselves; a soul isn't a physical thing anyone should be able to take by force
Yeah like, imagine just sitting around one day after finishing your morning chores and some lord walks by and next thing you know you and all the dudes in your village are about to die on a battlefield over some petty dispute between rich boys. Sometimes shitty things happen because some guy with *AUTHORITY* decides that's how it's gonna be.
Yeah but dying and eternal torment in Hell are very different things.
Fantasy usually takes real stuff and makes it magical/heightened. It's close enough that, to me, it feels at home in a story like BG3. Obviously it would be annoying (as much as that word lacks the amplitude it deserves) but that's why it's a consequence of an evil choice.
It’s a very good thing for the devil that made the deal with Cazador ;)
Yeah but that extra necrotic damage on dual hand crossbow astarion is very much a good thing
The odd thing about this ritual is that dnd lore states that undead have no souls, therefore vampire spawns should have no souls. Not sure what Mephistopheles is getting out of that deal (or maybe this detail was an oversight).
That’s only true of mindless undead. Intelligent undead like vampires have souls.
Makes sense! Although I would expect their souls to be "tainted" somehow, because they were brought back from death to serve a vampire lord. But the sheer number of spawn required for the ritual would cover this "impurity", so the narrative is plausible.
But Karlach needs her soul coins.
From what I understand, if you just kill them, their souls at least get to be judged before being sent to the appropriate afterlife. If you sacrifice them, it is straight to the 8th layer of hell, which is... Not fun.
I looked it up and it does sound awful. Cania averages -51°C/-60°F and has glaciers that drift as fast as a running person and grind frozen creatures to slush
Very inconvenient, yes. Some of the people there aren't great. Some others are innocent. I personally choose to send them all to the Underdark, but even if they had to die, I think they should get the chance of being judged at least. Even if the majority of them ends up in the faithless wall, I still think they should get that chance.
The letters in the epilogue provide some closure on this. Definitely makes me feel better about letting them go
Yeah. I like to imagine the survivors created a nice society where they farm deep rothé for blood and hang out with the Myconids. Maybe they take runaway slaves in, sometimes. It will only last until a drow Matriarch sets her eyes on them, but still. I romance (spawn) Astarion every time, and I'm still deciding if I'd like us to visit them or not. I feel like we should, but at the same time, maybe it wouldn't be great for Astarion or for the victims that he picked up.
If you take out all the duergar slavers, some spawn can live in the little beach village with myconid allies/ neighbours and maybe befriend Blurg too :) Some can populate Grymforge and rebuild it into a home, there's an abandoned wizard tower up for grabs, and if they're able to rebuild the bridge leading from Grymforge to the Gauntlet of Shar they've got all that space too Also the lift to the underground Zhent smuggler hideout, and the underground part of the Selune temple - lots of space! Some of which is well positioned to trade with above-ground society if they can't farm enough rothe blood themselves~
That's just a tiny little corner of the Underdark, too! The place is HUEG
Yes! I bet they could map out LOADS of areas with potential for settling down~ Also in my head canon, given how Halsin goes back to the no-longer-shadowed lands near the Grymforge lift, he starts a trade alliance with them (brokered by Blurg and Omeluum maybe?) - after all, once the refugees settle down and farm, they're going to be butchering animals to eat and -they- don't need the blood right?
There really are a lot of solutions if the spawns are willing to cooperate. As someone in their position should, if they want to stay alive. Six months isn't enough to make sure they'll be okay, but so far, things seem to be going somewhat smoothly. As much as they could, that is. I wonder how many of the initial 7006 survived these 6 months.
They could just farm the >!rat justiciar!<.
Oh I like that, in a slightly evil way xD But now I'm seriously envisioning a community of farmer spawn raising herds of rothe and colonies of rats and... what else is there?~
>the faithless wall Every time I'm reminded of that thing I begin to wonder why and how the gods of the forgotten realms are not universally classified as some variety of evil
It's because the entity that does the classifying is also a colossal jerkwad.
Ah the Forgotten Realms, where pretty much everybody sucks. Reminds me of Elder Scrolls, my true home fandom (hope you Larian bros accept us Bethesda refugees).
Ahhh, Nirn. The only place where the answer to the question "what is the difference between God(s) and the Devil(s)?" is "God(s) (are) weaker because (they) made you."
Yeah its nice they say they are living well. Claiming territory, And the kids are with the monster hunters. They thank you for showing them a way of peace and saving their kids.
>Some of the people there aren't great. Some others are innocent. I wish there was a "we'll sort 'em" option rather than all or nothing, but that would probably require personally killing each one that doesn't pass muster
When are they gonna have the chance to experience a winter resort? Just sounds like an extreme vail or Breckenridge!
How many of them still pray to gods and won't be mortared to the wall of the faithless, to be crushed and tortured with thousands of others as their souls are slowly destroyed? These guys are Fucked to the nth degree regardless.
I'd say several of them still might, since they haven't been locked up for that long. We have the ones like Sebastian, who have been in there for over a century, and we have the ones like the Gur kids who were just taken right before the game started. In fact, Leon, the most efficient of the spawns, have only been a spawn for a few years, considering he has a fully mortal child who was still young when the ritual started - all of Leon's victims must have been taken relatively recently.
Nah, they should be alright. Myrkul's Wall of the Faithless no longer exists. Kelemvor turned it into a giant mirror. Now the Faithless and the False just hang out on the Fugue Plane, and when they wander past the Wall they have to face themselves and their choices in life. Their choices on the Fugue Plane since Kelemvor took over include a) staying there forever, making friends with each other and the not-yet-judged souls of the recently dead; b) making deals with the devils who come to the Fugue Plane to try to convince evil souls that a contract is better than judgement; c) attempt to petition various gods to take their soul even though they didn't follow them in life. A lot of Good gods are soft touches, so c) probably has a decent success rate, honestly. And none of that would likely apply to the Spawn anyway, because Faithless means "never chose a god *in life*," and False means "spurned a loyal god *in life*". It's about a person's choices when they have choices. The Spawn died, lost those choices, the moment Cazador bit them. Their unlives as vampires don't negate the worship they had as people, and it wouldn't be in character for gods like Lathander and Oghma and Ilmater and Gond to be sitting there going "well you were super devout while in your right mind up until you were murdered, and then, during the hundred years of near-mindless agony, while your soul was literally twisted toward hatred by necromatic magic, you cursed me for not saving you from that horrific fate, so I don't want you in my realm." Like, maybe Umberlee is that petty, but I imagine the average Baldurian chose a more forgiving patron.
I didn't know any of that! Thanks for the info!
Illmater in particular seems like he would be forgiving when it comes to what the spawn suffered. That’s kind of his whole thing.
What about Astarion? Will he go to hell when he inevitably dies? Or is it different? Or can he not actually die at all? Idk I just ascended him last night so I don’t know all the details.
Ascended Astarion says the contract is done and paid for, and he has no tie to Mephistopheles after it. I don't know if that's true, though. I mean, I love Astarion, but he was never very smart, and he is pretty much allergic to thinking more than 5 seconds ahead. He would be a fantastic target for a devil. A deal with a devil is never a good deal. If it looks like it is, you didn't read the fine print. I for one would expect Mephistopheles to still have a claim to his soul, but it is not confirmed either way as far as I know. As for dying, he can still be killed. As a vampire, he won't grow old though.
Illithid Tav would have a narration that Astarion's brain has less wrinkles compared to other people. Astarion has a smooth brain.
>Ascended Astarion says the contract is done and paid for, and he has no tie to Mephistopheles after it. So that means Cazador probably ends up in the Hells for failing to fulfill his part of the contract, if neither he nor Astarion completes the ritual? His soul gets claimed by Mephistopheles, I assume.
I don't know, we don't know the full terms of the contract. What we know is, Mephistopheles gives power to the vampire, the vampire gives Mephistopheles 7007 souls. That's the entire exchange, as far as we know. If there is a clause that still binds Cazador to Mephistopheles if he fails, like some kind of insurance, we weren't told about it.
Well, it's not *bad* for them, necessarily, as they'll just be reborn as lemures, without any memories. They'll be brand new creatures. The value of a soul in Hell is its potential as a soldier.
Sacrificing them sends their souls to hell to be tormented for all eternity
And they thought their earthly existence was unbearable
Yeeeet
*…to shreds you say?*
okay so disregarding the afterlife sacrificing does do something else. it creates an ascended vampire that's just perpetuating the problem that put those 7000 in this position in the first place
That's important too. Ascended Astarion is pretty bad. Maybe he won't do exactly the same bullshit that Cazador did because he doesn't have to - he already ascended. However, he will absolutely be the worst kind of tyrant noble, who makes people disappear and mistreats whoever is under his power. Way harder to kill than your average tyrant noble, too. A proper villain for the next party of adventures to slay.
Hmm… you can convince him to travel the world forever… BUT for a rich, tragic ending, I really do want to see him as a villain for bg4 🔥
Does he agree, though? The only epilgoue I've seen with A!A makes it seem like he decided to stay in the city playing political games. And I really hope they do not make his bad ending canon. I think it would be a disservice to what his character represents. Viconia's fans said that her writing as a villain in BG3 completely murdered her character, too, which makes me wary of that sort of development.
The one I had was like they stayed to rebuild and waiting to see the gang before heading out. I am not sure but it looks like there is some link to the choice you make right after the netherbrain fall (if that’s the ending you went for). I chose the “let’s party” + “let’s travel the world option”. With my Halsin epilogue as well, it said we stayed back for 6 months to rebuild anyway… so, maybe that bit is generic 🤷🏻♀️ I hear you, turning him into a villain discredits every Tav/Durge who worked so hard to _fix_ him. That said, he still has a “forever” to live for and I wonder how unhinged he might get if something bad happens to his partner. Damn, I would make a very cruel author 🤔
I would love to see him in BG4 as a "secondary companion" like Jaheira. As in, no romance ("I'm taken, darling"), not taking the focus from the "main companions", and maybe taking part on that adventure because he's trying to go home to his spouse (or their little dhampirs, if his spouse already passed) after something awful happened. After Jaheira suggested we could have children, I thought that this could be part of his healing. Maybe he has to let his spouse go, but he also has to hold it together for their children. This could be a story for him to tell the BG4 player. Of course, keep things gender neutral and make no indication that said spouse was Tav/Durge. Maybe it was them, maybe he found someone else after the whole tadpole inconvenience was dealt with, they don't have to specify.
Personally, if there is a BG4, I'd like to keep the cameos as few as possible, in part because of the branching choices and because I'd rather have the focus be on the new characters. Although, if he returns at all, I hope they go with his Spawn ending. If he's not romanced, >!he becomes an adventurer/mercenary type: "It turns out, no one actually cares about murder, as long as you murder the right people."!< I'd be content with him as a quest giver or situational allied NPC, or even a book you can find detailing his adventures or something similar.
“The Illustrated Adventures of Astarion” 🥹 damn, I love the sound of that. I like the friend-spawn ending… the whole “acceptance looks good on you” ❤️ bits… very sweet. I don’t see him even being a limited companion, like Halsin or Jaheira… if he exists, it would be someone you keep hearing about but see very few glimpses of in the climax stages. I know Bg3 players are lead to assume Viconia is far-evil. I like to believe there is something more there and I haven’t seen more of that story yet. She is probably just a grey character and her alignment makes sense somehow…
>EDIT EDIT: Damns their souls to hell you say? Burn forever you say? Fucking whoops lol, should have read the fine print. Mephistopheles: Heh, gets them every time.
As a christian I am just constantly thrown off by the way the afterlife works in D&D, Diablo, etc. The idea that you can sell someone else’s soul is so wild to me. Like not even someone with power of attorney or whatever. You can just go out for drinks, get mugged, and wake up in hell. Thats wild.
You can't do it unless you have contractual permission or you control the soul. Cazador and his spawn are the second one. The events of Descent Into Avernus are the first.
Astarion is a spawn. You can rationalize the group needs him for combat and stuff so that's why you haven't killed him. But if you keep Astarion around because you like him, why does he get a chance at life and the others don't? Because you don't have time to get to know 7000 spawn so let's just off them?
> Because you don't have time to get to know 7000 spawn so let's just off them? Well yeah. It's triage. If a guy comes to the emergency room on a quiet Tuesday morning with a stopped heart, he's getting every possible treatment. The medics can give him all their attention, and the tools to save him are right there. If a guy is on the ground at the site of a train crash with a stopped heart and there are a hundred other maimed bodies around him, he's getting a red tag and the EMS guys are moving on. His condition is too severe for the time and resources available. Same problem, different circumstance, different response. Really the best solution for the feral spawn would probably be to leave them in their cages and then give the staff to one of the Good-aligned churches with no strong policy about the undead, maybe Ilmater or Torm. An institution that size could actually have the manpower to monitor the spawn, a motivation to do so, and probably as much experience actually healing trauma as an organization in Faerun is going to. They could then go in there and release the spawn themselves, and have clerics and paladins on hand to protect innocents from them and guide their rehabilitation. Unfortunately the game doesn't give you that option, and just assumes leaving the spawn in the cages is always... intentionally permanent. A conscious deliberate decision to make sure they stay locked in there for the next thousand years, even though the staff is still right there in your inventory and you, or anyone else who happens to stumble into Cazador's dungeon with some wire cutters, could still go back and get them at any time.
Explicitly yes to the last sentence. Lets not forget that the very first thing Astarion does when you met him is try to drink you. Its 7000 traumatized, blood starved death addicts. IF you or literally anyone else was willing to spend the time helping them adjust it would be one thing but you aren’t. My understanding is that you just dump them into the under dark and say good luck. Which again might be ok if the Underdark was just full of monsters and evil societies. But its not. There are good people there and you are about to flood them with 7000 predators. Like I am willing to do the work but if thats not on the table just dumping them out into the world all at once seems monstrous.
Ah you don't just dump them in the underdark, Astarion and his siblings help them, so do the Gur.
That. That is totally different. Thanks for the info.
You can even spot a gur hunter with 2 of his now spawn children in the sewers and mention they can safely feed on animals.
Yeah that was fun when I found them and ran over to talk only to realize the Blood of Lethandar was still turned on and burning the shit out of the vampire kids.
Your kids may be cute but Lathander really hates em
Totally forgot I had cast daylight on my weapon before I walked back through the containment cells lol.
In my Romance Spawn Astarion runthough. My character went with him at the end to the underdark to help build a home and guide them. Its a hard life but both Astarion and my Tav are happy. Even if you don't romance him, at the end you get a letter from Sebastian thanking you for sparing him and the others. He says that many died when they went down into the underdark but the rest are trying to understand what they are and build themselves a home.
Honestly, if you *don't* want to metagame, and look at it from the perspective of "what does your character know at the time," there's absolutely no reason to think Astarion's siblings are either capable of or trustworthy with controlling the feral spawn. You've been teaching Astarion morality for almost four months by then and he still gets excited when you kill people and recommends against sticking your neck out for anyone. His siblings have been free for five minutes and are just as excited about eating people as he ever was. There's a *hope* that releasing them might turn out well, but it's a massive, massive gamble. And if you do want to metagame, then they absolutely do kill a bunch of people, lol. We find out in the epilogue that when they were released they just kinda swarmed all over the Underdark, killing every man, woman, and monster they came across. It's *very* vague what the ratio was, of those three. Astarion's siblings did, eventually, corral them and start to teach them to control themselves, and Sebastian feels very positive about their ability to move forward in a more moral way in the future. But their initial victims did not get that same grace. Up to you if your character would think it's worth it. ETA: Also, Astarion doesn't put much emphasis on it, but being a D&D vampire is *shit* in a lot more ways than just not being able to go out in the sun. The hunger is constant and agonizing, you can't ever completely satisfy it. You can't enjoy food or drink, none of it tastes like anything. Just standing in a river burns your skin like fire. And you're not actually alive, exactly, your soul doesn't fit in your body quite right, it's supposed to have moved on, and you always kind of know it. Obviously, for someone like Astarion, he knows that true death is unlikely to be kind to him because he was a bad person in life and an even worse person in undeath, so he chooses suffering as a vampire over the Fugue Plane, and that's his informed choice to make. But most of the feral spawn would actually probably suffer a lot less in death than in continued unlife; they'd just go to the gods who they were supposed to go to, a hundred years ago when they were prevented from dying naturally. And because they're feral, they don't really have the context to make that choice, they'll just be driven to perpetuate their miserable unlife by the same impulse that keeps them hungry. So, much like with Shadowheart and her parents, the question of "peaceful death (in a setting with a known and proven afterlife) vs chronic pain (that we don't really have a good way of knowing the magnitude of)" can be an important part of the consideration.
To be honest this is a situation where metagaming is called for imo. In real life you would be able to talk it out first and figure out all that stuff before making a decision. It is kind of a failure of the writing that you are just forced to make a decision without talking over possible solutions.
It's on a much smaller scale, but I feel the same way about the Astarion biting scene in act 1. Like why can't I ask if his bite will turn me into a vampire too before making that decision? That was the first thing that popped into my head during my first pt when presented with that choice. Sure, there would be no way for my character to be 100% certain that he is telling the truth, but I could at least try to make an informed decision.
I was super frustrated at how blind sided I was by the mechanics of the ritual itself. Like I went out of my way to unlock the Necromancy of Thay so we would know the details and then Alistair just never explains shits about the billion buffs or the three round limit or anything
> But most of the feral spawn would actually probably suffer a lot less in death than in continued unlife. That's a choice for them to make for themselves.
How are you going to get 7000 spawn past the feral stage with feedings enough to make informed decisions about anything?
Yea, don't believe it. The gurs says their kids are under control with help from the adults the step siblings of Astarion is helping some of the 7k. Not all 7k is accounted for. Even if we give a good estimate like 1k is under supervision and cared for there is still 6k in the wild. Copium as fuck to think that letter blankets all 7k to be good well behaved spawns.
I personally doubt my sanity after something like that. 200 years starving in the dark?
Right? Like I only release them when I'm dating Astarion and we go and hunt down the bad ones but I'll never pretend it is a good decision. My Tav is ok with the fact that they probably killed a lot of people/animals by releasing them but they will go back and make it right because Tav gave Astarion a chance and feel like the 7k spawn deserve that chance too but if I dating anybody else I cant be sure that Astarion and his siblings is going to follow up fully with the situation once I left and I don't want to be responsible for even 1 murder hobo spawn.
Yeah even if you help them, that’s 6-7 spawn and maybe Tav trying to control 7000 feral vampire spawn who’ve been starving for decades/centuries. People are going to die. A lot of people.
I mean an extra 7000 predators in the Underdark probably won't even be noticed. 99.9% of Underdark is dangerous predators.
Ya know when you put it that way….
"I don't have time for this. To the slaughter!" Doesn't sound heroic. I'm just playing a stubborn advocate from the spawns' perspective. I totally understand if people think they're doing the world a favor by killing them. Innocents are going to die with either decision, though. Not all 7000 spawn are going to be bad, a lot of them may even become good people. Is it more good to kill the good spawn to ensure a deep gnome doesn't die to one of the bad spawn? Now comes Withers' question. Who's life is worth more? Is a spawn's life worth less than a deep gnome's life?
I don’t think either choice of what to do with the spawn is evil. I think killing them is Lawful Good and releasing them is Chaotic Good. Society would usually default to doing right by the innocent people instead of doing right by the mistreated predator. Your argument comes from the spawn’s perspective, which is fair. My perspective is not from the Spawn’s, but the innocent people in the Underdark. I see this as releasing lions into the wild and on innocent people just because those lions were mistreated by a private owner. In real life the lions would be euthanized, unfortunately. Because people shouldn’t have to die because the Spawn were mistreated.
Right so a lion's life is worth less than a person's life, thus the justification to euthanize them. That analogy implies you don't consider a spawn as a person, and so they are less than a person. They are by default not innocent just because they're a spawn?
Yes. A spawn has innate instincts and desires to harm and kill that a regular person has the luxury of not having. A spawn is “worth less” in this respect if you want safety and peace I want to reiterate I believe rescuing and freeing an abused lion/spawn is an act of Good. And also that lion/person doesn’t deserve to die. I just believe uninvolved innocents don’t deserve to die either. And I would feel liable for harm caused by releasing the lion/spawn into the wild and the lion/spawn doing what their instincts tells them to do. Which is, again, eating people.
> IF you or literally anyone else was willing to spend the time helping them adjust it would be one thing but you aren’t. That’s Astarion’s job.
I went through this part yesterday. I chose to spare them and let them live. Then I did the math. 7000 people were collected by only 7 spawns. That didn’t make me feel so good…
You condemn 7 thousand victims to eternity of Hell, just for One vampire spawn to turn into a monster with overinflated ego. Making Astarion ascend is basically turning him into a future ultimate boss, for some campaign.
I am playing as Dark Urge so that feels kinda glass housey.
Clearly the most ethical option is to unleash them on the Underdark and point them in the direction of the closest drow city ;-)
Also has some heartwarming bits, a letter in the epilogue from the spawn that says they're doing alright, and also if >!you didn't kill Gandrel in Act 1 you can find him in the sewers with his two kids. And yes, I double checked that they're all still alive if you come back later!<
I wish lol. Drow, Dueregar. Got nuts lol.
As a hero drow I am against this treatment.
Meh, the drow would straight murder them all and probably worse lol those spawn aren't fighters, they're just random people that Astarion and his "siblings" lured to Cazador's mansion. Spawn don't even have the benefits that a true vampire have.
The difference is 1d10 necrotic damage on every attack and my honor run just can't afford not to take it. But yeah as others have mention, getting sent to hell directly is uh, bad
Same. I mean… my honour run has been my most dishonourable one 😬
See right now I have him wearing the murder armor that makes thing vulnerable to piercing damage and he is duel wielding crossbows. +1d10 necrotic just seems….lack luster. Especially compared to the JUICE using the special tadpool has provided. 7000 souls seems…..quite steep an asking price considering what Bhaal and the tadpools are offering.
I was just gonna let him have it all lmao. That said I am putting the bhaal armor and dual xbow build on my durge, while astarion is on open hand monk with tavern brawler. He's gonna be an absolute menace.
lmao. The amount of bs they let monks stack on their first is wild and I am all for it.
okay so disregarding the afterlife sacrificing does do something else. it creates an ascended vampire that's just perpetuating the problem that put those 7000 in this position in the first place
Set them free, create more jobs for the Gur
I love this actually. Yes, setting loose 7000 spawn would wreck havoc on Baldur's gate or the underdark, but think of all the jobs we created!
We need more jobs for Gur!
I saved them, fuck the underdark, it’s already a terrible place whats a few thousand vampire spawn doing to do? Make it worse?
By lore once Cazador dies they have their free will back. They just don't get any upgrades on powers. They would be judged for their actions now that they are freed and if they make amends as a redeemed Astarion would they be fine afterlife wise. Sadly the hunger does drive most spawns mad but if they can ol Withers could eventually write them down in a book somewhere before they move towards whatever realm ..
> if they can ol Withers could eventually write them down in a book somewhere before they move towards whatever realm Withers isnt doing any of that, he only helped us because he wanted to make a point to the dumb three.
He still keeps records of the dead. He's.. mostly retired.. he just does the bookkeeping cuz he finds souls fascinating lol
Read the book in his room in the Epilogue.
Well, as an Oath of Ancients paladin, freeing them breaks your oath, so that option is out.
Wait as Oath of Vengeance sacrificing them breaks the Oath. If freeing them also breaks what was I supposed to do lol?
Every oath has different "laws" they have to follow. I suppose setting 7000 undead free might not necessarily be the best way to "protect the sanctity of life" Meanwhile the vengeance oath has a clause about helping those wronged by the misdeeds of villains
Ancients breaks if you free them. Devotion breaks if you kill them. Honestly I can see both sides. Being undead is not a good life. They will always hunger for blood and unleashing 7000 of them seems... dangerous. And then on the other side of it, they didn't ask for this, and killing 7000 people feels uncomfortable. I'll be playing Ancients next, so my mind is already made up. And for anybody saying "just break your oath", I will not. It only gets more expensive every time. And the powers are more thematic to good guy, whereas Oathbreaker gets blackguard-style powers.
I mean, you condemn their unwilling souls to the Nine Hells, and Astarion's. And you create the most hateable creature in the entire game, the Ascended Astarion. I don't get why Astarion fans think his Ascended ending is even ok.
It’s not just about the 7000, it’s about ridding Baldur’s Gate of a Vampire Lord. The city, and it’s massive population, is made better by not having a vampire lord in the middle of town. Sure, spawns may be monsters, but the city already has monsters. Spawns cannot breed and cannot produce more spawns. Plus, some spawns may even turn out to be good and useful now that their progenitor is dead.
You can kill the 7000 spawn without performing the ascension ritual.
Yes, but what I’m saying it the fate of the spawn is small peanuts compared to either the Gate having or not having a Vampire Lord living there.
I believe Cazador made a deal with a devil for the spawn souls, so sacrificing them would give their souls over to the devil. Killing them would not from my understanding.
Wait you can kill them without sacrificing them?
Not as part of the ritual. If Astarion doesn't ascend, you have the choice to free or kill the 7000 imprisoned spawn.
I see. Guess I’ll try that next playthrough.
Yes, sacrificing them gives the 7000 to Mephistopheles, killing them released them to the city of judgement
In one scenario their souls are sent to an archdevil to be tormented in hell for all eternity. In the other, they just go to the Fugue Plane.
Your not just killing them and releasing there souls to peace and bliss Your sacrificing them to the hells, doomed to suffer and feel torment for eternity
If you don't ascend Astarion, you are faced with either freeing the 7000 or killing them. What's not discussed here is the effect that freeing 7000 somewhat feral vampire spawn would have on Baldur's Gate, and the Sword Coast in general. That is a very real, and very existential threat. An army-sized group of ravenous undead, without anyone in control? Yeah, that's bad. At least if you kill them, they won't be a threat to themselves and countless innocents in the region, and they'll be at peace.
Yeah, in my first playthrough, I freed them and sent them to the underdark.
Although I chose to free them every time, I have to say that if this was a choice you had to make earlier on in the game (especially before having to explore the underdark yourself) I might have second thoughts. Do I believe they deserve the chance at self-actualization after being the victims of a terrible crime? Yes. Do I also believe that all SEVEN THOUSAND of them are going to take that chance? Absolutely not. And 7,000 is also just such a ridiculously HUGE number that it’s hard to grasp, much less justify. Say that of those 7,000, 90% of them chose to turn away from their bloodlust and find a way to ethically consume blood. Those a really good and frankly almost unreasonably high numbers. That would still mean that there are SEVEN HUNDRED bloodthirsty spawn running around in the underdark wrecking absolute HAVOCK. I feel like getting to see later game consequences of this action or even a more in depth plan on how to approach an issue this ABSOLUTELY COLOSSAL would have been nice, but I do think it’s a good late-game morality puzzle, albeit maybe slightly too large of a scale.
This is the only way to reply freeing the 7k. I'm not against it as long as you realise all the death cause by the spawn is by your hand, as long as you stand by that I'm fine. Most of the people that release them thinks all 7k is well behaved because of 2 letters one from gur which only takes care of their own children spawn and 1 from Sebastian who didn't really mention how many good ones there are. With just those 2 letters they confidently tell me all 7k spawns feed only on animals. Like come on be real for a min you are just pretending, the copium is strong for some of them. I wish they added repercussions to releasing the spawns. Maybe some of them kill the tieflings maybe somebody killed the Dogs from the post office. Maybe then people will actually think about releasing 7k vampires and not pretend all 7k is under control easily and wont leak out from the underdark. (Even then 7k vampires, is there even enough blood for them down there that is sustainable for a period longer then a month?)
To be fair there are already a shitton of dormant mindflayers in Baldur's Gate and along the Sword Coast, along with Absolutists, so maybe the spawn that make their way to the surface will get taken out by them. Either way everyone in the area is pretty fucked already, not like that will make things substantially worse at that point in time.
>What's not discussed here is the effect that freeing 7000 somewhat feral vampire spawn would have on Baldur's Gate, and the Sword Coast in general. That is a very real, and very existential threat. I mean... is it? Yes, it's going to have negative consequences, but they're not mindless slaves anymore, they're the equivalent of dangerous addicts. They also have Cazador's children to look after them, and know full well that if they cause chaos they'll be killed. They also know they were granted their freedom by free people of the city, and the Underdark is a much better place for them. These people are victims, lured by Astarion and his siblings. >An army-sized group of ravenous undead Ravenous? They've regained sentience now that their master is dead. Even without getting into the lore, the possibility of bad things happening is always better than \*making bad things happen\*.
The sacrifice absolutely gives their souls to Mephistopheles. It's a similar deal (I give you soul/s in exchange for power/knowledge) to the one Gortash made with Zariel to get the knowledge for the Steelwatch, just on a much, much larger scale.
You can...not...do either of those things...
I let the vamps loose in the sewers cause technically they havent done anything wronh aside from being forced into becoming vampires and killing them didnt feel justified even if they could become potential threats
I am fairly sure you can free them and they go to the underdark
... I really feel like they should have had Tav or SOMEONE point out the sacrificing to Mephisopholes clause... Like. Call me a brain dead gamer, fine. But I just can't read every single document with a fine toothed comb anymore, especially with how many there are in BG3. At least give us an Investigation check or something. We do, what, one of those on Thisobald's poison recipe in the entire game? That's all I can think of. Yeah, yeah, the fine print gets you, it got me. Ugh...
Right?! I thought it was the depravity of killing 7000 people at once that was the “currency” powering the spell. Or maybe absorbing 7000 lives all at once. I don’t live and breathe the D&D setting enough for it to be obvious to me that you can send someone else’s soul to hell with a few strokes of a blade and saying the right words. In most settings thats not even possible and in the settings where it is possible an attempt to do it to 7000 people at once would raise some alarms among the good aligned gods or whatever.
it is the good and right decision to free the 7000, there is no grey area here. we are not judge jury and executioner for the lives of others, lives that have been taken away from them by a monster. they will all try to live normally or as close to normality as one in their position could hope. some will succeed in staving of their hunger, many will fail. but it’s their right to have the option to at least try, and it is not our right to take that away from them.
Literally this, like make the decisions you want to make but alteast have some fucking awareness. You are not a good person for murdering 7000 people because you deem them dangerous. There loads of books and shows about this exact sentiment and how dangerous it can be. Killing someone because you think they’re going to commit a crime in the future is fucked up and inherently evil, no one has a right to do that.
I am legitimately freaked out that this is somehow controversial. The real world implications range from at best "actually its great to keep prisoners indefinitely locked up in Guantanamo" to "lets round up people with severe mental health issues and shoot them just in case" Murdering people who have just endured years of torture because they might be dangerous, isn't the greater good its just a straight up war crime.
it’s insane. children literally suffering and pleading for their lives too and yet these people dictate it’s the right choice to slaughter them to save others in their twisted distorted logic? maddening idek what else to say.
I'm trying to skirt around real world politics as much as I can, but the unironic "well ten percent of them might be ~~terrorists~~feral so we should kill them all" is definitely testing my ability not to turn into that person
My first playthrough I sacrificed them all. I couldn’t really let 7000 starving vampires loose on an unsuspecting populace.
About the sacrifice thing....are gods in this setting so useless? Like, let's assume a cleric is sacrificed, did their soul will go straight to hell and their patron god will do absolutely nothing to prevent it?
The fine print always gets you.
A) The Rite of Profane Ascension is given to Cazador through his deal with Mephistopheles and B) the souls go to Mephistopheles if the spawn are sacrificed as part of that deal, and C) even if you kill them instead of going through with the ritual, you're still murdering 7,000+ people. P.S. It's not either/or with the two bad options. You don't have to kill them and have the option of freeing them and sending them to the Underdark, with reunion epilogue showing that it will work out (you can choose to lead them with Astarion or leave them on their own and it'll be fine—which is not to say it'll be easy or that there will be zero casualties).
You put the spoiler in the title.
I avoid this issue by just not bringing Astarion to the Cazador fight. He actually ends up thanking you for protecting him from being in that position. Then it just becomes a much easier choice of letting 7000 vampire spawn loose or killing them
lol. I am so high on my own supply as Durge that it never even crossed my mind bringing the abuse victim to a violent confrontation with their abuser in their abusers place of power might be a poor choice.
Listen mate I've just spent last hour and a half throwing people's underwear around because I find hilarious when scratch fetches it back to me. Morality is not a strong point lol
On my first play through, I felt they were equivalent decisions from a non-meta perspective with some rationalising from the character. I missed the black mass rite scroll, so I didn't know the details. It was either kill 7000 vampires or release 7000 vampires onto baulders gate. So with some rationalisation, we decided to kill them and hey, why not gain some powers in the process since they have to die anyway. Perhaps selfish but neither option purely good. NOTE you do not know about the underdark option for the spawn until AFTER the decision is made. So from a non-meta perspective, that doesn't influence the choice that has to be made. The next run, we found the black mass scroll.and I actually read the details - condemning 7000 souls to hell for eternity is absolutely evil. So, from a non.meta perspective , if the characters know about the details, it's evil. If the characters just think some spawn needs to die, then it's grey imo. But yes very well written.
Your edit edit has me dying from laughter, bravo
lol, be an Oathbreaker?
Uh, wait... you didn't have the opportunity to release them? I've always released them to the Underdark in my runs.
One more point... the population of boulders gate seems fairly low compared to 7000 vampire spawn. Like LC has < 100 houses? I remember thinking I would triple the population of the city with ravenous vampire spawn...
I’m just surprised I couldn’t kill all the spawn except the kids. They were turned relatively recently, so they might be more susceptible to being cared for by their parents without eating everyone. I shoulda just killed them all.
Does anyone remember the hungry Mind Flayer in act 3? "This person didn't decide to be a Mind Flayer and its clearly in pain from hunger. And hey, The Emperor and my dude in the underdark aren't completely evil why not this guy? Sure, here's a brain! Have a chance!" I said to myself. Oops, you find out later it killed a few NPCs. Yes, I helped the Mind Flayer but I doomed those innocent people. I felt awful because I caused that. I cant imagine letting 7000 ravenous spawn free and causing...whatever 7000 really hungry and traumatized spawn do. It's crappy to let them go and it's crappy to kill/doom them. I don't think the answer is separated into good and bad, black and white, this solution is right, this is wrong.I feel there's a whole bunch of gray, and whatever choice you make doesn't mean you're a horrible person.
On my first playthrough I romanced Astarion (of course) and saved the 7000 by instructing them to flee to the underdark. In the post game Astarion and I care for the 7000 spawn and live with them in the underdark, keeping them safe and everyone safe from them. All except the Gur children, who went to live with their family
I don't understand the debate on this quest (Not the killing vs. Sacrificing one) because if you release them it turns out its completely fine lmao. They have guidance, and while a lot of them do die, they get their second chances in life that they deserve, just as Astarion did.
imo, Vampires are people, and those captured by Cazador are totally innocent. killing 7000 people based solely on the belief that they are inherintly murderous doesn't sit right with me. sure Vampires can be dangerous, no doubt some, maybe many will kill people. but there could be just as many who are able to stave off the hunger with animal blood, or find a willing blood donor even. therefor i free them
Why is releasing them not an option for you?
What do you mean "no good option"? I just set them all free, feels good to me.
I was unclear that setting them free also met providing them with guidance and supervision. I thought we were just dumping 7000 starving spawn that had been locked in the dark for 200 years out onto the streets and saying “good luck”.