bg3 storytime

A fun little write-up from my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 (the critically acclaimed CRPG from Larian Studios) I put together for my chatfriends. I found it while clearing out my GoogleDrive account and was too fond to delete it outright, so into the scrapbook it goes!

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okay so the party finally stole that idol and the process was so intricately planned and then so like a dnd adventure gone terribly terribly wrong i have to share what happened step by step

first, claudius’s plan was to get halsin to come back, flex rank and get kagha to stand down, so everyone could stop staring and chanting at this idol for five seconds

(if he stopped and questioned why he cared about this damn idol so much and why he needed to steal it without endangering any of the tiefling refugees, he would admit he has a soft spot for kids) (in the same way that wyll wants to teach the tiefling kids to fight to protect themselves, claudius wants to teach them how he’s learned to survive) (which is by swindling and stealing left and right)

but finding halsin and going through the proper channels was taking, in claudius’s opinion, too much time – this may be because his compulsive looting habit meant repeatedly making camp to unload every fork, spoon, and plate he picked up and returning to the grove to sell them

during one trip, he found the secret tunnel behind the grove library and decided to investigate more, with the rest of the party splitting up and running distractions as necessary while he skulked around and found his favorite thing!

an incriminating note in a hidden chest behind a secret panel! instructions about making a mysterious drop-off in the middle of the swamp!

claudius formed a new plan immediately: figure out what kagha is up to, ~~blackmail~~ confront her heroically

(are you seeing this, wyll? please approve of claudius’s actions)

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that was, as it turns out, no less complicated than finding halsin! but claudius had a good feeling about it, at least until he ventured into the swamp and (after an encounter with the nice lady he buys potion ingredients from) found out this whole swamp is magical and full of traps

[hover over images to enlarge]

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(it was actually hilarious, astarion was stalking ahead bc he has the most movement speed next to wyll’s familiar) (but then astarion made the mistake of trying to eat a sheep that was a red cap in disguise) (we’ve all done it)

great news, though!

eventually the party did find the drop off point and another super incriminating note! sometimes good things do happen to mostly morally neutral parties

claudius immediately went to dramatically confront kagha in front of the other druids with it

and that part went shockingly well! better than it had any right to frankly! it started out with claudius trying to discredit her and turn the other druids against her – do sectarian disputes between druids matter that much to claudius? not really! but it is his bread-and-butter back from when he was his brother’s spy on nearby churches and paladin orders, so he more or less knew the beats

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but then – because this is a fucking druid circle and not a normal church (in claudius’s estimation, remember he’s an ex-cultist and shadowheart is the first person he’s had serious religious conversations with) – three nearby rats went out of wild shape and revealed themselves to be the shadow circle druids

a new threat appeared! and claudius, being claudius, saw the chance to make an enemy into an ally

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he used his new level in bard (he was inspired by the tiefling on the hill to try it out) to make a performance check and remind kagha of the emerald grove’s history and how their forebearers fought to keep the grove from shadow … so maybe don’t do this?

(luckily shadowheart wasn’t there for claudius’s sudden switch to anti-shadow rhetoric, he was playing to his audience)

the important part is claudius got her to agree to shelter the tieflings after the clean-up

(the clean-up being the entire druid order and kagha killing the shadow druid leader and knocking out her companions)

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and you know what that means – no more druids in a circle staring directly at the idol! the idol heist can commence! there was a plan, a plan that claudius (and i, role-playing claudius) was really proud of:

wyll and claudius split off to one side of the grove, used their instruments to perform and attract attention, and wyll’s cat familiar wandered around meowing to attract even more attention

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meanwhile (now in turn-based mode because it was a lot of plates to keep spinning) shadowheart cast trickster’s grace on astarion, astarion lurked just out of sight, and cast mage hand on the idol

before flinging the idol as far as it could go

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nobody liked that, but everybody blamed the mage hand

tsk tsk mage hand! we thought we taught you better manners!

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unfortunately it wasn’t quite far enough for astarion to pick up without leaving his hiding spot

shadowheart tried to distract the only druid not at the concert, but it went poorly because shadowheart is not specced for distraction – she’s more of a lurk-in-the-shadows girl – and astarion was spotted

so astarion did the only thing he could do (?), he flung a fog cloud in the druid’s direction, grabbed the idol, and started running

unfortunately (again) that left shadowheart holding the bag, so to speak, and when the druid emerged from the fog cloud, he turned hostile and got all the other druids on alert

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(they even turned on poor wyll and claudius, who were just providing free musical entertainment, i swear)

and so plan b became ‘just fucking run’ – luckily astarion still has ridiculous movement speed with cunning action: dash + dash + his fancy gloves that let him jump immediately after dashing

(but the rest of the party had struggles, which feels fucking typical, thanks astarion)

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but they did it! one grease trap, one invisibility spell, and maybe a few misty steps later, the party reunited in mol’s hideout and finally presented this charming urchin child with her own holy idol to sell to support her criminal enterprise

and isn’t that what it’s all about? don’t you feel heroic?

(please wyll, claudius needs you to think this party’s heroic so you don’t leave)

please imagine the party stumbling back to camp, triumphant, and lae’ezel flatly asking whether they made any progress towards finding the githyanki creche so they can get the tadpoles out of all of their heads

claudius is a great leader

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Textures courtesy of Transparent Textures

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