I Felt Very Smart But Sadly, The Game Didn’t Seem To Agree

Considering that around 85 per cent of Baldur’s Gate 3 players choose to play a custom character, there are plenty of rare scenarios involving origin characters which aren’t as well-known in the community. For example, if you play Wyll, there are plenty of unique dialogue options involving Mizora and Wyll’s father Ulder Ravengard.

Recently, a player by the username of jabberwagon, got entangled in a sticky situation with Mizora while playing as Wyll. They describe attending Gortash’s coronation ceremony and accidentally triggering a massive battle with a Wyll-specific dialogue option. Duke Ravengard is hostile towards the party because Gortash implanted him with a tadpole. The elation at triumphing in one of the game’s most difficult fights was short-lived for our storyteller, as Ulder Ravengard lay dead on the floor of the grand hall.

Infernal Lawyering

The opportunistic Mizora offers a tantalising solution to the grieving Wyll. She can resurrect Ulder Ravengard in exchange for Wyll selling his soul to Zariel for eternity. Figuring that the character Wyll would probably agree, jabberwagon signed away his soul. However, as the end-game approached, the astute poster realised that there was potentially a way out of this contract – a loophole that Mizora would be proud of. This idea was sparked by the prospect of a trip to Avernus with Karlach. Travelling to the Nine Hells while contracted to an Archdevil probably isn’t the best idea, after all.

So… what if Wyll lost his soul? With this in mind, jabberwagon turned Wyll into a mindflayer. There’s not exactly concrete lore on whether illithids possess souls or not, but the logic here is sound. Mindflayers are aberrations from the Far Realm, they are not naturally occurring and therefore do not fit in with the cosmology of Toril, the primary setting of Dungeons & Dragons. There’s certainly a chance that one’s soul is erased when one turns illithid, given the cosmic origin of the species.

“I felt very smart, but sadly, the game didn’t seem to agree,” jabberwagon writes. “Not only did I not really get any unique dialogue for Wyllithid (ha), I actually seem to have lost a bunch of Wyll-exclusive options and scenes that would play out thereafter.”

They were essentially treated as a regular Tav from the point they turned Wyll into a mindflayer. There are plenty of edge cases that are accounted for by Larian, but unfortunately, this is not one of them. The lore surrounding Illithid souls is probably dubious enough for Larian to not have considered this very specific situation. I guess we’ll just have to see how this squid fares in Avernus.

Released

August 3, 2023

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence