English version
The main plot of Baldur’s Gate The main plot of Baldur’s Gate II and some hints on the companions and their (possible) involvement in the macro-narrative -part 2
Fabio Ciaramaglia
The fall from triumph to exile, the loss of anything which had been stubbornly achieved in the first game, seems not to stop in the second, because it starts while our character is in the captivity of a mysterious villain who is experimenting and torturing us. This is the beginning of Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Though we can decide whether to keep on with the same character of the first game, it is also possible starting from scratch, yet in the general plot the fundamental events of BG1 are given for granted.
In the upsetting situation of this forced captivity we are not alone, because Imoen, Minsc and Jaheira are imprisoned as well. After releasing each others, in the attempts to escape we find out that the big arcane laboratory where we are is somewhere out of our own dimension. Another very shocking discovery is that two more of our companions had been caught too but they did not survive the experiments, and these are Dyanheir and Khalid, that is the partners of Minsc and Jaheira.
The reaction of the druid is particularly emotional, also because Khalid was her husband and the couple, though very different used to be close-knit. Adding here that in the previous games, in a side-quest, Khalid put all his efforts to find a proper gift for Jaheira and asks for the help of our character in order to find the materials to craft it. The two half-elves were basically the two halves of a whole. Khalid was a heroic good-hearted and stuttering person whereas Jaheira, definitely more edgy and down-to-earth, found often herself to pull back her husband to what was more pragmatic. The loss of her huband makes Jaheira definitely less playful and darker. It is a touching loss also for us, considering that Khalid was one of the first companions we met (and we “keep” him until the end, unless we step on an evil path).
The matter related to the ranger Minsc and the mage Dyanheir is slightly different. In the first game we might even never meet them, because it all starts with a timed mission (that is, if not completed within a certain time-span it is automatically failed and all the related subplots are locked), in which Minsc asks for our help to release Dyanheir who has been caught by gnolls. They both come from Rasheman, an inland nation in the far east of the Sword Coast, and they are in the middle of a “dajemma”, that is a ritual of passage for the local young people.
At first glance Minsc is delusional since he sees acts of heroism in futile things or in obviously too dangerous stuff, and he speaks directly with Boo, a hamster which works somehow as his conscience and which is, according to the ranger, a “miniature giant space hamster” (the dialogues between Minsc and Boo in which we have to imagine necessarily the hamster’s replies are among the funniest and weirdest moments of all the saga). Minsc is loyal and brave, and for him the loss of Dyanheir is a shock too, but he reacts in a better way since he will look for a new spellcaster to protect, who will be, in this game, Neera and Aaerie, but also Jaheira herself, despite not a mage but a druid. A tender and deep friendship is developed between Minsc and Jaheira which arrives until the latest BG3, but we shall speak of this at a later time.
Finally escaped we find out also the identity of our torturer, the mage Irenicus, who chases us until the exit into an unknown place, which we soon find out being Athkatla, the capital of Amn. The Cowled Wizards, a sort of special police corp specialised in the arcane, step in because of unauthorized use of magics and they imprison both Irenicus (who does not even resist despite his immense powers) and Imoen, sending them to Spellhold, a sort of asylum for deviant mages.
The main goal now is finding the way to save Imoen, but we are in a city we do not know yet, so we need to explore it and to make new acquaintances. We receive some offers of help to save our friend, but they come from the bosses of the two criminal guilds of Athkatla, that is Aran Linvail of the Shadow Thieves and Bodhi of the Vampire Coven, who are at war with each others. In this city which is vaguely afraid of the arcane and definitely xenophobic, we manage to meet also the drow Viconia and it is possible to save her from a bonfire and hire her as a companion: this cleric of Shar, the ambiguous goddess of the darkness and of the night, is an old acquaintance of the first game, however for her being evil it may happen that she leaves us because of our too good or heroic choices. As we previously said, also in this game the number of companions is so big, as it is that of side-quests, and analysing everything would just lead to major digressions: we mentioned Viconia just because she appears once more in BG3.
Going on with the main plot, after many events, we finally manage to enter Spellhold, but Bodhi the vampire, not depending on the fact whether we worked for her or for her opponent Aran, seems to have some deeper interest in us. The path is paved for a series of recognitions: we find out that before being turned into a vampire Bodhi was an elf in Suldanessellar and she is Jon Irenicus’s “sister”, himself an elf in the same city. Led by his hubris and supported by Bodhi, Irenicus tried to go beyond the allowed limits of magics, estranging himself from his fiancee Ellesime, the leader of Suldanessellar.
Banished for ever from the city, they have chased other ways to extend their powers and their lives to finally revenge on the elves who had rejected them. Irenicus’s researches made him discover some rituals which may make him absorb the divine essence of Bhaal within our own character. Recognition follows recognition and we find out that also our long-time friend Imoen is a “Bhaalspawn”, though her powers had stayed latent and hidden for a longer time. After a first escape of Irenicus through the Underdark (in which there are several other adventures), we catch up with him during the siege of Suldanessellar where he is trying to absorb the powers of the Tree of Life sacred to elves.
The final fight follows and we ultimately finish this ambitious villain and we manage to have a new moment of triumph after all the vexations experienced from the end of BG1 and the beginning of BG2.
Many matters stay unresolved though, especially those related to Bhaal’s legacy and our character (including the unwilling transformations into the Slayer) and that of the revelation of Imoen sharing all of it with us. The DLC “Throne of Bhaal” finally leads us to the proper ending of the whole saga. The beginning is once again mysterious because we are unexpectedly teleported to the sieged city of Saradash, in the nation of Thetyr (the southern boundary of Amn).
Apparently in this nation there is a bloody and no quarter battle among several other Bhaalspawns and some of them, Highlander-like, have decided only one must remain alive, in order to absorb all the others’ powers and finally ascend to godhood. Advised by the cleric Melissan we are led to protect the weakest (and possibly innocent) Bhaalspawns and to fight the five most dangerous of them not just for their half-siblings but for all Tethyr (and the whole Sword Coast). We find out only later that Melissan, in time, has been the most loyal cleric of Bhaal and she had planned a ritual in order to become herself the god’s avatar and this, necessarily, leads to a final fight against her, on an astral plane in which we can understand our identity better and choose our last steps -we can even decide to require the help of a revived Sarevok.
The DLC is clearly shorter and smaller even in terms of maps and multiple choices, but it carries us to the conclusion of the whole saga and faces us with the supreme possible choice: becoming a god and welcoming the role of patrons of ritual murder in the name of Bhaal, or becoming a morally different type of god, or, ultimately, giving everything up and keeping on with our “normal” mortal life.
We have focused on the main plot and the saga of our character, who is after all the protagonist of it, but there are many other intriguing stories, like that of Neera, the half-elf wild mage and her struggle with the Red Wizards of Thay, the attempts of Coran (whom we meet later in the comics too) to seduce any female being, the betrayals of Safana and Yoshimo and all the morbid tale of the vampire Hexxat, and even the mirror-path to ours of young Imoen, etc etc.
Furthermore, in this golden age of Bioware, in both the first BGs, the romantic relations with the companions become being relevant, with all the possible combinations of gender and sexual tastes. There are also many meta-gaming references, such as the annoying NPC who follows us asking silly and pointless questions (a bit like the fans to the game designers) or the sub-hiring for a very simple task of a group of newbie adventurers who even think about a betrayal, but after having realised they cannot really defeat us simply “reload” their own game. Finally we have to underline, and we are going to speak about it more deeply later on, that the references to Forgotten Realms setting are precise and detailed and, as a matter of fact, they are by now part of the “canon” with the manuals, such as the special meetings with Drizzt and his friends in both games to help us (especially in the fight against Bodhi).
Basically, beyond the manuals which normally are the basics to start a proper gaming campaign in more than just one session, all the saga of the “Bhaalspawn” is itself a campaign which, even not playing out all the possibilities, may take about one hundred game-hours (I write this as a personal experience by adding the time taken to finish BG1 and 2 and their DLCs). They are video games which provide immersion in a world which, though imaginary, makes us experience in a proxy way a series of strong human opposite emotions, such us love-hate, loyalty-unloyalty, fame-villainy and many more. In the game we have the feeling that each single NPC we meet in the areas we explore may have an interesting and fascinating tale to tell.
In the hope we have made it clear why these games are by now a crucial turning point in the growth process of the video games, and how even after twenty five years they still have an impact on them, before we move on to the analysis of the third Baldur’s Gate we shall see how some of the characters named here, some of the setting and the themes, have temporarily migrated in a series of comics volumes published by IDW.
Further readings
Several authors, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Bioware, September 2000. In June 2001 the DLC Baldur’s Gate II: The Throne of Bhaal is released. Also this game has been updated by Beamdog in Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, allowing its use also on other platforms and operating systems. There are not new DLCs for this game in this edition.
On Amn and Thetyr refer for free to: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Amn and https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Tethyr
For a complete list of the most known Bhaalspawns, check this: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Bhaalspawn
end of article 10
Biography
FABIO CIARAMAGLIA
With an M.A. degree in English Literature, with a dissertation on Shakespeare and comics (2000) and a Ph.D. with a dissertation on Shakespeare and Italian TV (2004), I have always tried to deal with the complex relationship between literature and other media.
I have written for comics magazines, such as Fumo di China and Fumettomania (in its previous printed version), but also translated into Italian a couple of American comics for the publisher Magic Press and some poems. Meanwhile I have begun teaching English language at High School, at first in Rome and then, after 2015, in Trieste.
I have never lost the nerdy attitude even as a teacher, but since 2006 videogames have attracted me more and in some of them, maybe for a personal inclination, I have found several elements which are worth of being analysed, though before this year I had never dared approaching more seriously.
NOTE EXTRA
Elenco articoli dello speciale Dungeons&Dragons 50th Anniversary:
6 gennaio 2024
22 dicembre 2023
5 dicembre 2023
18 novembre 2023
9 ottobre 2023
4 agosto 2023
7 luglio 2023
23 maggio 2023
ed il 26 marzo 2023
Dal 30 dicembre 2022 stiamo pubblicando un interessantissimo approfondimento di fabio dedicato a
“Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider, dai videogiochi ad altri media (fumetti, cartoni, film)
ecco l’articolo più recente, del 10 maggio
https://www.fumettomaniafactory.net/tomb-rider-approccio-al-ciclo-conclusivo-di-dan-jurgens/
ed il link della Prima puntata del 30 dicembre 2022
Infine, nel 2022, Fabio ha pubblicato il lungo ed interessantissimo approfondimento dedicato a “DRAGON AGE dal videogame ai fumetti!“.
Sotto riportiamo l’ultimo articolo (il 27°) pubblicato da Fabio del 28 dicembre 2022
ed ecco la PAGINA DEL SITO DEDICATA A FUMETTI E VIDEOGIOCHI