Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Shadowheart origins poll

Wouldnt it be better if shadowheart was actually a mother fucker
Like full on chaotic evil shar worshipper the whole time before the memory wipe?
~To the point where her guilt of slaughtering the grove was the 1st time she felt empathy

Shadowheart origins better as victim or true worshiper single choice
	True worshipper (Chaotic evil)
	(Victim) Kidnapped civilian
Votes accepted starting: 07/01/23 12:17 PM You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

Arent Shar's true worshippers often victims too? and what's chaotic evil about being a mf? i thought only demons were supposed to be ce in modern dnd. arent even serisl killers ne at least.

Why do I have to be limited to one or the other? Why can't her guilt be a moment of weakness caused by the memory wipe? What if, as a result of that guilt, she "turns over a new leaf" as it were, in one playthrough, and vehemently rejects that in another, at some point down the line? Why do people feel this need to limit themselves to either/or when it could just as easily be all of the above?

Where is the kidnapped Selunite option? Because I'm pretty sure, that's what she turns out to be.

what

wait its confirmed shes a selunite?
astarion claimed to remember the hopskotch game in blighted town as well so i thought that was debunked

No chaotic evil can be anyone especially if they follow a evil aligned god
even demons can goto the 7 heavens and switch to lawful good

Nothing is confirmed. It's a theory on this point.

Any character might comment on the hopscotch, but there are at least two other potential places round Moonhaven (behind the windmill and in the old school) where Shadowheart might react and be overtaken by strange magic. And Moonhaven is linked by some of the notes you find with a (heretic?) Selunite sect. Well, and there’s its name, implying a connection with Selune.

Shadowheart’s reaction implies that she might have some connection with the village, but it was destroyed around a hundred years before BG3 (I think. I confess I haven’t quite got the timeline right in my head as so few of the notes have dates on them). If Shadowheart is from there then I think chances are she was pretty young at the time. Especially as we now have Jaheira to compare her with, who Larian are showing as greying and middle aged, and I think they said they’d assumed she was around 150-ish? So Shadowheart might turn out to have been kidnapped by Sharrans (working for Ketheric Thorm?) from Moonhaven as a child and raised in the Sharran faith, and perhaps have even been at Gymforge at some point, or even when it fell. I think that could be fun, as it gives her multiple connections with places you visit on your journey (probably including Moonrise Towers too), and the quest Find the Nightsong. But she would still be a Sharran in this option, though discovering her history might cause her to question some stuff.

Or she’s from Moonhaven but not kidnapped by Sharrans as a youngster, or not from Moonhaven at all, but maybe is Selunite and that’s her “true” god trying to reach her in those spots in Moonhaven. In that case, she might be a Selunite subverted just before her last mission, or one that had been with the Sharrans for a while. She might even have joined the Sharrans intentionally, undercover. What she knows of herself might have been wiped from her memory just before her last mission, or her memory could already have been manipulated before that.

Or she could genuinely be a Sharran with no connection with Selune at all, but who lost some other important information as a result of the mental meddling, perhaps she had some doubts about the most evil elements of her religion before her memory was wiped, or was otherwise something of a heretic. Or was a true Sharran with no doubts, and genuinely believed her religion served an important purpose (her spiel about stripping back lies and illusion was pretty compelling) but finds herself so changed by her experiences of living without her memories that when she gets them back she no longer fits back into her old life (I guess this is the closest to the chaotic evil mf option).

But as long as she turns out to be NEITHER a random kidnapped civilian NOR a straightforwardly chaotic evil character, I’m sure I’ll be interested in her story!

There have been more than a few theories about Shadowheart, and some attempts to work out the timeline. Ketheric Thorm was a Selunite cleric or paladin, who suffered a great loss that led him to worship Shar, for some time he worked to subvert the Selunite temple, probably the one at Moonrise. The loss he suffered might have been the death of his daughter, but last time I checked, they'd expunged the references to that from the EA, it still led to speculation that Shadowheart was somehow connected to Thorm's daughter. Eventually Thorm revealed himself, betraying the village, and starting the great conflict you still find artifacts of around. Also note that the village says children have been going missing, probably a result of Thorm. It's unclear how it happened but Halsin seems to view the victory over the Justiciars as either incomplete or pyrrhic, and it is probably the cause of the curse around Moonrise. We also find evidence of a Hellish host killing the remaining Justiciars in Grymforge. I try to avoid datamined spoilers, but the Nightsong is also probably pertinent to this plot, as well as the Sharran Temple.

I think Shadowheart was proabably kidnapped as an street urchin in BG, I can't quite work it out if she's directly involved with Thorm and his Justiciars. Though I did have a fanciful theory about Shadowheart's personality reverting to a kinder gentler version of herself because most of her memories as a Sharran were removed.

Ah, so the reference to a heretic Selunite sect (in a Harper note?) probably refers to Thorm’s attempts to subvert the local temple. I’d not made the connection there.

And do we know when the shattered Selunite sanctum became shattered? I certainly haven’t worked out the timeline of that, or even managed to work out if it’s related to what went wrong underneath it in the Underdark, or might be related to what happened at Moonhaven and possibly Thorm as well?



Oh, I’d forgotten that, and hadn’t made a connection with Shadowheart in any case. Interesting. Though possibly obsolete, if, as you say, references have been removed.

Yes, I've figured the profane cathedral the Harper's observe is Thorm's influence at Moonrise. I haven't found anything definitive about how the Sanctum was destroyed, but it being the Dark Justiciars makes sense. I think there's some definitive dates for when the village was razed (I can't remember them, 130 years ago?), which would put the Justiciar war to around then. There's a letter in Grymforge that talks about their first raid being unsuccessful, which I'm going to say was the assault on the Underdark fort, but we know that they did eventually make it to the village, and probably razed the Sanctum at the same time. We also know the goblins have been living there for some time when we get there.


looking through the thread, puts the attack on Moonhaven at 1371, I think the 'current' date is 1492-3


I made a loose timeline
GM4Him has one to on his blog too

Thanks for sharing! Interesting stuff. Clearly we don’t have enough info at the moment to be sure of much, but enough intriguing hints to provide material for speculation. Which is no doubt exactly what Larian’s writers intended .

Absolutely.

I voted kidnapped and "brainwashed," but honestly I'd be happy either way. I think it could be cool if they made us think it was one or the other several times throughout the story before fully revealing it, and it would be even better if there was more nuance than true believer or kidnapped. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle? Whatever it is, I imagine that aspect of the story has already been fixed by this stage of development. It's releasing in a few months!

Okay, I am sorry to have to ask this question, especially as I know I saw it asked and answered not all that long ago but I can't find where. How do you create a poll on these forums? I can't find the option anywhere, and get an error when I try to click the Forum Help link.

Any pointers gratefully received!

When creating a thread you'll see a box at the bottom called "Post Options" within that is a button called Poll Manager...that's it

I want my drow pc to be a mf too. would actually make somewhat sense. needs to be a tag.

Cheers! I see it now.

Okay, and meanwhile, as all of this is happening, where is Selune? She (a greater deity) just sits there and allows her faithful to be "kidnapped" and "brainwashed" by Shar, her arch enemy no less, and is totally cool with it?

This is Larian BS that completely goes against well-established FR lore, and a good example of why I consider Larian's writers to be ridiculous jokes. A good writer accepts the constraints within which they're expected to write, and they still end up creating something awesome even while honoring those constraints.