Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What impression do you get of Selune from BG3?

I have trouble with the Selune lore.

In BG3, she feels like her domains would be something like Light and Nature. That's the impression I get from the game at least.

She's said to be the other side of Shar, and Shar's all about darkness. So it's Selune who brought the warmth of light to the universe. Which makes me think Light as a domain, being the opposite of Shar's darkness.

And then there's Shadowheart, who has this deep love of animals baked into her being. Her Selune worshipping family sends her into the wilderness to survive on her own as a ritual. Meanwhile, her father can shapechange into a wolf. All of this gives me the sense that Nature is a big part of what it means to worship this moon witch.

But I looked it up, and it seems like her domains, relevant to BG3, are actually Knowledge and Life.

For me it's hard to form an impression of Selûne that's particularly distinct from this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selene or this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_(goddess)

She's basically a portmonteau of two more or less identical Moon goddesses from antiquity, with the little circumflex diacritical mark to make sure we catch the pronunciation in the FR version. The association with wolves and witches is also just sorta lifted straight out of Greek myth, with the Thessalian witches angle and such. The root word there means "bright" literally. So light would make a lot of sense for a domain portfolio to me, even if the books stress Knowledge and Life. Also Time I suppose in a pretty important sense. Selene had the epithet Mene, which was both a name for the Moon itself and a calendar term for the Lunar Month. 28 days, so a year divided into 13 months, before intercalary stuff was more widely adopted. Also a tripartite year with 3 seasons rather than 4, as we move up from the subtropics to the temperate zones where the winters are more extreme. So sorta comparing the reckoning of seasons in for example Ancient Egypt (3 seasons based on say the flooding of the Nile river or harvest times and such) compared to the later Roman reckoning described by Varro and Pliny. Roman religion preserves both the Trinitarian symbolism and the later 4 part division, which is basically symbolized by the cross later on. Like that's pretty much the nuts and bolts on that symbol, especially if it's placed in front of the Sun.

Shar I feel is somewhat more complicated. Her closest analog in the same mythos to me would be the Greek goddess Lethe, who is the personification of oblivion and forgetfulness and loss. Also the name of the river in the underworld whose waters would make the souls forget. The dark waters (contrast to the river of memory, Mnemosyne). Here's a depiction of Lethe from Gustave Dore's illustration of Dante's canto...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Gustove_Dore%2C_The_Divine_Comedy%2C_Paradise%2C_plate_115%2C_Dante_and_the_River_of_Lethe.jpg



To me that's sorta Shar right there, like in whatever aspect of her is meant to be somehow appealing and alluring.

And of course Hekate, who would be a bit more on the nose when the veil gets dropped, for like the monstrous aspect rebranding. Again thessalian vibes hehe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecate

The top image on that page, the Hecate Chiaramonti could easily be in the Gauntlet of Shar and that would totally seem to fit I think for the BG3 riff on it. The name Shar is kinda curious, I think it comes more from another mythos, sorta grafted onto the Lethe/Hekate idea but made more manichaean. So the whole light/darkness thing maybe coming in from that for her counterpoint.

To me Shar works for all the fire themed stuff coming from the light domain, because of cast shadows. So like whereas radiant damage seems off brand, a flicking candle or a lights out fireball seems to somehow fit that idea.

For knowledge and life with Selûne, I'd fold them both into some kind of idea about keeping time that encompasses those concepts. Especially cause of what the Elves make of it all and like Jaheira being on the scene.

It's hard for me to tell what's there compared to like what I'm bringing to it, but that's where my head goes. I think its kinda cooler if the deities had a portfolio standard, but also account for some adjacent domains that also work, if not exactly the go to stuff by the book. I was pretty blown away honestly when I got to the Shadowlands and the Gauntlet. It felt as if someone was taking notes in that other thread from years ago, with onyx stones that I can't find now lol, but I remember thinking a few times when playing like 'wow, they went pretty deep into it after all!'

I kinda agree though, by the story beats light and nature would make a lot of sense. In the same way that Shar has a bunch of undead necromancy type things going on with her umbral ghosts and skeleton warriors and whatnot. I was pretty into that! It totally reminded me of Jason and the Argonauts Harryhausen meets the skeleton from the last unicorn haha.

I guess there is supposed to be a Ying-Yang relationship between Shar and Selune, but let's face it, the moon is not really very bright. And what about eclipses (next one is April 8th) where the moon blocks the sun? The Shar end of it makes sense, and yes Lethe and perhaps Nyx as well are strong classical sources.

The Life domain for the moon goddess does have some precedence in ancient literature since the cycles of the moon kind of draw a parallel with ... uh, well, ahhh, you know ... biological monthly cycles. The Light domain in BGIII is very fire-oriented, with spells like Burning Hands, Fireball, and Wall of Fire, which are good for sun-gods but I don't see as a good fit for Selune. Selune clerics should have things like Moonbeam and maybe even some benevolent lycanthropy shapechange options, just like SH's parents as the OP mentioned. Moon stuff.

Interesting question and very nice answer @Black_Elk.

My guess is that Shar was a blending of Caligo and Nyx/Nox - the wings of a Caligo butterfly are marked with the symbol of Shar. But her representation as a dark dancer and her desire for destruction makes one think of Kali / Kali Maa

Much like literally every other female authority figure in BG3, Larian's writers are obsessed with writing her as a stupid evil bitch, even when she's meant to be the "good" counterpart to the evil goddess.

I always saw Selune as a goddess for travelers. It is not explicit stated in the Wiki, but she is often worshipped by people, who travel a lot, the Gur people for example.

I always kinda saw the Gur as a mystic people with ties to lycanthropy. It makes sense to me and helps me understand where Shadowheart was coming from when she labeled Selune as "that moon witch." I thought that was such a fascinating way of describing her. Much more interesting and flavorful than accepting her as the light to Shar's darkness.

Come to think of it, I like a lot of what Shadowheart has to say about Shar early on. The way she comforts those who've experienced loss and helps them to act in the darkness. It gave me the impression that she encouraged those who were broken in some way, perhaps lost in depression and unable to face the day. With Shar they found the strength to act rather than to be lost in the paralysis of misery.

*

Now I'm wondering if Helia was supposed to have had ties to the Gur people.

Does he tho?
Or was that just Sharrites manipulating her memory ... by simply replacing traumatizing memory of bunch of priestess brutally murdering her father ... with acceptable memory where bunch of kind priestess saved her from savage beast?

Personaly i incline to second variation ...

This is definitely a reasonable interpretation. And it's certainly interesting.

Personally, I lean toward her father being able to shapechange, either through wildshape or some other magic, and deciding to be sneaky and follow her to make sure she was okay during her sojourn. I mean, what was he doing there in the first place, and how did he intend to hide from Shadowheart if she happened to see him on the night she was supposed to be alone in the wilderness?

It is stated in the epilogue, that he can shapeshift. =) But before the epilogue was added, I was wondering how much of the memory or which portion of it was real too.

I think Shar's main power is to remove memories, rather than implant new ones. Absence. Larian did a great job showing how people might want to choose a dark religion like Shar's, where the darkness is a way to remove emotional pain. Likewise they did a great job with Abdirak's little dialog. After all, why would anyone normally want to worship a goddess of physical pain, dear one? But when it comes to Selune, the story telling was different. You can read the Mason's journal and other accounts of how Selune's people were wiped out, but that does not really address the ethos very much. And then later you have Aylin, driven half crazy with her rage while stomping on dead people's heads, and who never really reconciles her anger. I would say the one time where the story made me feel what Selune was really all about was when Shadowheart released her parents and they became moon-motes. Moon stuff.