Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion The Guardian romance suggestions

1. Tav decides to not turn into an illithid. They accept the Emperor as a mind flayer and partner, do whatever the Emperor wants from them and never bother to do anything beyond that. The Emperor never sees any need to change himself, only thinks that Tav missed an opportunity to become stronger. They never connect on a deeper level. In the end, when they get to talk for one last time, Tav is allowed to ask about their relationship, and the Emperor tells them that while they were good partners, he is not ready to accept Tav as a lover. When Tav tries to stay by the Emperor's side, no matter what they suggest, the Emperor always leaves.

2. Tav decides to turn into an illithid. They accept the Emperor as a mind flayer and partner, do whatever the Emperor wants from them and never bother to do anything beyond that. The Emperor never sees any need to change himself, only thinks that Tav made the right choice in order to defeat the enemy. They never connect on a deeper level. In the end, when they get to talk for one last time, Tav is allowed to ask about their relationship, and the Emperor tells them that while they were good partners, he is not ready to accept Tav as a lover. When Tav tries to stay by the Emperor's side, the Emperor agrees, but specifies that they can only be partners in work. It is left unclear whether or not they attempt to enter a romantic relationship ever again.

3. Tav decides to not turn into an illithid. They accept the Emperor as a mind flayer and partner, do whatever the Emperor wants from them and try to convince them that being a humanoid is not worse than being a mind flayer. Emotions can be a hindrance but also a great force. Feelings can hurt and heal. Relationships don't always have to end with betrayal. The Emperor starts to see a need to change himself, thinks that Tav has a point, that he has to accept his feelings, emotions and painful past as invaluable parts of himself. He leans more towards his guardian form, joins the final fight in that form while retaining all of his mind flayer abilities. He and Tav connect on a deeper level. When Tav falls from the platform and is about to reach the harsh waters below, the Emperor saves them from the fall the same way he did when they first met. In the end, when they get to talk for one last time, Tav is allowed to ask about their relationship, and the Emperor tells them that they were good partners and he wants to remain by Tav's side as their lover. They stay in the city and help it rebuild, after which they either work as its guardians or venture on another journey together.

4. Tav decides to turn into an illithid. They accept the Emperor as a mind flayer and partner, do whatever the Emperor wants from them and try to convince them that being a humanoid is not worse than being a mind flayer. Emotions can be a hindrance but also a great force. Feelings can hurt and heal. Relationships don't always have to end with betrayal. The Emperor starts to see a need to change himself, thinks that Tav has a point, that he has to accept his feelings, emotions and painful past as invaluable parts of himself. However, when Tav decides to become a mind flayer, the Emperor is taken aback. He asks if this is something Tav genuinely wants to do, and when Tav agrees, the Emperor starts to doubt everything. He joins the final fight in his mind flayer form. He never has any need to catch Tav, because Tav can now fly just like him. They never connect on a deeper level, and to the Emperor it somehow feels like betrayal. In the end, when they get to talk for one last time, Tav is allowed to ask about their relationship, and the Emperor tells them that while they were good partners, he is not ready to accept Tav as a lover. Moreover, he doesn't think they should ever meet again. When Tav tries to stay by the Emperor's side, no matter what they suggest, the Emperor always leaves.

1. Allow us to persuade the Emperor to side with Orpheus (high approval or romanced). Have him be right all along, beat Orpheus when he lashes out and let the Emperor/Tav/Karlach consume his brain (alternatively betray the Emperor and side with Orpheus instead).
2. Allow us to communicate and bond with the Emperor when using the artefact.
3. Reveal the truth behind the Emperor's mind control of Stelmane.
4. If romanced, add a cutscene after the ending sequence. Every romance interest has one, he should too.
5. If romanced, have the Emperor come up with a name for himself. Let everyone else refer to him as the Emperor/mind flayer/illithid/whatever they want. Tav is not voiced, so using a new name in their dialogue lines should not be a problem.
6. Have party members react to the intimate scene.
7. Make it an exclusive relationship.

1. Why the Guardian image and not Balduran's?
While I can see why he could theoretically return to his original body image if we nudge him towards it enough, I also feel like we shouldn't undervalue the form he picked for us. Not just because that's our preferable face and gender, but:
a) The Emperor himself states that he is Balduran no longer. He might not want to use that appearance anymore.
b) He wears the Guardian image when he connects with us for the first time - a fresh start of sorts, something he seems to be after ("I am who I was when we met" etc etc). He also proceeds to use said image well into Act 2, all while trying to act human in order to get us to cooperate with him. If we get him to see that there's a good side to embracing his feelings, I think it is possible that he might learn to associate emotional/personal growth with this image as well. I'm not sure how to properly explain it, but I hope you get the idea.
Still, I'm not against him taking his original form, I would even encourage it. But it would be a very big step. Additionally, he could build himself an entirely new image, though I can't really see why he would want to do that. It would be yet another fresh start, and there's no reason for such.

2. Why have him use a humanoid image and not his mind flayer one? It goes against what he wants: acceptance of who he is. Besides, he can't really turn back human.
He doesn't have to and really shouldn't change back into human (/elf in our case, I think?)! I think it would be a terrible thing. When I was describing the endings, one requirement always stayed the same: we should accept him as a mind flayer. As in his species, his looks, his abilities and so on. When I was describing him as 'leaning more towards his Guardian form' I merely meant him showing that he's learned to appreciate both sides of himself and is willing to show it. In the ideal world he would easily alternate between his two images, depending on what he feels like wearing. If he wants to only appear as a mind flayer, I say why not?

the Emperor was not happy with how his last thrall turned out. Consequently, he attempts to honey trap the player. He will not harm you unless it benefits him. Although, by his account, he is unable to feel "anything", he is willing to just let you go once freed. Pro-social psychopath vibes much?

a mindflayer

That's not entirely true. Mindflayers aren't robots. I think people equate being souless to having no emotions, but they actually do feel emotions. It's just extremely unlikely and rare that they form relationships and feel happiness. Both the Emperor and Omeluum are already anomalies for mindflayers, so it's not super far out of the scope to see them experiencing something rare to others of their kind. I'm not sure if that's a direction Larian would want to take the Emperor, but it could theoretically happen.

To quote the wiki,

"To non-illithids, mind flayers seemed calm and collected at almost all times, dispassionate and seemingly emotionless outside of their constant desire to dominate others. They dismissed basal emotions like pride as fatal flaws and founded themselves on a pragmatic outlook. While they might occasionally seem furious, it was difficult to discern if this was actual feeling or a ruse to manipulate others. Theories on this ranged from the belief that the mind flayers had no emotions, very few, or extreme levels of self-control, but all of these were incorrect. In truth, illithids had a whole spectrum of emotions and felt them intensely, sometimes even behaving irrationally because of them, but these feelings were almost entirely internalized and not evident even during moments of raging inner turmoil.

However, while mind flayers did indeed have a range of emotions, these emotions were almost entirely negative. They felt anger and hate when foiled and stymied in their ascent to sovereignty, fear when faced with hostile minds they could not control, shame when incapable of controlling minds, envy towards vast knowledge that was not their own, abhorrence towards a wasteful use of thralls, disgust for those that would engage with lesser beings on an equal basis, and sadness when a compatriot died far from home. These emotions, and related feelings such as anxiety and contempt, made up most of an illithid's emotional repertoire.

The most commonly experienced illithid emotion was frustration, discontentment rooted in the fact that they had not yet achieved dominion, and this dissatisfaction was a subtle, undercurrent that constantly defined them and colored their other emotions and thoughts. The same principle of underlying negativity could be found in the illithids overall; mind flayers had no sense of true happiness, and so did not plan to become happy.

The closest most illithids came to being happy was the delight of consuming a brain, but even then the act had such sadistic overtones that it still wouldn't be "happiness" as normally defined. A mind flayer's highest emotional state was that of self-satisfaction, whether that be from a personal sense of pride or the satiation of their curiosity, and it was this that motivated their behavior. They sought to live in luxury, to feast on the minds of well-bred thralls and master their psionic birthright. Love, or even friendship outside of acquaintances, was almost unheard of, for they had supernatural means of filling these emotional voids."

and this quote here too,

"The illithids had to dominate not only to achieve their goals, but to fulfill certain basic needs of their own. Without a mind to control, a mind flayer would feel incomplete. They actually had an intimate relationship with their own thralls, suffering when they died (whether by sickness, age, or physical harm) and sometimes going mad from loneliness without their constant companionship. Illithids were known to postpone their other goals just to renew an emptied retinue of thralls and every illithid had at least one personal thrall. When they found one they favored, illithids would go out of their way not to eat personal thralls in bouts of hunger or anger, and might even grant them toys and trinkets to occupy themselves with when not working. "

performing for Omeluum in the Underdark, the subtitles will convey the joy you feel from Omeluum.

First of all, some old lore books tell us that Mindflayers have emotions. In most cases they are negative emotions, but this is not always the case. There are exceptions, not many, but they do exist.
Some of the lines in the game suggest that the Emperor has some sort of feelings, and there's even a scene where you can feel his emotions yourself. I mean, it would be possible to develop something deeper from that, the lines are there, the choices are there, the only problem is, the consequences of these choices are not... And we are talking about a game where your choices matter.

The Emperor certainly behaves like a mind flayer, but thing is, there are numerous occurrences that hint at him being something deeper than just that, and those don't depend on him.

There are perception and insight skill checks that never lie and work regardless of what the Emperor - or anyone else for that matter - wants or thinks; those exist specifically to see through acts and facades. There's for example that dream sequence in Act 2 where you need to pass at least 2 (or was it 3?) different skill checks in a row in order to notice that the Guardian is in pain/frustrated (depending on which roll was successful, if any). We can choose to act on it or do nothing.

Then there are moments - small but all over the Acts - where the Guardian/Emperor reacts in weirdly human ways when there's absolutely nothing he can get out of it, and it doesn't seem like he's in control of those reactions to begin with. We first see those in form of the narrator telling us about his emotions flowing out of the artefact, like when we venture to the githyanki creche. Those emotions can be fabricated, I guess, but the thing is, the Guardian doesn't really say much, only maybe asks us not to go once and then falls completely silent. Another good example would be going to find Ansur, where the Emperor starts complaining seemingly out of nowhere, telling us that there's nothing to be found in there. His choice of words is very interesting, and it's kind of obvious he'd much prefer to be anywhere but near the dragon. Then there is his super defensive reaction if you call him a freak, his frustration if you go to the House of Hope and emerge with nothing (yeah, if you leave the hammer in the House, he'll be like "you've made better decisions than this" (= why did you even risk our lives going there))... plenty of those. Nothing to win, no useful information to learn.

Not a lot of people mention this, but he also has a really short temper, which delivers a number of funny scenes but only should we pick specific dialogue lines (like if we try to detect his thoughts when we see him in his true form for the first time, he goes, and I directly quote: "You must be joking. I am TELLING you my thoughts. Directly. Into. Your. Head.", or if you decide to crush the tadpole he gave you with your boot, he reacts with: "You absolute horror! (lmao) Do you know how hard it was to find that? To cultivate it to be safe for communion? Waste. Utter waste.").

There's plenty more of those things, not to mention the illithid prophecy and both the narrator and illithid Orpheus's lines, among which I honestly find it very difficult to believe the Emperor feels nothing/has no actual personality. But if he really does feel nothing in the end, and if his personality was fabricated in order to make him more appealing to us, I hope that the devs can at least implement a dialogue or two where the characters who romanced him can clearly realize that. It would be fair.

Omeluum is best boi and so is the Emperor. I romanced him as a bard and turned into a mindflayer at the end. During the final dialogue exchange I told him "we're mindflayers, we should think bigger" and it was the most big brained and most romantic thing I've ever heard lmao. I was unironically super happy with my ending. The mere fact that Larian allowed me to go down this crazy route was hysterical. And I do legit think that with some tweaks to the writing (and more scenes!) emperor would become one of my fav romances in games PERIOD. His backstory also really alligned with the one I created for my bard (who I imagined as a member of the Xanathar's Thieves Guild of Waterdeep, and therefore someone not really shocked by the fact that some weird tentacled aberration could run a well-oiled criminal society from the shadows ahah) so every time that he told me he was 'just like me' really rang true in retrospective once I found out what he was up to with the Knights of the Shield. It was one of my favorite little coincidences in the game because it truly felt like the GM (larian) was somehow woving my character's backstory with that of this NPC. It was such a fun moment.

Exactly, they are both very unique mind flayers. Therefore, I believe people shouldn't be biased against the Emperor just because he is a mind flayer. I hope that Larian can add more storyline related to the Emperor in future updates to address the gaps in the narrative.

He honestly cared for her and has regrets about how things went. He kept personal items of hers in his old den, even a portrait of her.

What if something went horribly wrong, and she suffered a horrible attack from a different illithid. However, due to her position, and his need of her as a public face, he needed her to still remain functional and operational while she struggled with the mental assault. Yes, he would be puppet and using her in her hour of need, it also served to protect them both.

If you play the game right, the end of it the Emperor asks you to stay with him to rebuild the city as an equal.

Such a turn of events is a curious idea that could be nurtured into a deliciously painul story... Buuut in reality it was probably somehow tied to the Order having dark cultists in its ranks. The Emperor seems to have this habit of getting betrayed by his closest allies during the hardest of times (Ansur and quite possibly Tav), so perhaps Stelmane was one of them. Or maybe she used to be this good, kind person once... but then one day she got brainwashed into becoming a follower, and in an attempt to bring her back to her former self the Emperor gave her a stroke instead. Maybe she was on the dark side all along and managed to trick him, so eventually a time came when he found out about her being part of the cult and had to mind control her in order to survive. Alternatively, he could use her face and influence to keep the cult from actively spreading and harming his city (making all those morally grey decisions along the way. He does try to lean to the 'good' side, after all). Or perhaps she was always pure, and he's just an evil bastard with a twisted understanding of their relationship, though that doesn't seem to be true to his character.