Hello! I'm on my second playthrough, and having some issues with the quest Hunt the Devil. In this quest, you encounter Karlach, a devil whose soul was forcibly sworn to Zariel who escaped from Avernus by riding the nautiloid. At some point, before the crash, she was infected. To make things worse, Zariel has set a band of cultists on her trail, and she's hurt and unable to move (a bit like Pandirna). She asks you to help her get rid of her hunters, and promises a future alliance in Baldur's Gate if you agree; it's hinted that she might be a future companion and that she didn't sell her own soul, but was rather sent to Hell by some Baldur's Gate politicians (maybe a tie-in with Astarion's past and infernal scars? who knows. Anywho, she definitely deserves to be helped.)
When you meet the group hunting Karlach, they too have an awful story and a very good reaso behind their mission; they are not, as Karlach suggested, a rabid bunch dead-set on getting her head for "reasons" but a lawful good group of ex-Tyr paladins who lost everything in Elturel, and who agreed to make a pact with Zariel to help the helpless; the only thing that she wants is one soul, either Karlach's or theirs. I did some digging, and Zariel is a complex character herself with a lot of redeeming qualities.
As the quest stands right now, in EA, the only way to complete it and get the checkmark is to either kill the Knights of Zariel OR kill Karlach. In my first playthrough, before deciding to kill the Knights of Zariel (because they had had agency in their pact, while Karlach didn't) I tried everything to find a third way: I tried healing Karlach, giving Soul Coins to Anders so that they could repay Zariel without killing Karlach, used every companion to talk to them, trying to unlock dialogue options to avoid slaughtering them, etc. The think is that IF you kill them, they won't be able to protect that bit of the road later on either, and they are doing a much better work than the noobs of the Flaming Fist, so it seems very counter-productive and chaotic stoopid to have to kill them.
I'd love it if there was a third way to fix the situation, one that didn't involve the slaughter of two factions that are very sympathetic -- much more than the Druids, for instance, where the third pacifist option is very apparent, and even with Mayrina and the Hag. Besides, there's an ongoing theme of distrusting authority figures in Baldur's Gate 3 -- and it's part of Shar's creed to topple these -- so it would make sense if the players who wanted to follow that path could untangle both parties from their ties to Zariel. It just seems as if leaving as many people alive as possible in Act 1 would keep more storylines open in Act 2.
So, what do you think? Should we be able to keep both Karlach and the Andersons of Zariel alive?
