Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General A Theory

Ok. So, if I'm understanding the theory correctly, the Gith box contains/has imprisoned the dream lover who still can influence things outside the box. S/he is triggered if you use illithid powers because s/he is attempting to help you control them - trying to use you for their own purposes and trying to turn you into a powerful weapon against his/her enemies, using the tadpole powers against those who gave them to you. The Absolute is threatened by it because s/he can actually help True Souls control their powers and rebel against the Absolute.

Hmmm. Maybe.

Here's another thought then. What if the entity in the box is Bhaal? Now wouldn't that be a twist? Bhaal was a man-whore who went around sleeping with lots of people. I'm sure he wouldn't bat an eye to use a Dream Lover persona to try to tempt someone. The Dream Lover has Baldur's Gate in mind for conquest and wants you to be a powerful weapon of mass destruction.

And if the Absolute has somehow stolen the Dead Three portfolios - using their symbol - Bhaal would certainly hate the Absolute and want to get his godhood back.

This would also explain why the box is SO vital to Larian's story.

I'm not sure it is because of what the book JAndK mentioned tells about the origins of the Githyanki:



This event occurred thousands and thousands of years before and it mentions whatever is locked inside the Githyanki box. It broke them free of the Mindflayer influence, same as it broke us free of the Absolute's influence. Meanwhile wasn't Bhaal a mortal several thousands years later who then became a God and tried to revive himself several times, so the timeline doesn't match up with the Githyanki uprising.

My theory is that whoever or whatever this being in the book was, it was not originally trapped in a Githyanki magical box. Instead after the uprising, considering how egotistic Githyanki are, they turned upon the being and entrapped it with magical Githyanki runes inside the box. To ensure if the Mindflayer threat ever arises they could always use its psyonic powers against them, which is why they value it so tremendously that they'd go against Vlaakith's own children. It's quite literally the key to their freedom as a race.

Which directly correlates to the reason why the Absolute wants the weapon so badly and why the Gith want it so badly too. And why the weapon itself wants neither the Githyanki nor the Absolute, just us. I believe Queen Vlaakith is the only one who knows exactly the true origin of the being inside the box and why she ordered her children to find it at any cost, even if it means killing her own children in the process... something that Lae'zel finds inconceivable.

Also the dead Mindflayer in the Shattered Sanctum shows us visions of thousands of Nautiloids pouring out of the void if they obtain the box, which to me implies that the Absolute's goal is to bring a new and improved Illithid Empire back into the food chain. And they may as well accomplish that if they manage to seize the only thing that defeated them thousands of years ago and kept them at bay since then.


As for why the artefact and the Dreamer seem related:

• Both seem to be handling Illithid telepathy with ease
• Both seem to be beings of pure psyonic energy
• Both are trying to protect us (the Dreamer cures us of the first stage of ceremorphosis and the box saves us from the Absolute)
• We are not able to get rid of either (the Dreamer is always there from the very beginning just like the artefact)
• We are saved from falling from the Nautiloid
• The artefact is referred to as "the weapon", but the voice itself tells Shadowheart that she will become "a beautiful weapon"

So if the Dreamer is the being locked inside the Githyanki box for thousands and thousands of years, who we then break free in Baldur's Gate, the weapon now becomes a free being who I presume would likely merge with us to share in its power. And now "the weapon" itself is gone and we become "a beautiful weapon". Would be quite poetic.

And by doing so, the dreams do not stop, but now the Dreamer is a part of us permanently and always with us. Which would then also justify why we get to customize our Dreamer. I think it is meant to be with us the whole way through the game.

I wasn't totally serious about Bhaal. I just threw that out there.

Still. You guys make some interesting points. It has me wondering now.

I think your theory is correct, and this idea is what convinced me. It totally fits with Larian's approach to things. In DOS you kept getting the source power from the gods. The powers given by the dream are similar (like many other similarities between DOS 2 and BG3 stories). I suspect in further acts characters will get more powers which also fits with Larian's habit of giving all classes magical powers. They wouldn't give you those powers and then penalize the player for using them. Its not their style.

Imagine playing through the entire game without using the Illithid believing that the Dreamer is trying to harm us, only to find ourselves then terribly outmatched and outpowered in front of the Absolute's overwhelming influence, exactly because our Dreamer is so weak and powerless.

Would be quite funny and the type of prolonged hinted switcheroo I'd expect from Larian.

At that point we wouldn't be role-playing though, they'd design an entire feature JUST around trying to trick the players. Everything we know is screaming that "tadpole = bad", and the powers are awesome, but taking away our humanity. If you play the game like that, role-playing and then in the final act "lul, j/k, the tadpole is good, you're fucked", it would make all our decisions seem completely fake, and take all control away from the player imo.

I agree, they will make it obvious well before the end that the Dreamer powers are benevolent.

I meant that mostly as a joke. Naturally they aren't making a feature just for the sake of tricking a player and doing some shallow plot twist to subvert expectations that comes out of nowhere. They however do not do black and white Disney type stories where the villain is a villain just for the sake of being a villain. The stories and outcomes are usually gray and obstructed with an incredible amount of subtle hints and clues that a player might pick up on by paying attention to all the details.

We know the tadpole is bad. We don't know whether the Dreamer is bad, though I personally think they aren't exactly because the dreams seem to be misleading into making us believe they are and the tadpole wants to murder the Dreamer at every single chance it gets. so if the murder monster that acts purely on instinct wants to kill the Dreamer so badly, then the enemy of my enemy is my friend I suppose.

And it seems likely to be due to all the reasons mentioned in this thread.

So I don't think it isn't roleplay, because it is. You're roleplaying based on what you perceive as the right thing to do in a given situation. But it may not be so black and white as it seems to be and knowing Larian games it usually isn't because hints and clues are all over the place foreshadowing such things from the very start of the game. So it is roleplay based on your own decision on how you perceive a situation.

It is incredibly important to not separate the Dreamer and the tadpole, but also to not put them in the same basket. Because the tadpole grows yes... but so does the Dreamer. Which is evident just before the first dream. We go through the first sign of ceremorphosis and then are cured immediately the next morning by none other than our Dreamer.

That right there should be proof that not everything is black and white as it seems. So it isn't like it will come out of the blue, the hints and subtle clues are all over the place and it is precisely because of them that we are having such an interesting discussion here. Without all these subtle hints and clues this discussion wouldn't exist ^^


For example, in Divinity Original Sin 2;

An issue I have is, if you don't go near the tadpole (tadpole=bad), then you NEVER have any connection with the dreamer. I've never used the tadpole and my character doesn't even know a dreamer exists. If the dreamer is going to play such a huge role, they REALLY need to find a way to have the dreamer be introduced if you're not using the tadpole. It's just bizarre that the entire first act can happen without you ever meeting something so integral to the game's plot.

Very true. That is what birthed this discussion in the first place which originated in a thread wanting to discourage people from resting, where all of these scenes are found.

I played my first story as any sane person would think they should. Avoid resting and avoid the tadpole at any costs. And I did just that and missed so much of the meaningful story and content because of it. It was terrible and I found the story awfully shallow and disappointing because of it. Only by using the tadpole and excessively resting have I then noticed how much I actually missed out on the story, it's insane.

However it isn't true that by not using the tadpole we do not have any connection with the Dreamer. We are supposed to hear the Dreamer on the Nautiloid and even have a dream sequence at the very start of the game supposedly, however it isn't implemented into the EA yet.

Because one of the lines when talking to Shadowheart is; "Is this the same voice we heard on the Nautiloid?", implying that we hear the Dreamer from the very start. And Shadowheart mentions having the same dreams as us on the Nautiloid, implying we are supposed to start the game within a dream sequence first before we get out of our pod. But it's EA currently so we can't experience it.

The Dreamer is definitely there to be with us from the start no matter what.

My theory in such a situation if the player avoids the tadpole by all means is that the Dreamer will still appear later in ACT II once we unlock the Githyanki box. We cannot get rid of the Dreamer nor the Githyanki box, which makes me believe they are one and the same. The box being a physical manifestation of the Dreamer and the dreams being the psyonic manifestation.

I did this as well thinking I should be saving resources and stuff like that. Then I rerolled a little into Act 1 and started resting more because I realized I was missing a ton of stuff. I almost feel like I should be resting after every fight or something because if I don't - I might miss something.

Exactly my issue, but that's the thread this thread came from.

Some games, like the Souls games can get away with telling more of a hint of a story, and if you completely miss it, no one will blame you, it's that hidden sometimes. But with Baldur's Gate, we're expecting a VERY obvious story, and having it hidden just cannot happen. No matter what playstyle you're doing, the story should be somewhat in your face imo. I have to believe though that this will change, and that playing a certain style won't lock you out of 90% of the story.

I'm sure at Moonrise Towers we'll be hooked up to some machine where we duke it out with Daisy and the Tadpole in the mindscape. Or maybe we'll be hooked up to a machine that let's us enter the artifact, which will be a pocket-plane prison for some Ancient Power™ that everyone wants to get their hands on.

I was thinking at Moonrise we're going to have to make a definite choice. No middle ground. Either join the Absolute or reject him/her and side with the box. The box would be the "good" path and the Absolute would be the "evil" path.

Now, if Daisy is the being in the box, it won't really be join good or bad. It'll be more like join bad or more bad and hope to somehow stay good - is you're trying to be good - when all is said and done.

In some respects, this second potential makes more sense with the overall trilogy. After all, in 1 and 2, you are Bhaalspawn doing Bhaal's will by murdering lots of people, whether good or evil. You can't help it. You're being forced constantly into situations where you have to murder lots of people.

So having to choose between 2 evils would actually be kinda cool. Of course, I'm assuming Daisy is actually evil. She might not be. We might just perceive her as evil.

She seems pretty evil though.

I kind of hope not. I’d find it disappointing to have to lock myself into a path that early in the game. Particularly if it was something as black and white as an evil or good path. Hopefully the Larian writers will pull off something greyer and twistier.


Good point, and I hope we do get something of this mood from BG3 as well. Or at least that we are forced to compromise, pick the lesser of evils, or that some of the decisions we make with good intentions turn out badly and vice versa. I’d find that kind of tale more interesting, and I think there are some promising signs in EA.

In regards to your theory, Ethel mentions that the tadpole (not sure if this needs spoiler tag, just adding it in case). Is this then part of the original box/Gith's plan and function, or are we talking about someone tampering with both tadpole AND the box?

I'm still unsure if there is a direct connection between the artifact and the Mind-Flayers. It doesn't seem like they were aware of what they took when they captured Shadowheart, otherwise why let her keep it. It's also unclear to me if the Gith are aware of the Absolute either.
Then there are the references to Netherese Shadow Magic throughout the game. I don't really know enough about it to see any lore foreshadowing going on, but I have learned on the forum that the Shadow Weave and Shar are connected, which might bring in the artifact considering it was the Sharrans who wanted to steal it from the Gith.

I guess what that leaves for this theory, has there ever been a connection between the Gith and the Netherese empire or Shar?

Omeluum will also talk a bit about the magic keeping the tadpole in check, though I think he just calls it “strange”.

I don’t have a good theory of where it comes from, though the box is one possibility. I’m not sure what that would imply about the box’s nature.

Here's an interesting bit of information from Nere regarding the Absolute. I've posted the full conversation for anyone curious to read it, but I highlighted the important bits.

This conversation is gotten by letting him kill the Deep Gnomes and then join him in killing the Duergar too:



Which is interesting as the weapon does not seem to have just protected us from the Absolute's influence in in the Goblin Camp, but seems to have incapacitated her own influence for quite some time, similarly to what it did for the Githyanki thousands of years ago. Because if we tell him that we don't hear Her either, he will outright attack us as it is completely out of the ordinary not to be able to establish a connection with Her presence.

If we tell him that we do hear Her, he will just dismiss it, thinking it's him that's the problem and send us on our way.

I assume the Absolute would sense and recognize the weapon being used against Her and probably warn every True Soul in the land. Yet neither Minthara nor Nere are able to establish a connection with Her after we enter the Goblin Camp, because She is probably weakened or temporarily incapacitated. Minthara although claims that the Absolute wants us dead, is in fact not in direct connection with Her because if she is persuaded not to kill us, she states that the Absolute must have granted her power to spare us. So she is presuming that sparing us is the Absolute's will.

Probably when we get to Moonrise Towers, the General will also not be in direct communication with Her, but my guess is that halfway through the dialogue the Absolute will regain power and that's when things start getting wild there.


As for the Dreamer and its role through all of this, it's interesting that no matter whether or not we use the tadpole, it is always with us and always using the dreams to protect us:

Astarion bite scene


Minthara backstab scene


And this is where things go crazy.

Drows do not sleep. They instead enter a meditative trance. Yet in both the Astarion and Minthara scene, a Drow player is actually sleeping and experiencing deep dreams. And a Drow player can in fact ask the Dreamer how is it possible that we are dreaming, to which the Dreamer replies; "How far is the deepest trance away from sleep? I leave that answer to you darling".

So at the very start of the game, the Dreamer is only able to do the things it does exclusively when our consciousness is at its lowest. And even pull a Drow into deep sleep to communicate with us.

Which brings another interesting theory as to how it saved us from the Nautiloid.

During our entire fall, we were completely knocked out due to the piece of debris that smacked us against the head. And the Dreamer at the very start can only communicate with us when our consciousness is at the lowest. Exactly because we were unconscious, it was able to take over and save us from the fall. But at the very moment our player regains consciousness, the magic itself dissipates.

Coincidence? I think not. I think that specific moment feels incredibly deliberate.