Thank you Estelindis. Great comment. Definitely something to think about and explore. Is there a line for self-sacrifice and, if there is, how much is the reason the person is so willing in the first place what defines it and how much is the line defined by the result? As Withers asks, what is the worth of a life?
I feel like Wyll and Karlach challenge our character as much as our sensibilities as angels who look like devils while we sometimes choose devils that look like angels.
In the next age somone is going to decide Wyll should be remembered as a saint if Faerun remembers him, human and flawed but a saint. What about the rest of us as heroes or ordinary beings? How much is too much to ask to save someone or many and what are we if we are not willing to pay?
Thank you Taleon! For me, this is one of the chief questions inspired both by the game in general and Wyll's story in particular.
In a world like FR, where lives are finite but souls can be eternal, to what extent can it ever be fair to sacrifice a soul - even your own soul, offered freely - to save one life? What about hundreds or thousands of lives? And to what extent can we meaningfully talk about it being a free sacrifice if there's extreme time pressure and the hanging threat of others suffering if you make the "wrong" choice, or even if you simply don't decide quickly enough?
At the same time, we can't necessarily treat it as a pure "souls vs. lives" calculation, because an atrocity against a large number of lives can have an impact on the fate of people's souls - say, if someone gets pushed down a path of vengeance by suffering, and ends up handing over their own soul in a pact. Or someone simply gets ground down by suffering and takes a worse path as a result.
In any case, regarding Wyll:
One might wonder whether Mizora could've handled the Cult without Wyll (not necessarily alone, but perhaps with some of Zariel's forces). Perhaps she chose to offer Wyll a pact simply to get the Grand Duke's son under her thumb. I don't think the game offers anything close to enough evidence to answer that question, so let's assume (for now) that it was genuinely necessary for Wyll to take the pact to save Baldur's Gate.
That's a world away from sacrificing his soul to gain his father a few more years of life. Wyll being so willing to do that says two things to me: he loves his father immensely; and he undervalues his own soul and is far too willing to sacrifice it to help others.
Does being a "hero" mean always putting others first?
I would have loved to be able to talk with Wyll more about his image of heroism. We do get to discuss it a bit, but he resists the sort of analysis I'm offering here, objecting that the Blade is the best version of himself. He's striving to be a good person who helps others - and for him, at the moment, that means trying to be an idealised heroic figure. If there was one message I wanted him to take to heart, it's that Wyll Ravengard is enough. He doesn't have to be the Blade of anything.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds Mizora's useless presence in my camp annoying.
Far from it! I hate her being there.
Particularly when she has tried to kill Wyll's father, in the scenario where you save him while still breaking Wyll's pact... and now she's just standing by Grand Duke Ravengard. Waiting. Having said that she still intends to find some way to balance the scales and kill him. And we can't make her leave.
