i see your point but i have to point out shadowheart was taken as a child, brainwashed and indoctrinated into a cult for the purpose of a dark goddedd. astarion[my vampire lore knowledge is rusty at best sorry] as far as i can recall was more or less forced into what happened with cazador since cazador was so much more powerful than astarion him standing up to him wouldve led to him just getting killed, tortured, or both. Gale on the other hand was the muse of the goddess of magic and in spite of her saying to be content and just chill out he went and delved into stuff he knew nothing about and pissed her off. im not saying he commited a great crime i wont claim that but compared to every other origin gale more than earned his punishment atleast from my point of view.
Mystra was Gale's muse, not the other way around. And the "just be content" is easier said than done, if you have literally nothing else in your life but that one passion / your job and have a feeling that you just aren't good enough. (Very relatable.) They all are shaped by the environments in which they grew up or lived in and Astarion and Gale are especially messed up by this. In a way it's poetic. The guy who's ambition brought him all kinds of misery can use the burden this ambition placed on him to destroy all the instruments of human/illithid ambition (brain and crown) in one swoop, or he can redirect his ambitions and live a fuller life in which he uses his gift to help those around him. (Or he become a god, but I am not too fond of that ending.) Either way, Gale of Waterdeep dies that day.
But I am cluttering Karlach's thread with how much I like Gale. ^^
Also I didn't say, that Karlach's situation is theoretically unfixable, just that if they wanted that big dramatic tear-jerker at the end of the story (which apparently they did, maybe? At least it sounds like it.) they set it up like that efficiently. I also agreed that I am surprised that they apparently didn't consider that this wouldn't go down well with the people who like her - who are many because they made her very loveable.
