Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion thoughts on mystra? (spoilers)

when i first played through the game a few months back with a friend, we initially played through by having gale ask for forgiveness, and i generally assumed this was the default/"good" ending to his story. i saw it at pretty basic depth where he crossed her boundaries and now he makes up for it. but whenever i hear people talk about her, they're almost always referring to her as one of the evil gods or even as bad as the likes of vlaakith and shar. hearing some of those points, i generally saw mystra in a more negative light, but not necessarily evil. wondering what you all think about her and why (and what ending for gale you prefer).

Mystra is not an evil goddess. The incarnation of her, that we meet in the game, is pretty young for god standards but Mystra scene s important to keep magic in balance. Last time she died, it was chaotic.

She is not really a character in the game, a player would necessarily root for, but if Gale chooses to just leave the crown in the Chiontar, his orb is still stable ( or healed even, not sure right now, but he lives a normal life), so she isn't really petty either.

I don't have strong feelings about her or most other gods in the game apart from our local resurrecter, Jergal., who is good in my book. I think the dead three are pretty stupid, but then, they were basically bullies back in the day.

Mystra should have had more faith in Gale, because if he would do, what she wants in act 2, it would make the situation worse. But I see that as the gods not knowing everything and she is forced to act indirectly by Ao, so she does, what she thinks is best. And again, she isn't petty about that, if Gale acts differently.

I think that in a lot of cases, people think Mystra has to be "evil" because all the other companions have an abuser in their story, so Gale has to have one too. Personally, I think that Gale's story makes most sense if you don't try to take it completely literally. When he first introduces Mystra to you, he introduces her as identical to magic itself and as the most important thing/person in his life. As the story continues, she also takes on the mantel of his conscience when handling magic, for example when dealing with the Shadow Weave. If you approach the story from this point of view, it's a story about a man and the relationship with his craft as well how he lets it define his self worth. It's told as a romance, but it's really about Gale coming to terms with himself. He either reevaluates what is truly important to him and makes peace with his values and his beloved craft, completely steps away from it and takes up a managing position as a god - or dies.

I think all of Gale's endings are well written, the one in which he lives are fun, the ones in which he dies are heartbreaking. My favourite one is a special ending he can have with Avatar-Astarion, in which they both build a safe haven for the other spawn together in the Under Dark (it's my favourite ending in general) but I am fond of all his adventuring endings.

Edit: I also don't think she is portrayed as evil, but I think that the gods overall are seen somewhat critically by the game.

I'm a bit of the same mind as fylimar, I don't really have any strong feelings about her. Maybe I lean a little bit into her being too controlling and deciding too much for Gale without concidering him as a person. But at the same time I can see that she may just be acting for the common good. I do not think she is evil no. I empathize with her even though I think she is stepping over Gales bounderies.

I generally go for defying Mystra in my playthoughs, and

I'm sympathetic with Kethric's take that the FR gods treat mortals as copper pieces to be traded.

Mystra, Selune and Bhaal are the Groomers Three. They engage in sexual relations with beings far below them in power and station just to set in motion mercurial machinations. The mortals affected are simply flung about and may or may not break.

Then again, they're gods more like in the Greek pantheon who revel in their power and dominance, and Ao gives them plenty of scope to misbehave. From a story perspective this is great as there's a wealth of conflict to engage with and have play out.

As for companion Gale? First play through ended with him pondering the Crown of Karsus. Second play through he ascended to God of Ambition. That sounds like being at odds with Mystra, but almost the whole party prayed to her in Act 3.

If you existed within the FR world, it'd definitely pay to pray to some of the deities. But you wouldn't want to get so close you become one of their play things.

When I played Gale companion, Mystra tells him it was she who stabilised the orb and conditioned it , so it could absorb the weave of powerful artefacts. It made me think... Mystra is one of the very old, very powerful Gods. She should have powers to foresee the future. And so, I wondered, what if, she was preparing Gale already there and then as a "bomb" she would have in store for any future crisis.

The fact that the absorption of the weave suddenly starts faltering at a time when "the bomb" is required, somehow reinforces this idea. If Mystra created the process of weave absorption, it should be she that also breaks it down at the convenient time.

That would be kinda evil from a mortal's perspective. But the Gods are above that. Like Ketheric, Gale is just a copperpiece in Mystra's belt.

Except, she also explicitly sent Elminster to go and stabilize the orb. Which renders it completely stable for the rest of Gale's journey, no artifact suc required.

Thus, it seems like she's just making use of the situation as it has unfolded. Hence her also conveying the message to Gale to use the orb to wipe out the Absolute alongside this stabilization (Which is both evil from a mortal's perspective and also shows that she doesn't care too much about Gale's own wellbeing)

She sends Elminster to stabilize the orb that she herself destabilised just prior to that. My point being, how could the weave eating mechanism of the orb have begun to falter, when it was Mystra that had put it all in place ? Was her original work so sloppy that it would "wear off" in time ? (Just at the moment when she could use Gale's orb to remove the Absolute threat ) Or was it the perfect Godly mechanism that she herself tuned down when she wanted to, so she could send Elminster to give the message.

I took the "because I allowed it to feed on the true Weave" to refer to Elminster stabilising the orb. While before the orb first absorbed Gale's powers (which is when Mystra separated the link between them) and afterwards Gale and Tara discovered that he could give the orb items to absorb instead of draining himself, stabilising it allowed it to feed on the Weave/Mystra itself/herself - the thing she originally wanted to prevent. Probably the tadpole rendered it instabile - given the nature of the thing.

Maybe something potentially significant happened to Gale. Like, being implanted with a magically altered illithid tadpole, which is then subdued by a magical alien trapped inside a box that is being manipulated by an illithid mastermind.

But what are the chances of that?

Again, I'm not really sure how much of this is still valid in D&D 5e, but the in AD&D Mystra had a bit more of a backstory and consists of three or even four deities. Faerûn's original god of magic during the age of Netheril was Mystryl. The Netherese had access to higher magical energies since the weave was still intact, sourcing so-called Weave Winds and casting spells up to 12th level. The Netherese abusive use of magic brought them the enmity of a species of floating, six-armed flatworms from the Underdark, called the Phaerimm, who were also extremely potent spellcasters and invoked life draining magic that slowly turned Netheril into a desert and caused trouble for their flying enclaves. Karsus was a prodigy, even by Netherese standards, and actually hoped to stabilise the Weave and defeat the Phaerimm, but of all the gods he could have used to fuel his spell "Karsus' Avatar", he chose Mystryl and, in a nutshell, short-circuited the magical Weave, killing the god of magic. It's difficult to tell if Mystryl had seen the end and didn't act to prevent it, or if the primordial god underestimated the power and ambition of the human Karsus. This happened ~1,800 years before the events of BG3.

The goddess Mystra was ushered into existence only moments later, but the Weave had already degraded to a degree that Netheril's floating enclaves were falling or at least crash-landing. Magic above 9th level was now barred from mortals except for Wish spells and True Dweomers that are essentially 10th-level-spells which can take month to prepare and are cast in elaborate rituals. This was the era of AD&D 1e, or the the first FR boxed set.

This second incarnation was killed during the events of the Avatar Crisis, also called the Godswar or simply the Time of Troubles, by the god Helm who was guarding the Celestial Stairway against the gods' avatars. The gods had been cast out of their divine realms by the over-power Ao after someone had nicked the Tablets of Fate. This is the same war that saw the deaths of Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul. While Cyric basically conquered the Dead Three's portfolios, Mystra had invested a portion of her power into the mortal wizardess Midnight who ascended to become the new Mystra after the crisis ended. While the new power was a little more good-aligned than the original neutral Mystra, the name Midnight faded over the following years and most Faerûnians clung to the familiar name Mystra. This was some 130 years before BG3.

I understand that this incarnation of Mystra was killed in the events of the Spellplague in later editions, and I don't know if there's an explanation how and why dead gods formed again after that.

Point being, the Mystra we meet in BG3 may have some inherited memories of Mystryl of whose energy the Orb was created, but probably has a different personality and makes different decisions. This also explained to me why she couldn't just reabsorb the Orb as it was the effect of an extremely powerful dweomer and consisted of energies which were not her own. Of course, I could understand why a goddess with such a troubled history of getting murdered would find it feasible to have nuke button.