Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Gale is Karsus: a theory/adventure for a BG3 prelude TT campaign I will DM

What does everyone think of this story? Feel free to help me out with story alternatives if something doesn't make sense. Thanks so much for your patience with this text wall! I appreciate the feedback.

The Idea:

Gale, is actually Karsus reborn (edit: millennia later. I need help w the math) as a human wizard. Everyone thought he had died petrified, but his essence/soul and personality actually transferred elsewhere (at some point). Why and how? Because right at the end he retained some divine power/ability and - just like with Mystryl/Mystra - a similar thing happened to his essence (or a part of said essence), and he was reborn as Gale, a human wizard....many, many, many, many, many years later (like more than a millennium and a half? Edit: Again, I'm not sure on the math... Karsus died in -339 DR and then would be reborn as Gale somewhere around 1460 DR). We can even tie this in with the Neverwinter Nights adventure in 1372 DR as a part of this story... which he wouldn't remember at all.... at first.

The Gale backstory as a prelude adventure for BG3:

At the age of 17-ish, Karsus (now reborn as Gale of/in Waterdeep), became self-aware of who he actually was, and his entire past life as Karsus formed into memory. Plagued with nightmares, he suffers the awful memories of Karsus' Folly again and again: of how his reckless actions had caused the fall of Netheril and the death of countless innocent people. Not to mention what happened to Mystryl.... Ashamed and humbled, Gale wants a chance to redeem himself due to his actions as his past incarnation as Karsus. So, he goes out adventuring with a group of adventurers (this is obviously the adventure part of the campaign, where the DM slowly reveals this information to the players, when they encounter an NPC called Gale and he - temporarily or not - joins the group.)

Now, the players don't know any of this (and I'm still trying to fill in the blanks as to how all this develops), but at some point during the adventure, young Gale attempts to reconnect with Mystra, but instead of just apologizing to Mystra, he ends up accidentally falling in love with her this time around. This makes him feel loved and all-powerful, so his egocentric sense of Self turns to Narcissism again and he becomes arrogant yet again.... buuuut out of deep shame, Gale never tells Mystra who he really is. We sort of know the rest from BG3: Mystra eventually rejects him, he tries to win her back by getting that piece of Weave from the book in the Astral Plane (w the help of the players - this is a big part of the adventure itself - but that ends up being a black mass of Shadow Weave that lodges itself in his chest, etc. etc.

The Mystery:

Did Mystra know all along? Or did she eventually find out? Was the shadow weave black mass in Gale's heart Mystra's punishment (or tragic irony?) for his past actions as Karsus, and for his current actions of omitting of his real identity and trying to deceive her? The thing is, Mystra and Gale actually DID fall in love.... so she may actually feel hurt, but does ultimately love Gale still. Or perhaps a punishment (as a catalyst to force him to REALLY redeem himself), so that he never again falls prey to his narcissistic tendencies that lead him to yearn for unlimited power? Maybe this remains a mystery entirely, not sure...

How the campaign ends:

It ends with Gale accidentally getting all the adventurers killed (or stuck in the Astral Plane) and with the mass of shadow weave lodged in his chest.... and then he even gets kidnapped by Mindflayers.... which leads into the beginning of BG3.

"Hundreds of years later"? Karsus's Folly happened several millennia before BG3 (Netheril fell in -339 DR, BG3 is in 1493 DR), in a time before Elminster was born.

Thank you! (I'm insanely terrible at math). I'll fix it.

I’m not a big FR lore nerd, but isn’t the Mystra of the “present” day a different person than Mystryl/Mystra, who took over the portfolio much, much later than Karsus’s Folly? If so, then it’s not clear why Karsus would feel the need to apologise to her or why she’d feel the need to punish him now. I mean, I suppose it might be the principle of the thing but it wouldn’t be personal.

I’ll be honest, while I enjoy stories that tie in with the wider lore, and disagree with the folk who think it’s already too much that Gale’s backstory is that he used to be arch-wizard level powerful, I hope we won’t see anything quite as epic as Gale being Karsus reborn. At the moment, what I’m hoping for/guessing is that he was one of the new Mystra’s Chosen recruited after her resurrection, perhaps a decade or so before the events of BG3.

EDIT: Though that’s just my preference for the BG3 game! If Gale=Karsus is a theory you think you think you can get some mileage from and is an idea you and your TT group are excited about, then why not?! I didn’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade .

I’ve got a couple of decades experience DMing and building my own campaigns (4 sessions away from completing a two year campaign right now), and my initial impression is that this is not a great idea at all. Actually, I’ll go a step further. It’s a really bad idea.

In general, campaigns should be centered around the players. You are responsible for telling their story. You are clearly very excited about Gale being Karsus, but will your players care? Will the revelation about this NPC’s backstory be interesting to them? Maybe you could make it work, sure, but here is sounds like basically you as the DM would be playing a character in the party who is the most important person in the story. That’s not good DMing. Build around your players. Otherwise the campaign becomes a bit masterbatory and that isn’t fun as a player. They are left just watching you gush over your own character while they get sidelined to supporting cast roles.

If you want to build a story about Krasus, I’d drop the Gale bit completely and have the party traveling with some random person they need to protect who they grow to like only to later discover he is Krasus reborn. He then leaves the party and becomes the villain and they need to put him down. That’s a story where the narrative is focused on the players. The drama comes from them trying to redeem or slay a friend.

The ending is also terrible. In my current campaign the party will “die” at the end (their fate will actually be left ambiguous and they won’t really be dead, as these characters are playing important roles in my next sequel campaign), but that is only after they have saved the world and completed all of their characters’ personal narratives (which I tied into the main plot of the campaign) so it will feel justified and bittersweet. Killing off the party so that the real adventure for the real main character (Gale, not them) can begin is just bad story telling.

Yeah… don’t do this.

90% of players if not higher won't even recognize the name Karsus, let alone care that Gale is them. It would be an Easter egg for the hardcore lore enthusiasts and that's it.

Quick Note: all 6 players who have expressed interest in my DM'ing a prelude adventure to BG3, are also playing BG3 (they're friends of mine). I noticed all 6 are very interested in Gale's backstory (that's why and how I came up with this idea, without telling anyone anything, except that I wanted to DM an adventure). So, yeah it's a very specific situation. Not for everyone, obviously.

The difficulty I'm having is: how to keep the mystery and surprise going throughout the adventure, without the players going: "Dude, come oooon... is that supposed to be Gale? I KNEW it the moment you introduced the suspicious, charming, vain, arrogant human!" LOL

Right now, it's all too 'on the nose' and obvious. I'm trying to have it be a big reveal ONLY at the mid-point of the adventure.

Quick Note 2: it's a bunch of Actors (all of us) playing, so as the DM, I can't get anywhere close to imitating Gale during dialogue moments. I need an effective way to conceal the fact that it's Gale all along. I'm thinking he pretends to be a different class (perhaps a non-combatant/NPC who never fights), different name, different demeanor, etc.

oh, this is role-playing BASED on bg3, I was confused sorry.

Well that’s a bit different. Sorry if my initial criticism came off has hash by the the way.

I still think the premise needs a lot of work. From what you are describing it sounds like there would be a lot of dialogue between Gale and Mystra, and as a personal DM rule I try to limit dialogue between NPCs. In my experience as a player that isn’t very engaging. Listening to a DM describe two characters falling in love sounds like a lot of time listening and not role playing.

If you want to hide that the story is about Gale’s origins, you could have the campaign begin with Mystra (in disguise) tell the party that Karsus has been reborn and task them with hunting him down. Then when they find Karsus they discover that it’s actually Gale, that the person who sent them on the quest was Mystra, and that the two were lovers. At that point they go from hunting Gale to accompanying him on his journey to the astral plane.

Oh no worries, Warlocke. I understood your POV. It made sense for a normal tt adventure (my idea WOULD suck xD). So yes, be harsh and direct (lol), I actually prefer that people engage honestly with me, and give me better ideas. It helps me rewrite and fine-tune certain parts.

So yeah, this group of players are very into the Gale backstory and his love affair with Mystra. And yes, absolutely: any dialogue between Mystra and Gale will be told via Gale (under a fake name) in dialogue w the players, as the players ask me questions about his past, -- as Gale talks about his "ex-girlfriend he can't get over losing, and wants to get back, bla bla bla, and that the only way to do it, is to help him find a "certain magical artefact locked in the Astral plane".

And..... if the players don't ask certain key questions, I'll reveal those key aspects of the backstory using some means of storytelling that veils the love-story as something else entirely.... so that half way through the adventure, once the players, realize I'm Gale, they can recontextualize everything and go: "Oooooooooh, okay, I see what's really going on!"

BUUUUUUT......... I also LOVE your idea of having a disguised Mystra being the one who tasks the players in the beginning in hunting a certain powerful Mage, and then having the twist of the party switching sides and helping Gale out. Maybe I can combine all of this by making Mystra unaware of the fact that he's Karsus?
Perhaps what happened in the backstory was this: only AFTER she broke up with Gale, does Gale begin to experience strange visions of someone's former life -- Karsus. And once Gale becomes aware that his strange visions were actually Karsus' Memories dated millennia ago, THEN Mystra becomes aware that Karsus has returned (but she has no idea it's Gale -- due to some divine magical reason I have yet to concoct).

Point being: Gale is Karsus reincarnated, yes, BUT he sees himself more Gale than anything else. His Karsus memories almost feel like someone else's memories...they feel distant.... but they're in the First Person POV, so they're technically still Gale's memories as well... almost as if a crack happened during the cycle of death & rebirth -- when Karsus "died", causing a paradox -- whereby a "magical copy" of his soul migrated millennia into the future and attached itself to Gale's, causing Gale to come into existence as someone who has two sets of memories merged into one body and soul (Karsus memories remaining dormant until after the Mystra breakup).

Wow, I'm getting a headache trying to keep up with logic in this convoluted mess. LOL!

So, yeah.....that's all I got for now. Thank you though! This helps a lot! I'm definitely keeping your idea of Mystra being the quest-giver at the beginning!

Who would be a good/fitting BIG BAD for this adventure? Whoever possesses the artifact in the Astral Plane? Or would it be a god instead? I was thinking Szass Tam or Ilyn Toth (to connect with the quest in BG3)? Or perhaps a demon from the Abyss?
I Appreciate any help!