Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What is the Absolute SPOILERS

The two "apprentices" with him can be found in the goblin camp later under some circumstances. He worked with the goblins, too.

If you "interview" one of the corpses around the nautiloid (the one on the beach" it says there was a beautiful female elf and all other survivors followed her West.

Where exactly are we on the map? I think Halsin said something about the direction of the moonrise towers but I don't remember
Thanks for the addition, the elf thing is interesting.

Still in between Baldur's Gate and Elturel. It's mentioned here.
Crescentcoat

If the elf took the other survivors to the west and we are supposed to find them the distance to Baldurs Gate seems to grow as the group heads to the west of Elturel.

I think I have found a strong hint outside of the game. It seems that Larian stated somewhere that BIG SPOILER


That would mean that the absolute is indeed a fake and I have seen more interesting ideas here than what appears to be the one Larian chose.

The dead three are bhaal, myrkul and someone else, jargol I think?

Bane
But Magluybiet serves bane so the goblins would follow them without inventing a new god and imprisoning the priest of the old one

Bane?
Was he a big guy?

But the zentalim would not, they are enemys of bane, well his sign is a black hand, the absolute ones is a white hand......

great what is the next step in his master plan? getting a mage named Pavel and get to Baldus Gate and plant a over sized Arcane Diffusion Bomb?
Is this why the gnomes are mined to death to gather resources?

He seems to be quite strong at the time BG3 takes place. There are lots of cultists of Bane, Myrkul and Bhaal in Baldurs Gate. I am not sure that they are behind the absolute though.

I went to check the corpses on the beach.

Two of them talk about the beautiful elf. One says going West and the other North, but they are talking in function of the beach. My guess is that she went to arcane rune waypoint.

when mindflayers convert people it deprives the devils of potential souls, which is their currency. I think they would absolutely be against any mindflayer attempt to tadpole everyone.

Harmless modified Tadpoles to facilitate more deals "hello there, I am Raphael and I can remove that thing for a small price" He could not benefit from people actually turning but from lots of scared souls

Question, can the illithid tadpoles transfer a dead mind-flayer's "self" over? I started another play, and the cinematic shows lots of bodies already inside the nautiloid, which the main Illithid pays attention to (Including one propped up against Lae'Zel's pod). Later when the dead Illithid is interrogated about the absolute, the description is a group of Mind Flayers, I wondered if there was a connection, it could explain why the Absolute is after the fugitives from the Nautiloid, the Illithid there could be opposition to the Absolute, also why Raphael is so interested and showing up here and there.

There seems to be a small "altar" for Lolth in the underdark, next to the lost gnome, normal candles, Lolth's candles, floor has a circular pattern. Might be nothing.

They hatch from eggs. These are modified ones but the scenario seems unlikely. Mindflayer brains can become part of the elder brain, tadpoles are for procreation.

I think you're on to something there, about the illithid being a dissident.

In this interview with one of the dnd writers on mindflayers after the bg3 trailer was introduced:



https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/30/...k-horrible-secrets-of-the-mind-flayer/2/

Could this mindflayer be part of this Ryxyg group? And why did he seem to desperate to infect the captured people with tadpoles while his ship was being chased by gith and dragons and the rest of the crew was dead.

My take on who the "Absolute" is: It's Tiamat.

There is a scrawled drawing in blood in several places (wall by Wakeem's Rest, and several shields found in Shattered Sanctuary) showing five stalks firing approximately straight up around a central thing that looks like an eyeball. To me, that has a LOT of reminders of the old "Dragonlance" story line, where Tiamat was renamed and took the form of a woman with five strands of hair in the form of each one of the chromatic dragons. My thinking is that, for whatever reason, the mind flayers attacked Tiamat's domain in hell and are having their asses handed to them. So the mind flayers are attacking human settlements as a kind of forced recruitment in order to staunch their military losses.

My theory of events explains Raphael coming into your camp with his "offer" (I literally said to myself "that's a devil" almost the moment it showed up); "he" was dispatched by Tiamat with the offer to basically not recharge enemy forces while simultaneously grabbing a few servants of her own. It explains the woman that came to "save" me from Priestess Gut from out of nowhere as well. That could have been Tiamat, or it could have been another devil/demon-kind under Tiamat's service. It also explains why the Mind flayer ship could so easily transport into Hell to begin with: the mind flayers were trying to control the front line and force that front line to be in Tiamat's domain. Not smart, but if you can show up on your enemy's doorstep at will, it's hard for your enemy to advance their forces onto your domain.

Still haven't figured out why the Githyanki are involved other than they want to be the big, psionic bullies on the block and the mind flayers get in the way of that. In the original, opening cinematic, I thought the dragons being ridden were bronze, which made me ask why the Githyanki are on Bronze dragons (mind control, I concluded), but I also can easily believe that those were very tiny red dragons, as well. Or that is a very large ship.

More practically, Tiamat is a very recognizable figure in D&D, to the point where she appears in multiple locations/mythos in the game, and, frankly, I'm a little surprised (especially after the old Dragonlance campaign from way back there) that Tiamat isn't considered an actual deity at this point. I think she made an appearance in Neverwinter Nights as well (again, old game), but I don't remember that one for absolute certain (no pun intended).

It could be that the Absolute is also some kind of Githyanki deity, but I don't have as much evidence for that one.

Anyway, that's my two cents: The mind flayers are at war with Tiamat.

I have not seen that scene. Care to describe it?

The Githyanki don't tend to be very religious. A goddess that puts tadpoles in them is most certainly not appealing to them.

They're red dragons. Apparently Tiamat has a deal with the Gith to supply them with red dragons to ride.

If you ask the priestess to help you with the tadpole, she puts you in prison while you await your execution. An attractive looking woman (elf?) comes in and slits her throat and kills everyone else there. She doesn't say who she's working for though.

This could be the elf the dead at the coast were mentioning
Did you get a journal entry that you are now an enemy of the absolute after that happened? Or some mention of the dead three?