Trying to gather all my thoughts and metas about this wonderful game in one place. It will be updating over time.
Astarion (EA)
Disclaimers: DnD, meta-knowledge, and interpretation
Astarion Analysis (extensive)
Astarion Analysis (summarised)
Lore: Details about Vampirism
Gratitude and Care in Astarion
Astarion's Standards and Manipulation
Astarion and Power - Part 1
Astarion and Power - Part 2
Gale (EA)
Disclaimers: Context, persuasion, and manipulation
Gale Analysis (extensive)
Gale Analysis (summarised)
Lore: Details about Mystra and her Chosen Ones
Lore: Details about the “orb”
Lore: The Netherese in 1492DR
Lore: Well-known Characters in Faerûn
Gale: Manipulation, Lies, and trust
“Stew” scene (extensive)
Loss scene (extensive)
Party scene (extensive)
Extra scenes: death protocol and comments on dreams
Gale: Hypothesis and Analogies - Part 1
Gale: Hypothesis and Analogies - Part 2
Hypothesis: Gale proposes you to “cheat"
Hypothesis: Does Gale love Mystra?
Hypothesis: Gale has no tadpole
...more incoming. My intention is to cover most of the characters or aspects during EA. But as you may imagine, it takes a LOT of time since apart from Astarion and Gale, there are almost no detailed videos showing “all options” for the rest of the characters. It’s hard for me to explore all by myself.
i love baldur's gate 3, truly i do. i find it one of the most wonderful games in recent times and the work that larian has done in trying to emulate a dnd-like video game is commendable bc they have done some good work with the lore and mechanics. but i really, really would like it if larian would for once in their goddamned fucking existence released a full game on launch day. i know games will always need patches to address some issues, but releasing info abt the upper city as a hub area weeks before release only to completely scrap the idea altogether? having NO ending, literally no actual epilogue or anything that adds to the story after the fight, just this random black screen and no proper epilogue? the half-baked encounters against orin and gortash after making them out to be on the same level ketheric's fight which actually felt like a boss? making dark urge this entire ~special origin story without actually allowing a player to do a true evil run without losing out on like 2/3 content? there is no punishment or reward for not taking/taking the tadpoles, it literally means nothing in the grand scheme of things. also for a multiplayer game, there's a resounding lack of actual story progression if you have all four slots covered, like it straight up locks you out of a lot of companions' stories bc you can never take them with you. this isn't even getting into the horrendous bugs and performance issues that straight up fry PCs by the end of the game. also adding fan service without any actual plot like - halsin's completely useless existence in act 3? also nonsense like gortash being lorded in the middle of wyrm's rock, the literal first fortress to the city that would not house the new lord of baldur's gate under any circumstance? gale starts the game with a TRUE RESURRECTION scroll that can be used to solve a myriad of problems, including, i dont know, curing karlach entirely by killing her then reviving her? having to go to cazador's palace through a random tower in the middle of the city? the emperor just deciding to abandon you and join the elder brain after spending years fighting its influence if you decide to go against him? like these are all unfinished parts to a "full" game. i still have nightmares from DOS2 and what a fucking mess that was and the fact that you need the "definitive edition" to make the final act work is straight up predatory... honestly fuck y'all for making ppl pay twice for the product they should have gotten the first time. anyway the game is great but larian needs a kick up the ass for some obvious bullshit that would not be tolerated if it were any other studio!
I liked reading your analysis about Astarion. Now that the full game is out, we’re there some opinions you had on him that changed or still the same? Tbh the whole reason I got into BG3 was because of Astarion but I’m now kinda put off since he’s a toxic bastard. I mean this guy could (and would) walk into an orphanage and kill all the kids in cold blood and people would still love him.
Hello. Thank you for sending a message.
In general my opinion about the whole game is massive disappointment. Astarion is also a disappointment because he was hinted in EA as a extremelly complex concept among the evilness, but ended up being dumbed down and simplified like 90% of the game. Even when he was Larian's fave char since the begining.
He was changed in the release game, and went from the potential and interesting topic "Evil finding justice in Evil hands", with a lot of grey morallity questions about justice in the process, to full victim without a clear background since there is nothing said about his past as a magistrate, when Sven had explained in some EPAX events and for german magazines of videogames what I wrote in this blog's analysis. That's why in the release game you feel a lot of strange gaps, like "why the gur would attack a magistrate in a city where they dont belong/live?" The explanation "they dont like his rules" is so cheap and bad, coming from Larian. Gur are not an agressive culture in Faerum even though they are perceived and stereotyped as savages, they are like the Rashemen, more shamanistic ones. And it makes even less sense when Gur can't care less about Baldur's Gate since it's not their city (they are nomads, so why would they care about any city's ruling?).
Like this, there are a lot of horrible lore/plot gaps that were left not even resolved or more or less arranged to look like consistent in the overall plot. No. They were simply left forgotten.
Let's not even speak about Cazador and how the datamining bits suggested a more complex participation in the plot, and therefore, with Astarion in a potential and very interesting exploration of evilness. No, we obtained a woobyfied Astarion, removing a lot of his original aprovals to reduce his evilness, and a Cazador who is a stupid cartoonish evil bad guy that makes no sense in the plot and cares nothing about the Absolute when we read in his lair that he is very interested in power and controlling the Sword Coast. Again, disappointment.
My opinions changed from an interest in a curious exploration of Evilness to massive disappointment.
Hey there! I've been doing a deep dive on Gale (surprise) and your exploration of his character and expression of himself have been so validating and it's been cathartic to read your analysis of him in such a profoundly well-written and thought out way. I saw you were worried about the apparent rewrite of his character, and I think that was done purposely. I think each character's description that we see is true - from the eyes of that character. IMO, the character's wrote them - their outward expression of how they see themselves. Each is written in such a different way, and the tones are very indicative of their feelings about themselves and what they believe to be important about them - it is their truth. I can only see the poetically wordy dork describing his worry as being "beset with concern" and then drop ceremorphosis in the same sentence. I just thought I would share - and again, thank you for everything you documented and detailed in early access, it's been a sincere pleasure to read.
Thank you for sharing this, and thank you for reading all what was done in this humble blog. Larian has used several dirty tricks along the way to the Release and has lied to us more than we expected. Those descriptions are just one of the many tricks in my opinion.
Just wanted to let you know that Gale has several radically different endings depending on the choices you make. The power-mad wizard stereotype that you're concerned about is indeed one possible ending, but it's considered one of the "bad" endings. There are other possible endings that I think you would be happy with. I hope that assuages your concerns enough that you will eventually play the full game and pick up your Gale character analysis series again.
Hello. Thank you for letting me know. Unfortunately, I have a massive disappointment with the game (I finished it already a couple of months ago, but I only felt disdain and playing it to the end was a chore more than fun), specially with act 3, and the several plot holes, lore inconsistencies, and even inconsistencies within the same game (you are told things in Act1 that never are reflected in Act3).
Many of these things removed my intentions in continuing this blog with analysis of lore and characters:
The rush in most quests, specially in Act3
The abandonment of the development of chars except for only one, the favourite of Larian that was never favourite in the community according Larian statistics (during EA and release, it's obvious in the infographics they shared even though they concealed it, lol),
The dumbing down of many quests and stories,
The rewriting of chars in the last moment that, although it makes them better than in EA, they clearly were abandoned mid-way (aka Wyll),
The rewriting of chars and stories that makes them immensely stupid or without sense, like Cazador's (the data mining content around him during EA was several times more interesting and complex than the cartoonish, silly, evil character we had in the final product)
Karlach (amazing char that can't be more rushed in its current state). She also suffers from this “stupidity” oversimplification because having archdruids among our companions (or wizards that may know archwizards) would allow us to deal with her problem in many other ways (but who cares about lore? Larian clearly doesn't),
Halsin, added in the last moment, made resources get split in a char that was not fully developed and feels wasted potential while also taking the place of another that had some kind of work done during EA (Helia) but clearly had to be thrown to the rubbish entirely in order to put Halsin in her place,
The useless and nonsense creation of concepts that were never part of the vast lore of Forgotten Realms and they had no real needs to create them for this plot (aka, the ridiculous crown or the wtf "Karsite" weave),
Mystra herself, presented as a god that can't see the future (who due to her rank she can), so it's very stupid to show her as whimsical as Lolth and command the destruction of one of her Chosen just like that (premature explosion), when she values her Chosen and their utility; after all, her chosen ones have a divine part of herself. She is still a Goddess who sees mortal life in a different lens, but I felt she was presented in the oversimplification of "she is a bitch". All her complexity just thrown to the rubbish, like so many other concepts in this game.
The ridiculous lack of consistency of the character the Emperor with himself by the end of the game in some paths,
The bizarre and unnecessary creation of a lot of lore about Orpheus and a "githyanki resistance" when you always had in the lore the Githzerai,
The lack of any consequences of your character in act 3. For example, drows can be absolutely fine walking around Baldur's Gate, treated as if they were humans, when everyone knows that drows are part of the Absolute lines (even Larian created that piece of lore in Ketheric's room explaining how they were recruiting Drow warriors tired of Lolth). The privileged power that a drow Tav had in the goblin camp in act 1 should have been contrasted with a difficulty to walk through Baldur's Gate. This was even a promised consequence told by Sven in an interview that, clearly, was not implemented.
The general lack of reactivity of the companions to the events in act 3, except for the favourite one.
The cut content (which is immensely richer and more interesting than the oversimplified version of what they left)
The list goes on and on, but you can read the official forums for more details and discussions.
I don't know. Maybe the game should have been "The Dark Urge and The Vampire in Baldur's Gate" alone, and leave it at that, so people who were not interested in those things could buy another game. Honestly, I'm deeply disappointed with the game to the point I decided not to play it again until they do a Definitive Edition, like they had to do with DOS2 (which ALSO had a terrible last act with numberless lose-ends and quests without resolution), and make a decent coherent act3 (hoping they will do it, since in Definitive Edition DOS2 was an improvement but not a fix, truly). Compare Act 1 quality with Act 3, and, at least in my case, I feel a bit scammed.
So far, this blog will remain here, but it will be mostly inactive, since I lost any interest in this game, and now I am playing other things. I feel this game would have been a gem but ended up being too messy for whimsical decisions. The excuse of time and resources are not valid for Larian in this case: after all we were always told that the game was going to be released when it was going to be ready, and we ended up with an EA of a full game, with a lot of valuable cut content, inconsistency lore, inconsistency in characters, and 60% of the act 3 bugged.
I'm sorry for the negativity of this post, I truly wanted to love this game, but felt a deep disappointment that, I hope, a definitive edition of it may fix in the future, eventually.
Thank you again for reading what was done during EA.
@dragonagitator, believe me, part of my disappointment also comes from Larian's deaf ears when it comes to feedback. During EA I sent them a lot of feedback, and it was barely addressed. The only one that I saw was the incorporation of lgbt npcs in the world to see them integrated in Faerun, and not just the isolated (and potential) queer!Tav. Check the official forums and you will see a lot of these feedbacks that were made even in EA, and were not taken care of.
A lot of people warned Larian since EA about making the same mistakes they did in DOS2, of making companions like "beast" (with almost no content), of unbalancing content between Larian's faves and the other companions, and did they care? No. A lot of feedback about Karlach's writing and ending was sent, and what was the solution? None. Karlach stays in her precarious story as usual. The lack of reactivity of companions in act 3 is also a well known feedback. So far, no solutions on that topic either. The list is too long, honestly, and when it comes to lore it's even worse. They sold a game, promoting it to be a thing that is not.
I know you have not uploaded in several years and might not even see this, but I wanted to say thank you SO much for your amazing explorations of Gale. He is a very complex and often misunderstood character and I think your meta posts on him hit the mark perfectly. If the spark arises I hope you will return after the full release :) Thank you again for all your wonderful posts! Have a nice day!
Hello!
Thank you very much. I am still around, it's simply work and other games have got my attention, and after playing EA so many times, I am already burnt out to the bones. I am also deeply disappointed with Larian's latest changes.
Hopefully, after release, I will continue with more analysis if the game is worthy of that. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how well these analysis of Gale will hold with the apparent rewrite of his character. If the new description of him ends up being true and it's not a terrible lie to the player, since nothing of that was shown or hinted in EA, these analysis will fall apart. In fact, if he ends up being another boring, overused, cliche wizard who wants power because he wants to be the biggest wizard of Toril :rolling eyes:.... I may lose any interest in him. All what made him interesting and a bit "original" within the context of Forgotten Realms has been erased completely with that new description.
I'm also disappointed with Larian in general, because it's obvious their two fave chars are forced through the player's throat like Liara was in Bioware's case. You don't care about them? It doesn't matter, they will always take priority in conversation and scenes, they will be key in showing another side of the main plot (as it was Fane in DOS2) and the rest of the companions become secondary or forgettable.
And Karlach's final face is a horror. It's a variation of Shadowheart's face, a barby-Karlach, because clearly Larian feeds bro gamers who want yet another doll-faced woman. I find annoying that nobody complained for this change: her first potential face (not the placeholder), with half face burnt and scarred, hard eyes, and a longer and pronounced nose, was the face of a warrior who went to hell and back... now you have the baby-doll face, Red!Shadowheart, almost, lol. It's a bit unsettling. It reminds me when Larian made their big-boobs lizard women in DOS1.
At least they did what I thought it was a must: to truly write Wyll, because that char was inconsistent, lacked of depth in comparison with the rest of the other companions, and was, basically, a future Beast (dos2) in BG3. That's why I didn't even bother to write a general overall analysis of his character. I suspected he had to be written at some point because it's was a cardboard character in there, just there to be your black char token. You know, the black char we add to a game so we look "progressive" but still has bad development as a char or it's simply shallow when compared with the depth of the other chars. Pretty much like Larian does with their lgbt representation too.
Larian's lgbt representation also bothers me. It is mostly hidden in books and lines of text in this world (yes, yes, Astarion is the only char shown and written lgbt openly, but the rest of the world has no lgbt integrated chars, or the few two couples we saw in EA are unhealthy and horrible-the gnome lesbian-or absolutely hidden in one single line that, if you miss it, you can confuse them as brothers -the husband gnomes-). We can have a long discussion about how Larian does playersexual characters that are not any representation of lgbt, because they are not written like bi but hetero, and their "bisexuality" only appears when you romance them (and this was done in DOS2 too, with barely a line or two hidden in Lohse's origin to show some potential, little bi inclination). It's so strong how they write their characters as hetero, that even in several parts of the romances of DOS2 you have descriptions where it shows that the default was clearly "man tall and woman smaller", even when in DOS2 world that may not apply to some hetero couples (elves and lizards). But all this discussion about playersexuality is a long one I'm not even sure the fandom can have at this point. I wish to be wrong and see more lgbt characters naturally integrated to the world, and not reduced to short stories in books or to whom you romance with your Tav. But I doubt it. Larian follows the masses. And Masses care nothing about this.
Thank you for the ask, and have a nice day too!
So far in EA, we have been shown that this is complicated to answer: human love is complex as well as the delirious lore of Forgotten Realms.
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.
The narrative is clear until the party scene which, as I stated many times across these posts, it's a scene that feels a bit inconsistent for me (reasonable since it's EA). But if we follow what the game explicitly shows us, we know that if we send Gale to sleep at the beginning of the Weave scene in which he is watching the incantation with the shape of Mystra, he will say:
Gale: Long days, yes. And long, lonesome nights.
If Tav knows that the incantation on his palm is Mystra, Gale will explain:
Tav: [insight] You don't have that look on your face when you're looking at “no one” / There's more to it than that. The figure I saw: she means something to you.
Gale: [...] I can’t quite describe it, the need I sometimes feel to see her – to draw the filaments of fantasy into existence. [...]
Dev's notes: Passionate. [...] He was recalling Mystra as a lover, but doesn’t say that out loud. [...]
Narrator: The Weave evaporates, and as it does so, you realise the night feels suddenly cold and lonesome.
This allows us to infer that, at this moment, Gale is feeling alone and probably very anxious with the oppressing feeling of the "orb" in his chest. The tadpole only increased the number of problems he has, so he resorts to seeing Mystra melancholically. We notice later in the Weave Scene that not having Mystra around increases this feeling of loneliness. The whole scene seems to give us the idea that he still loves her. There is yearning and loneliness in his current situation.
After a moment of passionate description of magic, Gale invites Tav to experience the Weave. The Weave has a particular effect on Gale: "The moment feels intimate. You realise the Weave is making you one." Considering how Gale was feeling while conjuring the incantation, this moment touched him deeply (the narrator implies that this feeling is mutual).
If Tav expresses their romantic interests, Gale will be surprised:
Gale: I.. I didn’t think..
Narrator: You perceive quick-fire gusts of embarrassment, trepidation, and finally.. elation
Gale: Sorry, I wasn’t expecting… But it is a pleasant image to be sure! Most pleasant, in fact. Most welcome.
Dev's notes: Warm, with real affection.
The narrator is giving us meta-knowledge, we can trust in what she says, and we can see that the situation was truly shocking for Gale. These emotional stages described here made me suspect that Gale is a character who has focused for too long on healing his condition, ignoring any chance for romance. His surprise here may confirm that, in my opinion. He feels embarrassment, a feeling that one can interpret as a sign of the surprise of being thrown into a situation he had not seen beforehand (the death protocol and Gale’s conversations show us that he is a character that thinks ahead). It follows trepidation: fear or anxiety about something that he is going to do or experience. Gale is scared of the possibility. Maybe because he is thinking in the danger he is, maybe because he was already burnt by Mystra's attention and having someone else's attention now makes him feel a bit anxious. And then, the final resolution of the process: elation, which is a feeling of great happiness and excitement about something that has happened. Gale is suddenly excited by the possibility. Something he will be thinking about, many times, for the rest of the EA.
Tav: So what did you think about what I pictured when we were connected by the Weave?
Gale: Oh, I was surprised. But pleasantly so, just like I said. Amid the madness that has befallen us, it seems almost out of place to think of a kiss/ of a romantic walk. And yet... now more than ever, it's important to recall what makes us human. [if Tav is not human] Well- you know what I mean. A stolen glance- that sudden heartbeat... Sometimes the little things are worth more than kingdoms. They promise things to come.
So romance was not something he had even considered until the opportunity arose (this is why he won't pursue a Tav who didn't show romantic interest towards him). I think that, since he is a character always living on the edge of death, he will take this opportunity to feel “human again”: after all, he follows the concept of "living life to the fullest".
During the Loss (see the post of the "Loss Scene"), we know that losing Mystra was a big blow for him. He regrets his decisions of the past in this scene, and it reinforced the idea that he is the only one to blame for Mystra's loss. There is a yearning for the lost Chosen powers, but Gale's context in the majority of his scenes seem to reinforce the idea that he sought power not as a means, but as a goal itself to be closer to Mystra and Magic. Since we are talking about a wizard, his passion lies in magic itself, in being one with the Weave/Magic/Mystra. A Chosen of Mystra is so entangled with the Weave and magic that when they die, they are part of the Weave itself. This is the level of passion that Gale has for Magic, and since Magic can only be performed by most mortals via Weave, and the Weave is Mystra, the whole three concepts are, in fact, one; and it makes it very difficult from a lore point of view to separate them.
Tav: There's something I don't understand. If Mystra abandoned you, how can you still cast magic?
Gale: The Weave is still here, all around us – inside of us too. As long as the goddess lives, magic is a tangible thing for those who know how to touch. I've studied magic for many years, and in as many ways I am still a more than capable wizard. It's just that I'm no longer able to perform those feats even arch wizards would marvel at. To have one hand on the pulse of divinity. You have to remember that the Weave is a living thing, both the embodiment and the extension of Mystra herself.She can give and she can take away. I'm afraid I'm still very much on her naughty list. Consider yourself lucky you're not.
I personally think Gale will never stop being devoted to Mystra (and won't stop loving her in many ways), because his passion for magic and knowledge is his own life, and Mystra IS those things. He loves magic for the sake of it. So losing this unique contact with magic itself that only Chosen of Mystra have was a terrible punishment for him. His abandonment issues are not just the result of a “guy being left by a girl”. They have an extra complexity because of the nature of Magic in this world and how its deity behaves with her chosen. Gale was not only abandoned by Mystra, but was also removed of a good amount of his capacity to perform magic. If magic “is his life”, the abandonment removed a part of his life away. I think some people miss this point, because, once more, it's related to Forgotten Realm lore and not Dragon Age. Many of these people keep constantly comparing this situation with Dragon Age, which has nothing to do with it. Dragon Age has no wizards, their relationship with Magic is natural, it’s sorcerer-like if we want to compare it, and the relationship with their deities (mostly absent, silent ones) are nothing alike the ones in Forgotten Realm. The context is key, as I repeated several times in these posts and in the one about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation".
Tav: I don't know what to make of what you've told me, but I sympathise.
Gale: Thank you.
[no romantic weave] I want you to know that you’re a good friend.
[romantic weave] I often think of that moment we shared together – one under the Weave. I hope you think about it too. /I'm glad to know you think about it too.
Narrator: You sense a moment of unspoken affection. You want to know where it may lead.
Gale: I consider myself very lucky to have found you
Tav: I think perhaps we could be more than friends
Gale: Perhaps.
Tav: You said you think about the moment we shared under the weave. Do you think about it often?
Gale: Do you?
1-2-Tav: Yes / From time to time.
Gale: So do I.
3- Tav: Not really.
Gale: And yet you ask. I do, as a matter of fact.
Gale: You see. I'm not a big believer in fate, but I do believe in serendipity. Life is a tempest of events that sometimes we brace against and sometimes embrace. You're one such event that one day soon perhaps I'd like to embrace.
So after sharing this regret during the Loss scene, Gale will show affection if Tav remains friendly during the Weave (but Gale will never directly engage it, he is waiting for Tav to give the first step; understandable if we consider he also has a dangerous bomb in his chest, so he may be torn between wanting to, but knowing he should not to). If there is no interest in pursuing romance, he will show a gesture of gratitude for being a good friend during that night of regrets.
If pursuing the romance, we can interpret that Gale, at this point, even though he is still struggling with all the emotions that Mystra inspires, wants to experience something more “human”, a romance with a mortal. We know for sure that Gale is getting interested, slowly, while thinking about it, since in each of the following scenes he will ask (or Tav will ask) about that “moment in the Weave”. He has been thinking about it for many nights, and he is “embracing” the idea.
If Gale is treated with judgement (despite not knowing his whole story) or allowing him to keep the secret of what or who he lost, we will obtain lines likes:
Gale: Good. Goodnight. And thank you for your patient understanding. // And try not to think too poorly of me. A cat can look at a king. A wizard can look at a goddess.
Tav: Another fool pays for his arrogance. A tale as old as time.
Gale: Arrogance? Ambition, rather. And ambition is a fine thing – until suddenly it no longer is. Then again, if that is how you judge me, there’s little I can do to change your mind. But know that I have this ambition still. First to save myself, and after that, the licence to dream. (Gale Disapproval)
We could interpret these lines as the only ones so far that may suggest that Gale is still wanting something from the goddess. We know due to the tadpole dreams that Gale’s desire is Mystra. On the comments of the second tadpole dream we know more details about his major desire: it is not just Mystra, but her forgiveness.
Tav: Gale, who is the apparition in your dreams?
Gale: She's... It doesn't matter. I just know her to be unreal.
Tav: What's impossible about what you're been shown?
Gale: Forgiveness
Tav: Gale, who is the apparition in your dreams?
Gale: It's indeed Mystra I see. And yet it cannot be her. There was a time when I would have believed - but no longer. I told you that I lost her. Lost her favour and lost so many of the powers I took for granted. What magic I can still weave is met only with undercurrents of disappointing silence. Mystra has not changed her mind about me. That's how I know our dreams are delusions.
I think this scene shows the difference between a standard desire for power as a means, and power for the sake of power itself (since this power allows Gale to be one with the Weave). The scene is ambiguous enough to see it as Gale wanting to return to Mystra’s side as well as remaining as an ardent devotee of her (because she is magic herself). I keep repeating that these scenes show that Gale’s most important thing in his life is Magic, which is Mystra: the extension and the embodiment of magic. So his desire for her seems impossible to be extinguished completely. In previous scenes we saw that he certainly had thought through the idea of loving her more like a devotee than a lover, but certainly the weight of being his first love will remain, especially since she is deeply related to magic itself.
During the Party Scene we find some information about his feelings for Mystra.
I personally ponder the book of Amn’s description as very important because, from a narrative point of view, it's a lot of lines/content that, if they were not important, tend to be removed from the script. If they are there, they are meant to be interpreted. For this reason those lines mean to me that Gale has finally embraced the idea of having something important with a mortal. In my post of the "Party Scene" I go into details, but here I will stick to the interpretation related to Mystra: all what Gale numerates in that book are things that he could not access to with a Goddess. Curiously, part of those descriptions are things that make humans human, so I personally think it reinforces Gale's intention in heading into this romance with the eagerness of finding some shelter (never forget the “orb” has a constant oppressing effect in him, increasing his anxiety and fears) and to experience (maybe for the first time) the love of a mortal.
So, for some assumptions made in the post of the "Party Scene", we suspect that Gale needs to share a night to feel confident enough to speak the details of his “orb” condition. Since he wants this relationship to be strong (after all, he implied commitment during the description of the book) he speaks about the true origin of the “orb” immediately after that night, starting with Mystra (which is, after all, the true origin of his folly). Depending on the version that Tav picks, we have extra information provided by Gale about his emotions for the Goddess:
Tav: What did Mystra’s attention feel like?
Gale: Love. Perhaps it was not quite love, but you see, the wizard was but a very young man. It was most certainly love to him. [...] One day all too soon, the whispers stopped. The goddess spurned the mortal. [...] and the wizard was left behind heartbroken.
Tav: I hate to say it, but he really could have seen this coming
Gale: He was blinded by love. Good stories are rife with lovers’ follies after all.
[Short Version] Gale: Before long Mystra tired of me. What was I after all but a mortal plaything in sacred hands? You have to realise I was heartbroken. I was a young man, she was my first love. I thought it would last forever. I vowed to win her back.
[after explaining the mistake of the “orb”]
Gale: It is this folly that led Mystra to abandon me completely. I can only hope you won’t abandon me as well. After all we’ve been through.. After the night we spent together. Surely we can brave even this side by side
Gale is giving a very detailed context about his love for Mystra: she was his first love, and the first love tends to have a special weight in a person's life and their memories. That doesn't mean the person has become unable to build more relationships for the rest of their life. If we add the fact that he was very young when all this happened (more details in the Post "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1") we find him under two effects: the impression of the first love and the naivety of the youth. Both elements made him believe it was a love that was going to last forever. With a Goddess, no less.
Besides, Gale expresses this, highlighting his naivety and foolishness: he is aware of how silly he was back then, and how impossible it could be for a mortal to keep the love of a goddess. He is a pragmatic and realistic character, after all. He recognizes in the end that he was just a mortal plaything for her.
I think these pieces of information give us a very clear context of his emotional state: he is still nostalgic for Mystra because of all the reasons I enumerated above; she is also more than just a woman, she is Magic itself. But he is aware that those emotions were the consequence of a very naïve and young self that has awakened by the burden of his own mistakes. There is also a reinforcement of “forever”, which recalls the concept of commitment that Gale pursues so much in his romance: he is not there just for the sex “intimacy”, he is there for serious commitment, maybe because he doesn't want to experience another abandonment. After all, we are talking about a character with a profile that shows abandonment issues (see the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1", section: "Abandonment Issues")
[If rejected]
Tav: No. This is too large a betrayal.
GALE: I see. I am sorry. I am sorry that it had to come to this. All that’s left to say is farewell.
Dev’s notes: hurt but understanding
Gale: Farewell. (Leaves)
Dev’s notes: A slight hesitation, hurt but understanding. He makes a polite little bow, then we see him walk away.
[If accepted]
Gale: I don’t know what I did to deserve the magic that you do.
Despite being terribly cheesy, this last line shows that Gale was more than convinced that Tav would abandon him because he doesn’t deserve Tav. This is why he doesn't put up much fight if Tav chooses to tell him to leave. He will try to make Tav listen to his story, and once it's done, the verdict will fall and he will accept it. He learnt his lesson with Mystra. This line also shows how everything important around Gale is or has to be worded with magic, even a silly metaphor like this is related with the word “magic”: Tav's acceptance is like magic. For him, as important and good as magic itself.
As if that were not enough, after the scene there is a comment in which Gale will reinforce his gratitude for Tav's acceptance:
Tav: If you ever feel the netherese magic overtaking you, what will you do?
Gale: If it should ever come to that... if I ever know I am no longer able to stop it... I will do anything I can to ensure no one but me pays for my mistakes. I will find the remotest place on the surface of Faerûn, or perhaps far below in the depths of the Underdark. I will await that death alone. [*] I promise I will not betray your trust... You kept me by your side despite the menace that I am. If worst comes to worst, I will be gone long before the curtain falls.
[*] If romanced, Gale will say here "I cherish you."
Which makes me suspect that Gale can disappear at any moment (in full game) if for some game mechanics we are unable to get magical artefacts but the deal with Raphael did not happen (if that’s even possible). But that's just me speculating. Nothing in EA seems to suggest this. What i's clear is that acceptance—that strong concept in the book he put so much emphasis on—is really important to him, so he shows gratitude for that: he promises to protect Tav (and many innocents) from his own mistake. He also says pretty soon an equivalent of “I love you”, in a more formal/meaningful way: “to cherish” is not just to love, but to care/protect as well.
Finally, in case someone lost those hints, or maybe as a consequence of this unpolished scene, we have a direct question with a direct answer:
Tav: Gale, are you still in love with Mystra?
Gale: I’ll be honest with you; I don’t know. She is my muse still, the embodiment of magic, but the embodiment of love? Only if we ever meet again will I know
Gale simply says what we have been inferring so far with all the previous information: Gale reinforces the idea that he will remain as a strong, loving devotee of Mystra, because she is magic. I personally don't even consider it possible to remove that love from him. He may not be a cleric, but he loves his deity as one. But he also learnt his lesson that loving gods has its own dire consequences for mortals. He is very aware of it during the discussion about Karsus:
Tav: Nothing good ever comes from mortals wanting to be gods.
Gale: Loving them has its side effects as well. Now, so many centuries later, I tried to follow in the footsteps of Karsus, not to destroy Mystra, but to prove my love for her. It tried to control only a fraction of the magic that was unleashed that fateful day. I merely sought to return one tiny diamond to an imperfect crown. Gale's Folly one might call it. History. Repetition. It's the way things go.
Once more, there is no scene where Gale doesn't reinforce that what he did was a mistake, a foolish action, a Folly.
Finally, if talking about a previous lover immediately after awakening with a new one was of poor taste, Gale acknowledges this, giving an honest apology:
Gale: Before we go on though, do first let me apologise. To share such a night with you only to tell you of a previous lover the next morning... It wasn't the most gentleman-like behaviour. But I had to finally tell you. Silence would have been far worse behaviour still. Nevertheless, I am sorry.
He accepts any rude response or lash-out from Tav without approval penalties. This is an interesting meta-knowledge that speaks about owning up to his mistakes. Unlike the Loss scene, where rude responses made Gale disapprove because Tav was judging him without knowing the whole story [16], in this scene he doesn’t. Now Tav has the whole picture, and he accepts whatever reaction Tav shows. Of course he will approve a forgiving Tav, since Gale is a character very related to forgiveness [12, 12b].
Conclusion:
So, answering the question that gives title to this section: yes. In my opinion, Gale loves Mystra. But it’s not a white-and-black love; it has the complexity of human love mixed with this crazy lore of deities in Forgotten Realms. I believe Mystra will always be part of Gale's life, because the Weave and magic are his life, and she is both. He will always love her as a devotee, even though he now understands the mistakes of his young self and seems more aware of how naive he was when he was a “very young man”. The comments on the second tadpole dreams explicitly show that what Gale wants the most is Mystra’s forgiveness, but at the same time, he knows that he does not deserve it. And this raw realistic view of himself is what makes him understand that those dreams are illusions. During the party scene he is uncertain about his emotions, but still he emphasises that there is a big chance for him to not see Mystra as the embodiment of love any more but reinforces that she will always be the embodiment of magic to him (a very important concept in his character design).
Whether Gale is romanced or not, I don't see a difference in the information he shares on this matter in EA.
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Another one in the long list of the strangest statements I've read in this fandom.
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
Let's proceed with the basics, because clearly, anyone saying that Gale proposes Tav to cheat has some faltering concept of the meaning of the word:
The definition of cheating depends on the terms that a couple or more members in a relationship mutually decide. In general, cheating is an act involving a third party that violates the standards or boundaries of a relationship between romantic partners. More specifically, it is a unilateral decision by one romantic partner to become involved (physically and/or emotionally) with an external party that is motivated by a perceived or real limitation in the romantic partnership.
Now that this is clear, let's see the facts.
To romance Gale, Tav needs to share the Weave, and this is a must. If Tav did not share it, there is no way to start a romance with Gale in EA. During the Weave there are 3 options that may lead to romance:
Imagine kissing him: We don't need to state that this is obviously romantic.
Imagine holding hands: At first, we can't say if this is a romantic gesture, but immediately after the Weave, Gale will describe this option as: "Amid the madness that has befallen us, it seems almost out of place to think of a romantic walk". So, clearly, it is romantic.
Imagine nothing: This is a friendship option, which in the Loss Scene unlocks a dialogue option for romancing Gale.
During the Loss Scene, if Tav chose kissing or holding hands, an option appears in which Tav can bring the moment of the Weave into the conversation: "Come, you know I care about you. I showed you when we shared that spell/The Weave". This is a reassurance from Tav. After the end of the scene, Gale will bring this concept again in his line: "I often think of that moment we shared together – one under the Weave. I'm glad to know you think about it too. " This means that ever since the moment of the Weave, Gale has been frequently thinking about it, knowing its romantic potential/intention.
If Tav uses any of the other options which don't acknowledge the event of the Weave, by the end of the scene Gale will state: "I often think of that moment we shared together – one under the Weave. I hope you think about it too." This time it is Gale who implicitly reassures that the connection had happened and had an effect on him: “it promises things to come”.
So, if Tav shared the Weave in romantic terms, the Loss scene will reinforce it. Gale and Tav are making a point that both are interested in what has transpired during the Weave.
If Tav opted the friendship option during the Weave, a unique dialogue option appears in the Loss scene: *You sense a moment of unspoken affection. You want to know where it may lead.*
Gale will subtly test the ground, carefully, to see if both of them are on the same page with the same intention. He will show somehow an “unspoken affection” that Tav can decide to pick up upon or not:
Gale: I consider myself very lucky to have found you.
Among the options Tav has, we find:
"I think perhaps we could be more than friends". Again, we can see that this is the obvious romantic option.
"I consider myself lucky too." A complete friendship-based option, in which Gale recognizes Tav as a good friend.
"Don’t get carried away imagining feelings that aren’t there." And this option allows any player to completely remove the romantic option here. It is not clear if this option can prevent friendship as well in EA.
As if this were not enough, after the Loss scene there is another confirmation of their romantic interest: the serendipity comment.
Then, the Party Scene follows. If Tav talks with Gale after arranging a one-night stand with another character, Gale will accept the situation without any reaction beyond some jealous comments. These comments are always available, even with an unromanced Gale, so I'm not sure if this is the way this scene is meant to be or it's simply there because its in EA stage. One can speculate that these comments should appear only in the particular case when Gale was romanced and Tav picks another character to spend the night with. Despite this display of jealousy after being led on, Gale still encourages Tav to follow their whims and enjoy the night with the one they picked
If anything, this seems to show that Gale would accept (even though he doesn’t like it) Tav's one-night stand, assuming that this scene, being in EA, is not meant to be in another way and we are watching an unfinished work in progress.
Once Tav sleeps with their new LI and talks with Gale about the bedtime story, Gale will propose to retake what had been left up in the air during the party. The player should remember that Gale has been explicitly informed that Tav had romantic interest in him. And if this happened in the Weave, that confirmation has been done several times. The player could have been clear with Gale and stop the romance during the party by choosing the option "Let me stop you right there. That's not something I'm interested in." But this option is sometimes not available depending if you speak with Gale first or later (again, the Party scene is very unpolished).
So far, what Gale has understood of that situation is that Tav had a one-night stand, but the commitment connection mind-to-mind and the relationship—will be established with him.
This is the reason why in the next day Gale says:
Gale: You spent the other night with someone else, and I hope it was all you wanted it to be, but…
[romantic weave+ romantic loss scene] we shared a romantic moment of the mind while clocked in the Weave, didn’t we? And I seem to recall a fond allusion to that moment afterwards.
[more than friends path] we had a moment, you and I, a moment in which we expressed the possibility of becoming more than friends.
Gale is accustomed to being only another name in a list of lovers.. He says it during the revelation when he explains that Mystra had many other lovers, and this fact did not intimidate him because, in his youth, "he thought himself favoured among others": he was the “special one”. So, from Gale's perspective, Tav has shown interest in a deep connection with him, so he clearly understands that the night with another companion is a simple, casual thing. There is enough context for Gale to think that he is “the special one” for Tav.
As a person who respects privacy, Gale will not use the tadpole on Tav to know exactly the degree of commitment they have with that person. He is merely assuming. As he explicitly says afterward if Tav says they will remain with the other LI:
Tav: I’m sorry, but I won’t betray *companion*
Gale: I… I see. She/He ‘s a lucky woman/man. Loyalty is such a… such a very rare commodity.
Dev's notes: Hurt by the player’s refusal. The reference to loyalty foreshadows Mystra leaving him.
Gale: Apologies, I really did think you and I…
Dev's notes: Hurt by the player’s refusal.
Gale: But no. Perhaps it’s for the better. In fact, I’ll let you be the judge of that. After all, I still have a story to tell.
Dev's notes: Composes himself.
From his perspective, he and Tav had been actively pursuing "a romantic connection of the mind". This rejection immediately makes him remember Mystra, so he alludes to her in the line of loyalty: he has been led on once more, similar to what Mystra did. For more details about Mystra’s style check "Mystra and her Chosen ones". If we see the datamining information gathered by pjenn, it's explained in the dev's notes that his comment of loyalty is directed to his experience with Mystra.
I don't understand people that claim that Gale wants Tav to cheat. Tav has been leading him on in many scenes and then, during the party scene, they changed their mind. Gale—like Wyll—needs a connection to engage into romance (and sex "intimacy); this means that if Tav never expressed their romantic interest towards him, Gale will not look for a romantic relationship. Considering his surprise during the Weave, we can speculate that this aspect of his life had been forgotten or at least, rejected, since he is stuck in the bad experience of Mystra and his folly with the “orb”.
For some unknown reason to me, these people love to spread the misinformation that Gale invites Tav to cheat for this situation. A plain lie.
What they think the game shows: Gale is asking Tav to cheat on their significant one.
What the game is showing: Tav led Gale on to believe they were interested in a romantic relationship. There is an option available during the party to make Gale stop the romance, but it depends on the interaction order chosen by Tav. After Tav slept with another LI, Gale will inform them that he is fine with that casual night and will propose to spend the next night together. Some people state this is Gale inviting to cheat. With the exception of Gale and Wyll, the rest of the companions state that such night is a mere casual encounter for pleasure. Shadowheart may be more obscure on that matter, though. In any case, there was never any commitment with the other companions either, so all that speech of “cheating on your significant other” is very ill-intended. The closest to a negotiation/promise we have ingame with any companions are the constant reassurances that Gale and Tav have several times along the EA and the subtle meaning for commitment during the explanation of the book of Arm.
Gale: A stolen glance- that sudden heartbeat... Sometimes the little things are worth more than kingdoms. They promise things to come.
Gale: I often think of that moment we shared together – one under the Weave. I hope you think about it too. /I'm glad to know you think about it too.
Gale: I'm not a big believer in fate, but I do believe in serendipity. Life is a tempest of events that sometimes we brace against and sometimes embrace. You're one such event that one day soon perhaps I'd like to embrace.
Gale: There is a book that circulates in Amn, detailing the first thousand nights of a newly-wed king and queen. They turned everything they did into an art. The art of conversation. The art of taste, time honoured and newly acquired. The art of the body. The exploration and acceptance of the self and the other. The art of the night itself. I say we take a page from their book.
So, if anything (if we truly want to force this concept even when nobody is in a relationship still), Tav is the one "cheating" on Gale, violating the implicit mutual interest in a potential relationship.
In conclusion, Gale seems to be very obvious in wanting a commitment that could prevent Tav from abandoning him like Mystra did. He has an immature idea that sleeping with Tav would increase his chances for acceptance (not by chance Gale talks about the book of Amn in the way he does. It's not mere poetry or euphemism in my opinion. He is indirectly saying he wants those many aspects that a married couple turned into art, he won't mind making this relationship a "prequel" of that book: one can interpret this line as a suggestion that Gale wants to end up in a deep commitment.)
When we analyse this aspect of Gale, we can see that words like promise, loyalty and abandon are a bit frequent in his speech, and it may be displaying the constant abandonment issues echoing in his mind. A final example of this can be seen during a non-romanced Gale who receives Tav’s proposition to spend the night together after arranging the same with another LI:
Gale: You are all too quick to abandon the one you promised yourself to. It’s not a quality I admire
Again, Gale’s character is strongly attached to the concepts of loyalty and abandonment. For more details, read the post about "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1", section: "Abandonment Issues"
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in this (post) while disclaimers about Context in this (one).
Before anything I strongly suggest reading this post about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation" to understand in a simplified way the meaning of the words we use, so despite not being related to bg3, it's related to communication and social issues. Since fandom loves to misuse them, I think it requires a proper explanation so we all know in which frame we are analysing these scenes.
Due to the fact that this post ended up turning into a much longer one than I wanted to, I split it into four posts, each of them showing how many sides Gale has in those scenes, how much his actions are "manipulative", how many details related to lore he shares, and possible interpretations of his behaviour, since it's rather easy to lose his scenes because they have the lowest priority. In this post I will only make a summary and a compilation of the broad details explained in those posts, so pick what you want to read since all these posts may have overlap of information and repetitive concepts (they were written to be self-contained as much as possible).
'Stew'Scene
"Loss Scene"
"Party Scene" (with Revelation scene)
"Extra Scenes": Death Protocol and Comments on Dreams
I'm analysing these scenes in detail because I noticed that many players incorrectly paraphrase Gale's words, putting in his mouth words he never said, so for the sake of transparency, I transcribed many fragments of his dialogues, making these posts more lengthy than they should be.
The stew scene
The details are shown in the post of the "'Stew'Scene". In this scene, Gale shares a friendly introduction with the stew and with a list of good deeds done by Tav. This shows that he has begun to trust Tav so he can talk about this issue earlier than he wanted to (he will wait much longer in the neutral version). As a gesture of honesty, Gale sets an explicit boundary by telling Tav to refrain their curiosity and do not ask about the 'why' of the issue he is about to talk about (under no circumstance he is forcing Tav to agree with the delivery of artefacts before telling them 'what' he needs). He acknowledges that it may be unfair not to give the whole context, but he still can't speak in detail about this very personal issue. As an interesting detail, his trust in Tav at this moment of the conversation is so honest that he has not shielded his mind, so Tav can intrude with the tadpole without Gale knowing it—if Tav succeeds— . If Gale doesn't trust Tav even successful intrusions of the tadpole can be perceived by Gale's trained and cautious mind. For more detail read the post of "The Tadpole".
I personally interpret the stew scene as one of those moments in which one is developing a friendship with a stranger, and at some point, someone has to trust first. It's a rare occasion in which the act of trust is shared in equal measure by both members in a new relationship. Usually, one of them offers a bigger portion of trust, testing the other, seeing if it was not misplaced or if it will be honoured later. It's a normal asymmetry, and in this case, Gale is only explicitly asking for that asymmetry in his favour.
Considering how Gale opens up later, Tav passed the test in his eyes. Helping him during his direst moment and accepting that temporal trust asymmetry made Tav “earn the respect of years” despite being a stranger he met a couple of days or weeks ago. But Gale will not be blind to that gesture. He will progressively honour that trust in the Weave, the Loss, and the Revelation scenes. And by the end of EA, if it is not bugged as usual, Gale's approval status can change to “best friend” (an information given as meta-knowledge, therefore very unlikely to be "a trap set by Gale". For more details read the post about "meta-knowledge").
It's pretty common for manipulative characters (whose trait of manipulation belongs to their personality, not characters who may have circumstantial manipulative actions) to expose their pain too soon with strangers as a tool to force empathy on the listener and "catch" them. Gale does exactly the opposite: he won't open up until having a solid ground where to place his trust. Nobody wants to share their pain in unsafe places, after all.
Helping him with artefacts is deeply appreciated by him and a great boost of his approval for obvious reasons: people tend to place their trust on persons who helped them in their most desperate situations or in their survival. It has to do with the unique connection that often happens between survivors of extreme situations (war-like) who helped each other in surviving. The shared link is deep. One could expect this link to be built with any of Tav's companions since the Tadpole experience is traumatising and extreme. I think this has higher chances of happening with neutral and good aligned companions, since evil ones may have little scruples to not honour the trust received.
Gale could have avoided Tav's questions and mistrust for this secrecy by just lying. However, Gale opts for an explicit enunciation of his limits and boundaries. And Tav is completely free to agree or not since Gale won't abandon the party if not. We know that, in that case, he will try to find another solution that he may find in Raphael's deal. Some players consider this situation of mutual agreement in the terms and conditions that the conversation will happen as a coercive one. What I see is diplomacy and negotiation rather than manipulation.
Gale's need for secrecy is related to two factors:
Survival: He needs to be sure that Tav won't kill him out of fear (which we saw during the scene with Nettie; it's a common procedure in Faerûn: exterminate what's dangerous). Gale's case is even worse because killing him will only activate the devastation he is desperate to avoid: Gale wants to survive but also wants to avoid the massacre that the “orb” can cause.
Personal reasons: Which is the main reason at this point: Gale is unable to speak about the "why" of this condition because it's originated in Mystra's abandonment and the horror of the “orb”: such traumatising experience that turns the Tadpole experience into an inconvenience (this is why his attitude with the tadpole is more relaxed too, he has already passed through a much worse, terrifying situation).
The Loss scene reinforces this concept when we see Gale—usually so verbose and impossible to shut up— can't speak or find the words to say what he lost and why. And only by the end of the scene, if Tav insisted with many checks, he managed to say something. It's worth noting that these checks tend to be strangely low for a character who is struggling with a personal secret. This is usually understood in DM-code as Gale wanting to share this info (setting a lower DC than the average). Gale is not finding the way to do it, and a Tav gently pushing him will do the trick.
It is for this reason I personally think that Gale's secretive attitude is more like a series of obvious clues he purposely leaves in his conversations for Tav to draw their own conclusions before he could finally open up. If all Gale's scenes are triggered (which at this moment is very hard to do with his priority being always the lowest) and Tav pushes him to speak more than he is willing to, the player obtains a decent amount of information to conclude that Mystra and Gale had a deeper relationship, and that the “orb” is something dangerous not only for Gale. To be honest, the death protocol is a gigantic red flag pointing out that Gale's primary condition is not to be taken lightly and “many innocents” can die because of it.
With a neutral or lower approval, Gale will not ask Tav to trust in him. He doesn't trust Tav either, and there is no promise to speak and disclose his condition later. Gale clearly is more mindful and caring with a medium or higher approval Tav who he is starting to see as a good companion/friend, while with a neutral or lower approval Tav he cares little about keeping the contact beyond what diplomacy demands.
It's not by chance that this Stew scene is meant to happen before the Weave scene. From a narrative, contextual point of view, the trust that Tav gave Gale during the Stew scene is afterwards paid with the Weave and the Loss scene. Let's remember that Gale would only ask for that trust if Tav is of medium or higher approval, so the Weave scene comes naturally (when not bugged). The neutral and low approval Tav is never asked for that trust and therefore the Weave scene never happens (if their approval keeps going down). In fact, Gale can leave permanently without any chance of convincing him to stay if he reaches very low approval. What I mean is that, from a narrative point of view, the Weave and the Loss scenes are Gale's way to return that trust that Tav gave him first during the stew scene and the first artefact consumption.
The Weave was not a premeditated scene. It happened by surprise, triggered by Gale's deep loneliness: Tav startled him when he was longing for Mystra while seeing her image in his incantation. He shares in that moment how important and vital magic is in his life, and only then, the previous actions done by Tav encourage him to share this experience. It's important to highlight that this is too personal for Gale, too important, and a bit painful too, since we know later (second dream) that every time he connects with the Weave, he meets with Mystra's disappointment: "What magic I can still weave is met only with undercurrents of disappointing silence."
After a moment of rambling, Gale invites Tav to share this experience. Here is where all the branches about explicitly displaying Tav's romantic interests can be developed; a neutral option for a friendship path, or very aggressive and violent reactions can be picked as well. More details about this scene can be read in the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Proposition to Cheat". And again, for a char so guarded of his own privacy and personal issues, sharing the Weave can be clearly seen as the repayment of the trust that Gale received from Tav during the stew scene.
The Loss scene
The Loss is a scene that starts with a mystery about Gale's incapacity to cast a spell. He keeps pushing Tav away, claiming that night to be of personal regrets. Tav knows already that something is dangerous in Gale's consumption of artefacts that can cause a catastrophe, so in this scene some links can be made between the two conditions.
If Tav gently pushes Gale to speak, we will notice that most DCs are rather low, meaning that Gale is not putting a strong resistance for the pushing: a friendly Tav pushing him can be interpreted as Gale wanting extra help to open up and speak (in the end he approves the caring despite his reserved persona). Gale gives many hints in this scene that suggest he was a Chosen of Mystra. The most relevant one is the Silver Fire reference. For more details about the Chosen's powers read the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones".
We also see a reinforcement of Gale's pattern behaviour: He prefers to speak in this poetic way when he has to talk about painful topics (we see it after killing the druids that triggers “the barren oak” scene or during the goblin party scene). Talking in third person puts distance, but also the embellishment of his narration makes it easier for him to speak, after all he is a poet/storyteller as well.
What's clear is that the verbose companion, who always has a lot to talk about, is basically speechless in this scene, stuck in his "loss" (literally, metaphorically, and psychologically speaking). Part of this behaviour can be understood a bit more in the post about "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1", section: "Grooming". Besides being a private person, Gale also has a perspective that talking about things that can't be changed is useless. He is so stuck in the loss, that talking about it means nothing to him, "the outcome" is always the same.
After pushing Gale to share his burden, the presence of Mystra in Gale's life is undeniable for Tav. Gale sounds like a strong devotee that somehow lost Mystra. We know in this short description that he “did something” to impress his Goddess and earn her favour back, and in doing it, he failed, invoking death upon him. If Tav is sharp enough, knowing that Gale's consumption of artefacts is related to a “catastrophe” and a certain death of himself... maybe they can start connecting some dots and suspect that Gale's primary condition may be related to the loss of Mystra. My point is, even Tav has been informed quite a lot about Gale's “truth”. As we can see, the “Revelation” scene should not be such a shocking “revelation” as it was written, but more a “detailed description” of the situation.
The context seems clear so far: Gale knows he hides the details of his condition (which are not so hidden anymore), and knows that it's information that can cause a second abandonment (whether as a friend or a lover). Gale is at this point in his life very tired and lonely of struggling with the “orb” inside him too. He could use some emotional support, and this is why I believe he has less tough DCs that one should expect from a character who is actively holding information he doesn't want to share. We need to remember that Gale lives in a permanent anxiety mind-state, too focused on Artefacts and the disaster he can cause, increased with the dreadful, hungry feelings that the “orb” inspires with each passing day. He is getting fond of Tav at this point, and their abandonment would mean too much, even though he knows that he may deserve it.
We know that Mystra abandoned him, but did not ban him from using the Weave. I personally speculate that maybe Gale's point of view of the situation of the “orb” and the following abandonment of Mystra is partial: Mystra may have abandoned him not on purpose but as a consequence of having that Weave-sucking power in his chest. As it was explained in the post of "Mystra and her Chosen ones", Chosen ones have a deeper connection with her, and they are able to use raw magic in the form of Silver Fire. This means that Chosen are part of Mystra herself (in Dead Masks, it's stated that Mystra leaves a bit of her own divinity in each of her Chosen), so Chosen ones are also part of the Weave, always connected to Mystra who is the Weave. If the “orb” inside Gale consumes Weave, and we all know that Weave IS Mystra, it's not too far to conclude that Mystra may have abandoned him as a safety measure since, if Gale remained as Chosen, his contact with her would be deeper and would expose her to the “orb”, destroying her eventually. But this, again, it's a mere personal speculation.
The party scene
Gale has finally reached a degree of trust in Tav that gives him enough courage to finally speak about the details of the "orb" (and I emphasise details because in broad aspects, he already shared what's most important: the “orb” in his chest is a dangerous thing. If Tav assisted in his death protocol, this is undeniable by now, unless Tav did not pushed him and respected his privacy).
If he is romanced, he promises much more: confessions in the art of conversation, pleasures in the art of the body, and, hopefully, acceptance. For Gale, acceptance is a big deal: I personally believe he shows a fair level of naivety on this matter. It seems (especially later, with his arguments in the morning) he thought he needed this level of intimacy to reach acceptance first (a process that this book guarantees to happen), so he could speak openly. He wants to have this night before any confession because he wants to acquire acceptance which, in his mind, would prevent the abandonment he viscerally fears.
Gale is so eager to spend the night with Tav first and confess later that the only way of not doing it is not romancing him at all or telling him that Tav is not in the mood. It's not clear in EA if this ends the romance; I think it doesn't since the disapproval is not big (there is no change in the approval status).
Gale wants to be with Tav intimately so badly that he doesn't mind Tav having casual sex with other companions first as long as the "commitment" part would be established with him. This is reinforced by the fact that, if Tav never shared the Weave with Gale, there is no way to sleep with him: Gale is not a character for one-stand nights. He craves for deep connection, for commitment, in whatever fashion he can get it. Mystra taught him not to ask about exclusivity after all, and because of the ephemeral nature of his relationship with her, he craves for something meaningful and more committed.
Mystra was his first love. After her abandonment, he made the mistake of the “orb” that dragged all his energy into studying Netherese magic and possible solutions. I consider it fair to think that maybe Gale never had a relationship beyond the Goddess, and all what he learnt about romantic relationships was through books like the one he mentions or, as a poet, through novels or romantic poetry. He must have an idealisation of love (also proper of a poet) that made him believe that through sex “intimacy” there is a guarantee of acceptance.
His pattern, in my opinion, says that he tends to make mistakes in his emotional state, which is mostly triggered by the “orb” and the potential of “abandonment”. Not so much with Mystra herself. He seems to be nostalgic, but more aware of what loving a God causes (his regret is explicit during the conversation about Karsus). He seems to be quite done with "her romantic love", but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to be forgiven nor he doesn't love her as the essence of Magic itself. More details in the post of "Mystra and her Chosen ones".
Some players see the “Revelation” scene as manipulative. Although that's personal interpretation, if we analyse the kind of information withheld by Gale we found little new: the dangerous nature of the “orb” had been indirectly disclosed in all the previous scenes. Tav being surprised about the “orb” seems strange. And Gale sleeping with Mystra has little relevance: in a game for adults, why are past partners such a big deal? The scene is so confusingly written to make it sound as if Gale is still in love with Mystra, but previous scenes showed he has been working on getting over it. Despite loving Mystra as the embodiment of Magic herself, Gale showed to be very aware that all that love belonged to the past (second dream), to a younger self, and even though he is not certain if he loves her still, he is clear that nothing good comes from relationships between mortals and gods (comments on Karsus). He is very explicit about desiring her forgiveness (second dream). So, there is little withholding information at this point for a Tav who pushed him to speak. Now, Gale's attitude certainly has been tactless. Not the best decision to disclose a past lover with such a degree of fascination just after sharing a night with Tav. But it's understandable since in order to “disclose” the “orb”, Gale needed to provide the context of his young love for the Goddess.
The whole scene of the Revelation seems very, very unpolished, mixing tones and confusing information that was given before and presenting it as if it were a revelation when it's not the case. It jumps from one drama concept to another, and never sticks to one, and Tav's options tend to be extreme: or the player calls this disclosure a “great betrayal”, or makes it seem as if nothing has happened, giving little options of what Tav already knows, or if they want to show a moderate annoyance since most of the information has been disclosed already, but still Gale's timing is annoying. Part of this can also be written on purpose to show what a disaster Gale is when it comes to the potential of “another abandonment” in his life. Hard to tell in EA.
Tav's romantic options react as if Gale confessed to have cheated on them, while what he explains has a different degree of conflict: he confesses he is not sure he still loves Mystra, but his lines in previous scenes show he wants to get over it, without losing his magic/relationship with Mystra, because magic is too important in Gale's life. At times, Tav's options are meant for them to react with jealousy, other times as if this were a big betrayal, or as if Gale's romantic past should have been disclosed before the night, and in the last part of the scene, Larian remembered that the “orb” could be considered a conflict too, so Tav has some occasional options to react to the “orb” as if it were a big revelation (when it's not, because we had 3 scenes, four if we include the death protocol, stating its dangerous nature). So, I personally understand why every person has a completely radical interpretation of the situation: it has been written in a rush, and I see it as very inconsistent in tone and context. This all makes sense when one remembers Kevin VanOrd stream where he explained that Gale was meant to be in the second wave of companions, and not in EA. Gale's writing was rushed and it shows in the last of his scenes and his meeting scene.
Some people may argue that talking about a previous lover right after sharing the first night is, at the least, a very bad taste. However, the player (not Tav) can understand the reason behind it: Gale started the story in order to explain in detail the "why" that has been left up in the air since the stew scene. That "why" can only be explained if Gale discloses Mystra's relationship as the origin of his mistake. So... on one hand, this disclosure right after the shared night is unfortunate for Tav (especially by picking the long version of the explanation in which Gale shares too much unnecessary detail). On the other hand, if he omits this relationship, it's harder to explain the context of why he got the “orb” in his chest.
In general I think this scene has been handled poorly. The whole “conflict” portrayed here implies two aspects: He slept with Mystra, and he has an explosive “orb” in his chest. Neither of them are truly big arguments for the drama degree that this scene seemed to have been written because we already know, to a certain degree, about them.
The “orb” is not truly “such a revelation” at this point. The stew scene alone gave Tav and the player a clear idea that something in Gale could cause a catastrophe without consuming artefacts. After the death protocol that certainty is clearer. So, these “revelations” are more like “extra details” of problems we already know about. Which is what he exactly says when introducing this scene: “Those are but the broad strokes. The time has come to paint you the true picture”.
Having past lovers seems also a strange concept for a “betrayal”. Adults carry pasts. It's true that maybe speaking of a past lover in the same moment he awoke with a recent one is in a pretty bad taste; it's a bit more understandable when you finish the scene: the origin of the “orb” problem was Gale's love for Mystra, so it makes sense to start from her. However, I see the conflict of the conversation switching constantly in three directions: the fact that Gale had a lover that didn’t talk about the previous day, that “Gale is still in love with Mystra”, and that he has an “orb” that Tav “never” knew about it. A very inconsistent conversation.
It's true that Mystra is not a standard lover—she is a goddess—but she is quite known to have these affairs (at least for the player), especially during her past when her direct contact with any human was not banned. It should be more surprising that Mystra seemed to have broken that ban for Gale's case (since she only kept in direct contact with her chosen ones: Ao's decree). And it's also clear the scene tries to show that Gale is still “in love” with her, which is very confusing with what he spoke during the Loss and mainly, during the second dream. Again, I personally feel the scenes of the party and the romance are a mess from a cohesive narrative point of view, and they are the result, alongside Gale's first meeting, of his rushed introduction into EA.
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
In these “scene posts” I will explore the scene of the title looking for the information in the dialogues. What I will be looking for is how much Gale “lies”, how much lore is provided, and any extra detail that may be of our interest to highlight. At the end of these posts there are summary points for those who don't want to read the whole post.
Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in this (post) while disclaimers about Context in this (one).
The scene of the "stew" has two versions. One for medium or higher approval (in which we see the stew reference) and one for neutral or lower approval (in which we lack any stew). Let's analyse first the most common one.
I'm a bit surprised at the lack of reading skill of some players. Many claim that Gale is coercing you to give him artefacts and agree to this deal before even telling you such a request. If you read the scene, and you understand what he is saying, it's clearly not the case:
[Medium approval version] Gale: [stew and list of good actions] In short: I've grown to trust you. […] I need you to place your trust in me. […] I feel compelled to speak. I say this because there is something I desperately need, but while I'll tell you what that something is, I won't tell you why. I have to ask you to agree to this before carrying on with this conversation.
Tav: No. It's unfair to demand blind faith in you.
Gale: I understand that I'm asking for a lot, but I can't tell you everything. Not yet anyway. Please, reconsider. […] I have a... condition. A condition different from the tadpole, but just as deadly. [...] The only way to “appease” said condition is for me to take a powerful magical artefact and absorb the Weave inside. It's been days since I last consumed an artefact, before we were abducted. It is time. By that I mean it's Imperative that I find and consume powerful strands of Weave at the earliest possible juncture.
I don't want to explain the obvious, but it is apparently needed: Gale is not asking Tav to agree to give him artefacts before explaining the situation. Gale is asking Tav to refrain from their curiosity despite the secrecy of the situation. He will explain "what" he needs (artefacts), but he won't explain "why" he needs them (he won't disclose the “orb” and its link with Mystra). This situation is pretty close to talking to an ill person who needs some drug: they are asking you to give it but they won't disclose their illness and their origin, because it's private information that a stranger is not entitled to have. Specially if such illness will not affect you (as Gale tries to maintain his situation under control so nobody has to deal with it)
Some players are spreading the misconception that Gale forces you to agree to give him artefacts before establishing the deal.... when he only is asking you not to question why he needs artefacts. Why are these people reading so wrong?
Later, we can understand that the "why" also has deep personal implications he doesn't want to disclose yet. It's also funny that Gale says he won't explain the why, but you can have a blunt indirect answer of the 'why' when you ask him about what happens if he doesn't consume artefacts: "catastrophe". Which exposes that, whatever is happening with him, is very worrisome. In the end, Gale said a very generalised 'why he needs artefacts' in one word. If we are allowed to have a far-stretched interpretation, we could almost consider that Tav outsmarted Gale with that question: we are well aware 'why' he needs to consume artefacts, because otherwise a catastrophe will happen.
So, once more—as it happened during his meeting on the road—what he is doing is setting a boundary. I don't know why some people angrily think he is "coercing" the player into giving him artefacts at this point of the conversation. It's not what's written! He is asking to respect his privacy when it comes to personal information.
In this way, he is setting the conditions in which this conversation will happen from the beginning. This is a gesture of the trust exchange he wants to have with Tav. The easiest way for Gale to avoid all this situation would have been plainly lying, but he opted for an honest approach with clear voiced reservations.
If we refuse to agree to listen to the "what" because the "why" won't be explained, Gale will be disappointed.
Tav: I'm still going to say no. / No, I won't. And that's final.
Gale: That's... truly disappointing. I see now that I misjudged you, so we'll dwell on the matter no longer. And at least I know where I stand. This is a part of the journey I must walk alone. Good night.
Again, some people understand this as a "coercion". We need to look for the meaning of the words once more: oversimplifying it, coercion is the practice of influencing someone to do something by using force, social pressure, or threats. I can't see where the threat or the force is done by Gale. He is voicing facts: Gale explicitly says he is disappointed; he was trusting Tav in accepting that boundary before talking. This is a diplomatic and explicit negotiation with clear terms. He says he misjudged Tav, which is also true, since he thought the exchange of trust was possible despite that boundary set due to Tav's good heart. Gale knows that this Tav cares for the well-being of creatures since it is obvious after witnessing their good deeds done up to the moment. Then, Gale stated that he would solve this problem alone without any “guilt trip” as some players say. Later in the game we know that one way he finds to do it is with Raphael's deal, an action described by the game archives and some players as “Gale's betrayal”. Everything in Gale's quests feel like an over-magnification of everything when it's supposed to be a game for adults. This detail made me wonder if Gale's character was not modified several times until being part of the game. More details of this are commented on in the post of the"Orb".
If we intrude into his mind with the tadpole and fail, we obtain this:
Tav: [Wisdom] you sense secrecy and danger. Use your tadpole to probe Gale's thoughts.
[Failure] Gale: I'm afraid that's not going to work on me. Look, I appreciate your curiosity, but don't pursue this path. Let's agree on actions first and explanations later, yes?
He isn't angry with Tav because he can block their intrusion before they could see anything, but he insists once more that Tav should give him an answer about whether they accept to talk in his terms about not asking the "why" of his need (now more obvious than before that Tav wants to know). The "explanations" will come later. And this curious line of Gale also shows, in my personal interpretation, how much he has been burnt with Mystra's words that seemed to be weak by the lack of actions. He needs actions to trust in someone now, words are not enough. He had been called Chosen, and it ended up not being the case. However, he keeps doing an honest approach: instead of lying to avoid any questioning, Gale explicitly states his limits, and Tav can agree or not to them. Diplomacy rather than manipulation.
If Tav uses the tadpole before agreeing, succeeds, and then is honest with Gale about what they saw in his mind, Gale will attempt to leave the party because, at this point, he realises he is in danger: Tav is using the tadpole and he is not aware of it because he trusted Tav. Gale probably thinks that Tav may find out how dire his condition is and would consider him a danger to exterminate. As an extra, there is also the horror situation of having the privacy of his own head violated. If Tav manages to reason with Gale and keeps him in the party, he will reinforce his need for privacy and explain the reason of why:
Tav [persuasion]: Be reasonable, Gale. I'm responsible for our party. I had to know.
[success] Gale: The need remains debatable, but I recognise your responsibility. Perhaps I spoke in haste, it's just that... there are things... things I cannot speak of. Besides, what you saw... You read the opening line of a very big book, no more. The darkness you perceived, that is my primary condition. A condition different from the tadpole, but just as deadly. The only way to “appease” said condition... [same as before].
If Tav doesn't play too evil, Gale will eventually open up to explain his secrecy in the future. The Loss scene is a very good example of how truly hard this situation is for him: the verbose char who can't shut up, can't find the words to explain what he lost. This is a potent narrative tool used to tell us that something deep and painful is stuck in him. More details in the post "Loss Scene".
Now, if we see the “stew” scene with a neutral or lower approval [watch video], we obtain a very different one:
[Neutral or lower approval version] Gale: Spare me a moment, if you please. I've something important to discuss with you. We've been travelling together for a while now and it's just about time that I shared something with you. It's a rather personal matter that I'd have preferred to keep quiet, but needs must when the devil drives. I have no choice but to speak. You see, I have a... condition. A condition different from the tadpole, but just as deadly. The only way to “appease” said condition [same as before]
First, the scene will trigger after a longer time, implying that Gale is trying to not speak with a Tav whose actions are keeping him in neutral or lower approval (we can infer Tav is rpg-playing rather evil since Gale is quite an approval compulser). So Gale wants to keep his primary condition a secret as long as possible since he doesn't trust in this Tav.
Second, since Tav clearly is playing somewhat an evil path, Gale doesn't like this Tav, so he doesn't care in giving them meaningful gestures of courtesy. Again, we see a diplomatic but honest approach: Gale will explicitly voice his dislike for this Tav if the disapproval continues. This would be an uncommon attitude if Gale were a truly manipulative character: no matter their approval, they will remain pleasing Tav until they obtain what they are looking for. It's not the case here. Gale is not interested in exchanging trust with this “evil” Tav, he just wants to deal with the situation and parts ways (the lower approval, the clearer this concept). Therefore, the whole scene about the friendly stew and the "let's agree first that you won't ask why I have this condition" is not present at all. This shows that the stew scene was an honest friendly gesture he won't offer to someone he doesn't like/trust. Gale is so mistrustful of this Tav that there won't be a chance to have access to his mind via tadpole either (See this point in the post of “The Tadpole”).
With a neutral or lower approval, Gale will not ask Tav to trust in him. He doesn't trust Tav either, and there is no promise to speak and disclose his condition later. Gale clearly is more mindful and caring with a medium or higher approval Tav that he is starting to see as a good companion/friend, while with a neutral or lower approval Tav he cares little about keeping the contact with them.
In any case, both versions converge once Tav is informed about the need for artefacts. Tav has four options to determine if they agree or not in giving Gale artefacts. The options in which Tav doubts are:
Tav: When I acquire powerful magic items, I'm not so sure I'll choose you over them. / I can tell you right now I don't care at all for this wild Gale chase.
Gale: That's your decision to make. I expect you to make the right one. Much is at stake. More than my own meagre life alone.
When Tav makes clear they won't probably give him artefacts, Gale is giving them a free choice. I repeat: giving artefacts to Gale was never decided before. Even after this conversation is not even decided, since it's still Tav's decision to make his words into actions. Gale was also more than clear in his narration that there is more at stake than his own life alone. And considering what we know in retrospect, Gale is right: he is desperate to live but also wants to avoid killing innocents in a massive way (a concept he repeats every time his life is in danger, showing that he keeps the idea constantly present). Some people insist this is coercion, again. Could these words be interpreted as a threat? Anyone is free to interpret anything in the way they want to; I personally can't see any threat, because it's a fact, a real problem: we know that Gale without artefacts can explode dramatically and cause Game Over. He is not threatening Tav, he is being clear about the consequences of not taking his request seriously. If this were not enough, when the scene finishes, we can have extra information talking with him:
Tav: Tell me more about that condition of yours
[Tav saw it with the Tadpole] Gale: You've already seen more than I was willing to share, remember? Best leave the darkness in darkness for now.
[Tav did not use the Tadpole] Gale: That's part of the 'why' you agreed not to discuss. Wouldn't want to make an oath breaker out of you.
If the player did not understand previously what they were agreeing with, Gale repeats it here. It's the “why”, not the unconditional delivery of powerful artefacts. This is why I'm worried about the comprehension skills of some players. This is not a matter of interpretation: it's plainly written and repeated in the game many times.
Curiously, despite having agreed not to ask about the why, Tav can push Gale a little bit, and he still provides a small details that give a bigger perspective of his issue:
Tav: What happens if you don't consume any artefact?
Gale: Catastrophe.
This is the answer for the question "why do you need to consume artefacts?" In the end, Gale provided it without details. So, saying that Tav is completely oblivious to the danger in Gale's chest seems rather unfair. Because this information is provided to any Tav, no matter their picked options across the dialogues. It's true that Tav doesn't know the details of it, but the big picture of it is clear. The only way a Tav can't have this information is a Tav who never interacted with Gale at all.
Whether Tav accepted to deliver artefacts or not, the scene finishes with:
Gale: I know the allure these artefacts hold, I understand their value and their power. All this to say: I understand the sacrifice I ask of you. I hope I can count on you.
Again, some people understand that last sentence as coercive. Given the context in which it is made, I personally consider this as the confirmation of how important this matter is for Gale. Gale is simply communicating that he is very aware this trust is a leap of faith in a stranger, but he still hopes.
It's not by chance that this scene is required to happen to trigger the Weave scene later. From a narrative and integral point of view, the trust that Tav gave him during the Stew scene is afterward paid with the Weave and the Loss scene. Let's remember that Gale would only ask for that trust if Tav is of medium or higher approval, so the Weave scene comes naturally (bugs aside, of course). The neutral and low approval Tav is never asked for that trust and therefore the Weave scene never happens (if their approval keeps going down). In fact, Gale can leave permanently without any chance of convincing him to stay if he reaches very low approval (a really evil, maddening path can accomplish this). What I mean is that, from a narrative point of view, the Weave and the Loss scenes are Gale's way to return that trust that Tav gave him first during the stew scene and the first artefact consumption.
The Weave was not a premeditated scene by Gale, as it's stated in the Dev's notes:
Dev's notes: When the player approaches, he dispels the image and he feels embarrassed to have been caught doing what he was doing. The conversation turns to his passion for magic however, and he invites the player to try to cast a spell with him together. […] He was recalling Mystra as a lover, but doesn’t say that out loud.
This scene happened by surprise, triggered by Gale's deep loneliness: Tav startled him when he was longing for Mystra while seeing her image in his incantation. We know Gale's mental state in this moment is a very lonely one since if Tav tells Gale to go to sleep, preventing the Weave scene, Gale will explicitly say: "Long days, yes. And long, lonesome nights.”
He shares in that moment how important and vital magic is in his life, and only then, considering the previous actions done by Tav (for sure the consumption of one artefact, additionally could be the death protocol), Gale finds himself willing to share this experience. It's important to highlight that this is too personal for Gale, too important, and a bit painful too, since we know later (second dream) that every time he connects with the Weave, he meets Mystra's disappointment: "What magic I can still weave is met only with undercurrents of disappointing silence.”
After a moment of rambling, Gale invites Tav to share the Weave. Here is where all the branches about explicit display of Tav's romantic interests can be developed, a neutral option for a friendship path, or Tav can have very aggressive and violent reactions. More details about this scene can be read in the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Proposition to Cheat". And again, for a char so guarded of his own privacy and personal stuff, sharing the Weave can be clearly seen as the return of the trust that Gale received from Tav during the stew scene.
Similar analysis can be done with the Loss Scene, where Gale will try to open up about what he lost, and depending on Tav's options, he may confess his pain in losing Mystra. For more details, read the post of "Loss Scene". This scene can be interpreted as another gesture of trusting Tav after they helped him with his chest problem.
Summary of the Stew Scene:
Medium or higher approval version: Gale introduces his request with the stew. He makes a friendly approach, asking for an exchange of trust: he needs Tav to agree not to ask him why he has his condition. Gale presents this as a personal boundary since the explanation is personal matter related to his experience with the orb and his romantic life with Mystra. He doesn't ask Tav to agree in giving him artefacts before explaining the request, as some players seem to misunderstand. Then, he presents the problem and his need for consuming artefacts, leaving the decision to Tav to give him them or not.
Neutral or lower approval version: There is no need to place a boundary. Gale is certain that Tav cares little for him, so they will not ask about his condition and well-being. He presents the problem and his need for consuming artefacts, leaving the decision to Tav to give them or not to him.
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
In these “scene posts” I will explore the scene of the title looking for the information in the dialogues. What I will be looking for is how much Gale “lies”, how much lore is provided, and any extra detail that may be of our interest to highlight. At the end of these posts there are summary points for those who don't want to read the whole post.
Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in this (post) while disclaimers about Context in this (one).
The second scene in which Gale repays that trust given to him during the Stew Scene is in the Loss Scene. Gale is probably trying to cast some Chosen spell and fails. If Tav decides not to push Gale's secrets, Gale will be thankful, will approve of this respect for his privacy and will express openly that he considers Tav a good friend. And unless Tav wants to pursue romance after choosing a neutral option in the Weave, the scene basically ends there with Gale saying: “And thank you for your patient understanding.” or “And try not to think too poorly of me. A cat can look at a king. A wizard can look at a goddess.” (depends entirely how much Tav pushed him to speak about Mystra in this scene)
Whether pursuing romance or friendship, in this instance, Tav is very aware that Gale lost something of deep value that makes him fail this unknown spell, and there is a mental state of restlessness:
Tav: Is something wrong?
Gale: Let’s just say not all is right. But that goes for all of us.
Tav: Do you mind? I’d like some peace and quiet
Gale: Quiet you can have – peace I can’t guarantee. Especially not peace of mind.
Tav: They say you should never go to bed angry
Gale: Isn’t that advice for couples? The only one I’m angry with is myself. Please – just let it rest.
Tav:Ever the mystery man, aren’t you?
Gale: I simply have a lot on my mind.
All these answers keep pushing Tav away from his “personal business”, implying that there is more in Gale that meets the eyes. Tav already knows that something is dangerous in Gale's consumption of artefacts that can cause catastrophe if it's not fed. This scene adds more mystery from Tav's point of view.
Now if Tav pushes Gale gently, we will notice first that in general, most DC are rather low: usually lower than 10. Some even 5. This is usually understood in DnD as a NPC wanting to speak (as long as they don't have any magical effects on them, like "friends" or similar spells that “magically” lower the DC). The aforementioned NPC is not putting a strong resistance to the pushing, and therefore the DC is low because their own volition lowers it. This could also explain why some of these pushes end up in Gale's approvals too: This whole scene of Gale with a friendly Tav pushing him can be interpreted as Gale wanting extra help to open up and speak.
We also know about Gale's mind state: this scene is about his own regrets:
Tav :[Persuasion] I’m the leader of this party. I need to know what’s going on .
[failure] Gale: You're the leader and I will follow you where you go, not down the path of my own regrets. With that I bid you an evening better than my own.
Tav: [Insight] We shared the weave the other night. Now share what's on your mind.
[failure] Gale: Tonight's not a night for sharing. Tonight's a night for regrets. With that I bid you an evening better than my own.
When the check is successful, Gale starts to speak with his flowery and story-teller mode about all the power he used to have.
[success] Gale: Very well. Just now, I was trying to cast a spell I once cast with ease, but I failed. You see, this fire – there was a time that I could make it come alive. That it would take the shape of a dragon and roar in delight. There was a time I could silence a Beholder with a word, and lift a tower from its foundations with a flourish. There was a time I was all but one with the Weave. But no more – a mere shadow of the wizard I used to be. Why? Because I’ve lost.
[Wizard] Tav: Are you telling me you used to be an Archwizard?
Gale: I was. Until I lost.
This fragment alludes to blasting lore concepts: the fire he speaks about is silver fire, raw magic that only Chosen of Mystra can handle. This is the biggest spoiler of Gale, it's the detail that claims that Gale had been Chosen or tested to be one. Any player familiar with Mystra's lore will get this reference instantly. Any Tav with average knowledge of Mystra will know it too: Silverfire is not a “secret” in Faerûn for Mystra's clergy or sages, it's the mark of the Chosen of Mystra. However, this is always up to the DM. Given the options we have in these dialogues, I believe Larian—as the DM—only would allow Tavs to be very ignorant of what happens in their world. I hope this is just because it’s EA.
[Comment after patch 6]: Now, with the motion added, we can understand that “this fire” means simply the campfire. Still, all these concepts and interpretations keep applying for his line “One with the Weave”.
Sadly, the following RPG options available for Tav to pick are pretty lame. All of them, even a wizard or a cleric of Mystra, do not acknowledge anything of this information as something highly suspicious to be considered as Chosen. I hope the incoming background tag of [sage] would acknowledge this, since as I said in the post about "Well-known Characters". Many of these characteristics are known by, at least, the scholars of Faerûn. It's not 100% meta-knowledge. Scribes, sages, and scholars have this information. And Gale has disclosed enough to suspect it.
Some of the spells described belong to high level wizard's spells while others belong to other classes, so these can be considered special abilities granted to a Chosen (for more details about the Chosen's powers read the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones"). Players who read Elminster Series would also find these descriptions (such as “being one with the Weave”) similar to the ones written in the novels, giving an extra hint that Gale had been a Chosen, and had been with Mystra in the same way Elminster was.
In this scene, we see once more Gale's patterns: He prefers to speak in this poetic way when he has to talk about personal stuff or painful consequences (killing the druids that triggers “the barren oak” scene or the goblin party scene). Talking in third person puts distance, but also the embellishment of his narration makes it easier for him, after all he is a poet/storyteller as well. Therefore, instead of having Gale telling Tav that he had archwizard powers some time ago, he does it in the poetic verbose description of the spells he could cast.
Then, the scene proceeds with a "repetitive" Gale, another narrative tool to tell us that what's happening is truly difficult for him to talk, and Tav has to push with DCs a bit higher than before to skip all his "I've lost" and finally make him talk:
Tav :I don’t understand. What is it that you’ve lost?
Gale: I’ve lost…
Tav :Who are you?
Gale: I am the man who came after – after having lost….
Tav : If this is meant to be suspenseful, I assure you it’s not.
Gale: You don’t understand! I’ve lost…
Some people may consider this scene a bit too melodramatic, but it's a narrative resource to emphasise where Gale's great conflict is. In any case, what it's clear is that the verbose companion, who always has a lot to talk about, is basically speechless in this scene, stuck in his "loss" (literally, metaphorically, and psychologically speaking). Part of this behaviour can be understood a bit more in the post about "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1", section: "Grooming".
If the final persuasion fails, we get a very meaningful line:
Tav [persuasion]: You can tell me. You can trust me.
Gale [Failure]: Trust is not the issue. The issue is that the truth doesn’t matter. Secret or revealed, the outcome is the same.
This line basically explains the reason for his secrecy: despite Gale being a private person, there is also this perspective that talking about things that can't be changed is useless. He is so stuck in the loss, that talking about it means nothing to him, "the outcome that he lost" is the same.
If the final persuasion is successful:
Gale [Success]: I’ve lost Mystra. I sought to impress her personally. To turn the eye of my muse upon me. To win the favour of a goddess. But I failed, and all I invoked was death and dismissal. My death. Her dismissal.
Here again we have some information that Gale had been withholding: He lost Mystra because he sought to impress her (in retrospect, he is not lying) He wanted to catch her attention, but he failed and “invoked” death. If Tav passed through the Death Protocol, they have non-detailed information to suspect that Gale's need for artefacts is related with this loss. See the post "Extra Scenes" for more information. It's true this information requires a lot of successful checks to reach. But a pushing Tav can have it.
Tav : Another fool pays for his arrogance. A tale as old as time.
Gale: Arrogance? Ambition, rather. And ambition is a fine thing – until suddenly it no longer is. Then again, if that is how you judge me, there’s little I can do to change your mind. But know that I have this ambition still. First to save myself, and after that, the licence to dream. (Gale Disapproval)
Here Gale also corrects Tav's perception of him: if anything, Gale has been a victim of his own ambition, not arrogance. In retrospect, we know that the ambition of keeping Mystra's attention on him made him make the biggest mistake of his life. The licence to dream, in my opinion, seems to evoke his desires explicitly stated during the Second Dream Scene as well, where he explains he wishes for Mystra's forgiveness, but he is also realistic enough to know that such a thing will never happen. The licence to dream it may mean to keep his hopes of forgiveness, but they hardly will turn into reality.
From Tav's point of view, the presence of Mystra in Gale's life is undeniable after pushing him to share his burden. He sounds like a strong devotee that somehow lost Mystra. We know in this short description that he “did something” to impress his Goddess and earn her favour, and in doing it, he failed, invoking death upon him. If Tav is sharp enough, knowing that Gale's consumption of artefacts is related to a “catastrophe” and to a sure death... maybe can suspect that Gale's primary condition may be associated with the loss of Mystra. My point is, even Tav has been informed a lot about Gale's “truth”. The “revelation” scene is not even a “revelation” anymore, it's more a “detailed description” of the situation.
If Tav pursues the path of "a moment of unspoken affection", we will find an interesting line too:
Tav : You are a good friend too, Gale.
[you let it rest] Gale: Hold on to that thought. I may just have to remind you before all is said and done. Goodnight. And thank you for your patient understanding.
This is the option in which Tav allowed Gale to keep his private issue a secret, but still in this instance Gale reinforces that there is something big behind all this that may shake the ground of the relationship Tav is building with Gale. This “I have to remind you that concept of friendship” is the equivalent of “after all we have been through”.
Gale knows he hides the details of his condition (which are not so hidden, really), and knows it's information that can cause a second abandonment (whether as a friend or a lover). Gale is at this point in his life very tired and lonely of struggling with the “orb” inside him. He totally could use some emotional support, and this is why I believe he has less tough DCs that one would expect from a Char who is actively holding information he doesn't want to share. We need to remember that Gale lives in a permanent anxiety mind-state too focused on Artefacts and the disaster he can cause, increased with the dreadful feelings that the “orb” inspires the hungrier it gets. He is getting fond of Tav at this point, and his abandonment would mean too much, even though he knows that he may deserve it.
As final comments after the scene, we have this bit of information:
Tav: There's something I don't understand. If Mystra abandoned you, how can you still cast magic?
Gale: The Weave is still here, all around us – inside of us too. As long as the goddess lives, magic is a tangible thing for those who know how to touch. I've studied magic for many years, and in as many ways I am still a more than capable wizard. It's just that I'm no longer able to perform those feats even arch wizards would marvel at. To have one hand on the pulse of divinity. You have to remember that the Weave is a living thing, both the embodiment and the extension of Mystra herself. She can give and she can take away. I'm afraid I'm still very much on her naughty list. Consider yourself lucky you're not.
We have once more another reinforcement of the concept of Chosen of Mystra, in case the previous hints escaped us. This speech also shows that Mystra abandoned him, but not banned him from the use of Weave, something she can do.
Summary:
If Tav respects Gale's privacy, Gale will thank them and say he considers them as a good friend or any romantic variation if that was pursued. Tav is only aware that Gale lost something precious that removed his powers. Tav is unable to connect it with the consumption of artefacts.
Pushing a bit, Tav learns that Gale had the power to use a “fire” that allowed him to cast over-powerful spells. A player familiar with the lore (and any Tav familiar with Mystra or with a theological sage background) will be immediately spoiled that this is Silver Fire, and therefore, Gale was a Chosen of Mystra. Many hints are constantly repeated that make the suspicion more certain.
Players who read the novels may spot more easily that Gale was a Chosen of Mystra.
The verbose companion, who always has a lot to talk about, is basically speechless in this scene, stuck in his "loss" (literally, metaphorically, and psychologically speaking).
After many checks, Gale confesses that he lost Mystra because he sought to impress her (in retrospect, he is not lying). He wanted to catch her attention, but he failed and “invoked” death. Tav can suspect that Gale's primary condition may be associated with the loss of Mystra.
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
In these “scene posts” I will explore the scene of the title looking for the information in the dialogues. What I will be looking for is how much Gale “lies”, how much lore is provided, and any extra detail that may be of our interest to highlight. At the end of these posts there are summary points for those who don't want to read the whole post.
Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in this (post) while disclaimers about Context in this (one).
The party scene, I personally think, needs plenty of polishing. The fact that many characters can have a "jealous" behaviour towards Tav no matter their approval looks suspicious to me. Gale's case is even weirder because if Tav did not romanced him at all, Gale will still share those judgemental comments that seem to come from jealousy, as well as strange dialogue options about “being a bad loser” when the context is not romantic at all. This would make some sense—to a certain extent—if Tav romanced him, but if Tav locked him as a friend, it has no purpose. Especially if Tav explores the option of suggesting him to spend the night together, which ends with Gale rejecting the situation because "they are just good companions" after such display of incoherent jealousy coming from a char who values privacy (and therefore would not meddle into Tav's personal affairs). It seems to contradict his character and therefore, it makes me suspect that the whole party scene is just very raw and unpolished in general.
As I said, the party interaction is very confusing since it doesn't follow the relationship context created by Tav, and in Gale's case looks inconsistent with his char as well, inviting a strong misinterpretations of his character (this is probably a consequence of the decision of making Gale part of EA in the last moment). So this scene analysis may be a bit messy since the scenes are messy too (hence this post's length. I'm sorry).
Whether Gale was locked into friendship or romance, Gale drops his famous line:
As they say in Waterdeep: In wine there is truth. That's usually followed by: In water there is good sense. Good sense will have to wait till the morrow.
A great warning line from a narrative point of view: he is basically saying that what will be shared that day under the effect of wine is true, but it certainly won't be "good sense".
In a friendship path, he would not want to waste Tav's time any longer, and will bid them a good night while promising a bed-story the next day. In that case, the wine line could be interpreted as the final decision of a confession that will happen the next day: Gale has finally reached a degree of trust in Tav that gives him enough courage to finally speak about the details of the "orb" (and I emphasise details because in broader aspect, he already shared what's most important: the "orb" in his chest is a dangerous thing. If Tav assisted with his death protocol, this is undeniable by now, unless Tav allowed him to keep his privacy).
In a romantic path, this wine line could be interpreted as the decision of inviting Tav to share a night, and explaining the details in the morning, the “good sense”. After the wine phrase, we have other piece of prose in which Gale describes a book that it's a bit more than a sexual book:
Gale: Allow me to make the following proposition: there is a book that circulates in Amn, detailing the first thousand nights of a newly-wed king and queen. They turned everything they did into an art. The art of conversation. The art of taste, time honoured and newly acquired. The art of the body. The exploration and acceptance of the self and the other. The art of the night itself. I say we take a page from their book.
Considering that Gale is not only a verbose char, but also a poet and a scholar, the enumeration of the concepts in the description of the book speaks a lot in my opinion. Gale is not inviting Tav to a night of sex (let's remember he never uses that word in EA) but to a deeper degree of "intimacy", as he calls it. There is a lot more involved in what he asks for: confessions in the art of conversation, pleasures in the art of the body, and, hopefully, acceptance. For Gale, acceptance is a big deal: it’s not by chance that he left it last in the enumeration, summarising the whole concepts with the "art of the night". Gale is truly eager to access these concepts, and in doing so, I personally believe he shows a fair level of naivety on this matter. It seems (especially later with his unpolished arguments in the morning) he felt he needed this level of intimacy—of acceptance first—so he could speak the details openly. He wants to have this night before any confession because he thinks that it would allow him to acquire something that would prevent the abandonment that he viscerally fears: acceptance.
Any of the options taken by Tav keeps showing his eagerness. He wants this to happen in whatever terms Tav desires: as a brand new experience (“blank slates on blank sheets”) or with the promise of commitment (writing the prequel of a newly-wed couple). Or if Tav romanced Gale and then chose to spend the night with another companion, Gale will still insist in sleeping together, showing he was open for Tav to have casual sex as long as the "commitment" part would be established with him. This is reinforced by the fact that, if Tav never shared the Weave with Gale, there is no way to sleep with him: Gale is not a character for one-stand nights. He craves for deep connection, for commitment, in whatever fashion he can get it. Mystra taught him not to ask about exclusivity after all.
Gale is so desperate to have this deep connection that if Tav doubts about spending the night with him, he will drop a line which can trigger an alarm in the player:
Tav: I'm not sure you're the one I want.
Gale: That's because you've yet to find out what you're missing. Doubt is a spoilsport. Cast it aside.
Gale, the scholar, the one who kept encouraging Tav to doubt and to think critically about everything, suggests to dismiss doubts. Once more we see he needs this to happen. Some players interpret this as manipulation as well. I personally think this also says something else in Gale: since the dev's notes show no second intentions in the only two scenes where dev's notes existed, and instead, they display how much fear Gale has for a second abandonment, Gale is showing here his inexperience with relationships as well as a constant fear for abandonment.
Gale is looking for commitment, for something that can last longer than Mystra's affair did: he wants something solid, but his inexperience in this field made him "acquire" knowledge of how things should work via romanticized means such as books and poetry. In his mind, the acceptance he needs can only be acquired due to the "art of the night", very well detailed in this book he describes.
It's true that, all this part, if we completely ignore the narrative weight that the book has for a book-based character such as Gale, can be interpreted as Gale manipulating Tav to have sex alone; desperate to obtain it, doing everything in order to get it. We can also see the description of the book as a “bait”, as some people do. It's a valid interpretation, especially for a Tav who respected Gale's privacy during the Loss Scene and the protocol, so that Tav has no information with which to connect the dots. But I personally find it an over-magnification to see him as a "mastermind of manipulation". The few dev's notes we have about Gale seem to confirm that nothing shadier than his “orb” despair and his fear for abandonment are going on. These fears are constantly echoing in his mind, and they are, as I said in other posts, the main reasons why he becomes emotional and prone to make mistakes.
Is this action manipulative? It can be seen as “withholding information” by any Tav who didn't push him to explain, otherwise, all the information in a general way has been offered already and there is no withholding at all. Is Gale a manipulative character? In EA we don't see a pattern of that behaviour to qualify him as such. He has been quite honest, explaining in all scenes what he can say and what he cannot, drawing his boundaries clean and clear. We saw him struggling with the explanation of what he lost. The few Dev's notes reinforce mainly his fear for abandonment, lacking any manipulative behaviour behind his actions. His pattern, in my opinion, is that he tends to make mistakes in his emotional state, which is mostly triggered by the “orb” and the concept of “abandonment”. Not so much with Mystra per ser. He seems to be nostalgic but more aware of what loving a God causes (his regret is explicit during the conversation of Karsus). He is quite done with "her love as a lover", but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to be forgiven nor he doesn't love her as the essence of Magic itself. More details in the post of "Mystra and her Chosen ones".
After the party, Tav can have a romantic conversation before the sex “intimacy” or can reject the chance. What seems incoherent in this part is when Tav is not in the mood for sex, and Gale simply cuts off the situation. He is a character who craves connection and intimacy, and pretty much like Wyll, he needs a bond before stepping into romance. To waste a night of celebration that could be used to share any other level of intimacy (let's say, talking? The man clearly LOVES to talk) seems strange. If this reaction is truly meant to be in the game, it would seem that he certainly was more desperate for sex than what all the previous scenes hinted, but in that case it would have done little sense to leave the tale of the wizard for the next night. Gale already knew Tav did not want to have sex, so no point in delaying the explanation of the details. I personally suspect these incoherences are a consequence of Gale being added into EA at the last moment, making him more “shadier” than he is meant to be.
To justify my opinion that this seems to be an unpolished scene: if Gale is not romanced, and conditions are given, Lae'Zel will spend the night with him, talking. Why would Gale prefer to share a night of talks with a companion with whom he had not the Weave connection before, but he won't do it with a Tav who shared it? I see some incongruence here, probably as the result of being added into the EA in a rush. His scenes are less polished and much more messier than the other companions' (certainly not more than Wyll, though) and his bugs and triggering priority show it.
This part is also seen as "coercive" by some players:
Tav: I’m sorry, but I actually don’t think I can do this. I’m just not in the mood.
Gale: Not even a simple kiss would change your mind?
Tav: No, it wouldn’t.
Tav: Maybe a kiss was enough
Gale: Are you sure? One kiss is like one chord in an entire symphony. It begs for more.
Gale: (disapproval) What a pity. One should never be afraid to live life to the fullest. Before we part.. I know there are many things about me that remain shrouded in mystery. You’ve been very patient with me, and I appreciate that. You’ve brought me back from the grey shores of death. You know of my condition, and you know about my unfortunate efforts to win Mystra’s favour, but those are but the broad strokes. The time has come to paint you the true picture. So come find me another night, yes? No kisses, just words. (Leaves)
Asking seems to be coercive for some people just because there is a disapproval. I personally separate very clearly what Tav sees and receives as information from the NPCs and what I, the player, do. Tav should react to what they see, but the player is having a “meta-knowledge” of the situation with the info of the narrator and the approval system. The player knows Gale is disappointed in not having intimacy now, and he expresses it. Then he behaves completely natural, and continues talking (of course) about what he will explain about in the following morning (I don't understand what impedes him to say it in that moment: is it the wine? He fears his charisma checks are at a disadvantage due to the wine? Is it just a reflection of the rush in which he was added to the game? We will see in the full release. To me it looks inconsistent.)
Anyways. The scene continues in the early morning or simply the next night depending on what option Tav picked. Here, Gale presents the details of the revelation: “It is a story full of answers long overdue. It is a story of a man who fell in love with a goddess.”
Tav: You're really about to tell me about another lover? What's wrong with you?
Gale :I couldn’t do it before. I couldn’t ruin the chance for us to happen. You were there. How could I say no to you?
Dev's notes: Gale revealed he was in love with Mystra. He tells this the morning after. Understandably, the player can react negatively to his timing. He tries to explain himself.
This line clearly shows that there was an intention in hiding the relationship he had with Mystra, which it's an “answer long overdue” (is it?). Now, some players consider this the proof of Gale's manipulations; the greatest betrayal, because people are entitled to know all the details of their partner's past before sleeping with them. Other players consider that it's in poor taste to disclose this exactly the morning after sharing the night with Gale. And I agree. However, I see a scene with a lot of over-magnifications and making things more problematic than they truly are. In my opinion, “the chance for us to happen” is deeply linked to the book of Amn for all the reasons explained before. It's not by chance that this book has such a weight in the scene. Gale also shows with this line that he has no experience nor idea how relationships develop.
I also think that Gale fails so much in delivering decent lines in this scene because, 1) this is a very unpolished text in EA, or 2) this is very on purpose, emphasising that Gale is ready to speak about the two topics that turn him into an emotional disaster and his word choices could be attributed to as someone failing many charisma checks. Maybe that's the intention.
If Tav considers this the greatest of the betrayals they can tell him to leave and Gale will not resist the rejection, leaving the party immediately and facing one of his biggest fears: Abandonment. And once more, the abandonment as a consequence of his own mistake. The irony of this path.
If Tav allows him to explain, Gale will accept any "judgement after telling his story". This is something very related to Gale's approvals: to have a complete grasp of a situation, you need to have all the evidence, hear all the details of the event, before drawing a conclusion. And curiously, no matter what aggressive option Tav picks, Gale gives no disapproval unless he is forced to leave the party. So, after some dramatic reaction, Gale will try to proceed with the telling.
Tav: It’s clear as day you are talking about yourself, you know
Gale: I know, but a bit of narrative distance will make it all so much easier in the telling. Indulge me.
From here, Gale gives Tav another courtesy gesture: to pick the version in which this will be explained. He clarifies that the long version, more pompous and verbose and in third person, is the one he would prefer due to the distance. Since the first meeting on the road, or the stew scene, passing through the Loss Scene, we see this pattern again: Gale, the character who always has a lot of things to speak about, has also topics that are difficult to explain and needs to use narrative tricks to do it. Not by chance he is a reserved person: those topics he can't talk about are always personal.
Long version
Gale: Once upon a time, not quite that long ago, there lived a wizard in a tower. The wizard was what one might call a prodigy, who from an early age could not only control the Weave, but compose it, like a musician or a poet. Such was his skill that it earned him the attention of the mother of magic herself. The Lady Of Mysteries, Mystra.
Tav: What did Mystra’s attention feel like?
Gale: Love.
Dev's Notes: nostalgic, regretful, bitter, sad, lost romance–all with a bit of hesitation on the front of the line.
Tav :He sounds like a very talented individual
Gale: He was. Even though it was in Mystra’s affections that his true power lay.
Tav: Teacher’s pet, was he?
Gale: He fancied himself much more than that. He fancied himself favoured above all others.
These three options give interesting additional information: Gale was convinced that Mystra's attention was love, because he was young and naive. He is now very aware that his talent meant little, because the true power he had was in Mystra's affections, meaning in being a loved Chosen one. He fancied himself unique, as a Chosen would do.
Gale: Perhaps it was not quite love,
Dev's Notes: A little embarrassed
Gale: but you see, the wizard was but a very young man. It was most certainly love to him. Mystra showed him the secrets behind the veils. The gossamer veils first, draped across the Weave. The delicate veils next, draped across her body. ‘Chosen One’ she whispered, as she slipped them off completely.
This is another fragment with interesting, yet disturbing lines: Gale now, as a narrator, questions if that past feeling was Love. He has matured his sentiments for Mystra, they are less "teenager-like". He is convinced that in the past it was love to him, implying that now he has doubts (concept reinforced once more by the end of the scene). The disturbing line is the definition of "very young man", which I will talk about in the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1", section: "Grooming".
Tav: The veils draped across the Weave?
Gale: Indeed. What most wizards perceive is but the ripple of the Weave’s surface. Untold wonders lie beyond. I enjoyed them for a while, as we enjoyed each other.
Once more, in these details, the narrative reinforces how intense is the connection of Mystra with a Chosen one. Again, this is lore information. Chosen ones have a deep connection with Mystra/the Weave/Magic, which is unique. More on this matter can be read in the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones".
Gale: One day all too soon, the whispers stopped. The goddess spurned the mortal. The veils were drawn once more, and the wizard was left behind heartbroken.
Tav: Poor wizard
Gale: Poor wizard. Silly wizard too, for he wouldn’t take no for an answer
Tav: What happened next? // I hate to say it, but he really could have seen this coming
Gale: He was blinded by love. Good stories are rife with lovers’ follies after all.
Tav: Perhaps she, like you, had other lovers she didn’t tell him about.
Gale : She might well have had, but that didn’t stop the wizard from trying to reclaim her affections.
Gale: Like so many of the heartbroken, he did something infinitely foolish. One has to think big if one seeks to win back a goddess. So the wizard thought big. [Here he explains all about Karsus who] sought to usurp the goddess of magic so that he could become a god himself. He almost managed but not quite, and his entire empire – Netheril – came crashing down around him as he turned to stone. The magic unleashed that day was phenomenal, rolling like the prime chaos that outdated creation. A fragment of it was caught and sealed away in a book. No ordinary book, mind you; a tome of gateways that contained within it a bubble of Astral Plane. It was a fragment of primal Weave locked out of time – locked away from Mystra herself. ‘What if’, the silly wizard thought. ‘What if after all this time, I could return this lost part of herself to the Goddess?”
Another part of the scene that keeps giving us a lot of information: Gale is very aware now how silly he was in his youth (at this point, one can almost remember his words during Arabella's quest: she is not innocent but that doesn't mean she is guilty) and his past young self was unable to take a no as an answer (which apparently Gale learnt very well when before this revelation or after, Tav can reject him and he simply leaves the party without putting much resistance, despite knowing that Tav only has a fragment of the big picture). The other answer reinforces his blindness by this strange concept that Gale thought it was love, and pretty much uses the word Folly for describing or making an analogy with his past, which again, it's not a casual word: Folly is a formal way to say stupidity and it's also a word that Gale uses to compare his mistake with Karsus' folly. As an extra, the last answer seems to explain very much what he does when Tav romanced him and then slept with another companion. Details of this in the post "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Proposition to Cheat".
Short version:
This version is shorter and more into the point without an excess of dramatic details that may end up annoying Tav more than making the process of comprehension better. The short version makes much more clear where Gale is standing: the facts are presented without his typical pattern of embellishing the story.
Gale: […] I am what one might call a wizard prodigy, who from an early age could not only control the Weave, but compose it like a virtuoso. Such was my skill that it earned me the attention of Mystra herself. I soon fell in love with her, and she returned my affections. […] Before long Mystra tired of me. What was I, after all, but a mortal plaything in sacred hands? You have to realise I was heartbroken. I was a young man, she was my first love. I thought it would last forever.
This part reinforces once more that he is very aware that a relationship with a goddess was very unbalanced, that Mystra was his first love, he was a young man, and he thought it would last forever.
For completion's sake, the goblin version has a different introduction:
Gale: Let's just get this over with. No doubt you've guessed by now there was something rather special about my relationship with the goddess Mystra. The thing is, we were lovers once. I am what one might call a wizard prodigy [...follows the same speech of the short version]
Three versions converge in the kneeling. The scene in this point has a different narrative value; a proud character as he is, who has a deep regret for his mistake with the “orb” (he says it explicitly in the "Loss Scene" post) kneels before Tav to humbly show the traumatic experience by placing their hand on his heart, where the “orb” resides:
Gale: Here. Place your hand over my heart. Let me show you
Narrator: You feel the tadpole quiver as you realise Gale is letting you in. Into the dark. You see through Gale’s eyes, staring down the corridors of a dread memory. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It’s teeth, it’s claws, it’s unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever hungry…
This scene speaks of opennesses in all senses, honest and without any interest of pretence: Gale is showing his greatest regret, the lowest of the lowest he reached, the despair that it inspires. For once, he is not talking, he is showing it (because the experience is the one that makes him speechless and its memory seems to cause him great pain too due to the facial gesticulation). And what Tav sees shows again that Gale has nothing extra to hide: this has been the same exact information that Tav could extract from him in earlier opportunities with successful tadpole intrusions. So, if Tav never reveals that they saw this in Gale during the stew scene, Tav will realise that Gale kept his promise: he was reserved for a while, trusting slowly in Tav, to finally open up and show that he was going to explain the “why” much more later, because it's truly difficult for Gale to speak about.
1-Yank your hand away
Gale: Terrifying isn’t it? And that is only the beginning
3-Tav: Gods – why show me this?
Gale: I’m sorry, but I had to. After all, that is only the beginning
4-Tav: I slept with a monster.
Gale: I didn’t sleep with a monster despite the tadpole in your head. We are none of us monsters. We are merely hatcheries for monstrous things. So we fight them.
This is one of the most ominous information Gale gives us, in my opinion: The experience of how the “Black Weave” rushed into his body is grotesque and painful, and it's meant to cause despair. But that was only the beginning: Gale is everyday dealing with that feeling, but on a bigger scale as its hunger increases with each passing day. The descriptions of his emotions during the artefact scenes adds more despair and anxiety to it. Gale is living in the worst mental state that a person can, but he manages it thanks to his wizard training and the Weave he consumes (he is still alive thanks to Magic, of all things). This shows the mental power of a wizard in DnD. And if you read the post about "Well-known Characters" section: "Elminster", Gale could have been inspired in him since I can see this level of endured torture similar to the one that Elminster was exposed to when he was kidnapped and dragged to the Hells.
Gale: This Netherese taint.. this orb, for lack of a better word, is balled up inside my chest. And it needs to be fed. As long as it absorbs Weave it remains stable – to an extent. The moment it becomes unstable, however..[...] It will erupt. I don’t know the exact magnitude of the eruption, but given my studies of Netherese magic, I’d say even a fragment as small as the one I carry…. It’d level a city the size of Waterdeep.
Dev's Notes: He admits he’s a walking disaster waiting to happen. This is said very seriously. The truth is finally out and he has no idea how the player will react to such monstrous news.”
Tav: I should godsdamned kill you
Gale: Perhaps that is what I deserve, but you deserve no such thing. To kill me is to unleash the orb. I understand your anger, I do […]
Here is where we know that Gale calls it “orb”, but it's not an orb. For more details, read the post about the "Orb". Tav already knew since the Stew scene that Gale could cause a catastrophe without artefacts. In this scene we just get some extra details about it.
Gale: It is my truth, finally revealed. It is this folly that led Mystra to abandon me completely. I can only hope you won’t abandon me as well. After all we’ve been through.. (After the night we spent together). Surely we can brave even this side by side.
Dev's notes: Solemn. Full of yearning his news will not lead to him being abandoned by the player.
And there, Gale's “truth” is “revealed” (not truly, it is only more detailed in the information): We know that the Weave he consumes from the artefacts keeps this condition stable (something we already knew since the Stew Scene) and it will erupt if it doesn't consume artefacts (which is something we knew since the Stew Scene too). So the revelation scene is not so much of a revelation. The whole scene has a writing with a lot of weight in “shocking” revelations and “dramatic” reactions when the context provided shows that there is little to be shocked about, in my opinion. If anything, this whole scene needs serious polishing.
Then it follows the “coercive” part according to some players, which again... it's only Gale hoping this situation doesn't end in a second abandonment. The concept that the “intimacy” of the shared night gives more reasons to stay by his side seems pretty naïve, but maybe that was the intention (thus my suspicion that Gale has no experience at all in relationships, only what he learnt from romantic books). What it's clear is that after the detailed explanation, Gale is desperate to avoid a second abandonment, yet he knows it's unavoidable. This can be seen when Tav doesn't forgive his betrayal (?) of not saying anything about Mystra or the "orb" (he did in the Stew and following scenes, but this context is not acknowledged here), and Gale simply accepts it, showing that Mystra's experience made him learn to accept a no, leaving the party forever (in EA).
Tav: No. This is too large a betrayal.
Gale: I see. I am sorry. I am sorry that it had to come to this. All that’s left to say is farewell.
Dev's Notes: A slight hesitation, hurt but understanding. He makes a polite little bow, then we see him walk away.
Really, I don't understand what happened with this scene because it's either ignoring any annoyance that the situation can cause on a Tav who didn't push Gale to talk, or it offers an over-reaction when all the information has been shared already, at least in a very generalised way during the Stew Scene. A Tav who doesn't push Gale to speak will have no more details than the ones provided during the Stew Scene at this point in the game, but one who pushed Gale will basically have the whole story covered. The Rpg-options we get here are so white-and-black, and not even coherent with the context, no wonder so many players turned Gale into a “mastermind in manipulation”. This scene is very unpolished in my opinion.
Tav: Gale, are you still in love with Mystra?
Gale: I’ll be honest with you; I don’t know. She is my muse still, the embodiment of magic, but the embodiment of love? Only if we ever meet again will I know
Here we have once more confirmation that Gale questions what kind of love he has for Mystra. Considering all the context he gave us previously, it seems that his love for his Goddess as a devotee will never cease, but romantic love is a big question for him. He has given Tav all the hints to make them suspect that Gale probably never knew romantic love outside his experience with Mystra or what he could read in books.
Tav: What would permanently rid you of the orb?
Gale: The orb was kept safe and inert in a pocket of Astral Plane, suspended in time. If I can somehow manage to expel it from my body while in the Astral Plane, it will be rendered inert again. Alternatively, I could learn to control it’s chaotic magic, that is; to succeed where I failed before. But without Mystra’s favour, I don’t see how that may come to pass. Of course there could be different answers as well. Faerûn brims with more magic than any one wizard could fathom, let alone comprehend. Who knows what outlandish solutions may yet present themselves?
The last bits of information are more interesting: Gale thought of two possible solutions to solve his “orb”problem. One is to expel the object out of his body in the Astral Plane where time doesn't exist so its hunger or ticking mechanism stops, so the magic will remain inert. The other option is to control Netherese magic. He informed Tav that he already tried this option, so it's clear that Gale's intention when obtaining this book was to master this strange piece of Weave and give the secrets of that control to Mystra. But he failed.
Summary of the post:
There is an important emphasis in acceptance: only through acceptance Gale can open up to share the details of his mistake. He wants to have this night before any confession because he wants to acquire this acceptance that, in his mind, would prevent the abandonment he viscerally fears.
In all the scenes there are many hints suggesting Gale is very inexperienced in relationships: the acceptance he needs can only be acquired due to the "art of the night'', which is one of the main points in this book. His notions related to relationships seem to have been acquired via romanticised means: books and poetry. He may believe that intimacy guarantees acceptance.
Gale “reveals” his truth: he was a Chosen of Mystra, he was Mystra's lover, and the “orb” problem was a mistake he made to earn Mystra's attention. All this information is now detailed here when it had been shared already. There is little “revelation” in it.
Gale's actions can be interpreted as manipulative for a Tav who respects his privacy and has little information about the “orb”. But hardly the pattern extends to his behaviour. His need for acceptance makes him make bad decisions.
A Tav who pushed Gale to speak in previous scenes finds little new information in this one: they will have a more detailed picture of the situation and they will know that Gale and Mystra were lovers.
Gale is very aware that Mystra's love was not exactly love, but it felt like that when he was young. He also knows that the true power of a Chosen is related to being loved by her. He is also aware that a relationship with a goddess is a very unbalanced one. He states that Mystra was his first love, the affair happened when he was a (very) young man, and he thought it would last forever.
Potent narrative image: Gale, a proud character with great confidence, kneels before Tav to humbly show the traumatic experience by placing his hand on his heart, where the “orb”resides.
In general, the whole tone of the scene jumps constantly in my opinion. Tav's options are not toned to the general atmosphere of the scene: or they ignore completely the value of what Gale says, or over-react magnifying information as if it were the first time Gale says it, when a lot of it was shared during the Stew Scene and following scenes. It feels like a very unpolished scene, probably as the result of Gale being a companion added to the EA in a rush.
The Dev's notes explain the whole situation as:
Dev's notes: synopsis: The principal portion of this dialog consists of two main parts: a romantic night intro that leads to a fade to black and implied intimacy, and a section in which Gale tells you his true story in either of two ways (chosen by the player). These are the ‘story’ variant in third person, and the slimmed down ‘story-light’ version in first person. It is the story of how he fell in love with the goddess Mystra, was spurned by her after a brief affair, and how he got himself into big trouble when trying to win her back.
The dialog was originally meant to contain only the above, but for recording and cinematic purposes, the story sections of it are also used in a variety of other ways, that is to say, the dialog also contains an intro section in which the scene begins with no romantic intent. In specific cases though, Gale will still try his luck, which you’ll see in the repeat of some lines of an earlier dialog.
This shows that, so far, the intention was always to make Gale explain the “true story” in this scene, which was the one we were told. I think that expecting more secrets would water down this intention here. In any case, the future secrets, if there are some left, may be secret even for Gale himself.
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
In these “scene posts” I will explore the scene of the title looking for the information in the dialogues. What I will be looking for is how much Gale “lies”, how much lore is provided, and any extra detail that may be of our interest to highlight. At the end of these posts there are summary points for those who don't want to read the whole post.
Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in this (post) while disclaimers about Context in this (one).
Protocol Scene
After skipping all the annoying protocol, we can reach to the most important part of it: the comments afterwards.
Gale: [...]I assume you have some questions for me. Only fair to warn you I've precious few answers to spare. I apologise if it sounds thankless. It's just that some secrets simply cannot be revealed.
[If Tav used the tadpole successfully before] Tav:[perception] I've seen the darkness inside of you, remember? I already know.
[success]Gale: You don't know. Not really. But after all you've done for me, I do suppose I should be at least a little bit forthcoming.
[Failure] Gale: There is no knowledge in a glimpse of darkness. My secrets are still my own.
Tav: [persuasion] I brought you back to life. A few answers is the least you can spare me.
[success] Gale: I... I suppose that after all you've done for me, I should be at least a little bit forthcoming.
Gale: Tell you what, I will answer one question that you may have. To the best of my ability. If I can.
Over and over and over Gale is very explicit that he has secrets he can't or doesn't want to share. This is why the “great betrayal” concept in the revelation scene feels so cheap in my opinion. Gale never denied that something very wrong was happening with him. He certainly opens a bit more once he is brought back to life and tries to compromise in saying something more. We can clearly see his resistance to it.
Tav: I simply want to know what it is you're keeping from me
Gale: I'm dangerous. Not because I want to be, but because of... an error I made in the past.
[before gale speaks of his loss] It makes me dangerous – even in death. You brought me […]
[after gale speaks of his loss] I told you how I sought to win the favour of Mystra. I did this by trying to control a form of magic only one wizard ever could. I failed to control it. Instead it infested me. It makes me dangerous... even in death. You brought me […]
Tav: Why did your projection say that many lives depended on your resurrection?
[before gale speaks about artefacts] Gale: Because it was the truth, and the truth is a great motivator. I'm dangerous. Not because I want to be […]
[after gale speaks about artefacts] Gale: When I told you I needed powerful magic to keep my condition under control, I didn't tell you why. Well, here is part of the why: I'm dangerous. Not because I want to be […]
[After using the Tadpole successfully] Tav: the darkness inside you, what is it?
Gale: It's magic from another time and another place. It is something that is beyond me, yet inside me. That makes me dangerous... even in death.
Tav: Actually, nevermind. If it makes you this uncomfortable, I won't insist.
Gale: That's... well, that's very kind of you. If the roles were reversed I don't know if I'd have your patience.
I mean... really... No matter the conditions, the context or the option picked, Gale can't be more repetitive about three facts: he has secrets, he is really dangerous, and there are 'catastrophic' consequences if we don't help him with the artefacts. None of them are a lie. This is also why I think the party scene is very unpolished: it doesn't acknowledge the fact that Gale already said a lot to some Tavs who explored and pushed Gale to speak, and the scene is presented as a conflict or a “betrayal” when there was none, specially for the case of Tavs who pushed Gale to speak. In either case, Tav is aware of what's happening with Gale: they know everything in broad strokes, or they respect his privacy and know little but they know that what Gale hides is a very dangerous secret. This is why I think calling Gale a manipulative or coercive character is very misunderstanding.
Tadpole Dreams
Dream 1
Gale feels well and healthy despite the terrible symptoms that Tav and their companions shared the previous night. However, Gale is a pragmatic person: this is not just luck and he makes it clear in his opinion:
Gale: What I saw surpassed the vivid. The voice was too true, the touch too tantalising, I can tell you felt the same. Sought out in the night by.... what? An illusion, or a promise? […] let's agree that at the very least there was the lure of a promise. The touch, the kiss, the everything... Did you relented or resisted? […] The dream wasn't just about power, it was about desire. […] It was an expert, this apparition. First the seduction, then the spurning, then that teasing souvenir. 'You are not ready, I will return when you are'. That's what I was promised. We have some restless nights ahead of us.
For players who pushed Gale to speak during the Loss scene, it's easy to suspect the person he is dreaming about: Mystra. The relationship with Mystra can be guessed during these comments after the dreams. We know that the dreams represent our companions' desires and wishes for power, and they have, in most cases, a sexual connotation. When Gale speaks about the kiss, we can assume that, same as what Shadowheart explicitly said, he slept with his dream person. So, if the player gets the Loss scene before the second dream, Tav will be quite aware of Gale's relationship with Mystra. Again, this is never acknowledged in the 'revelation' scene.
Dream 2
In the second dream, Gale is darker and bitter.
Gale: Good morning. I'm sorry, but I'm not in the best of moods. I tire of these dreams. Dreams. The word implies desire, but we're being played for fools. These are nothing but delusions.
Tav: I recall you being a lot more enthusiast after our first collective dream
Gale: I never said I'm not among the fools.
Tav: The power we're given is real, and there's no denying that.
Gale: It’s not because they’re real, that they don’t deceive. Give it candy and a child stops asking questions.
Gale: These dreams are too good to be true, and I can tell you why. Because their promises are perfect, and in perfection lies their flaw. It's the tadpole reading our every desire, but they don't read between the lines. They don't know some things are impossible. They don't know that... They don't know.
Tav: Gale, who is the apparition in your dreams?
Gale: She's... It doesn't matter. I just know her to be unreal.
Tav: What's impossible about what you're been shown?
Gale: Forgiveness
3- Tav: I'll leave you to your ruminations.
Gale: Remember: these are nothing but delusions. Don't let the illithid's close readings persuade you of good intent.
[If Tav can guess it's Mystra after the Loss Scene] So it's Mystra you see. Of course it is.
Gale: I... why, yes. Clearly the tadpole isn't the only one who can read me like a book. It's indeed Mystra I see. And yet it cannot be her. There was a time when I would have believed - but no longer. I told you that I lost her. Lost her favour and lost so many of the powers I took for granted. What magic I can still weave is met only with undercurrents of disappointing silence. Mystra has not changed her mind about me. That's how I know our dreams are delusions.
[If Tav cannot guess it's Mystra] Tav: [Persuasion] Come, you can tell me. We're among friends here.
[success] Gale: Very well. It's Mystra I see. And yet it cannot be her. There was a time when I would have believed - but no longer. Things were different once, between the goddess and me. But things have changed. The parasite has plans for us [...]
This scene, for those players who can be lucky enough to trigger (it has the lowest of the lowest priorities), removes part of the apparent “shadiness” in Gale. He repeats clearly that he dreams of Mystra, which should immediately make aware the player that this has sexual connotations since these dreams are about desire and power, and Gale also expressed this in the first dream about the kiss. We also discover that what Gale desires the most is not power, but forgiveness. This is why I personally see him as looking for power not as a means but as a goal: Gale wishes to save himself, to remove the “orb” from him, and to be “one with the weave”. The more powerful he would become, the closer to Magic and the goddess he would be.
However, Gale is a pragmatic, realistic character as we saw in the Ceremorphosis scene: he won't lie to himself. He is very aware that forgiveness is beyond reach. He may have believed it be possible when younger, but he repeats once more that this concept we saw in other scenes: he is aware that whatever he had before is over.
Summary:
During the protocol scene Gale explicitly says, once more, that he has secrets.
He explains that he is dangerous, even in death, despite not wanting to be, reinforcing the idea that his consumption of artefacts prevents something very 'catastrophic' from happening.
If the protocol is triggered after the Loss scene, he will explain that an old magic 'infested' him.
During the comments after the dreams we learn that the dreams represent desire and power with sexual implications in most cases (if not all).
After the second dream, Gale expressed his scepticism about the dreams. He knows his dream person cannot be Mystra.
We learn that his most intense desire, reflected in the nature of the dream, is forgiveness, not power. Let's remember these dreams can't be fooled. They show the deepest desire/wish for power of the dreamer.
If this scene is triggered after the Loss scene, we learn that Gale is always aware of Mystra's disappointment because he can sense it in the Weave every time he casts magic.
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Here, I compile several hypotheses that are pretty common to find around, expressing my opinion on them and showing what EA has given us so far to justify them or not.
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
Disclaimer about interpretations of Real Life concepts: I’m not a fan of bringing real life issues into plain analogies/allegories in a game which intention in doing so was not made explicit, but the fandom seems to like this aspect and therefore I would like to share those opinions here as well since some seems reasonable despite not being of my taste. This topic may be sensitive for some people. Be aware of it.
Hypothesis: Gale was groomed
Concept
Grooming is building a relationship, trust, and emotional connection with a child or young person (and sometimes their family as well) to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. Grooming allows offenders to slowly overcome natural boundaries long before sexual abuse occurs. On the surface, grooming a child can look like a close relationship between the offending adult, the targeted child and (potentially) the child’s caregivers. The grooming process is often misleading because the offender may be well-known or highly regarded in the community. As a result, it’s easy to trust them. Although grooming is more common among children, it may happen with adults too, especially in work environments.
Stages: First, perpetrators may target and exploit a child’s perceived vulnerabilities: emotional neediness, isolation, neglect, a chaotic home life, or lack of parental oversight, etc. They work to gain the trust of parents/caregivers to lower suspicion.
Once the perpetrator begins to fill the child's needs, they may assume a more important role in the child's life. Perpetrators utilize tactics such as gift giving, flattery, gifting money, and meeting other basic needs. Tactics may also include increased attention and affection towards the targeted child. The perpetrator uses isolation tactics to reinforce their relationship with the child by creating situations in which they are alone together or by cultivating a sense that they love and understand the child in a way that others, even their parents, cannot.
Once emotional dependence and trust have been built, the perpetrator progressively sexualizes the relationship. When sexual abuse is occurring, perpetrators commonly use emotional manipulation; they make the child believe they are the only person who can meet their emotional and material needs. The child may feel that the loss of the relationship, or the consequences of exposing it, will be more damaging and humiliating than continuing the unhealthy relationship.
Behavioural consequence
The consequences on victims of grooming tend to be very different depending on the victim's age, personality, and psychology, but some broad leftover traits or behaviours can be summarised as:
They are too eager to please and have a great avoidance of angering others.
Big desire for privacy: they know others will not understand what they lived.
The victim becomes withdrawn, or they may seem troubled by something but unwilling to talk about it. Alternatively, their emotions might become more volatile.
They tend to be unaware of the abuse for a long while even after the relationship ended.
If they are aware, they tend to display shame and embarrassment for what happened.
They can suffer abandonment issues depending on the way this relationship ended.
They tend to develop difficulties to maintain relationships.
This situation tends to be particularly invisible or dismissed for men and boys due to social norms about masculinity.
Inside the context of BG3
First, it's important to estimate Gale's age. More or less the fandom agrees he is currently (1492DR) in his early 30s. Mystra returned in 1479DR (read the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones" for details), so Mystra may have lured Gale into serving her as Chosen when he was around 17 years old (this depends on every player’s perception of Gale’s age)
This gives us a good estimation of the context: When Mystra returned thanks to Elminster—who gave her most of his Silver Fire—she immediately started to strengthen her network of Chosen ones and to work on repairing the Weave to its original state. Due to this unique context, Gale may have been observed by Mystra as a precious asset: a very young wizard who could not only control the Weave but compose it: a great skill to repair a still weak Weave. Furthermore, in the novel Dead Masks (1491DR), it is stated that the best way to cast a spell with a weakened Weave is to "twist" it instead of using it for tapping into the Raw Magic. In this book it is not clear if this is a skill that only Chosen ones have, but it has a strong similarity with Gale's skills.
Although we don't know much about Gale's childhood, if he was neglected or not as a child to be more easily lured by the Goddess, we can agree that it's most likely that Mystra has been watching him as a potential candidate since a child. Gale explicitly says: "I’ve been in touch with the Weave for as long as I can remember". And as far as Forgotten Realms lore goes, Weave and Mystra are the same. We also know that this is a common behaviour of Mystra who has been watching precocious, skilful wizards before choosing them for her goals: for example, Midnight.
When Gale reached an age that could be considered a "(very) young man", she seduced him, using his passion and love for Magic to lure him. She offered him a deep connection with her and with the Weave: with Magic itself. After seeing Gale's passion for magic, it is understandable that he—as a teenager or a young man—must have been dazzled by her and her proposal. We know that, in the novel Elminster: a mage in the making, she offered to Elminster exactly what he wanted the most: power to make his revenge possible . By the end of the encounter, Elminster became “charmed” by her despite hating her throughout all his life, turning into her devotee. This situation can be interpreted as another example of how Mystra works: she seems to lure her potential Chosen with the promise of giving them what they are most passionate about.
Once Mystra slept with her Chosen, and imbued her divine essence on them, she left them to their own devices, making them wait for her commands. In Elminster’s and Sammaster ‘s case, both were put under tests, being forced—by their own drive to please the Goddess—to develop more magic and personal skills to serve her. In the process, both developed an obsession for her. Elminster's seems to be less self-destructive than Sammaster's, but the latter could be understandable since he always suffered from madness. My point is, the pattern continues with Gale: driven by this obsession of wanting Mystra close, to please her, Gale tried to control an ancient magic, and failed, being abandoned by Mystra due to this mistake.
Gale, according to this interpretation as a victim of grooming, is still stuck in the process: he wants to please Mystra, wants to right his wrongs, even though in some scenes he seems to have been over her, in others he still seems to be very attached to her (it's hard to know which is the most accurate since it's EA and Gale was rushed), he keeps all this trouble in private because he knows nobody will understand.
Unlike an adult who realised he was victim of grooming, Gale seems to be still not over that relationship, showing many of the behavioural consequences:
Gale is a person who is always eager to please and avoid confrontations. If there is no choice he will use violent means, but he will always push for diplomatic approaches [1,2]. This trait seems to favour this interpretation.
He has a strong sense of privacy to the point that he is considered "shady". A lot of that desire for privacy may come from the fact that he knows no one will understand the unique relationship he had with a bigger entity. This can be seen by choosing the meanest options during the Weave and the Loss. Despite his many troubles, he remains secretive, acknowledging that "some things can't be spoken".
He is completely unaware of having been a victim of such power imbalance. He doesn't see abuse in it, and he is not performative about this fact, since he is very private on the topic until very late in game.
Nobody can deny his abandonment issues (which are even explicitly pointed out in the dev's notes) [20]
We can infer, by all the information given, that Mystra has been his first (and presumably only) relationship so far, giving a possible hint that he may have decided not to enter another relationship again or may have felt apprehensive about it (even though I personally think this impediment is mainly caused by the “orb”).
I don't completely subscribe to this interpretation because I don’t think Mystra’s main goal has been sexual abuse, but the creation of servants and devotees that allow her to expand her power. To do so, she uses sex as part of the “ritual” that transforms certain mortals into Chosen Ones. The way in which this is indirectly explained in the novels makes me remember the concept of Zeus and his abuse of mortals: he spreads part of his divinity in the form of demi-god offspring. In Mystra’s case, she seems to leave part of her divinity in the Chosen one that slept with her: the “seed” of semi-divinity.
However, it’s not clear if sleeping with her Chosen ones is a procedure she always does. Her daughters may have inherited her divinity when she conceived them while possessing a mortal body, but other female Chosen Ones seemed to be out of this process. Ed Greedwood also has a constant discourse in his novels where he explains that magic is “better” understood or much easily wielded by females because “they are connected to their emotions” and another stereotype of this kind. What seems to be clear is that Forgotten Realm lore hides as much as possible its queerness, and when it comes to Mystra, this habit of sleeping with her Chosen seems to apply (or at least make it more explicit) only to male mortals. So in short, her main goal was to catch another useful mortal to her group of Chosen Ones, and to do so, she lured Gale with all what she could offer. I also believe gods are gods, and they are immensely overpowered and entitled to do whatever they want in this fantasy world. They don't follow mortal rules, so they may have little scruples to do anything they see necessary to achieve their own goals, no matter if the consequences of their actions affect children, teenagers, or adults.
Mystra in particular has been a very neutral goddess (due to her many rebirths), not particularly cruel as an evil deity could be, but not completely selfless either: she has conceived her daughters using a mortal vessel who previously gave her consent but without knowing the consequences of giving birth each year for a decade while containing a goddess inside. Mystra also profited off of Sammaster's madness (some Harpers who wrote Sammaster’s reports suspect she could have been able to cure him): she may have actively decided not to in order to let his genius madness increase her realm of power/magic. Therefore, Mystra may have had little scruples to use a very young Gale enamoured with magic to turn him into another Chosen whose skills could fix the Weave given the context that it had been severely weakened after the Spellplague. So the grooming is not completely misplaced in my opinion.
Gale's Chosen selection process is not different to what we can read in the book of the Cult of the Dragon, where Sammaster became obsessed with Mystra after sleeping with her and developed metamagic as a consequence to impress her. Or in the novel Elminster, the making of a mage, where Elmister originally despised Mystra and every magic user. However, after being in her presence, he fell for her charm, and never could get over his "love" for her, suffering a lot of painful circumstances to just be a "good devotee" and serve her.
Mystra is written in most novels as the living allegory of the beautiful "mean" woman who will always ask for more from her poor captivated men, but she will never be completely satisfied, no matter how much they sacrifice. She acknowledges the effort, but she is always asking for more. Only with Elminster she actively tried to save him from the Hells, showing, for a change, that her Chosen can be a bit more than mere pawns in the big game of divine power. However, it's important to highlight that the last rebirth of Mystra has changed her: in the novel Dead Masks some of the Seven Sisters explicitly say that Mystra has turned paranoid, asking each of her Chosen to do missions that the others cannot know. She has become more secretive and cryptic than ever.
Mystra's actions seem to have worse connotation if we think that she can have visions of the future, as she had when she decided that Sammaster had to be her Chosen: she had foresaw the death of another Chosen and she wanted him to fill that vacuum before the event happened. So she may have foreseen Gale’s actions in his naive way to impress her. Maybe she wanted him to do it, so she could have a new piece of magic in her realm. But this is mere speculation, we will need the full release of the game to have the answer.
As I explained, despite not being a fan of it, the interpretation of grooming is not a bad one. It fits mostly if it's applied to a teenage boy, and probably it would have been taken a bit more seriously and less prone to jokes inside the fandom if Gale were a female character and Mystra a male God.
Hypothesis: Gale has abandonment Issues
Concept
Abandonment issues arise when an individual has a strong fear of losing loved ones. A fear of abandonment is a form of anxiety. It often begins in childhood when a child experiences a traumatic loss. Children who go through this experience may then begin to fear losing other important people in their lives. Some individuals continue to fear abandonment as they grow older. Although it is less common, abandonment issues can also sometimes begin in adulthood.
The loss often stems from a trauma, such as a death or divorce. Emotional abandonment, where a parent or caregiver is physically present but emotionally absent, may also give rise to abandonment issues later in life. It is not clear what makes one person develop this fear, since not all humans who have experienced similar losses do it. Trauma — potentially from abuse or poverty — may play a role, as may the level of emotional support that a person receives following a loss. These issues can have a significant effect on a person’s life and relationships because they fear that the other person will leave them at any moment.
Behavioural signs/consequences
Being overly eager to please ( a “people pleaser”)
Pushing others away to avoid rejection
Jealousy of the partner or the others when in a relationship.
Trouble trusting their partner's intentions.
Feeling insecure about their relationships.
Codependency
Need for continuous reassurance that others love them and will stay with them
Persisting in unhealthy relationships
Inability to maintain relationships: or moving quickly from one relationship to another or sabotaging them
Inside the context of BG3
I'm not going to explain this in great detail since it's spread in most of the posts I’ve done about Gale's analysis. What it's clear is that Gale has a constant fear for abandonment once he starts caring for Tav as a friend or/and lover, and this fear makes him prone to do things of poor taste. This fear seems to make him look for acceptance that only through a night of intimacy can give him. This information is apparently in the book he read, making us guess that his experience with relationships is rather poor if nonexistent. Dev's notes also reinforce the idea that Gale fears abandonment:
Gale: It is my truth, finally revealed. It is this folly that led Mystra to abandon me completely. I can only hope you won’t abandon me as well. After all we’ve been through. After the night we spent together. Surely we can brave even this side by side
Dev's note: Solemn. Full of yearning, his news will not lead to him being abandoned by the player.
Gale: Loyalty is such a… such a very rare commodity.
Dev's note: The reference to loyalty foreshadows Mystra leaving him.
So far in EA, we can see that Gale checks some behavioural consequences of this fear: he is always eager to please, approaching Tav with courtesy and jovial manners, only displaying his most acidic side to a Tav whose actions are evil. In that case, Gale cares little if Tav leaves him. With the Loss scene we can see that it is hard for him to give his trust to others, pushing them away because they would not understand the grave mistake he made. His trust demands constant progression from the Stew scene, to the Weave, to the Loss scene. If he is romanced, he asks several times if Tav is thinking of the Weave moment. When Tav asks him this question, Gale will deflect, always asking back to have Tav’s answer first before giving his: it could be interpreted as Gale looking for constant reassurance in the blooming relationship.
However, in my opinion, the best situation that shows his abandonment issues is during our meeting with Gandrel. Gale disapproves of handing over Astarion, by telling Tav about an anecdote of a dog turning old and mean: how his friend got rid of the animal just because it was an inconvenience. This is very curious since Gale's mistrust for Astarion is not a secret: he stated many times that Astarion is a danger to the group, and his wickedness causes him to strongly dislike him. The reason for this is quite obvious if we see both lists of approvals: mostly what one approves the other disapproves. Despite all this, Gale strongly judges Tav for handing Astarion over, and his disapproval for doing it shows that Gale is not lying on the matter: the meta-knowledge is trustworthy information.
This can be understood better when Tav defends Astarion against Gandrel: Gale approves twice of defending him. If Astarion is not in the group when meeting the monster hunter, the first approval happens when Tav recognises that Astarion is part of their companions/friends (therefore, Tav is showing care for their group). The second approval happens when Tav reinforces their loyalty to Astarion insisting that they won’t give his location (this is a clear display of loyalty that Gale acknowledges as rare. See the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Proposition to Cheat" for more details). Although Gale will explicitly question this decision, he secretly approved it (the approvals we saw are meta-knowledge: only the player sees them). Considering the undeniable context that Gale deeply dislikes Astarion, we may interpret this as Gale seeing in Tav a loyal person who will not abandon someone they care for, even if that person endangers them. Loyalty is something that resounds deeply in Gale due to his abandonment issues.
Another detail on this matter can be seen during the party. If Tav arranges spending the night with a companion and then asks (non-romanced) Gale the same, he will answer:
Gale: You are all too quick to abandon the one you promised yourself to. It’s not a quality I admire.
This line shows that first, Gale is not interested in casual sex; he needs the connection that the Weave provides and Tav’s explicit, previous romantic interest in it. Second, when Gale is romanced but Tav sleeps with someone else, Gale will not interfere in that affair, but he may not like it (due to his, I suppose, jealous comment since he doesn’t display an approval penalty for this). However, he seems to equate loyalty with commitment, understanding that affair as a fling but believing he still holds the romantic interest of Tav, hence his proposition the next day. More details in the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Proposition to Cheat".
---------
Sources for both parts:
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( 5V)
Some concepts were summarised from:
https://melcrowecounsellor.com
www.d2l.org/child-grooming-signs-behavior-awareness/
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Here, I will compile several hypotheses that are pretty common to find around and I will express my opinion on them showing what EA has given us so far to justify them or not.
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
Disclaimer about interpretations of Real Life concepts: I’m not a fan of bringing real life issues into plain analogies/allegories in a game which intention in doing so was not made explicit, but the fandom seems to like this aspect and therefore I would like to share those opinions here as well since some seems reasonable despite not being of my taste. This topic may be sensitive for some people. Be aware of it.
Hypothesis: Gale is a gaslighter
Concept
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgement. It may evoke changes in them such as cognitive dissonance or low self-esteem, rendering the victim additionally dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and validation. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction,and disinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilise the victim and delegitimise the victim's beliefs.
A gasligther's ultimate goal is to make their victim second-guess their choices and to question their sanity, making them more dependent on the abuser. Fandom does an incredible misuse of this word (and similar ones), that over-magnifies situations which don't have those dimensions. For example, it’s pretty common to read in this fandom that Wyll “gaslights” Tav when he denies that his eye is a sending stone. Gaslighting and lying are not synonymous at all.
Then, what's the difference? A person usually lies by either withholding or concealing information, or falsifying information and presenting it as true.
Gaslighting is similar to lying, but a gaslighter will also be attempting to confuse the other person by flipping a situation and putting the blame onto them, making them doubt their perception of events and second guess themselves. Typically the gaslighter is either trying to avoid taking responsibility for something and they want someone else to take responsibility, or they are trying to gain control over someone because they have an agenda.
So basically, gaslighting is about flipping, attacking, confusing and blaming, gaining power over another, and trying to get someone else to take responsibility for their bad behaviour. But lying doesn’t involve flipping, attacking or blaming and the liar isn’t trying to get someone else to take responsibility for their behaviour, they are merely hiding information for personal reasons.
Inside the context of BG3
Honestly, nothing of this is happening with Gale, not even with Wyll and his denial about the sending stone. Gale and Wyll are hiding personal information, but without any interest to control Tav. In fact, the one holding power is Tav: the leader of the group that no companion questions. It's clear for any player that Tav has so much power over the group that they can kill any of the companions without consequences.
Unlike an average gaslighter, Gale is well aware that his dire situation is the product of his own mistakes; the folly of his young self who believed that Mystra's love would last forever. We also learnt in the Loss scene that he deeply regrets this situation and during the Revelation scene he makes it clear over and over again that the only one to blame is “the silly wizard who did not accept a no from a goddess”, while being quite oblivious of the power imbalance his young self was in (here is where the grooming interpretation comes. Read Part 1 for details). Gale never disrespected Tav's opinions, confusing them or dismissing them. Gale can agree or disagree with Tav, and be very clear about it, but like an expected scholar, his disagreements are done with sensible touch and respecting Tav's individuality. In the only moment where Gale is aggressive due to dissidence is during the conversation after the goblin party or in his final scene before leaving the party when he is very low approval. But it's more than understandable since Tav forced him to be part of evil acts he did not want to participate in (after all, he is a good-aligned character, as Sven said it in PAX).
Even Wyll, lying straight to Tav's face about his stone eye, is not even gaslighting. Gaslighting is about power, control, and submission of the other. I would really like the fandom to learn the context of the words they use.
Hypothesis: Gale is a narcissist
Concept
Another word that fandom can't grasp and misuses so lightly. The difference between a narcissist and a cocky person or a high self-esteem person is big.
A narcissist is not just someone who loves themselves in excess and has a big ego. A narcissist is a person that has very specific character traits, the three main are: having a sense of entitlement, being exploitative, and being empathy impaired, or having a complete lack of empathy for others.
Sense of entitlement: A narcissist views themselves as superior and special and better than everyone else, so they think they should be treated that way. They have delusions of grandeur and a sense of omnipotence and grandiosity that makes them feel entitled to have whatever they want.
They see their needs and desires as a priority and more important than anyone else’s; they are ruthless in getting them fulfilled. They crave admiration and adoration and will demand attention, but they will not give anything in return. They’ll punish others if they don’t get what they want. They don’t care about the consequences because they don’t believe consequences apply to them, since they think they are above reproach.
Being exploitative: Because of their sense of entitlement, the narcissist needs to exploit and use others to get what they want. Exploitative behaviour includes: intimidation, manipulation, control, plotting, conspiring, strategising, teasing, bullying, threats, being aggressive and passive-aggressive. They take advantage and treat people unfairly . They do only what is best for themselves in order to achieve their own goals. Due to their lack of conscience they will not feel any remorse or concern for the person they use and exploit. Instead they will just feel excitement and pleasure at having gained what they believe is rightfully theirs.
Lack of empathy: Empathy is the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes, and imagine what they are feeling, understanding those feelings. Narcissists lack this ability, so they do not concern themselves with other people's feelings, showing little compassion for others. This lack of empathy means they have no problem taking advantage of people or hurting them when they exploit or degrade them for their own means, and they have no conscience or awareness about the pain they cause in others. This is the reason why they can't offer comfort or reassurance.
Another big sign that someone might be a narcissist is if they have trouble being told ‘No’. Narcissists lack boundaries and they don’t care about other people’s boundaries, so trying to set a boundary simply by saying no to them, may provoke a very strong reaction in them.
So, the difference between a narcissist and a cocky or high self-esteem person are clear:
A person with high self-esteem greatly respects themselves. Self-esteem is confidence in one’s ability to think, make choices, and act on those choices, as well as feeling deserving of happiness and benefiting from one’s hard work and accomplishments. Above all, it means valuing the facts of reality and reason to guide one’s life. A lapse in knowledge or a mistake won't threaten their self-esteem. In fact, they embrace facts, whether those facts come from themselves or someone else, because they know that knowledge will help them in their life.
People with high-self esteem rarely (if ever) evade facts or rational advice because they know reality is their survival tool and means of achieving and maintaining happiness. They may be cocky at times, but they have tact and empathy to understand their own mistakes and the effect that they may cause on others, accepting the blame.
Narcissism is the opposite of self-esteem. Narcissists act as if they know everything, and anything that contradicts what they believe is either evaded or rejected out of hand. They’re not interested in facts that contradict what they feel or want to be true. They feel they must be right all the time. Their charm and show-off is usually aimed to belittle people. They always want to remain blameless.
Inside the context of BG3
Gale is certainly confident in his knowledge and he is proud of what he does; he spent many years learning under many tutors; his skills are a product of hard effort and a privileged education (wizard education).
Gale: I'm a wizard of considerable acclaim, and scholar of exceptional accomplishment.
Lae'zel: You strike me as cleverer than most istiki, Gale. Multiple tutors I should guess.
Gale: Many a wise man and woman, indeed. Waterdeep is the home of myriads of scholars.
Gale: Benefits of a wizard's education, you see. Of course my considerable talent didn't hurt either. Well... That depends on who you ask, I suppose. I may have summoned things rather more exotic than a winged cat.
This is not mere fake, because the scene of Ceremorphosis shows that Gale has a deep understanding of the process, compared to the knowledge that any githyanki has (Lae'zel or githyanki Tav). What Gale continues stating are facts:
Tav: And what makes you the expert?
Gale: Study.
He is far from being the typical obnoxious scholar who enjoys making people feel small and inferior. Unlike the archetype, Gale doesn't enjoy mocking Tav's ignorance, on the contrary, the excess of explanation can be seen as a typical vice of a teacher (which is confirmed after the Weave: Gale has been a teacher for some students even though his patience was thin). But in the same way Gale states the fact that he knows a lot, he is also well aware of his limitations, and he doesn't hide that fact: during the scene of ceremorphosis, he acknowledges that his “knowledge fails him” when he tries to understand the anomalies they are experiencing.
During the Weave scene, he acknowledges the obvious:
Tav: You’re a good teacher.
Gale: I Know.
Annoying? yes, but true. After all, the game allowed a non-wizard Tav to channel the Weave, a unique experience for non-magical users. They are casting the Weave for the first time thanks to Gale's good instructions (and some luck with the dice).
Another situation can be seen during the scene of the consumption of the artefacts.
Tav: Thanks don't get me that artefact back
Gale: I myself am a much more powerful artefact in your arsenal. Rest assured of that.
His comment may be cocky, but it once more displays a fact: a functional wizard (with many spell slots) is more valuable than the power that those artefacts give to Tav (usually one spell alone). It’s also worth noting that none of his show-off comments tries to dismiss or belittle Tav.
Because of his habit of over-explaining, Gale tends to be considered a mansplainer. I would see it that way if his excessive explanations would only happen with female Tavs. But the truth is that he is explaining too much to anyone, even to fellow wizards that may know all that stuff already. After all, it makes sense: he has the [sage] tag; he read all his life, he knows a big amount of things, and he was a teacher: a terrible combination that justifies a character with a tendency to over-explaining.
But Gale is not even that cocky, in my opinion. Many of his scenes have a level of teasing that implies more a hidden joke than high self-esteem. This is a pattern that can be seen in several opportunities: Gale uses this fake cockiness to put some levity in the moment, showing his joking intentions by context or explicitly with words:
The scene of Ceremorphosis starts with him observing his own reflection. When Tav asks him what he is doing, Gale answers: “Indulging in a spot of vanity. Handsome devil, aren't I?”. He deflected the raw context of the answer with teasing. He was not indulging into vanity, what he was truly doing was to observe any change in his physiognomy, and he attempted to levity by teasing. This is explicit later, when the topic of the conversation focuses on the changes that ceremorphosis causes. Even the handsome devil comment has teasing implications: according to some idiom dictionaries, the expression handsome devil “it's usually used playfully or flirtatiously”. Again, a teasing.
During the Stew scene, Gale puts some levity before introducing the dramatic conversation about the artefacts he needs:
Gale: Curious time to be dieting. Especially with a chef like myself around.
When meeting the Myconid, Gale will talk with fascination about the ability of this species to raise the dead through spores.
Tav: Sorry, but I don't share your fascination for fungi.
Gale: Nobody's perfect.
Tav can be a bit dismissive with his response, to which Gale will reply with one of his typical teasing/jokes, implying the ridiculous idea that a perfect person should always be interested in fungi. It’s a joke.
Another attempt to levity despite fearing to turn into mind flayers that night:
Gale: More blood. That's a pretty sight. Give it to me straight, how do I look?
Tav: Like your handsome self, Gale.
Gale: Thanks, that's what I thought.
During the Loss scene, in the romantic path of “more than friends”, we have this silly, teasing/cockiness which lacks belittling intentions. He is just playful. That can be seen because he doesn't let the situation last more than a moment, immediately calling himself “insufferable”. A narcissist, under no circumstance, would call himself as such.
Tav: When I said we could be more than friends, you answered “perhaps”. What does that really mean?
Gale: If I recall correctly, the Waterdhavian Dictionary of the Common Tongue of Faerûn defines it as an adverb that conveys the meaning of “It may be that”, or “possibly”. Sorry, sometimes I just can't help being quite insufferable. In seriousness, I'm glad you asked that question. [...]
When the joke/teasing finishes, his words change immediately returning to the “serious” note of the conversation, doing it explicitly: “In seriousness”. Meaning he was joking a moment ago. He is painfully explicit.
The same exact teasing/joke happens during the scene of the consumption of artefacts:
Tav: Let's hope this was the last artefact I had to part with.
Gale: Come, come, these are mere fabled objects of great to enormous value. My continued presence though – quite priceless! On a more serious note, I do not wish to give you false hope. We're only treating the symptoms, not the cause. [...]
After the teasing, Gale explicitly says “talking on a more serious note”, meaning, the previous moment was a joke. Again.
Another example of teasing/cocky joke:
Wyll: Between the orb and the bug you've got more than your fair share of unwelcome passengers.
Gale: What can I say. Mother always taught me to be a gracious host.
Gale claims to be a gracious host, but the context surrounding this... just makes it into a joke. This is why I insist so much in the Context.
This happens during the “Revelation” scene too, when it's Tav who attempts to use this teasing to relax the tense situation with a joke:
Tav: When you put it like that – no one can say no to me.
Gale: After all, even I am only human. (Gale Approves)
It's painfully obvious they tease one another. After all the conversation of Mystra and the orb, some Tavs may want to opt for this option to answer Gale, and he even would approve this attempt of levity, because it's the same exact, silly thing he does as a pattern. He also approves it because he likes confidence. Again, I will repeat myself, but it's clear that Gale is char with high self-esteem, and likes people with that same trait. We know this because during the party when Tav accepts his out-of-nowhere “thank you”. Gale immediately says: “There's that confidence I like”.
During the scene after the party, we have some extra silly, cocky moments that could be the result of wine in Gale's system, or the messiness of the scene itself, since it’s so unpolished:
Tav: I think that sounds delightful
Gale: That's because I'm full of delights
Tav: You’re a good kisser.
Gale: I’m of the opinion one should try to excel at everything.
Tav: Thank you for a wonderful night.
Gale: Like I said; I try to excel at everything.
I would like to highlight this line because the way it's said shows a level of confidence that is not related to an excess of ego, but to a high self-esteem behaviour: he says “try”. Meaning, he knows he may fail. His past is proof that he can try to excel at things that he would never be able to manage, and unlike a narcissist, he acknowledges his limitations once more.
Another interesting exchange is after that night:
Gale: A night to remember. It was wonderful, wasn't it?
Tav: Oh, I've had better.
Gale: I had a goddess, but you don't hear me complaining.
[After apology]
Tav: We should do it again sometime.
Gale: We absolutely should, after all I need to undone the misconception that you had better.
Tav can question Gale's performance, and after repaying that rudeness with his comment on the Goddess, (again, Gale is a character that will pay you with the same coin [18]) he accepts the criticism and promises—with a teasing—to do it better. Again, an impossible gesture in a narcissist.
But not only in these teasing/joking situations we see his high self-esteem: in bitter or aggressive reactions, we see he uses it to enrage his rude/violent interlocutor:
During the Weave scene:
Gale: What did I think about seeing my head on a spike? That I still looked as handsome as ever, that's what.
Gale is hurt of being depicted beheaded (we know he fears death, the scene with Nettie shows it). His answer is, of course, rude after such a gore image projected in his mind. But instead of resorting to plain aggression, he pretends that it did not have the effect that Tav wanted to cause. To do so, he shows off.
The scene of Mirkon displays both styles of teasing: Gale started using his teasing/cocky attitude with a clear intention of sharing something personal with Tav, who has just done an action that it's important for Gale (saving children/youngsters of their own mistakes [5, 12b], a concept that echoes in Gale's background).
Gale: Benefits of a wizard's education, you see. Of course my considerable talent didn't hurt either. Well... That depends on who you ask, I suppose.
Tav can ignore this silly cockiness and engage in what Gale wants to share, leaving the moment at that. But if Tav opts for a rude comment, Gale will answer with a degree of rudeness too, using a condescending tone (but it’s very light if we compare it with the level of aggressive condescending he displays with an evil Tav). We need to remember that Gale is a char who follows the philosophy of giving people their own medicine [18]. That's what he does:
Tav: Considerable talent. Are you always this full of yourself?
Gale: Only when the occasion suits. That's mostly a synonym for 'yes', by the by. Anyway--
Gale is a very confident character, but his high self-esteem is not that broad. It is limited to his knowledge and appearance, but never to relationships. Exactly it's there where he becomes less confident and when his emotions and abandonment issues conflict with his good sense.
Don't get me wrong, Gale's ego is there, I'm not denying it. But like everything in this fandom, some groups tend to over-magnify what the game gives in EA. Gale has a very well founded self-esteem in academic and researching fields: he has been a prodigy of the Weave from a young age (probably very close to a Weavemaster, skill referred in the novel Dead Masks), and a remarkable scholar with artistic attitudes in poetry. He worked hard for years to amass all that knowledge (he has a [sage] tag for a reason) and then he became, briefly, a Chosen one (not a small feat) which catapulted him to an status of archwizard. He could be so immensely obnoxious, aggressive, and dismissive as Fane is in DOS2. Still, Gale remains in a low level of a playful ego that only surfaces when the situation requires a teasing/levity or when it is a bitter tool against an aggressive and rude Tav. Considering him a narcissist is to over-magnify this trait out of the chart. He is a lore-content character; that character that in many rpg games will accompany us while explaining the context of the fantasy world we are playing in; therefore it is natural and obvious that he will over explain like no other companion so far.
Of course, all this is EA and may change by the time the game is released. But so far we should analyse what has been given to us.
I personally don't like this trait of his, but I think it's part of his many flaws. After all, he is the embodiment and the concept "humans are fallible", and he is very aware of that every time he speaks in seriousness.
Hypothesis: Gale is a manipulator
Concept
I suggest reading the post about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation" for the definition and understanding of the concept.
Inside the context of BG3
On this aspect, I won't repeat myself, and I will recommend to read the series of posts I've done about "Gale: Manipulation, Lies, and Trust" which explains in detail the Stew Scene, the Loss Scene, the Party Scene and extra scenes (death protocol and dreams). This series focuses exactly on the degree of truth and lies that Gale shares with different Tavs (depending on their choices). As a broad conclusion I can say that Gale is not a manipulator as a main trait in his personality, and may (or not) withhold information if romanced (depending on Tav’s choices).
He is not even a liar, since he has always made clear his boundaries and never denied to have secrets. Earning his trust to open up takes its time and good actions, and only in a romantic path there is a more messy approach: the scene pretends to create a “great betrayal”, when there is little since all the information concerning the “orb” has been given in broad strokes previously. The information that Gale has been withholding was personal and private but said in a bad timing making it of poor taste. The whole scene is very unpolished, not reacting to the amount of information that Tav can have from previous scenes. It presents two apparent conflicts:
The “orb”, which danger has been stated since the first moment we met Gale, and it was reinforced in most scenes; so there is not a great revelation in it by the end of EA.
The other conflict is apparently Gale's past lover: Mystra. Which can be surprising for a Tav, but not so much for a player who knows the lore background. In any case, the scene offers poor options to react to all this: or it ignores all the information that Tav can know by that time (information given by Gale himself), or gives over-reactive options, pretending that Mystra and the Orb are informations that never were informed in the game.
So far in EA we see that Gale could withhold personal information not because he wants to have power over Tav, but as a consequence of his visceral fear for a second abandonment. Gale suffers from abandonment issues that make him prone to making bad decisions when confronted with that situation.
As I said before, for a real and detailed analysis read the post "Gale: Manipulation, Lies, and Trust", which is summary of the posts
'Stew' Scene (extensive)
Loss Scene ( extensive )
Party Scene ( extensive )
Extra Scenes: death protocol and comments on dreams
Hypothesis: Gale makes you "cheat" your LI
I won't repeat myself so I recommend to read the post Gale proposes you to 'cheat' "
Hypothesis: Gale still loves Mystra
I recommend reading the post Does Gale love Mystra?.
Hypothesis: Gale has no Tadpole
I recommend to read the post of "The Tadpole"
---
Sources for both parts:
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( 5V)
Some concepts were summarised from:
https://melcrowecounsellor.com
www.d2l.org/child-grooming-signs-behavior-awareness/
This post was written in June 2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Here I'm going to explain some interesting characters worth knowing in detail that some groups in the fandom keep saying are Gale's true identity.
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in this (post)while disclaimers about Context and the popularisation and misuses of professional words in "Context, persuasion, and manipulation".
Azuth
He is the Patron of Wizards, his personal preference is toward wizardry rather than sorcery, and his philosophy fits better with the studious life of a wizard than the more haphazard practices of a sorcerer. Wizards invoke Azuth when they scribe scrolls, inscribe magic circles, attempt to memorise spells, and even when they cast spells. Often this acknowledgement comes in the form of silently forming Azuth's holy symbol, pointing the index finger of the left hand to the sky.For many wizards, the gesture is so commonplace in their lives that it becomes an unconscious habit. Azuth is represented at such sites as a hooded and bearded figure with his left hand held high, finger pointed up. Sometimes he is represented by merely the hand.
When he was a mortal, he was a wizard who showed prowess with spells and magical lore that attracted Mystryl’s attention, and after completing several quests to prove his worth, she named him Magister (old title in 1e and 2e, different to Chosen, related to a more bureaucratic role of Magic). With the new title, he taught magic to many people across Faerûn.
Azuth came into conflict with a minor southern deity: Savras the All-Seeing. Both were powerful spellcasters and Mystryl favoured both. They began a battle that lasted several years, using agents, magic traps, and personal spell-battles. Azuth managed to defeat the young deity and imprison him. With this victory Azuth ascended to godhood, became Mystryl's lover, and pledged to serve her.
During the Spellplague, Azuth fell to the Hells and Asmodeus consumed his divine spark to achieve godhood. It was thought that this had destroyed Azuth, but instead he ended up inhabiting Asmodeus' body together. Most of the time Asmodeus had control over the dormant Azuth. In 1486, Azuth managed to have a Cormyrian war wizard as a Chosen, and began to struggle with Asmodeus for dominion over their shared body. As a consequence, the hierarchy of the Nine Hells is jeopardized due to the unbalanced Asmodeus. After a while, The Chosen of Azuth sacrifices his life to be a vessel for the god and let him escape from the Hells. After the Second Sundering, Azuth returned to the faerunian pantheon.
Where is he in 1492?
Now, he has returned to the Faerunian pantheon, and considering Ao's ban, he can't be walking around Faerûn.
Can Gale be Azuth? I certainly can't see it. Azuth has been trapped in the Hells for most of Gale's life, returning to the pantheon recently. And we can't forget Ao's ban of direct contact: no god can have direct contact with mortals anymore, with the strange exception of Mystra (see the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones" for more details). Besides, if Gale were to be Azuth's avatar, we are usually talking about characters over lvl 40.
The only link we can agree with Gale is that Azuth also has storm motif concepts in his design. Gale tends to explain with his pointing finger extended, but as it's said in the lore books, this is basically an unconscious common body language in most wizards. I cannot see any resemblance to make us infer “Gale is Azuth”.
What we can see by reading Azuth's story is why the Hells are so convoluted at this point. The blood war is unbalanced, since powerful figures such as Asmodeus had been having weak periods of leadership due to the inner fight with Azuth in his own body. For this detail alone, it is so important to give context to BG3 I considered worthy to mention.
Sources:
3e : Magic of Faerûn
5e: Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide,
Novels: Fire in the Blood. The devil you Know
Myrkul
Myrkul had a cold, malignant intelligence, and spoke in a high whisper. He was always alert, never slept, and was never surprised. He was never known to lose his temper or be anything other than coldly amused when a mortal succeeded in avoiding his directives or chosen fates. His influence in Faerûn was imposed through fear, and he was a master of making mortals terrified of him through his words and deeds. He was the one deity that almost all human mortals could picture clearly.
As a mortal, Myrkul's full name and title is said to have been Myrkul Bey al-Kursi. He was a powerful adventuring necromancer who travelled with Bane and Bhaal in order to acquire divinity for themselves. In -375 DR, they slayed one of the Seven Lost Gods, gaining a bit of divine power. Using it to go further, they embarked to Jergal's realm with the intention to slay him as well.
However, Jergal—tired of his godhood—freely agreed to hand over his dominion of the underworld. As the three could not decide who among them would sit upon the throne of the dead, they left the decision to chance with a game. More details and stories of several deaths and coming backs can be briefly read in the wiki. It makes no sense to add them here since they provide nothing interesting related to Gale.
Most of Myrkul's “recent” story can be seen/read in the game Neverwinter Nights 2, the Mask of the Betrayer. The game explains how Myrkul created the Wall of the Faithless (non existent anymore in 5e and nobody knows how it was destroyed) where the souls of the faithless or those abandoned by their gods got stuck in eternal pain. The main goal of the Wall was to use all that energy to feed Myrkul. The main character of Neverwinter 2 can visit the agonising God in the Astral Plane and kill him or leave him in a slow death.
Myrkul, with Bane and Bhaal, tried to seize the Tablets of Fate from the overgod Ao and use them to rule over Faerûn and its gods. They failed and were slain during the Time of Troubles. Since then, a variety of contingency plans they had in place allowed them to be reborn afterwards.
A small group of followers across Faerûn kept Myrkul's worshipping alive despite the dire events of the Spellplague and the Second Sundering. In the 1400’s, he is considered to have returned with the three dead in a quasi-deity condition.
While the Sundering forced the other gods to withdraw their direct influence from the mortal world, the Dead Three remained behind in mortal form as quasi-divine beings. While their power has diminished, they remain a formidable trio and play a malevolent role in influencing events on Faerûn.
Where is he in 1492?
He is clearly somewhere in Faerûn, with Bhaal and Bane most probably (we have strong leads to assume that the Absolute is them, getting as many worshippers as they can to recover their deity status, since now they are only quasi-deities)
Can Gale be Myrkul? I honestly can't see anything that we can use to link him to Myrkul without making it look like an absurdity. The easiest argument to revoke that nonsense is that Gale clearly is not a quasi-deity.
A quasi-deity is immune to every attempt to tamper with their mind (which would nullify the tadpole effect, and would make Gale immune to any tadpole intrusion, which is not the case as we saw in the post of "The Tadpole"). A quasi-deity is also immune to sap its vitality, or to force it into a different form. It has a strong defence against magic and a limited defence against heat. Weapons not enchanted with magic of an epic scope could not hurt a quasi-deity without problems. These defences against magic, heat, and non-magical physical attacks grew stronger as a deity rose in rank. It is crystal clear that none of this applies to Gale, the squishy wizard of the group.
This comparison is nonsense, especially if we think that some people supported it because “Gale's robes have clasps in the shape of triangles”, which was considered an incomplete symbol of Myrkul. So... I really won't waste time in this comparison. I just did it because I wanted to offer a summary to compare Myrkul (the three dead more precisely) with The Absolute. This idea is very strong when we think that in 5e DM book is explaining that a quasi-deity can recover their godhood condition if they amassed a sufficiently high number of followers (which is what The Absolute is doing). But this should be done in another post related to the Absolute.
Source:
2e: Faith and pantheon,
5e: Descent to Avernus, Dungeon Master's guide
Karsus
Karsus was born in Netheril in -696 DR. He was able to cast his first spell at the age of two, and by the age of twenty-two created his own floating city. He also founded a magic school encouraging radical thinking to keep pushing magical discoveries. A seer warned Karsus that soon Mystryl would face the greatest challenge of her divine life, so worried about the consequences of this, Karsus created his spell Karsus' Avatar with the objective to protect the Netheril civilization. This spell would steal the power of a deity and transfer it to him, giving him divine power to protect his people from Mystryl's challenge and destroy the magical aberrations that had been attacking Netheril (phaerimms) for years. He was very aware that the feat could cost him his life, but he accepted it as a worthy sacrifice to protect his people as well as remain in the History as an iconic figure.
In -339 DR, Karsus chose Mystryl, the goddess of magic, as his target, feeling that she was the most powerful deity and the most appropriate choice for his purposes. However, this was a mistake. The responsibilities of the deity of magic are to regulate the flow of magic to and from all beings, spells, and magic items in the world. Unable to fulfil Mystryl's function with the Weave, Karsus causes a surge of magic and violent fluctuations.
In an attempt to save the Weave, Mystryl sacrificed herself to block Karsus's access to the Weave, causing all magic to cease for several minutes. The flying cities of Netheril (fuelled by magic) fell to the ground. The severing of the link also killed Karsus, who turned into stone and fell to the ground, seeing his entire civilisation being destroyed because of his actions. This is known as Karsus's Folly.
The stone form of Karsus eventually landed in a part of the High Forest, now called the Dire Wood. Karsus was never accepted as a petitioner by any god, nor did he go to the Fugue Plane when he died. Instead, his soul was bound to the Material Plane. Those with experience in pact magic could call up his vestige, where he appeared as a giant blood-red boulder, like the one found in the High Forest where his petrified form landed. Blood burbles up from the top of the stone, trickling down the side facing the summoner, pooling at the base. Karsus granted the summoner a boost in magical ability, though he also imparted some of the arrogance he was renowned for.
Where is he in 1492?
Even in death, Karsus' undying spirit persists in the chaotic magic of the Dire Wood. His essence is ensnared in a single point of time by the magic of the lich Wulgreth, and it manifests in three separate pieces. Each manifestation contains one portion of Karsus' tripartite spirit. It is believed that Karsus cannot depart from the Realms until his sundered spirit is reforged into one.
Karsus' mortal body survives as a tall butte of red stone embedded in the ground and eroded by the elements. This manifestation radiates heavy magic (read the post about the "Orb" for more details)
Karsus' gigantic, ever bleeding heart beats within the butte itself. This manifestation is essentially powerless, but it cannot be destroyed. Karsus' heart continuously radiates an enchantment similar to the sadness effect produced by the 4th level wizard spell Emotion.
The final third piece is inside an animated golem created by Wulgreth. This manifestation bleeds an ever-flowing stream of blood like liquid which mingles with the Heartblood River, giving it its characteristic colour.
So, can Gale be Karsus? Hardly. Karsus' spirit is not even complete. One could ask if Gale is a part of Karsus? I don't see it either: each of these parts are stuck in the different stones across the Dire Wood, and since it was a lich who made the binding I see little reason to suspect how a piece of Karsus' spirit stuck in the middle of the continent reached a baby in Waterdeep.
Sources:
2e: Magic of Faerun, Powers and Pantheons
3e: Lords of Darkness
Elminster
Elminster was born in 212 DR, son of a prince of Athalantar. His parents were killed by mages and at the age of 12 he became a brigand and thief. With a friend thief, Elminster committed many acts of thievery together and lived life fully, creating the gang the Velvet Hands after a number of adventures.
Elminster tried to desecrate a temple of Mystra as a gesture of vengeance for the goddess having not defended his parents when they were killed by mages. Mystra appeared before him, and despite Elminster's defiance, she offered him the power to take revenge for his dead parents. Elminster accepted, and Mystra turned him into a woman to see “the world with female eyes” and to strengthen his bond with magic before being a proper Chosen. This transformation also helped Elminster to pass unnoticed among his enemies. He spent a long time learning magic in this shape, taught by Mystra's avatar in disguise. When her disguise was uncovered, she and Elminster slept together and she offered him to become her Chosen. By that time, Elminster accepted any command from the Goddess, his defiance was completely gone.
In 241DR he travelled to the city of Cormanthor and continued his magical studies.
Somewhere around the mid–7th century DR, Elminster entered a tomb and became trapped there in stasis for roughly a century. He emerged from the dusty tomb in 759 DR. By that time Magic was unreliable (Mystra was possessing Elué's body to conceive her daughters). The god Azuth told him that he couldn't rely on Mystra or magic for aid. Soon he had to learn how to survive without magic. He later underwent further magical training under the tutelage of a wicked sorceress who sought to tempt him away from Mystra's path. During a fake ritual for Bane, she revealed herself to be the goddess Mystra herself, once again testing him.
In 767 DR, Elminster became a foster parent to three other of Mystra's Chosen: Laeral Silverhand, Storm Silverhand, and Dove Falconhand.
In 851 DR, Elminster mentored the newly-appointed Chosen of Mystra, Sammaster, in how to use his new powers.
During the Harpstar Wars in 1222 DR, Elminster defeated the Zulkir of Necromancy, Szass Tam, and earned himself (and the Harpers) the enmity of Thay.
In 1358 DR, just before the Time of Troubles, Mystra gained some foreknowledge and backed up her power into Midnight, the human wizard, so it would not be lost. During this time, Elminster, like most wizards who received his power from Mystra/the Weave, was left powerless once more.
In 1371 DR, the new Mystra stripped away many of Elminster's memories of her former incarnation's secrets. By the end of that year, he was called to Blackstaff Tower to discuss the phaerimm attack. The whole event ended up being related to a planificated attack from the Shadovars. Since shadovar were living shadow magic, and silver fire was raw magic, the collision between the two tore at the fabric of reality, creating a rift to the Nine Hells. Elminster realized that the only way to close the portal before legions of devils spilled forth into Toril was to close it from the other side. He did it, being trapped on the other side and at the expense of much of his magical strength.
Once in Hell, he was abducted and enslaved by an outcast archdevil known as Nergal, who wished to discover the secret of Mystra's silver fire. Elminster was subject to brutal tortures, surviving only because of his exceptional endurance and ability to heal himself with silver fire. Mystra tried to save him herself, but ended up sending several Chosen ones instead. Only The Simbul was successful in his rescue.
In 1373 DR, Elminster discovered a daughter he had never known, conceived against his will with a dragon thanks to Mystra's intervention.
Following the death of Mystra in 1385 DR and the collapse of the Weave during the Spellplague, Elminster was stripped of many of his abilities as one of the Chosen, though he still aged as slowly as he had for the previous millennium and was still quite powerful magically. However, every use of his magic drove him insane. When this happened, only Storm was able to bring his mind back, giving off her own essence to soothe Elminster's mind. Despite these setbacks, Elminster and Storm continued with their campaign to save Faerûn, battling evil and fixing the Weave where they could.
In 1479 DR, Elminster sought to gain access to artifacts known to contain the spirits of the Nine—objects powerful enough to permanently restore the Simbul's sanity.
During one of his excursions for these artefacts, Elminster's body was destroyed by Manshoon, who had secretly been peeling away the Old Mage's contingency spells over several years. However, Manshoon departed before he realized that Elminster had survived his body's destruction in a near-undead state. With the agreement of Amarune and the aid of Storm, Elminster's essence was placed in Amarune's body with the aid of a spell the ex-Chosen had discovered in a cache once belonging to Azuth. Later, thanks to the sacrifice of the Simbul, he regained his former body again and ruined for good Manshoon's claim to the throne of Suzail.
In 1487 DR, Elminster (with the help of the Srinshee, Alustriel, and Laeral Silverhand) stopped Shar as well as Larloch from becoming the new deity of magic. He killed Telamont Tanthul and let Thultanthar fall upon Myth Drannor. Along the way, Mystra was completely restored.
In 1491 DR, Elminster returned to the city of Waterdeep, aiding the newly appointed Open Lord of Waterdeep, Laeral Silverhand, to uncover the culprits behind a string of murders of Masked Lords.
Sincerely, there is a lot of content left outside this summary because Elminster’s material is a lot. A LOT.
Where is he in 1492?
The last time we know about Elminster’s whereabouts is during the book Dead Masks, a year before BG3. He has been working in Mystra’s name in Waterdeep when Hidden Lords have been assassinated. It’s very hard to conceive Gale as Elminster in disguise. Elminster has a different personality and a very obvious pattern of speech, sounding more like a mixture of a scholar and a farmer, and using expressions like Nay, aye, and so on. Elminster being abandoned by Mystra is also a strange concept because if there is something very clear from all the material we can read about his adventures is that Mystra loves him with a particular and exceptional love. He was the only Chosen that, when he was being tortured in the Hells, she attempted to save him by herself, risking her life (obviously, then she changed her mind and sent several Chosen ones that died in the process).
Also, if Gale were Elminster, he should sustain a spell of disguise constantly (many people know Elminster, an old man of white hair and beard), which is also very unlikely for a lvl1 wizard to do.
Source: 3e: Elminster: The Making of a Mage. The Temptation of Elminster. Dead Masks
Sammaster
He was born in 800 DR, probably in Sembia, the Dalelands, or the North. At age of 17, fascinated by the theory of the Arts and how magic works, Sammaster became a follower of Mystra. He was a gaunt man of poor health, full of eccentricities: he never remained in one place for too long, he skipped his meals and sleep in favour of learning, and it's suspected to have fathered a countless number of children.
Before being 40 y/o he acquired the skills of an archmage and he discovered, rediscovered, or improved numerous spells in the advanced theory of magic known as "metamagic". All this discovery of knowledge and magic (so favoured by Mystra as we can see in the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones") granted him the attention of the Goddess, who appeared before him.
At his 50 y/o Sammaster saw his most fervent dream appear before his very eyes. He was both awestruck and smitten with passion as he fell to his knees and wept upon Mystra’s feet. Raising him to meet her gaze, Mystra responded to his unspoken question and swept him into her embrace. They spent a tenday together, and at the end of that period, Mystra asked him if he thought he was worthy and strong enough to carry a part of her divine power within him. Despite not knowing what she meant, Sammaster accepted anyway, becoming the first Chosen after she conceived her seven daughters. Mystra explained that she had chosen him for his development in metamagic but also because she had foreseen the death of an already Chosen one (Syluné) whose place she wanted immediately filled with Sammaster.
Sammaster was ordered to be in contact with Elminster to learn more about his new condition of Chosen. Sammaster and Elminster developed a tense situation mostly because Sammaster's obsessive love for the Goddess deepened while Elminster kept reminding him that her only consort was Azuth.
Dejected for the truth that he would never have a personal long-lasting relationship with Mystra, Sammaster focused on understanding the powers of the Chosen and the mysteries of the Lady in himself and in Toril. However, a seed of resentment started to grow.
In 855 Sammaster found a Zhentarin slave caravan resting in a camp. In it, he found three large cage carts full of peasants taken from the farmlands in the surrounding area. Enraged, Sammaster attacked the Zhentarin using his spells and Silver Fire, but in the process he killed many innocents he wanted to save. His mind snapped that day. Despite trying to convince himself that the Zhentarins were to blame, this episode was—without any doubt—the seminal event that irrevocably turned Sammaster down the path to madness and, eventually, evil.
Years later he started to develop his interest in necromancy in an attempt to return those innocents he had killed, trying to find a way to revive the dead. During this time his interest was focused on the undead, and forged relationships with some liches. How did Mystra allow this? At that time, Mystra was a much more neutral deity. Her primary interest was the use and development of magic; she cared little about how it was used or by whom. As long as Sammaster continued to advance the theories of magic and push forward its frontiers for all mortals, Mystra turned a blind eye to his necromancy interests.
In 861 DR Sammaster met Alustriel, Chosen of Mystra, and fell in love with her. His unbalanced mind seemed to finally find some peace and stability, but his obsession —at first focused on Mystra—now turned upon Alustriel, wanting to master her, to make her entirely his, and to make her world revolve around him. Disturbed with Sammaster's necromancy research and his increasing need for control over her, Alustriel broke up with him.
Afterwards, while deepening in his experiments with necromancy, Sammaster befriended Algashon Nathaire, a priest of Bane who had formerly been a mage. In the unstable Sammaster, Algashon saw the chance to create a formidable tyrant. Bane must also have seen the chance to rob one of his most powerful enemy’s Chosen of his last vestiges of sanity and perhaps his powers or even his life.
Presented as a friend, Algashon manipulated Sammaster into thinking that all his failures and problems were the fault of that uncaring goddess and her equally inconsiderate servants, her so-called "Chosen". Sammaster resisted this subtle indoctrination at first, only to be painfully reminded of the events at the slavers' camp (the Zhents' fault, of course), his uneasy relationship with Elminster, his failure to win the love of Mystra (Azuth's fault and Elminster's for pointing it out so hard-heartedly), and his failure to win Alustriel (her fault and that of her Goddess). As time went on, Sammaster argued against these superficial, easy excuses less and less, and Algashon's lies wove their way deeper into the unhappy and unstable mage's mind. The next step of Algashon was to steal the secrets of the power of the Chosen. To do that, he encouraged Sammaster to use his Chosen power at every opportunity.
Rather than risking their pawn's life (yet) by attempting to strip the silver fire from Sammaster outright, Bane and Algashon decided to try and arrange to steal another Chosen's silver fire: given her past with Sammaster, Algashon chose Alturiel. This way Sammster fought Alturiel, aiming silver fire against her. Losing the battle against a maniacal Sammaster, Alustriel called for help from Laeral Silverhand and Khelben Arunsun. The three of them won the combat against Sammaster.
Azuth presented himself on Mystra's behalf and removed Sammaster's Chosen condition. When the other Chosen left the place, Algashon helped Sammaster, affixing the immortality of the Chosen ones in his body despite having lost his powers. While he could be destroyed, Sammaster continued to remain ageless and to heal from wounds very quickly. However, as a side-effect of this spell, Sammaster lost his last vestige of sanity and morality that may have remained in his clouded mind.
In 887 DR Sammaster retranslated old texts of a prophecy, highlighting the importance of undead dragons and creating soon afterward his own Cult. In his insanity, he kept doing more necromancy research focused on turning dragons into draconlich to follow this prophecy. His first success in turning a dragon (Shargrailar) into an undead made his cult famous. In this way, Sammaster earned a powerful weapon with which threatened many across Faerun and obtained an enormous amount of money. Even the rich nobles paid tribute when the Cult threatened to send Shargrailar to burn their farmlands and villages to ash. Sammaster did not think to oppress the peasants for their coppers, but the noble powerful ones.
In 960 DR, his cult finally adopted the name “Cult of the Dragon”, even though “Cult of the Dracolich” could be more appropriate, even though Shargrailar still looked like a normal dragon. By that time the cult increased too much for Sammaster and Algoshon to control, so Sammaster wrote all his wisdom in a book called Tome of the Dragon that would turn into the core of the cult, helping them to spread Sammaster's ideas beyond their limitations.
The popularity of the cult was not missed by several groups. The Harpers tried to destroy it, but they failed. The Zhentarims are also against Sammaster's cult since their activities are limited with the constant threat of the Dragon Shargrailar. More groups were added to the cult's list of foes, but Sammaster ignored them or sent them a dragon to destroy them. Not merely mad now, Sammaster was becoming drunk with a level of power he had not felt since before he had been stripped of his powers as one of the Chosen. Algashor suggested that he keep a low profile in order to protect the cult, but his advice was ignored.
In 916 DR, The Harpers developed a plan to eliminate Sammaster and weaken the cult itself. The battle was brutal and Sammaster seemed to win by the end of it, commanding an army of undead and experimental creatures. Sammaster would have won had not Lathander sent a battle avatar, enraged by the undead abominations that Sammaster created. After an intense battle, Lathander incinerated Sammaster. However, Sammaster had planned ahead: he had sent his mind to a phylactery before being killed.
With the phylactery and a special book of the Tome of the Dragon, a loyal cultist called Zotulla had been ordered by Sammaster to create a new cell of the cult in the Northwest. However, Zotulla failed and died at the hands of an orc war party who discarded the phylactery and the book. Both items were lost for more than 300 years, until a shaman may have deciphered the instructions in the book and raised Sammaster as a lich.
In 1282 Sammaster rose as a lich and began to gather the remnants of his cult once more. Harpers and some countries began to plan to defend themselves from this danger again. In 1285 a group of adventuring paladins known as the Company of Twelve supported by the Harpers, attacked the lich and killed him at a great cost. However, neither the phylactery nor the book were found. The possibility for him to return is high.
In 1373DR Sammaster completed the transformation of the Dracorage Mythal. This was a Mythal created by elves around -25.000DR which had a maddening effect on dragons, making them lose their minds for several tendays. This effect used to be linked to the appearance of the comet King-Killer Star in the sky. When Sammaster transformed this mythal by binding his phylactery to it, its maddening effect was no longer constrained by the appearance of the comet but linked instead to his own life force. Only Dracoliches remained unaffected by Sammaster’s endless, ever-intensifying Dracorage effect. This fact forced wyrms to join his Cult and accept to be transformed into dracoliches or suffer permanent madness. By manipulating this effect, Sammaster tried to retake control over his Cult. However, a group of adventurers destroyed the mythal—thus Sammaster’s phylactery—and put an end to this effect.
Where is he in 1492?
So, is Gale Sammaster? Lore-wise, to destroy a lich for good you need to destroy their phylactery. This has been done in 1373DR, therefore, I hardly see any potential for Sammaster to raise again. And here is where any possible argument ends.
What Sammaster's story shows us is that Mystra's sudden abandonment is not uncommon once she gave them their Chosen powers. In the report of the Harpers that narrate Sammaster's life in the book Cult of the dragon (2e), there are some comments pointing out how Mystra, despite noticing Sammaster's madness, allowed him to follow his dark path. One may speculate that maybe Mystra uses the obsession that she may cause in some of her Chosen ones, in order to make them eager to explore beyond their limits so she can acquire knowledge or control of new magic.
Certainly, what Sammaster and Gale share in common is how they were favoured by Mystra, had a affair with her, and soon afterwards she stopped “whispering” in their ears. Their condition as Chosen had been kept intact, but their madness in one case, or their devotion in the other, made them go too far. Sammaster ended up being a toy of a priest of Bane, while Gale simply made the mistake of thinking himself capable of controlling an unknown magic to impress Mystra in order to have once more her attention on him. More than this is walking on the headcanon terrain since the game in EA can't provide more information.
Source book: Cult of the dragon (2e), Dragons of Faerun (3.5e)
Conclusion
The truth is that Gale is Kirby. He doesn't only eat artefacts but also Faerûn iconic characters as well (joke done by a reddit user)
In my personal interpretation, I hardly see Gale as the incarnation of anyone. First, it would be very, very lazy writing. Characters such as Sammaster, Elminster, or Azuth tend to be NPCs. We found some of them in games such as previous Baldur’s Gate games or Neverwinter nights.
But the main and strongest argument against secretly being any of these characters is that he is an origin character. All companions are potential players in their origins. Anyone who played DOS2 AND played an origin character would understand this: there is no plot twist of that magnitude in their personal backstories that would erase completely the essence and the personality of the character. All that sensitive information is previously stated.
All what we need to know about the origin char is basically said in the BG3 webpage. Those descriptions are the same ones found in the game, which changed after EA was released in Astarion’s and Gale’s case, showing—in my opinion—that Larian changed them a bit at the last stage of development. These descriptions spoil every secret that the characters have. This doesn’t mean their more complex background should not be part of a plot twist later in the game, but it would not have the impact of erasing completely the RPG characters you were playing for a while.
Every companion has a secret spoiled in their descriptions: Astarion, his vampire condition; Shadowheart, her Shar faith and he mission; Wyll, Mizora; Lae’zel, the tadpole (not for the group, but for her people); Gale, the “orb”. All these secrets are informed beforehand to the player for them to pick an Origin if they want to play it and make it their own. As companions, we learn these secrets early (act 1). This happens in act 1 of DOS2 too.
A player choosing an origin has to be informed of the character’s secrets and motivations at the moment they pick it. Otherwise, it would ruin their RPG experience, making the player unaware of their own character’s true nature. This doesn’t mean that deepening their backgrounds would not make us discover information we don’t know. My point is, it won't remove the character’s persona turning him into a character very well known in lore.
Gale, so far, seems to be a pretty fair standard wizard who had a young obsession over Mystra (quite common in terms of lore for those who stand before her), which brought him troubles and made him prone to mistakes (as, once more, we know it tends to happen in lore). The justification why he was Chosen is also clear from a lore point of view: we have a context post-Spellplague that made Gale's skills more than useful for Mystra. In my opinion, there is nothing else abysmally suspicious beyond these points, and if there are more secrets, it seems fair to think that not even Gale is aware of them.
This post was written in June2021.
→ For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
Detail: BG3 takes place in 1492 DR.
To understand what's the context around "Netherese magic" and, let's hope, its nature, I think it's of vital importance to know a bit about Netheril and what happened in recent years.
The game does a good job in showing us what happened with their fall at Karsus' hands. I explained in the post of "Well-known Characters" a good amount of information about him. His desire for godhood was a bit more complex than just wanting to be a god, even though the game shows it as blind arrogance and ambition: so far we know, it was Mystra who commanded her priests to spread this version of Karsus' Folly, as if he only wanted power alone.
After Karsus' folly, all the floating cities of Netheril fell to the ground, destroying their population with them. However, only three cities were saved since they were too high in the air: their fall gave enough time for Mystra to be reborn in minutes and saved them. A fourth enclave, ruled by Telamont Tanthul—also called Lord Shadow—was teleported to the Shadow Plane (now called Shadowfell) days before the catastrophe. This was possible because Shadow Lord had been experimenting with the Shadow plane energies for a while. When he returned to Faerûn to see the aftermath of Karsus' folly, he recognised the need to stay in the other plane and gather strength to rebuild Netheril. After 1700 years, he started his plan for the return of his Civilisation in 1372 DR.
This is the context in which the trilogy of The Return of the Archwizards is set. This also belongs to 4e, which is one of the concepts that have annoyed more players, since this return made the Shadovars the Big Bad Evil everywhere. Maybe WotC wants to clean this aspect in the game. Maybe not. We don't know for sure. But we may suspect that Netherese people are returning in BG3: many details ingame keep giving context about them: Gale's explanation about Karsus' Folly, Excavation of the Enclave of Nhalloth (book), The Approachable East: Vol5 (book), and then the presence of Netherese magic not only in Gale's "orb" but in the tadpoles.
I think it's worth checking the ingame book called “Excavation of the Enclave of Nhalloth”. Nhalloth was a Netherese city floating above the Sea of Fallen Stars in Faerûn. After Karsus' folly, it sank into the sea, claiming for some underwater creatures. As a consequence of the Spellplague, the geography changed, the waters lowered, and allowed a bit of exploration. Little was found, and explorers reported odd feelings and ghosts around it.
What do we know about the Return of Netheril in 1372?
These new Netherese people started to spread their influence in Faerûn, looking for Netherese old artefacts and spying on people and places that could possibly hinder their ultimate goal of creating a new Netheril in their image. But, were these people truly Netherese? The question comes from the fact that living creatures can't stay in the Plane of Shadow (currently merged with the Plane of negative energy which transformed it into the Shadowfell) without being affected by it. So, in an attempt to be short but still provide important facts I will numerate vital details of them that may become handy in BG3:
This floating city used to be called Thultanthar, and after its return, it's more commonly referred as the City of Shade.
Somehow, the Netherese people survived, and became more united and secretive.
Over 1700 years, each generation of these netherese people become more and more attuned to the shadow plane, some of them even turning into Shades: twisted, dark, humanoid creatures with longer lifespan than humans. Lord Shadow was still the main ruler of the City of Shade because he is now a Shade.
A big percentage of their population are worshippers of Shar.
The archwizards (ruling class) in the highest ranks are called Shadovars. Not every Netherese or Shade person is a Shadovar. Despite this, most folk refer to all Netherese as Shadovar nonetheless.
Most Shadovars are followers of Shar.
Shadovars are masters of Shadow Magic. It's a common mistake to think that Shadow magic is the same as Shadow Weave magic. Shadow Magic is magic using the energies of the Plane of Shadow. This can be done using Weave or Shadow Weave. Since most shadow casters are evil-aligned, Shar tried to offer them the Shadow Weave as a means to cast their magic without using the Weave (an element of a neutral-good aligned deity). This is related to the effect of worshipping without consent: Using the Weave is always a way to worship Mystra even if the caster wants it or not. This always gives power to Mystra. Shar created the Shadow Weave as a way to divert all those evil-aligned casters into her own worshipping. More details in the post of "Mystra and her Chosen ones"
With the return of the Shadovars, they tried to corrupt the recently recovered Weave and turn it into Shadow Weave.
In 1487DR, Lord Shadow tried to gain the power of the Mythal of Myth Drannor, but Elminster killed him and the City of Shade fell upon Myth Drannor, destroying both cities.
However, this was not the end of the Shadovar. We may have some information about how they are in 1490s DR (let's remember BG3 is during 1492 DR):
Lord Shadow may be part of the Weave now (I have no idea why Ed said this. Lord Shadow was not a Chosen of Mystra, why would he be a weaveghost now?)
Two of his daughters and a Netherese arcanist survived: The sisters Lelavdra and Manarlume and the arcanist Gwelt have been calling themselves "The Three".
The Three have been collecting Netherese and others loyal to the Shade Empire from the ruins of the Citadel of the Raven in the western Moonsea region since late 1487 DR. They had collected at least 60 low level arcanists and 20 low born Netherese within a short period of time.
Gwelt was leading the hunt for others calling their group "The Court of the Three."
Their goals were supposedly to collect other Netherese, make allies, identify foes, take command of the remaining floating Netherese cities, and find a remote location to regroup and plan their re-emergence. It is unknown how far they have come.
Why all of this may be important?
Because part of this canon material may or may not be part of the story of BG3.
It's true that Larian has already changed some very consistent canon facts, such as the spell of the Hag eye (Ethel justifies her spell as a very personal customised one) or—the most impressive change—the Ceremorphosis process: Gale explains that the normal process removes the personality of the person in the sixth day after the infection, when in Forgotten Realms canon it should happen few hours after the infection. So my expectations for them to follow all canon material are not blind. They will change canon concepts as they think suitable, which is how DnD works. Still yet, it seems reasonable to read about all this in order to have a better context of what we will see, since the canon context is undeniably there.
Personally I always saw the presence of Netherese/Shadow Magic in the tadpoles as the intervention of Shar, but I never could find a group of mortals who would do that work and have such specific knowledge. We know that, with the exception of Mystra, contact with mortals is forbidden to all gods; therefore, Shar could not be the one to have approached these Mind Flayers. Now, the presence of the Court of the Three, working alongside or co-opting The Three Dead's plan seems a more reasonable possibility for me.
So far, what we know is that
Shadow Magic is equivalent to Netherese Magic ( EA, Ethel's words)
Shadow Magic is magic related to the plane of Shadows. This plane was altered by Shar when she merged the negative energy plane with it, causing the Shadowfell. The Shadowfell was Shar's realm for a while.
Shar was a great loser in the last edition. She could not change the Weave into Shadow Weave and become the greatest deity of magic as she planned. So she may want to counter-attack now.
Shadovars—who tried to help Shar in turning her into the Goddess of Magic—are masters of Shadow Magic and Shadow Weave magic.
The Shadow Weave was not destroyed, it's recovering at a similar pace to the Weave.
The tadpole can't turn the host into a mind flayer because Netherese magic (the dream person) attached to it works as a stasis process. ( EA)
The Netherese magic—aka dream person—seems to restrain the Mind Flayer transformation while having strong connotations of Bhaalspawn essence. ( EA)
These small details may suggest that maybe the Shadovar are returning, or the three dead are using Shadovar's knowledge or vice versa. The possibilities are many and it seems hard to decide which ones are more likely since EA gives little information for such estimation.
Sources:
2e: Sea of Fallen Stars
3e: Lost Empires of Faerûn
4e: The Return of the Archwizards, The Herald, Grand History of the Realms
Article: After the Fall by Ed. Greenwood: https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/after-fall
Ed Greenwood Twitter
This post was written in June 2021.
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