gortash has got the religious terrors just as bad as durge imo. he seems to have sought out worship of bane on his own, establishing the little cult in the gate.
he was on the up and up under his own power when the dreams started and he seemed to have seized that opportunity and undergone the training. i dont think, given the context clues scattered around, it is a stretch to say that he found shelter in Bane's teachings in the same way Abdirak did with Loviatar.
he seems to decide that he will not be weak or vulnerable again. i think a lot about the helldusk helmet in raphael's house and how it allows the infliction of frighten. i think a lot about how his coat renders him proof against that, with its charms and baubles invoking both baneite iconography and the decor of the house of hope.
of the boots, allowing him to walk over his captor every day.
he follows his dreams from bane. he investigates the astral prism. and then everything goes to shit. even in a playthrough where the player is not the durge, the durge still exists and the notes about them are still in place. implying that durge makes it Back to baldur's gate from the crash site on their own, and loses the challenge against Orin.
he still lost his nearest and dearest. he still experiences things starting to fall apart around him, very suddenly, after so much time building up.
like it really seems like gortash has an elaborate series of rituals he does to assert that he is in control of his environment and the plan. but i wonder if he doubts. bc like his private memoir notes #9 are really revealing? and he would absolutely have doubts about it from time to time, that'd only start to accelerate after either tav or durge themselves start throwing wrenches in the gears.
wasn't it odd, if one thinks about it, that this scheme, made by an illithid lich, was left right next to the crown? mephistopheles must have been aware of raphael's thousand year obsession with stealing it.
and we know that meph had a spy in his House, constantly reporting back.
sure, it makes sense to group like with like in a museum collection, but the whole thing would start to smack of a honeypot.
he lost his partner, he helped sow the seeds of his own destruction, and he's a man desperately trying to trust that bane wouldn't hang him out to dry or be played by greater forces while all the evidence is building that Exactly That happened.
and every little lapse, every moment of doubt - while important for potentially getting the plan back in action - might feel like a strain on his relationship with his god, no matter how business-partner'y his conception of his relationship with bane might be.
and he's lost the one person he could freely bounce thoughts off and frame it as Preparation and Worst Case Scenarios with. if he just has those thoughts on his own, that's just Doubt.
all of this to say there are a bunch of little red flags that gortash is genuinely deeply desperate to get shit back on track, but cannot allow himself to actively have his crisis of faith, because to do so would be in itself to admit weakness and failure when he is supposed to be the living exemplar of the opposite.
terrible man. i'm chewing on him. im shaking him furiously back and forth in my teeth.
I absolutely do NOT have an obsession over another evil bastard of a fictional character. It's not like screenshotting all the documents, letters and books I found about him makes me obsessed. smh
This bitch looks like he can barely lift a bowl of soup, he's as aerodynamic and dextrous as a baguette, and I'm sorry I love the man, but he's dumb as a bag of Mugwort.
I'll give him the charisma one though.
You'd be amazed how charismatic 40 year old weirdos with bad hair but impeccable drip can be.
For my prelude, see live footage of me at work below. (PS: Mac on the right there is basically my wife, she was very kind to let me ramble about this.)
Here we go. And I think it goes without saying, but spoilers ahead.
So, we have a better idea of Durge's timeline than Gortash, which is helpful since we know that they knew one another before the events of the game. On top of that, we know what each was doing when the other was doing something else. At least, to a point.
We'll start with Durge.
Exhibit A: We know that Sceleritas Fel appeared to Durge on their "age of majority", which is generally accepted to be 18. Could be 16, but we're going with 18 for the timeline.
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Exhibit B: We know that in the prequel Blood in Baldur's Gate, the main antagonist is Dark Urge, and Sceleritas himself appears multiple times in the story. We also know for a fact that this happens in 1477, 15 years before BG3.
Therefor, we know that Durge CANNOT BE YOUNGER than 18 in the year 1477, and therefor cannot be younger than 33 in BG3.
It's important to note for later on that at this point in Baldur's Gate in 1477, it is very likely Durge has already started the cult of Bhaal or is on the verge of starting it.
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Like I said, easy as Hell, now on to Gortash. Cause he is definitely trickier; we'll be needing to work backwards for this guy.
Exhibit A:
Gortash is intent on making a memoir of his life, and has given us a helpful order of events, if without dates and such.
Exhibit B:
We'll start with the heist at the House of Wonders. If you don't know what the House of Wonders is, imagine a giant museum/research university run by NASA. It's a big fuckin' deal, and holds some insane things.
We don't know everything they stole, but we do know some.
1. A Bhaal torture device and some preserved Bhaalist bodies (unimportant for our conversation), and
2. Schematics which served as the basis for the Steel Watch, as well as the submersible.
((I can't find the specific screenshot for the Steel Watch schematics, but just trust me, it exists.))
We can assume that Karlach was sold right around this time, maybe before, most likely right after. The reason why she was sold around this time is because...
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Exhibit C:
Karlach is a proto-prototype Steel Watcher, or at least of the infernal engines the Steel Watch use. What Gortash most likely got for Karlach were plans/materials/development for the infernal engines.
So let's recap. We now know that ten years ago Durge and Gortash pulled their heist, traded Karlach, figured out infernal engines, and started production or development on the Steel Watchers. Neither were the chosen of their gods yet, and the Crown of Karsus wasn't even on their radar.
Let's keep going.
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Exhibit D:
The first and second listings in Gortash's memoirs are him founding the Bane cult, and then discovering that there was a Bhaal cult already started. I would posit that Gortash established the Bane cult right around the time of the previously mentioned Blood in Baldur's Gate.
At the bare minimum we know that Durge had to have been already active and Sceleritas already trying to guide him. So we can likely say that Gortash established the cult of Bane in 1477. Which means he was not in the House of Hope any longer in 1477.
The Crux of the Issue:
Here is where we get into speculation, and there's several questions we have to answer that don't have a clear answer.
1. How old was Gortash when he was sold off?
2. How old was he when he escaped the House of Hope?
3. How long after that did he establish the Cult of Bane?
I'll give you my answer for these questions, and my reason why.
Given my previous post, you might know that I subscribe to the idea that Gortash had a knack for artifice when he was young. There's no way a devil/warlock would pay even a small amount for a useless kid. So, at what age is a kid "useful" while still being a kid?
My guess would be as old as ten, as young as eight.
Based on the conversation with Nubaldin, I would say he was still fairly young when he escaped. The way he talks about Gortash establishes that the jailor remembers Gortash as a 'sniveling little shit' and 'mischievous little blot of a boy'.
I would put him at about sixteen, absolute tops.
3. I believe he would have started the Bane cult very, very soon after leaving the House of Hope because I have a sneaking suspicion that Bane's influence started at the House of Hope. Might be how he escaped in the first place, or maybe he heard about Bane while there. Either way, I don't think he took very long.
In my head, he's probably around 17-19 when he starts the Bane cult. But also, if there's age discrepancies, this is probably where they come in.
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And there you have it. I don't focus on his in-game model much, because looks can vary so wildly. Especially when there's years of demonic torture, obsessive artifice study, and dead god cults. The game narratively describes him as a young man, so I generally erred on the side of "young" when figuring out this timeline.
If you've got questions, comments, additions, go on and lay them on me.
me and my brothers are playing a new kind of chess where you sit on the floor with the rabbit roaming around and you have to play as quickly as possible before he ruins the board. you cannot stop him or you lose
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