Irenicus: Stupidest antagonist ever? (Spoilers for BG2)
SirFrancealot
Member Posts: 56
I present the following evidence as proof positive that Jonaleth Irenicus is the dumbest evil mastermind ever:
0) Tries to eat the world tree and become an elven god
1) Being a mage whom sets up shop in amn
2) His first conversation in the game is with a golem.
3) Keeps nymphs in his basement - immune to charm (someone should make a penguin meme for this)
4) Doesn't pay thieves guild for services rendered
5) allows himself to be captured by an inferior attacking force
6) allows himself to be imprisoned in the geographic and cultural equivalent of colonial Australia
7) Relies upon a vampire. Is siblings with a vampire. Does not keep vampire on a leash.
8) Allows vampire sister to put CHARNAME through countless dangerous and pointless exercises that put CHARNAME in huge peril before taking what he needs.
9) After CHARNAME shows clearly heroic powers steals his soul and doesn't immediately kill him. Gives to vampire sister to play with.
10) Employes Saemon Harvarian.
11) Builds portal to underdark in his new crib's basement.
12) Makes deal with drow. Breaks deal with drow
13) Pisses off elder Silver Dragon
14) Invades hometown with demons and drow. Does not kill his ex.
15) See step 0
16) Gets killed.
17) Gets killed again in hell.
0) Tries to eat the world tree and become an elven god
1) Being a mage whom sets up shop in amn
2) His first conversation in the game is with a golem.
3) Keeps nymphs in his basement - immune to charm (someone should make a penguin meme for this)
4) Doesn't pay thieves guild for services rendered
5) allows himself to be captured by an inferior attacking force
6) allows himself to be imprisoned in the geographic and cultural equivalent of colonial Australia
7) Relies upon a vampire. Is siblings with a vampire. Does not keep vampire on a leash.
8) Allows vampire sister to put CHARNAME through countless dangerous and pointless exercises that put CHARNAME in huge peril before taking what he needs.
9) After CHARNAME shows clearly heroic powers steals his soul and doesn't immediately kill him. Gives to vampire sister to play with.
10) Employes Saemon Harvarian.
11) Builds portal to underdark in his new crib's basement.
12) Makes deal with drow. Breaks deal with drow
13) Pisses off elder Silver Dragon
14) Invades hometown with demons and drow. Does not kill his ex.
15) See step 0
16) Gets killed.
17) Gets killed again in hell.
14
Comments
1) He set up shop UNDER the city. Cowled wizards don't care what you do indoors or underground
2) His first conversation is with cowled wizards when they arrest him. He talks at CHARNAME, then talks to himself when the Golem comes
3) Whats the difference between laundry and a bunch of captive nymphs? I don't keep my laundry in my basement
4) Inaccurate
5) All part of his master plan. Well with his 18 int and 18 wisdom allow him to come up with new master plans on the fly
6) Again, master plan
7) I can't dispute that one
8) Such as?
9) All villians do that. Bodhi was supposed to kill him, though see 7
10) I can't dispute that one
11) All part of his master plan. He couldn't just teleport, the Faezress or whatever of the Underdark screws that up.
12) Making deal with drow is fine. Breaking deals with drow is fine.
13) Had CHARNAME been dead as he assumed a non issue for his master plan. Even Irenicus would have a hard fight there.
14) Who doesnt want to do that? I mean, if I could force an ex to watch me destroy everything she held dear I absolutely would.
15) See step 0
16) Not part of the plan
17) Also not part of the plan as heroes screw stuff up like that.
1) Magic is completely outlawed in Amn, and as he wasn't a cowed wizard he was going to get targeted sooner or later. Why not setup shop in a country that doesn't have a magocracy in power and avoid the issue altogether
3) lol!
4) need someone to clear up exactly what Irenicus' relationship with the shadow thiefs was. Possibly something to do with Bhodi and the war?
5) Why not just kill all the crappy mages and not deal with the indignity of being held prisoner in the first place? It was clear he was capable of taking anything the coweled wizards threw at him.
6) He's making lemonade from lemons when he could have mountain dew
7) Teamwork high five!
8) If the purpose of Irenicus' plans is to capture CHARNAME, why not just do that as soon as he starts working for Bhodi? You walk right into her lair! Instead she sends him to single handedly wipe out the entire Shadow theifs including their guild leader. Too dangerous!
9) Not all villans are guilty of monologuing. With his genius level intellect the guy should recognise the threat Charname poses the moment he wakes up from the sould sucking tank and kill him while he is down.
10) That moment in ToB when you get to kill saemon.... feels so good, gotta be quick though!
11) this is interesting, I've actually never head of anything in the underdark effecting teleportation. But that doesn't change the fact that he could have avoided it altogether without too much difficulty.
12) Drow are an extremely dangerous group of people to have as enemies... Irenicus could have avoided the issue by employing mercenaries on the surface rather than dealing with potential future rivals.
13) True, Irenicus didn't calculate that CHARNAME could survive spellhold. That just makes him a bad planner though, and I still hold that killing a silver dragon's babies is a super duper bad idea.
14) I found it strange that he still had feelings for Elliseme, given all he had done was because all emotions and feelings had faded after being striken of his soul. And if there's another part divine being walking around after the time of troubles, perhaps she would be the better target than a child of Bhaal.
15) See my 2nd step 0
16) Bad plan!
17) Case in point, irenicus was stupid for not picking someone less dangerous
1) Yeah its outlawed but hes so powerful unless he starts casting in the streets they probably wouldn't go after him. If Dick Cheney shoots someone in the woods, no one cares, but if he climbs a clock tower then it becomes an issue.
4) Yeah, that kind of wasn't clear. Bodhi starts a rival guild and recruits shadow thieves over. In the battle in Spellhold he sends Murderers at you and teleports away. I figured Assassins/Murderers were needed to cast Rapture of the Father (as Bhaal was god of Murder), so he would have to go someplace where theres a major thieves/assassins guild concentrated to get subjects. Shadow Thieves are the most notorious guild of that nature in the Forgotten Realms, plus he doesnt have to travel far to get back to the Tree of Life when the time comes.
5) "Even if we fall our numbers are many". When Zallanora and Kholynnus Paac get involved, hes in trouble (One of them is an ancient Shoon 35th level demilich wizard or something even if in game her stats don't reflect that). He wastes many of his high level spells on the first waves anyhow, he can't cast all day.
6) In Spellhold he isnt in Amn anymore. So long as he keeps it business as usual with the Deviants, cowled wizards might not even notice. Lonk the Sane and Perth the Adept seem fine with the new arrangement, Wanev not so much.
8) Well, every person you kill strengthens Bhaals essence I guess. Doing the Bodhi way to get the spellhold is evil-er than shadow thieves. 90% of the time I go with the Shadow Thieves.
9) He doesn't have a soul. People don't tend to last long without one.
12) Drow served his purpose perfectly as they are the enemies of elves, a great distraction.
13) The Matron Mother would have a Lesser Demon Lord at her bidding. Its not a Demogorgon but its still enough to handle a dragon with its hellish hordes and such.
16 and 17) He threw everything he had at CHARNAME twice. He just was weaker.
1)They didn't care until he started killing people in the streets.
2)So?
3)They are not there for him to practice his enchantment spells on.
4)Been too long since I played so I have no idea what these services are.
5)He would eventually have been overwhelmed.
6)It gave him an isolated base to conduct experiments and plenty of test subjects.
7)Bodhi did what he wanted. Beyond that he doesn't care what she does.
8)I imagine if you want someones soul you'd want to make sure it was worth taking.
9)He got what he wanted so why should he care what happens to the bhaalspawn.
10)So?
11)He was working with the drow so why wouldn't he want to have quick access to them?
12)Because "fuck you I'm a mage".
13)See 12
14)From this point you just go full retard.
0. That was largely Bodhi's fault. She inflated his ego and constantly pushed him to be more then he already was...i.e. a ridiculously powerful master of elven high magic, who's also boinking the elf queen and daughter of one of the elven gods. Yes...that was probably a dumb move....
1. All part of the plan.
2. And?
3. They were an early attempt at restoring emotion to his empty soulless nature. Didn't work.
4. The thieves attack him, because Bodhi has been sending captured thieves there for use in the "experiments".
5. All part of the plan. His hastily thrown together lair didn't have the required facilities to pull off the soul swap.
6. Spellhold on the other hand, did.
7. Well, you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. (also used her as a guinea pig for seeing if vampirism would help. Also tested the soul swap on her first...just in case)
8. He was distracted about suddenly being able to feel emotions again, which made him haughty. And to be fair, Bodhi was supposed to kill you....and probably would've if not for that whole slayer thing scaring the piss out of her.
9. See Above
10. Fail to see how that was dumb. Irenicus is probably the only person in the whole game who DIDN'T get screwed working with Havarian. He did his job just as requested and that was that, anything he did after was completely unrelated (and to be fair, Irenicus actually screwed HIM by giving him the silver sword blade as a reward).
11. The underdark prevent most teleportation. A stabilized teleportation effect like a portal is the only real way he could've entered to meet up with his allies in the Underdark, without having to walk.
12. Where was the stupid in this? He kept his end of the bargain (gave them the eggs and negotiated the agreement with the Demon), and their defeat was entirely on you, not anything he did (though he probably would've backstabbed after Godhood..hard to tell.)
13. And? Epic level mage with access to high elven magic AND empowered by a fragment of the soul of a god. Lvl 12 Edwin can kill Firkraag solo....what's Irenicus gonna be able to do to a dragon of similar power?
14. To be fair...He pretty much won. If you hadn't shown up (and you were supposed to be dead, Bodhi kind of forgot to mention that part when they were stealing the thingamajig), he'd have succeeded. Yes sadly...having a soul reawakened just enough of his memories of memories of memories of memories of memories of loving her, so he stayed his hand of finishing her off.
15. See above
16. To be fair, you never fight Irenicus seriously, at full power. He's exhausted after the ritual which allows your army of psychos to drive him away. And at the world tree, the backblast from killing the parasite things drains not only the power he had drained, but most of his epic level high magics, bringing him down to "merely" epic mortal magics.
17. At this point he had just become a part of the test, much like Sarevok. (though he didn't realize it at the time)
...
Congratulations! You've failed to make even a single valid point!
Now Sarevok you have more of an argument for. He kills Gorion and allows CHARNAME to just... walk away without even attempting to find her/him when s/he was the entire point of the trip? Sloppy.