SPOILER: The mother of our hero...
SamuelVarg
Member Posts: 598
OK. Here is the deal. I see a contradiction in BG and BGII-tToB.
In BG Gorion says in a letter, that is in his room in one of the top floors in Candleceep, that he and the PC:s mother where lovers. (I think that Gorion wrote that the PC:s mother was killed in childbirth or something like that and that's when he adopted our hero.)
In BGII-tToB he says that he just ran into a sacrificial ritual and snatched the PC (who then was an infant/child) from a Bhaalpriestes (I think that is was she was) who was the mother of the character.
Only I who find thees two stories a little bit contradictory?
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Boo does not like contradictions or ret cons. Not at all.
And neither do I.
In BG Gorion says in a letter, that is in his room in one of the top floors in Candleceep, that he and the PC:s mother where lovers. (I think that Gorion wrote that the PC:s mother was killed in childbirth or something like that and that's when he adopted our hero.)
In BGII-tToB he says that he just ran into a sacrificial ritual and snatched the PC (who then was an infant/child) from a Bhaalpriestes (I think that is was she was) who was the mother of the character.
Only I who find thees two stories a little bit contradictory?
---------
Boo does not like contradictions or ret cons. Not at all.
And neither do I.
3
Comments
The PC is a bastard in the classical sense, devoid of land and title, thrust out into the cold harsh world to make his way by sword and wit alone.
I will google. I will be back.
The scroll's item code is SCRL2J, and here is the part which is relevant to the topic:
[...] For reasons unknown to me, he sought out women of every race and forced himself upon them. Your mother was one of those women, and as you know, she died in childbirth. I had been her friend and, on occasion, lover. I felt obligated to raise you as my own. I have always thought of you as my child and I hope you still think of me as your father. [...]
Any thoughts about this? Anyone?
My first thought was that
But if that's the case, the inconsistency should have been acknowledged somewhere in his ToB lines, in particular as a dialogue choice for someone who played BG1.
Obviously, the worst part is that CHARNAME's dad was the god of murder. That being out of the way, which one is better: that (1) CHARNAME's mom was a kind woman who had been raped by Bhaal, or (2) that she was an evil priestess of Bhaal who gave herself to the lord of murder willingly. Both options seem pretty horrible to me, and I wouldn't know which one has the greater potential for making CHARNAME feel even worse than the other.
Dunno, I'm still pretty much convinced that they simply forgot about the mom lore they'd set up in BG1.
That would be creepy enough for a foster child to read if true. I mean, kids don't really like hearing stories about their parent's (or foster parent's) sexual conquests. If the whole thing was made up in addition to that, I think we can say Gorion was a creepy old man who liked post-mortem bragging about how he banged your mom.
Without looking at the source, they don't necessarily seem mutually exclusive.
1) Gorion was in love with a cleric (or at least follower) of Bhaal and either he didn't mind or she didn't tell him and he never caught on.
2) Gorion wrote a false letter about the mother just in case he died before being able to tell CHARNAME, and assuming that CHARNAME would be the one to find the letter.
Since Gorion always seemed like the impulsive type. *Quickly, without any preparation let's take the only road out of town because we know that someone is trying to kill you. We'll go at night without my two friends I told to wait somewhere else for no reason and I don't have darkvision; I forsee no problems.* ...yeah, I'm guessing it's the first option.
Playing horsey with the Lord of Murder is one thing but Gorion! How drunk was she?
I always assumed I could tell the Solar to stop lying about my mother but when it turned out I couldn't, I was forced to concede that, for 'plot sensationalism', the writers saw fit to turn everyone's mother into a person who would kill her own child and Gorion into a murderer.
If you ask me, from in-game perspective, all those 'trials' are just a bunch of bullsh*t conjured up by the Solar to see what we'd do with them. (That Solar annoys the hell out of me, by the way. Not only it's bossing me around in my own pocket plane and yanks me there at a whim, but it also has the gall to interrupt my final boss fight and deny me the pleasure of snapping Melissan's neck. Bah! If I ever wrote a BG fanfic, the Solar would be consumed by a slayer alongside Melissan.)
From meta-perspective it's just a lazy clishe-d writing, when the sequel tries to prove that everyone is related to everybody, and that they'd known each other from forever and ever, or that 'their fates had been intertwined from the dawn of time', even if in the original game/movie/book/whatever the protagonists clearly met for the first time, came from completely different backgrounds, and they only met by chance.
(I'm not a big fan of 'fate'. In fact, I'm an avid disliker of the concept).
I'm more interested in learning about Imoen's mother, to be honest, as we don't get even a single information on her backstory. Was she a red/airhead aswell? Did Gorion also bang her? How did Gorion even find Imoen, as she was not with Sarevok and Charname in the temple? From a TOB point of view, Imoen is equally important to the story as Charname (she even developes the minor cleric bhaalspawn powers at some point).
The truth is uncovered!
What a master manipulator!
And on that note....
Btw, here is the Forgotten Realms wiki on Gorion for references sake. And here's a repost of the snippet on this subject: Gorion was a Harper. And as a Harper he was evidently spying on Bhaal's plot to resurrect himself in his involvement with CHARNAME's mother. I think it would have to essentially be a coincidence that Gorion knew her before she became a priestess of Bhaal, and that Bhaal used CHARNAME's mother to sire a Bhaalspawn.
Because it doesn't seem very plausible that they would have been lovers after she became pregnant with CHARNAME, right?
I think we may assume that Alieanna's child is about less than a year old when Gorion rescues his ward-to-be from her sacrifice ritual. (Notwithstanding that it makes no sense whatsoever that Alienna would sacrifice two Bhaalspawn as a priestess of Bhaal; that seems to contradict Bhaal's plot to ressurect himself by siring many mortal progeny who would start wars throughout the Realms.)
Gorion had to choose between Sarevok and the protagonist when they were both being sacrificed as infants. So we know CHARNAME and Sarevok are the same age. And Sarevok has to be old enough to credibly succeed in his plot to take over the Iron Throne. (His Int is 14 and Cha is 13 in BG, per .cre file; in SoA Int is 17 and Cha is 15.) He is a giant of a man, and a charismatic evil genius. But he still has to be of an age for all those powerful merchants to buy in to his leadership. He eventually replaces them with dopplegangers to complete his plot, as we know. But just to get the ball rolling he'd have to be a young adult of about, say, at least 25? Anyway, the younger he is, the harder the premise is to accept.
So this set's CHARNAME's age at about that as well, roughly 25 years old.
In all events, Gorion would have been been involved with Alieanna some time prior to her becoming pregnant with CHARNAME. If Gorion is about in his late sixties in 1372 DR, he would have known Alieanna in his 30's to early 40's or thereabouts.
The story I would write for this:
Alieanna was an adventurer when Gorion knew her. He allied her as a Harper, and she worked with him in spying on Bhaal's activities. Alieanna turned to the dark side after she learned of Bhaal's plot in her own investigations, and was seduced by him.
One way to make sense of her sacrificing Bhaalspawn would be that it is secretly an attempted act of redemption. Another is that she basically went mad. Or better yet, perhaps: both could be true. So she is trying to right her terrible wrong of allowing herself to be used as a vehicle in Bhaal's heinous plot in her dying act. (The ritual sacrifice is a pretense to accomplish this goal, because it actually doesn't make any sense that I can see.)
This makes her a tragic figure, essentially. It's then a much weightier dramatic moment when Gorion intervenes to save CHARNAME's life.
Nope, at the beginning of BG1PC is 20. The prologue says it very clearly:
Also, in ToB when "Gorion's ghost" (a mirage cast by the manipulative Solar, more like) says that PC and 'other babes' were supposed to be sacrificed, but the next second the "baby Sarevok ghost" says: "Some of us used the Chaos to escape, to flee [...] I was there, [...] I fled on my own."
I refuse to believe an infant, or even a three or four year old child could escape on their own from a hidden, guarded temple in the middle of a hostile raid. He must have been around 7 years at least... IF you believed any of this story, which I don't. (People often said Gorion lied in his letter... well I say that the Solar is lying through its hypothetical teeth and conjuring those images at random. I realize I'm in a minority in this, even if that time inconsistency I mentioned above seems to support this theory ;D )