How do you know if you are *** (SPOILER)?

Permidion_Stark

Does your mum tell you? I imagine it must be a pretty awkward conversation.

Mum: "There's been something I've been meaning to tell you for a while now. There's no easy way of saying this. You are the spawn of Bhaal."

Child: "What? Mum! You had sex with the Lord of Murder? How could you possibly think that was a good idea?'

Mum: "Well it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Chnapy

Well it's fairly easy : Bhaalspawn's bodies turn to dust when they die, and cannot be brought back to life. Pay someone to raise you then kill yourself. If you get raised that means you weren't a Bhaalspawn.

tbone1

I can see this becoming a Jeff Foxworthy parody.

If your soul scares a Drow priestess, y'might be a Bhaalspawn.

OlvynChuru

Chnapy said:

Well it's fairly easy : Bhaalspawn's bodies turn to dust when they die, and cannot be brought back to life. Pay someone to raise you then kill yourself. If you get raised that means you weren't a Bhaalspawn.

Then how come you can bring

Imoen

back to life?

deltago

OlvynChuru said:

Chnapy said:

Well it's fairly easy : Bhaalspawn's bodies turn to dust when they die, and cannot be brought back to life. Pay someone to raise you then kill yourself. If you get raised that means you weren't a Bhaalspawn.

Then how come you can bring

Imoen

back to life?

That is their inherit power.

scriver

OlvynChuru said:

Chnapy said:

Well it's fairly easy : Bhaalspawn's bodies turn to dust when they die, and cannot be brought back to life. Pay someone to raise you then kill yourself. If you get raised that means you weren't a Bhaalspawn.

Then how come you can bring

Imoen

back to life?

A horrible awful thing called story and gameplay segregation.

UnderstandMouseMagic

Permidion_Stark said:

Does your mum tell you? I imagine it must be a pretty awkward conversation.

Mum: "There's been something I've been meaning to tell you for a while now. There's no easy way of saying this. You are the spawn of Bhaal."

Child: "What? Mum! You had sex with the Lord of Murder? How could you possibly think that was a good idea?'

Mum: "Well it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Blame it on the alcohol.

Gin is known as "Mother's ruin" after all.

Must have been quite a night.

jsaving

You can bring

Imoen

back to life because

the devs didn't envision her being a Bhaalspawn when they wrote BG1 and didn't want to create an inconsistency by suddenly changing that in BG2.

But you're right that strictly according to game lore, you shouldn't be able to raise her.

sarevok57

jsaving said:

You can bring

Imoen

back to life because

the devs didn't envision her being a Bhaalspawn when they wrote BG1 and didn't want to create an inconsistency by suddenly changing that in BG2.

But you're right that strictly according to game lore, you shouldn't be able to raise her.

ah, but there was another bhaalspawn brought back to life:

Sarevok, although he did use some tom foolery to do so

so the idea that bhaalspawn peeps cant necessarily be brought to life might not be the true meaning of what differentiates bhaal spawn from non bhaal spawn

Permidion_Stark

tbone1 said:

I can see this becoming a Jeff Foxworthy parody.

If your soul scares a Drow priestess, y'might be a Bhaalspawn.

If a Hooded Man starts following you around, y'might be a Bhaalspawn.

Zaghoul

If you got into an argument with some guy at your local sawmill over the last 4x4 post (or Yeti 110 ) for your underground cavern complex, and find that last nights dream allowed you to drain the life outa the other guy... ya just might be a Bhaalspawn.

Artona

Child: "What? Mum! You had sex with the Lord of Murder? How could you possibly think that was a good idea?'
Mum: "Well it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Well, he was a god. He had to have high Charisma, right?

tbone1

Permidion_Stark said:

tbone1 said:

I can see this becoming a Jeff Foxworthy parody.

If your soul scares a Drow priestess, y'might be a Bhaalspawn.

If a Hooded Man starts following you around, y'might be a Bhaalspawn.

If you can suck the life out of a room just by walking in, literally, y'might be a Bhaalspawn.

Permidion_Stark

Artona said:

Child: "What? Mum! You had sex with the Lord of Murder? How could you possibly think that was a good idea?'
Mum: "Well it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Well, he was a god. He had to have high Charisma, right?

Well yes, and he's got that 'bad boy' thing going for him. But it's all the more reason to practice safe sex in my opinion.

Balrog99

If you have weird dreams about death, violence and the latest people you've slain then wake up with superpowers. You MIGHT be a Bhaalspawn...

UnderstandMouseMagic

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Bhaalspawn, my son!

(sorry Rudyard)

Montresor_SP

sarevok57 said:

jsaving said:

You can bring

Imoen

back to life because

the devs didn't envision her being a Bhaalspawn when they wrote BG1 and didn't want to create an inconsistency by suddenly changing that in BG2.

But you're right that strictly according to game lore, you shouldn't be able to raise her.

ah, but there was another bhaalspawn brought back to life:

Sarevok, although he did use some tom foolery to do so

so the idea that bhaalspawn peeps cant necessarily be brought to life might not be the true meaning of what differentiates bhaal spawn from non bhaal spawn

Ah yes, but

Sarevok

was brought back to life using

a part of your or Imoen's Bhaal essence

and they came back no longer a Bhaalspawn.

Imoen

on the other hand is a pretty big plot hole.

jsaving

The solar explains at the beginning of ToB that

the Bhaal essences scattered across his progeny must be rejoined through the deaths of each Bhaalspawn, whose divine essences then return to the source seen at the end of BG1.

The in-game lore is silent on whether it is possible to resurrect Bhaalspawn after

their divine essences have rejoined the pool, though the complete crumbling of the Bhaalspawns' mortal shells after death would rule out the game's resurrection spells which require bodies or at least body parts to function properly.

This is why Sarevok needed CHARNAME to

do the resurrection some other way, and even then, it wasn't possible to bring Sarevok back with his divine essence intact as it had already entered the pool.

Imoen is different, because

the devs changed her into a Bhaalspawn for BG2 after previously envisioning her as a normal human in BG1. Because the devs viewed her as a normal human in BG1, she could be resurrected like any other normal human without her body crumbling to dust. The devs were thus faced with a difficult conundrum, because the intended shock of discovering Imoen's Bhaalspawn status in BG2 would have been nullified if they retroactively patched BG1 to make her non-resurrectable (because you would see her body crumbling to dust in BG1 and realize the two of you share a common heritage, which you then inexplicably wouldn't be able to explore or even ask her about until BG2).

This does represent a plot hole, yes, but the cause is out-of-game human error rather than inconsistent in-game lore.

JuliusBorisov

Added the spoiler warning to the title. You know, there're those new players of the BG franchise who still are about to find out the main fact.

Permidion_Stark

@JuliusBorisov
Thanks for that. I keep forgetting that some people haven't been playing the game for the past twenty years.