Baldur’s Gate 3 — The Scribe and the Murderer

This essay discusses major events and the ending of the Dark Urge storyline in Baldur’s Gate 3. Some conversations have been reconstructed to fit the narrative.

“What is the worth of a single mortal’s life?”

Withers rose from his sarcophagus and asked me this without preamble. I did not even know who I had been. I only thought it a strange question. From that day on, Withers stayed at our camp.

I remembered nothing from before I woke aboard the nautiloid, a flying ship. Yet whenever I looked at someone’s hand, I pictured cutting off the fingers one by one. Someone only had to stand in front of me for the thought of killing them to intrude. I did not know why these thoughts kept coming.

I set out, resisting the urge. Whatever came into my head, I believed I could stop before acting on it. At least as long as some part of me still did not want to kill.

The Woman Writing a Song

When I met Alfira in the druid grove, she was writing a song for her dead teacher. She was a tiefling bard travelling with her people to Baldur’s Gate. When gnolls attacked them on the road, Alfira survived, but her teacher Lihala did not return. The song she was writing, “The Weeping Dawn”, would not quite come together.

I had never known Lihala. I did not know what her voice had sounded like, or what she had taught Alfira. All I knew was that Alfira wanted to sing for her teacher someday at the Elfsong Tavern in Baldur’s Gate. Before I ever met her, she had someone she had lost, and something she had yet to finish.

One night, Alfira came to camp. She said she wanted to travel with us. I welcomed her and went to sleep.

When I woke, Alfira was dead.

There was blood on my hands. Her body was mutilated almost beyond recognition. I could not remember what had happened after I fell asleep. I told my companions I thought I had done it.

The person who had come asking to travel with us died by my hand that night. After that, what I had done came to mind before anything Alfira had meant to do.

Until the Night Was Over

Some time later, a strange butler named Sceleritas Fel appeared. He called me his master and congratulated me on killing Alfira. He seemed to know me, so I asked who I had been. But the butler told me nothing about my past.

In the shadow-cursed lands, even travelling without a light was dangerous. The people gathered at Last Light Inn were sheltered from the curse by the barrier Isobel maintained. If she died, the barrier protecting them would fall. The butler told me to kill her. I refused.

The butler returned a little later. Since I had not killed Isobel, he said, the person I cared for most would have to die instead. He added that once I fell asleep, I would kill Shadowheart with my own hands.

I woke Shadowheart and told her I might kill her if I fell asleep. She did not run. She simply bound my hands and stayed beside me while I struggled.

The night passed, and Shadowheart was still alive.

The Writing Left Behind

My memories still did not return. Instead, as we drew nearer to Baldur’s Gate, I began meeting people who remembered what I had forgotten.

Kressa, whom I met beneath Moonrise Towers, recognised me too. She said she had found me near death after Orin had stabbed me in the head, and that she had kept me alive. After that, she had repeatedly opened up my body to study the parasite in my head.

Her research log listed me as the “first” test subject. She had recorded in detail the fluids leaking from my body and the parasite in my head, even how she had taken out my organs and put them back.

When I met Gortash in Baldur’s Gate, he treated me like an old accomplice. As he remembered it, I had been the Chosen of Bhaal, the god of murder, not Orin. He said she had taken my place after I disappeared.

Gortash said we had also plotted the theft of the Crown of Karsus together. Our plan was to use the crown to control the Elder Brain and, through it, the people infected with parasites.

Listening to Gortash, I remembered a prayer I had read beneath Moonrise Towers. His name had been written there too.

The prayer was something I had offered to Bhaal. I had written that once the plan I made with Gortash put power in my hands, I would wipe out every living thing in the world. When the time came, I would kill even those who had plotted alongside me, and finally myself.

“Everyone will die. Everyone will die for YOU. I will make you proud.”

On the night Alfira died, I had not even known what had happened. But the person who wrote this prayer had decided whom to kill, and what to leave at the end. I understood every word. But however hard I looked within myself, I could not find the desire to do such things.

I was reading words I had written.

A Place to Return To

Killing Orin, who had stabbed me in the head and left me to die, could have been revenge enough. If I took back the place she had stolen, I might even feel I had recovered my lost past. Sceleritas was probably waiting for that ending too.

Orin’s mother Helena had once wanted that place herself. On the orders of her own father, Sarevok, she had tried to kill her young daughter, only to die at her daughter’s hands. Using a spell to speak with the dead, I heard what Helena had to say. She said that she and Orin had both loved Sarevok.

Thinking of the order Sarevok had given Helena, I remembered the butler telling me I would kill Shadowheart with my own hands if I fell asleep.

I thought I was beginning to understand what sort of place Orin had wanted so badly.

In the Temple of Bhaal, Orin demanded a duel. Whoever survived would become Bhaal’s Chosen. When the duel was over, I was the one who had survived.

Bhaal appeared. He thought I had become a murderer again. Then he told me to become his Chosen, take control of the Elder Brain and kill every living thing in the world.

If I was to keep the promise I had written in that prayer, there were still people I had to kill. Shadowheart, who had stayed beside me that night, and the people who had come this far with me were no exception.

I broke that promise and refused Bhaal.

Then Bhaal took back what he had placed inside me. I died on the spot.

The Scribe’s Defence

Withers appeared, and I opened my eyes again.

Withers introduced himself as a scribe, a seneschal and a keeper of records. He said that from now on he would stand by me, both in life and in the City of the Dead.

“Did you know from the beginning?”

“I did.”

“Who I was, too?”

“And what thou hadst done.”

While I had been searching for my past, someone who could give me the answers had been in camp all along. For a moment, I could not speak.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“To speak the truth is also to interfere. A mortal’s heart is easily swayed.”

Withers also explained why I had come back to life. Bhaal had only taken back what he had placed inside me. He could not take the person I had become as I lived on after losing my memories.

When I first woke on the nautiloid, I could not remember my past. This time, though, I knew who I had been and what I had refused.

Afterwards, I destroyed the Elder Brain Bhaal had told me to claim. By then, the power of the Crown of Karsus had transformed it into the Netherbrain.

I had come back to life, but Alfira had not returned.

Withers had said he would stand by me, but I did not think that would undo what I had done. To me, it sounded as though he would also record how I had lived since then.

Alfira’s name would be in that record too.