There is revenge – and then there is really dark retribution in Baldur’s Gate 3. No boss has been defeated in such a despicable way – because the player’s own mother is involved.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, you have quite a few options to express yourself freely. You can be a shining hero in sparkling armor who brings peace and good deeds everywhere. Alternatively, you can also be a depraved murderer and villain who leads various characters in the game world to their doom to enrich yourself.
Or you are so cruel that you first kill a character’s mother and then use her corpse to beat up her son. A toast to the freedom of choice.
Spoiler warning: This article is about Act 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3 and some decisions you can make there.
What happened? In the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit, Syntactics2411 shared a small clip showing his fight against Gortash. He is one of the two main villains you face in the last act of the game – or can ally with him.
Gortash is not a blank slate. The whole plan with the mind flayers partly originated from him, and his backstory is particularly intertwined with Karlach. He sold the tiefling to hell, after which her machine was used as a heart, and she had to fight in the arena for devils for years – even though she had trusted Gortash until that point.
Karalach wants revenge for this betrayal and asks the hero to be there when it comes time to deal with Gortash – ideally, she even wants to deliver the fatal blow herself.
And that’s exactly what she does in the video shown. She doesn’t just strike, but goes about it in a particularly insidious way. She pulls Gortash’s mother’s corpse from her inventory and hurls it at her son – which causes enough damage to defeat him.
This kind of cruelty would probably astonish even the “Dark Desire.”
Who is Gortash’s mother? You can find Gortash’s mother in a rather small house in the city of Baldur’s Gate. The parents are not part of any real quest line but provide some additional background information about Gortash. It is also revealed that both parents are already infected with a mind flare worm, and Gortash ensures that they remain ‘trapped’ in their bodies.
It should be mentioned that Gortash’s mother is not exactly the most lovable character you can encounter in Baldur’s Gate 3. She sold her son to a warlock at a young age to avoid falling into deep debt – thus, she isn’t exactly the mother of the year.
Of course, one could discuss whether Karlach would really be so cruel as to send Gortash to hell in this manner – but hey, in the end, it’s quite a creative (if unnecessarily cruel) way to defeat Gortash, which only came about due to the vast freedom of choice in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Whether one should really exploit this freedom to this extent – that ultimately has to be decided by each individual.
Another player made Karlach almost useless – perhaps it’s better to know what else she does.
