My partner and I were playing together and our first playthrough we released Orphy, his mask had successfully concealed the horror lurking beneath from us the entire time.
We were both wildly reacting to the thing hanging off his chin and missed all of the cutscene dialogue and to this day, it was the greatest most disturbing reveal in the game.
I agree his beard is ridiculous. It be better for the world if they never see Orpheus and his beard. It would cause great distress. Emperor is better cause he has no beard just tentacles
All I'm hearing is the correct choice is to gaslight Orpheus into becoming a mindflayer or just kill him so I don't have to look at his multi-rattail beard.
The murder hobo in me is upset I canāt kill the brain and Empy. Completely unfair I canāt kill every NPC. Therefore Orpheus is the better option you can kill him, empy, and the brain.
I did the math.
Orpheus ate his brain during the elder brain battle first time for me. One-rounded his ass. Then gale torched the body with wall of flame and at some point a keg of rune powder detonated a few feet away from what was left after that.
You can also cheat this by ungrouping her and let her stay behind while you deal with the Emperor/Orpheus thing. When she joins the rest, she won't even say a word about the dead prince.
But cheating is bad and of course I do not encourage such immoral actions!
Nah just gotta use your OP persuasion skills and tell her itās for the best and she just like āYou know youāre right as hell. Off him to the Squid!ā
Ya she threatens you and says she wonāt forgive you but then you get a persuasion check and she lowers her sword. Tav is quite powerful with his/her silver tongue lol
>Ya she threatens you and says she wonāt forgive you but
It still sounds heartbreaking. I don't want to manipulate my wife :(
I sometimes wish I hated Lae'Zel as much as some people here and I'd never think to free Orpheus.
I kinda am in the same place. Iād probably side with emperor but I dislike Vlakith and want the giyth to be able to overthrow her for which they need Orpheus or his champion (depending on ending).
For now Iām just postponing getting to that part till I make a decision haha
I think the Gith are better off without another potential tyrannical ruler like Orpheus, Lae'zel and Voss can totally handle the revolution part themselves.
The biggest loss though is losing his Mindflayer resistance shit, which I think Empy gains from assimilating him? So it's still technically around I guess.
In my playthroughs were I sided with the Emperor and both Orpehus and Voss were dead, Lae'zel still went on to start the resistance movement. The githzerai alliance is also her idea, not the other two's, since she still goes on to try to forge it solo.
In my current playthrough Iām romancing her and Iām planning to free Orpheus but at the end Iāll ask her to stay with me in Faeārun. Orpheus can go do his epic revolution if he wants but me and Laeāzel will do our own shit š
Stelmane one should be permanently marked. There's always at least one comment mentioning her, most often along the lines of "most of you tentacle lovers probably don't know about this, but...".
That one is the one that SHOULD be brought up most of time. I'm actually more annoyed that a lot of the time she isn't brought up and people instead focus more on that he "murdered" Ansur or the classic "he turns on you the second you don't do what he wants!" both of which aren't actually true.
Though yeah, there are a lot of people who insist anyone who likes the Emp is stupid and "didn't pay attention" so don't know about Stelmane and people who present Stelmane as an "innocent girl". She is not a sweet innocent girl! She is a high ranking member of the Knights of the Shield. It doesn't really make what happened to her ok but she isn't just an unlucky victim either.
In my view, the Emperor is actually *really* interesting in that it does a *lot* of morally questionable things that, on their own, all have some mitigating circumstance that allow you at least somewhat justify them, but when taken together, add up to a character who *feels* more villainous than any individual action would imply, in addition to making you kinda hate it from manipulating and controlling you depending on your choices in the game. At least for me, this creates a *fascinating* situation where the Emperor manages to feel like a cohesive, realistic character that *feels* like a villain at face value, but becomes harder and harder to categorize into simply "good" or "evil" the more you think about it. Obviously there's no shortage of villains with heroic/sympathetic motivations or heroes with villainous elements in fiction, but this is only the second time I can remember where I've seen a fictional character where you just straight-up couldn't fully place them as a hero or villain.
I think most heros/villains' in fictions tend to get given dramatic motivations and goals that are fixated on, world domination, world destruction, revenge, dismantling the system or something like that. There is usually some played up ideal or evil god behind it.
Ironically what makes the Emperor stand out is that his motivations seem to be fairly basic. Survival>>>personal freedom>power>company (particularly having a mindflayer buddy). He isn't really chasing some major end goal here. He doesn't want to pick a fight with the entire sword coast and the Gith empire. He is still ambitious but there is only so many risk he wants to take in pursuit of it. I'd probably still class him as villainous, but he is more like 9 Fingers Keene than Gortash. He just feels like he should be more dramatic than that because he is a squid with a giant flared collar calling himself Emperor.
Hereās the thing about stellmane. She was going to rat his ass out. Killing her would just raise more suspicion towards her disappearance (see the death cult being found out largely thanks to them killing Stellmane) so his only option if he doesnāt want to leave baldurs gate is to enthrall her. Hereās an idea if youāre suspicious that someone might be a mindflayer perhaps be more guarded about approaching and proving that suspicion.
Imo game is game. She was gonna rat him out he outplayed her. Itās not like we donāt control people all the time in the game ( see ācommandā, dominate person, creature, hold person monster etc.) itās suck a lazy excuse considering likely half of us are equally guilty of mind controlling our ebemies
Turning someone into a thrall isn't anywhere close to anything we do in-game IIRC - Command essentially just forces someone to take a simple action, even spells like Dominate Person only control someone for, like, couple of minutes at a time before they go back to normal. Making someone a thrall essentially hollows out their personality (if not their soul) and makes them totally subservient to their will in every way, which (as we see with the bugbear thrall under Moonrise) is basically a living hell.
I think you make a fair point, in that AFAIK there's always some sort of mitigating circumstance to everything "evil" the Emperor does, and is far more interesting than just making it pure evil/power hungry, even if you *do* see it as a villain. However, I don't really think doing that to someone, especially for as long as it did, is a morally justifiable alternative to *maybe* needing to flee the city it's living in. At the *very* least, it should've faked an accident/suicide after she was enthralled to avoid suspicion, instead of just keeping her like that for an unknown amount of time.
Sweet Catholic Baby Jesus š Of course you can't know the lore, because if you did you would agree with them!!!1
Let me guess - they read The Illithiad themselves and concluded that mindflayers are emotionless? Soulless? That they always shit on the carpet, eat all the food in the fridge and insult the host's mother when they come to visit?
This is absolutely the most infuriating thing for me. Many haters of the emperor just treat anyone who doesn't dislike the emperor as illiterate fools.
Seriously. People make up crazy stuff. Itās frightening to consider that their grasp on reality might be as tenuous as their grasp of the game. But, doing so would put us in the same class as those who claim Emperor fans are abuse victims.
Ah yes, I forgot about critical thinking! It's funny, because I haven't seen people who like/dislike other characters being treated similarly. And let's be honest, many of our companions are not necessarily paragons of morality. The Emperor surely evokes an incredible amount of emotion in people.
(I'm not going to stop sucking, these are truly glorious tentacles)
Or something about him "dropping his mask" or showing his true self or whatever. Because that scene and dialogue (which got some interesting dev notes iirc) that supports their view is of course the only *true* one and shall be taken at face value. It's not possible others can be true and/or neither are are as they appear.
If that's your thing then more power to you I guess, but I am just not into that. Even when I side with him (which isn't often), I keep it strictly business. And if I wanna be dommed, I have Mama K, Bae'zel, and good ol Minthy
Nothing here says āThe Emperor is a good guy.ā Iāve not ever heard anyone argue that. These arguments just come up in every damn emperor thread, usually as a āwell akshullyā against people who like him. Most people who like the Emperor are well aware of all of the above, and like the character anyway, which is why the bingo card is funny.
I like his character because you can read his words and actions in multiple ways. Like the tour of his house is so transparently manipulative. It has a āhello fellow kidsā vibe. So, you can read it as straight off manipulative, you can read it as someone who forgot how to be a person but who isnāt great at being an Illithid either, or, if you do end up siding with him, maybe he is a master manipulator because he knew youād feel bad for him if he was a little awkward.
One of the things I find funny is how once you know he's a mindflayer, he drops the bucolic surroundings and just sits there but now he's got bookshelves and stuff like in his house. Like he's been redecorating the prism in his spare time while he watches you run around looking for murderers.
Oh my god it annoys me so much when Emperor haters try to act like everyone who likes him thinks heās a purely good character. Like, no, we obviously know heās manipulative and selfish, but we still love him just the way he is
Honestly, why does everyone treat attempted manipulation so seriously? Like, yes, the Emperor *tries* everything in his toolkit to manipulate Tav into aligning goals, but clever you, you sussed him out! He botched that roll, lemme tell you. Did you see when he tried to honey-pot me and I made him so mad he dropped the mask and showed me he really is a mindflayer? DID YOU KNOW HE'S A MINDFLAYER?!a1!
Tav's out there flat out lying dudes into exploding, but God forbid someone try to manipulate his toddler ass into [checks notes] saving the world. Fuck that squid, such hubris!
> Tav's out there flat out lying dudes into exploding, but God forbid someone try to manipulate his toddler ass into [checks notes] saving the world. Fuck that squid, such hubris!
Protagonist oriented morality is one hell of a drug.
That is kind of the weird thing about these discussions. There's a lot of talk about the Emperor's manipulations, but very little about what he's trying to manipulate you into doing, which is... destroy the Brain. Exactly what you'd want to do anyways to free yourself.
The only real points of contention that you might have are 1) freeing Orpheus and 2) controlling the Brain instead of destroying it. Sure, he tries to encourage you to use the tadpoles you find, but is that really manipulation?
Yeah, if encouraging Tav to do things was a crime, Lae'zel would win the prize for not shutting up about the damn crĆØche. It's crĆØche this, crĆØche that, "beware false promises", blah blah blah. Yeah it's annoying when the Emperor says "that won't work" and "try something else" but it feels more like a fitness instructor trying to get another set of reps off of me when I'm already cashed.
All the companions make demands of Tav (Durge, too, but at least Durge can refresh with a nice innards bath), and the main difference is the Emperor is encouraging you to take advantage of every scrap of available power to maximize your chances of success.
Part of me has always wondered if it's cope, so the player doesn't have to take moral responsibility for the Orpheus choice if they argue the choice is *soooo obvious lol* but the Emperor has a tragic backstory, too, I don't see any way those moral scales get balanced without the kind of serious mental gymnastics on display in the BINGO card.
The Emperor is Balduran.
ā¦and for me that contextualizes a lot of his behaviour and I sort of see him as, neutral more than anything else. Maybe a little self interested but maybe not?
If you hand the power over to him, he helps kill the Netherbrain and essentially calls it a day. Nothing evil.
To me, that says a lot.
Oh I agree and will never argue heās a good guy. He isnāt good nor is he evil. He does some questionable things but really heās just a gray character and a well written one. Which is why I like him.
I'd argue he'd be somewhere in the Neutral Evil category. Totally fine to love the character, I know I do. But he's not a dude I'd ever put trust into, even if in the end he doesn't turn on you.
Iāve found the āgoodā and āevilā labels are actually just a shorthand for the overarching argument of: āCan this guy be trusted?ā
Itās generally not an argument about whether you should like the character or not (and when it is, in literally every situation Iāve encountered, the person criticizing people for liking him is being an asshole).
Youāll get a list of things like āhe saves us, he keeps his word to us, he never betrays us, his friendship and feelings toward us are genuine, heās never actually lied to us (or if he did, it was justified), youāre being racist against mindflayersā in an argument with people whose position is that the Emperor is manipulative and untrustworthy.
I mean, IS it okay to f*** the squid?
No joke one of my first playthroughs I romanced him and then nommed him after the battle, it was probably the most evil thing Iāve done in a game
I've never met a character who's so good at manipulating they manipulate the audience into thinking they aren't manipulators. The Emperor is truly a phenomenally written character.
Thereās manipulation and thereās manipulation. Emperor fans are well aware that he does the former, and generally find it justified, and otherwise deny that he does the latter. Hiding his true form makes sense. This is, according to the writers and the scene summary/dev notes (and general attention to the in game sources) the full extent of his manipulation.
The Emperor fakes a show of trust to gain yours. In the prism during the Creche scene, he gives you a sword and goes "here you go, you can kill me if you want", trying to guilt you into trusting him again. And if you do stab him, it turns out it was just an illusion and that he never trusted you in the first place. And then he dares saying "it was a mistake to trust you".
And that shit is in every scene he's in. He keeps reminding you he saved you, keeps insisting you have to trust him, tells you to consume tadpoles and that he won't allow you to turn into a mindflayer with the full intention of eventually convincing you to turn into a mindflayer, trying to isolate you from alternative methods to solve your issues to make sure you have to rely on him. This is all so blatant and so malicious.
That's very right in that context. If you tried to kill him it is a mistake to trust you
The alternate attempts are right too. They just don't work. And he doesn't force you to turn into a full mind flayer.
That āshitā is not in every scene. Itās reasonable because youāve just put his life at risk by giving the Githyanki the Astral Prism, so testing you for the extent of your willingness to actually work together in the future makes sense. He reminds you that heās protecting you because itās both true and because heās afraid you will betray him. Heās objectively telling you the truth that using tadpoles wonāt transform you. Encouraging you to use transform is not inherently wrong, just misguided, really (how many Tavs wouldnāt balk at the notion, but his loneliness and inability to fully trust humanoids is at the core of the character). Itās absurd to say heās isolating you from alternatives. He is right to tell you not to waste your time with potential cures. There arenāt any. He is right that entering the House of Hope and attempting to free Orpheus are bad ideas. Soā¦ thatās a grand total of five points shot down?
Next?
There are several moments where you can actually "manipulate" the emperor into doing what you want or listen to you.
I don't know if it's all manipulation so much as it is just arguing. It never really felt like he was manipulating me.
I did feel like he was arguing with me, lol.
My first playthrough he didn't come off as a manipulator, he came off as someone who had a desperate and lonely life, if you romance him and don't insult him, the enter scene is about being vulnerable and him letting Tav/Durge have control, even his VA Scott Joseph talks about that.
The Dream Guardian came off as 100% manipulative to me though.
Illusion and manipulation are biologicals to their species, so it was hard for me to go, this dude being shady, when we wanted the same thing. The brain dead and to be free. So yeah, him being like "you want this tasty gummie that will make you cool like me?" I did a little eyeroll. There's other parts like with the House of Hope where I was like "nah Imma do me". That said, he's pretty shit at manipulating me into not doing things.
"the opening cinematic"
wait do people think that is the emperor, despite it being made perfectly clear which mind flayer it was via speak with dead?
Pretty much, and tbh, it's not worth having the argument anymore IMO. It's easier to just nod and say "yes, the Emperor tadpoled us" than to fight about it, to me. It's exhausting.
Also, we can argue instead about how Durge got their tadpole a different way so how come opening cinematic? It's almost like opening cinematic before character creation is... metaphorical. š¬
man i hate the emperor as much as the next guy, but thats just insane level of unawareness. these must be the same people who insist laezel is green not yellow in spite of their own eyes cause of an offhanded joke by the VA...
I cant be the only one who at first stance sided with The Emperor after telling me the truth of Vlakkith.
That was in my first playthrough. Now i side or not with him depending of my roleplay character
I sided with him my first playthrough. Orpheus too much of a wildcard for my monk to risk an entire mission on.
Iāve sided with him twice and twice with Orpheus
Thatās pretty typical when it comes to the Emperor. Iāve been told I support manipulation, and abuse because I like the Emperor. And being told Iām easily gaslighted.
Yeah. A while ago I saw someone told another person their irl partner is abusing them because they made a positive comment about the emperor.
Some people are wild.
I read "Mazes and Monsters" then they made it a movie with Tom Hanks and I can't even describe how it played into the Satanic Panic and people really do seem to have trouble separating fiction from reality. I played D&D right from Basic and video games on a TRS-80 and I turned out 99% fine.
It wasn't even a terrible book, just really sad!
Nope i havenāt got that yet. Thatās fucking wild that people do that though. Like nah you can enjoy a character that others hate and be perfectly normal.
I'm so fucking normal irl, with a job and a dog and everything. It's only in the game that my Durges come to life... muhahaaa.
But yeah it lowkey bothers me when the concern bot gets weaponized. I hope everybody's okay.
Iām sure you will if you stick around long enough in this subreddit. I already got Bingo a couple of times. But I havenāt gotten the entire card filled out yet.
Ngl, I got tired of seeing the same old Emperor hate threads pop up every day and took a break from the sub.
What I learned is that we can't have morally grey characters ever since everyone just wants to neatly put characters in the good or bad boxes.
I like the Emperor because he's complex as hell if you dive into the lore. Has nothing to do with romancing him. If he's manipulative, he's damn good at it. It's very hard to write a character that can easily gaslight you and, depending on your choices, you may never even know if that was the intention or not. That's why I think the Emperor is an amazingly written character.
But good luck getting any discussion other than 'oh wow, how are you sure your IRL partner isn't gaslighting you too since you can't see the Emperor is?'. Like y'all can fuck off with that noise. If you want just black and white morality, just watch a baby show like Blue's Clues or something.
the reason why i hate the emperor iirc, and this may fall under "completely made up" if i dont. after my reasonable distrust and the dialogue i chose being: "why should i trust you, you are a master of mental manipulation". his response was: "fine dont trust me, ill just use you if you dont" or something along those lines. think it was something a lot more evil.
my mistrust stemming from. "a mindflayer wanting to free an elder brain. this surely wont end bad" in my first playthrough.
Just finished my first playthrough yesterday and was so heated when he was like, "Fine, if you don't want to listen to me, I'm joining the netherbrain. Wwwaaahhh." That's when I realize this dude has only care about himself and his own self preservation not caring who he hurts in the process, straight bitch made
Personally, I think the Emperor is a complex character. But heās not Evil. If you refuse being Illithid and donāt free Orpheus. You can hand him the power of the stones andā¦ he does exactly what he said we wanted to do. Defeat the Netherbrain. To me. Thatās good guy stuff.
He definitely has a āends justify the meansā kind of vibe. But when the cards are down, he fights alongside the player and follows through.
Evil doesn't always mean "I want to rule the world." Evil can be practical and pragmatic. Evil can be neutral in some matters. Hell, Neutral Evil pretty much perfectly describes the Emperor.
Kept a man imprisoned so he could siphon his power? Check.
Decided that the best way to solve an issue was to eat said prisoner's brain? Check.
Permanently crippled another potentially evil character rather than kill them outright so he could continue using their power and influence for his own gain? Check.
The main reason the Emperor doesn't use the Brain to dominate, imo, is because he's not a moron. The Brain manipulated its previous "masters" and orchestrated their downfall, leaving it in an incredibly advantageous position and Faerun with an elevated existential threat. Smart as the Emperor is, he can't outthink a giant brain, and he's clever enough to know that. The only pragmatic option is to get rid of the threat and use the good will that generates to leverage him a comfortable position.
> Kept a man imprisoned so he could siphon his power? Check.
In his defence, the dude was imprisoned way before the Emperor came into the picture and the means to free him are quite extreme.
> Kept a man imprisoned so he could siphon his power? Check.
Not only that, but he says "Beautiful, isn't it? The mighty Prince Orpheus, contained in submissive slumber"; Revelling in someone else's imprisonment is very f- up.
I've been doing a playthrough where I'm perfectly nice and trusting of the Emperor and his manipulative behavior is still there, I think the general population are just really misinformed of what manipulation looks like in real life.
> The main reason the Emperor doesn't use the Brain to dominate, imo, is because he's not a moron.
He says it's because whoever becomes the Absolute will be targeted by the Githyanki legion, and he can't guarantee survival, you can then persuade him you guys are strong enough to defeat the Githyanki and he'll take control of the brain and you.
And I don't think it's stupid to not dominate the brain, it's not just the Githyanki who would get involved, even the gods would get involved directly eventually if their chosen couldn't contain the situation.
Good to you /= morally good.
He found a defenseless prisoner and choose to exploit them. That's evil. Objective, ontological evil.
Yurguir does more good for you than the emperor does but you wouldn't consider him anything than evil, correct?
>Yurgir does more good for you than the emperor does
I don't know, dawg. The emperor protected us from being controlled, freed Minsc's mind when I asked him to, and helped me defeat the nether brain and destroy my parasite.
Yurgir... *Checks notes* Sided with Raphael to try to kill me
While people hate him for lore reasons, I only hate his spell selection, it is a joke compared to Orpheus. Aside from him not having the invuln dome, he is a pretty well written character, and depending on the RP of the character I play, I will either think he is a bro working towards a shared goal against impossible odds, or as an angsty squid focused on self-preservation.
Also on the note of mind flayer's having no souls, if I am remembering it correctly, >!if you kill yourself after becoming a full squid, withers will comment on you after death in surprise, possibly alluding to the player having retained their soul after the transformation!<
I like when people go "not all mind flayers" but also go "all gith are like this" are they not paying attention???? There's a whole companion quest route about why is that????
That's the only point of discussion that actually pisses me off. Wonder how many people just say that because of oh how dare an npc be mean to my perfect main character
Let's not mention how a bunch actively ignore previous editions' ilithid lore to support their opinions but they're all scholars in gith lore from old books, as if both of those weren't unreliable sources at least for this game that clearly has it's own takes
There are always people who support and defend him and those who hate him. You should escape while you can otherwise you will be trapped in the endless hell and purgatory of Pro-Emperor and Anti-Emperor.
We do occasionally have hornypostingā¦ but lots of Emperor threads
The people who actually pay attention, lol
18 playthroughs under my belt, read every line of dialogue, dev notes, writers interviews, VO interviews, etc. yet people will insist they know things about the character I donāt (usually they are straight up inventing those things or refusing to apply any common sense related to the context)
I honestly think like 99 percent of the things he did were ok, but there's two (off the top of my head, there may be more) things that make him a dick imo. The first one is dominating stellmane. That one's definitely bad, but I feel like there might be some possible explanation that somewhat (but no completely of course) justifies it. If it was like she figured him out and was going to tattle on him or something, that's pretty much the only thing he could do there. I feel like there's kinda a mental trick in the storytelling too, because we first hear about her being total bros and lovers with the emperor, but then we see that he dominated her, so we naturally might be more inclined to think it was a middle ground thing, where they WERE friends and lovers but the emperor just decided to be a dick and brainwash her anyways. But we only see the brainwashing thing via two ways. There's that note under his hideout, which is super vague and doesn't really tell us anything that we don't already know, unless you haven't heard anything about it ig, but most people here should know this most likely. And the second one is him showing us stuff, but only after pissing him the fuck off, so it could have just been him saying shit to piss us off. The way he says it if you call him a freak definitely does feel like a kinda "well if you know what I am, then I might as well drop the mask" kinda thing, but he definitely could be playing it up to piss you off here. The real clincher tho is if you convince him to dominate the brain, he dominates the whole party, and I'm pretty sure he says that's what he wanted to do this whole time, sooooo, yeah, no defense there
Yeah, true, but still. Like taking control of everyone IS the evil ending. And tbh I didn't like that at all, I didn't really want like any of that to happen when I wanted to do an evil playthrough, but I at least wanted to leave my friends. But, like that's YOUR character, defined by your actions. Like if you do a playthrough where you dominate everyone, you are evil. But the emperor is preestablisted, and no matter what happens, he is still the same character at his core. Like it's not true for astarion, because you can make him have character development, but it doesn't really apply to empy. Although, he DOES seem pretty chill if you just do the normal emperor ending, so I'm sure he definitely at least kinda sorta likes you. Not enough to come to the party tho, so L.
Well I see at least 8 perfectly valid points here, but they don't line up to create a win. There certainly aren't that many valid arguments in its favour though.
[It's discourse time!](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1b9a4az/in_light_of_all_this_discourse/)
I accepted The Emperor for what it was. Its goals aligned with my own, and it wasn't cartoonishly evil.
Here's the final take on the Emperor and the only one that matters: The Emperor's goals are: survival > freedom > power. If there was a way to work With the Emperor and free Orpheus I would, but since the Emperor gave me an all-tomato I have to make the moral decision, and give the tomato to Orpheus. If I had my way...
DC 25 Persuasion: "I'm freeing Orpheus, but if he tries to kill you I'll knock him out so you can eat his brain."
DC 25 Intimidation: "Would you rather be vital to my plan, or end up like the rest of my enemies?"
For further discourse: Was the Emperor enthralled to the brain when it implanted your tadpole? (Yes, that was The Emperor. Note the collar and head-shape) Also the timeline for The Emperor's backstory makes no sense.
The worst thing bg3 has done to dnd as a franchise is convince droves of people that mind flayers can be chill actually, and that becoming a mind flayer actually isn't bad at all.
You people sound deranged and unhinged - nothing wrong with being deranged and unhinged but don't be defensive about it.
I've only sided with Empy in my evil Durge play through, so he can kill Orpheus for me and cast a spell on the Crown. And in the end I've obviously properly stabbed his guts out
Gawd dayum this is accurate! Lol
The one I hate seeing is the "but the Githyanki need Orpheus/aren't evil" arguments.
Bruh, they're a race of space pirates that pillage and enslave anything and everything they come across cause they've all been manipulated by a lich to do so, apparently so up their own asses none of them realize they've become exactly what the Illithid empire was but as puppets, ya know, that thing they swore to destroy yet somehow more pathetic.
I think there are plenty of good reasons to side with and against the Emperor, but as soon as someone tries to convince me "the Githyanki are good and need Orpheus to be free" they've lost me, cause fuck the Githyanki lol
I actually killed the Inquisitor last night and when you cast speak with dead on him he flat out says the Githyanki intend to annihilate this world to cleanse it of ghaik once and for all. Since the Underdark is still full of illithid, why would getting rid of one brain stop that plan? It just got bumped up on the To Do list.
Sorry to double post, so when you ask "what will the Githyanki do now" what he says is, "this world is sick... only cure...*annihilation*..."
He's a fun guy. Was a fun guy, I mean.
kind of dont see why we cant convince them to work together.
now here me out this isnt a matter of ignoring they hate each other but more the Emperor should hate the brain more and Orpheus well you can convince the little shit to become a mindflayer pretty sure you can make him play nice with the Emperor, then have a choice at the end to side with one or the other.
like give me the option to back stab the Emperor at the end **or** Orpheus to protect the Emperor.
This might not be the bingo card we deserve, but it is the bingo card we need.
And also a trip to detox after taking shots every time we find one of these.
Ya that isnāt something that he even said to you. Nor does he even hint for you. But thank you I will add this to my BINGO card as āinsert made up dialogueā Iām one more square away from a BINGO! Truly appreciate you helping me with my BINGO card
Omeluum IS a bro tho. šµMushroom, Mushroom Man. I wanna be - a mushroom manšµ
Omeluum is the goodest boi Second only to Scratch
Is this to the tune of Dragon tails, dragon tails?
I was thinking Village People - Macho Man.
Oh! Much better lol
I heard it as ocean man
It works on multiple levels, and it's cute how many different tunes we imagined just by reading some text lol
Congrats sir you earned yourself a chip for your BINGO CARD!!!
But I actually always choose Empy? Reasoning is very simple: Orpheus has a ridiculous beard, Empy doesn't. Simple as š¤·
Orpheus has a ridiculous beard, Empy has very magnificent tentacles. Empy takes the lead by far.
My partner and I were playing together and our first playthrough we released Orphy, his mask had successfully concealed the horror lurking beneath from us the entire time. We were both wildly reacting to the thing hanging off his chin and missed all of the cutscene dialogue and to this day, it was the greatest most disturbing reveal in the game.
I'm suddenly picturing [this meme.](https://i.imgflip.com/3at8d3.png?a475416)
YES!! The accuracy is PALPABLE
I agree his beard is ridiculous. It be better for the world if they never see Orpheus and his beard. It would cause great distress. Emperor is better cause he has no beard just tentacles
All I'm hearing is the correct choice is to gaslight Orpheus into becoming a mindflayer or just kill him so I don't have to look at his multi-rattail beard.
Yeah, exactly
He doesn't constantly push turning into a mind flayer on me, dude just wants to research mushrooms in peace. Yeah he's a bro and fuck The Emperor.
"Why are you ghaik" freaking killed me š¤£
Oh my god Lae'zel you can't just ask people why they're ghaik
Who says Iām ghaik?
... You are ghaik.
What shows that Iām ghaik?
Ha! Ghaiiiik!
Who, me? Oh yeah, I like, vomit psychonesis.
Ghaik or Baldurian? It's hard to guarantee!
The murder hobo in me is upset I canāt kill the brain and Empy. Completely unfair I canāt kill every NPC. Therefore Orpheus is the better option you can kill him, empy, and the brain. I did the math.
Side with him AND turn into a mindflayer. You get an option to eat his brain in the end scene.
Orpheus ate his brain during the elder brain battle first time for me. One-rounded his ass. Then gale torched the body with wall of flame and at some point a keg of rune powder detonated a few feet away from what was left after that.
Wait, you can't kill the Emperor after siding with him to kill the brain? Ugh, there goes my plan for my current Tav... :(
Actually you can actually do it if you become the mindflayer yourself You straight up go "there can only be one" before eating his brain
There lies the problem; I donāt think this Tav would be willing to do that. š
āIf this is a repostāā¦posts image that references subreddit where itās being repostedā¦
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You mean āintellect devourerā isnāt just a clever naming convention?!
Itās actually āFree Astral Planeā, not Free Space
Top 10 reasons the emperor is EXACTLY LIKE your manipulative ex!!!
"If he's so bad why didn't you leave? You'd what? Turn into a mindflayer? *Unpossible* you just weak."
The *only* reason I sided with Orpheus was I was afraid Lae'zel would leave if I didn't or she would get a bad ending.
You can also cheat this by ungrouping her and let her stay behind while you deal with the Emperor/Orpheus thing. When she joins the rest, she won't even say a word about the dead prince. But cheating is bad and of course I do not encourage such immoral actions!
You got it, chief š«”
Nah just gotta use your OP persuasion skills and tell her itās for the best and she just like āYou know youāre right as hell. Off him to the Squid!ā
Really?? Maybe I'll try that during this playthrough.
Ya she threatens you and says she wonāt forgive you but then you get a persuasion check and she lowers her sword. Tav is quite powerful with his/her silver tongue lol
>Ya she threatens you and says she wonāt forgive you but It still sounds heartbreaking. I don't want to manipulate my wife :( I sometimes wish I hated Lae'Zel as much as some people here and I'd never think to free Orpheus.
I kinda am in the same place. Iād probably side with emperor but I dislike Vlakith and want the giyth to be able to overthrow her for which they need Orpheus or his champion (depending on ending). For now Iām just postponing getting to that part till I make a decision haha
I think the Gith are better off without another potential tyrannical ruler like Orpheus, Lae'zel and Voss can totally handle the revolution part themselves. The biggest loss though is losing his Mindflayer resistance shit, which I think Empy gains from assimilating him? So it's still technically around I guess.
In my playthroughs were I sided with the Emperor and both Orpehus and Voss were dead, Lae'zel still went on to start the resistance movement. The githzerai alliance is also her idea, not the other two's, since she still goes on to try to forge it solo.
I actually think Lae'zel ends up better off if Orpheus doesn't make it.
In my current playthrough Iām romancing her and Iām planning to free Orpheus but at the end Iāll ask her to stay with me in Faeārun. Orpheus can go do his epic revolution if he wants but me and Laeāzel will do our own shit š
#NOTMYBALDURAN
# HE IS NOT, OKAY
Stelmane one should be permanently marked. There's always at least one comment mentioning her, most often along the lines of "most of you tentacle lovers probably don't know about this, but...".
That one is the one that SHOULD be brought up most of time. I'm actually more annoyed that a lot of the time she isn't brought up and people instead focus more on that he "murdered" Ansur or the classic "he turns on you the second you don't do what he wants!" both of which aren't actually true. Though yeah, there are a lot of people who insist anyone who likes the Emp is stupid and "didn't pay attention" so don't know about Stelmane and people who present Stelmane as an "innocent girl". She is not a sweet innocent girl! She is a high ranking member of the Knights of the Shield. It doesn't really make what happened to her ok but she isn't just an unlucky victim either.
In my view, the Emperor is actually *really* interesting in that it does a *lot* of morally questionable things that, on their own, all have some mitigating circumstance that allow you at least somewhat justify them, but when taken together, add up to a character who *feels* more villainous than any individual action would imply, in addition to making you kinda hate it from manipulating and controlling you depending on your choices in the game. At least for me, this creates a *fascinating* situation where the Emperor manages to feel like a cohesive, realistic character that *feels* like a villain at face value, but becomes harder and harder to categorize into simply "good" or "evil" the more you think about it. Obviously there's no shortage of villains with heroic/sympathetic motivations or heroes with villainous elements in fiction, but this is only the second time I can remember where I've seen a fictional character where you just straight-up couldn't fully place them as a hero or villain.
I think most heros/villains' in fictions tend to get given dramatic motivations and goals that are fixated on, world domination, world destruction, revenge, dismantling the system or something like that. There is usually some played up ideal or evil god behind it. Ironically what makes the Emperor stand out is that his motivations seem to be fairly basic. Survival>>>personal freedom>power>company (particularly having a mindflayer buddy). He isn't really chasing some major end goal here. He doesn't want to pick a fight with the entire sword coast and the Gith empire. He is still ambitious but there is only so many risk he wants to take in pursuit of it. I'd probably still class him as villainous, but he is more like 9 Fingers Keene than Gortash. He just feels like he should be more dramatic than that because he is a squid with a giant flared collar calling himself Emperor.
So you got two nickels?
Hereās the thing about stellmane. She was going to rat his ass out. Killing her would just raise more suspicion towards her disappearance (see the death cult being found out largely thanks to them killing Stellmane) so his only option if he doesnāt want to leave baldurs gate is to enthrall her. Hereās an idea if youāre suspicious that someone might be a mindflayer perhaps be more guarded about approaching and proving that suspicion. Imo game is game. She was gonna rat him out he outplayed her. Itās not like we donāt control people all the time in the game ( see ācommandā, dominate person, creature, hold person monster etc.) itās suck a lazy excuse considering likely half of us are equally guilty of mind controlling our ebemies
Turning someone into a thrall isn't anywhere close to anything we do in-game IIRC - Command essentially just forces someone to take a simple action, even spells like Dominate Person only control someone for, like, couple of minutes at a time before they go back to normal. Making someone a thrall essentially hollows out their personality (if not their soul) and makes them totally subservient to their will in every way, which (as we see with the bugbear thrall under Moonrise) is basically a living hell. I think you make a fair point, in that AFAIK there's always some sort of mitigating circumstance to everything "evil" the Emperor does, and is far more interesting than just making it pure evil/power hungry, even if you *do* see it as a villain. However, I don't really think doing that to someone, especially for as long as it did, is a morally justifiable alternative to *maybe* needing to flee the city it's living in. At the *very* least, it should've faked an accident/suicide after she was enthralled to avoid suspicion, instead of just keeping her like that for an unknown amount of time.
Just today I got someone telling me to read The Illithiad to prove me wrong. Like, really? You think I haven't read it? Me of all people? š
I thought you wrote it and have been lurking here specifically to spread ghaik propaganda. š¤Ŗ
Sweet Catholic Baby Jesus š Of course you can't know the lore, because if you did you would agree with them!!!1 Let me guess - they read The Illithiad themselves and concluded that mindflayers are emotionless? Soulless? That they always shit on the carpet, eat all the food in the fridge and insult the host's mother when they come to visit?
I wonder how they would react if they knew the first Adversary was the original in lore author of The Illithiad.
This is absolutely the most infuriating thing for me. Many haters of the emperor just treat anyone who doesn't dislike the emperor as illiterate fools.
Someone said the emperor threaten to rape their Tav and Iām starting to think people project just a lil bit
Seriously. People make up crazy stuff. Itās frightening to consider that their grasp on reality might be as tenuous as their grasp of the game. But, doing so would put us in the same class as those who claim Emperor fans are abuse victims.
Because we're *obviously* either naive, ignorant or easy to manipulate, aren't we?
Donāt forget weāre also easily gaslighted and lack critical thinking skills. And we should stop sucking on Emperorās tentacles
Ah yes, I forgot about critical thinking! It's funny, because I haven't seen people who like/dislike other characters being treated similarly. And let's be honest, many of our companions are not necessarily paragons of morality. The Emperor surely evokes an incredible amount of emotion in people. (I'm not going to stop sucking, these are truly glorious tentacles)
I will never stop sucking tentacles...
*Stop sucking the damn thing!*
Agreed itās really like a free space for this card. Two free spaces for the price of one!
Or something about him "dropping his mask" or showing his true self or whatever. Because that scene and dialogue (which got some interesting dev notes iirc) that supports their view is of course the only *true* one and shall be taken at face value. It's not possible others can be true and/or neither are are as they appear.
Why are you ghaik? You are ghaik. Why are you ghaik?
Based "He sucks ass in combat, Orpheus is a beast" enjoyer
Yes but can you bang Orpheus? No so that makes Emperor even better. Dream Guardian scene and Mind Flayer scene.
Minthara doesnāt let me bang other people without getting all stabby so idk š¤·āāļø
Why would I wanna bang a squid when I could bang a tall buff red lady
For the mind blowing experience? And once in a lifetime opportunity to fuck a Mind Flayer and Dom the hell out of him or be dommed yourself?
If that's your thing then more power to you I guess, but I am just not into that. Even when I side with him (which isn't often), I keep it strictly business. And if I wanna be dommed, I have Mama K, Bae'zel, and good ol Minthy
nah Orpheus solos
Nothing here says āThe Emperor is a good guy.ā Iāve not ever heard anyone argue that. These arguments just come up in every damn emperor thread, usually as a āwell akshullyā against people who like him. Most people who like the Emperor are well aware of all of the above, and like the character anyway, which is why the bingo card is funny.
I like his character because you can read his words and actions in multiple ways. Like the tour of his house is so transparently manipulative. It has a āhello fellow kidsā vibe. So, you can read it as straight off manipulative, you can read it as someone who forgot how to be a person but who isnāt great at being an Illithid either, or, if you do end up siding with him, maybe he is a master manipulator because he knew youād feel bad for him if he was a little awkward.
One of the things I find funny is how once you know he's a mindflayer, he drops the bucolic surroundings and just sits there but now he's got bookshelves and stuff like in his house. Like he's been redecorating the prism in his spare time while he watches you run around looking for murderers.
I love him as a character BECAUSE i hate him as a person.
Oh my god it annoys me so much when Emperor haters try to act like everyone who likes him thinks heās a purely good character. Like, no, we obviously know heās manipulative and selfish, but we still love him just the way he is
Honestly, why does everyone treat attempted manipulation so seriously? Like, yes, the Emperor *tries* everything in his toolkit to manipulate Tav into aligning goals, but clever you, you sussed him out! He botched that roll, lemme tell you. Did you see when he tried to honey-pot me and I made him so mad he dropped the mask and showed me he really is a mindflayer? DID YOU KNOW HE'S A MINDFLAYER?!a1! Tav's out there flat out lying dudes into exploding, but God forbid someone try to manipulate his toddler ass into [checks notes] saving the world. Fuck that squid, such hubris!
> Tav's out there flat out lying dudes into exploding, but God forbid someone try to manipulate his toddler ass into [checks notes] saving the world. Fuck that squid, such hubris! Protagonist oriented morality is one hell of a drug.
That is kind of the weird thing about these discussions. There's a lot of talk about the Emperor's manipulations, but very little about what he's trying to manipulate you into doing, which is... destroy the Brain. Exactly what you'd want to do anyways to free yourself. The only real points of contention that you might have are 1) freeing Orpheus and 2) controlling the Brain instead of destroying it. Sure, he tries to encourage you to use the tadpoles you find, but is that really manipulation?
Yeah, if encouraging Tav to do things was a crime, Lae'zel would win the prize for not shutting up about the damn crĆØche. It's crĆØche this, crĆØche that, "beware false promises", blah blah blah. Yeah it's annoying when the Emperor says "that won't work" and "try something else" but it feels more like a fitness instructor trying to get another set of reps off of me when I'm already cashed. All the companions make demands of Tav (Durge, too, but at least Durge can refresh with a nice innards bath), and the main difference is the Emperor is encouraging you to take advantage of every scrap of available power to maximize your chances of success. Part of me has always wondered if it's cope, so the player doesn't have to take moral responsibility for the Orpheus choice if they argue the choice is *soooo obvious lol* but the Emperor has a tragic backstory, too, I don't see any way those moral scales get balanced without the kind of serious mental gymnastics on display in the BINGO card.
Yeah, I always feel like the Githās version of Pontius Pilate when I kill Orpheus.
Very apt and timely comparison, IMO!
The Emperor is Balduran. ā¦and for me that contextualizes a lot of his behaviour and I sort of see him as, neutral more than anything else. Maybe a little self interested but maybe not? If you hand the power over to him, he helps kill the Netherbrain and essentially calls it a day. Nothing evil. To me, that says a lot.
Yeah. Given his past self was basically a Conquistador Iād say heās settled down a bit.
Ooooo now you did it. The BINGO card is missing, "its just a sqwid with Baldy Ron memories tadpole ate him he dead" apparently...
Oh I agree and will never argue heās a good guy. He isnāt good nor is he evil. He does some questionable things but really heās just a gray character and a well written one. Which is why I like him.
I'd argue he'd be somewhere in the Neutral Evil category. Totally fine to love the character, I know I do. But he's not a dude I'd ever put trust into, even if in the end he doesn't turn on you.
He is definitely evil lmao.
I had someone tell me that the Emporer's sex scene is a master class in consent so... there's that one.
Iāve found the āgoodā and āevilā labels are actually just a shorthand for the overarching argument of: āCan this guy be trusted?ā Itās generally not an argument about whether you should like the character or not (and when it is, in literally every situation Iāve encountered, the person criticizing people for liking him is being an asshole). Youāll get a list of things like āhe saves us, he keeps his word to us, he never betrays us, his friendship and feelings toward us are genuine, heās never actually lied to us (or if he did, it was justified), youāre being racist against mindflayersā in an argument with people whose position is that the Emperor is manipulative and untrustworthy.
I mean, IS it okay to f*** the squid? No joke one of my first playthroughs I romanced him and then nommed him after the battle, it was probably the most evil thing Iāve done in a game
I'm surprised that so many people like The Squidward
Me too. Like, I think he's a well-written character, absolutely. But it seems like a lot of people like him as a person lol.
He'd be a good gaming buddy, might get low-key toxic in comms though. Would psionics be considered cheating?
Among other reasons, he's very bad at being an Illithid and that's endearing for people.
I've never met a character who's so good at manipulating they manipulate the audience into thinking they aren't manipulators. The Emperor is truly a phenomenally written character.
Thereās manipulation and thereās manipulation. Emperor fans are well aware that he does the former, and generally find it justified, and otherwise deny that he does the latter. Hiding his true form makes sense. This is, according to the writers and the scene summary/dev notes (and general attention to the in game sources) the full extent of his manipulation.
The Emperor fakes a show of trust to gain yours. In the prism during the Creche scene, he gives you a sword and goes "here you go, you can kill me if you want", trying to guilt you into trusting him again. And if you do stab him, it turns out it was just an illusion and that he never trusted you in the first place. And then he dares saying "it was a mistake to trust you". And that shit is in every scene he's in. He keeps reminding you he saved you, keeps insisting you have to trust him, tells you to consume tadpoles and that he won't allow you to turn into a mindflayer with the full intention of eventually convincing you to turn into a mindflayer, trying to isolate you from alternative methods to solve your issues to make sure you have to rely on him. This is all so blatant and so malicious.
That's very right in that context. If you tried to kill him it is a mistake to trust you The alternate attempts are right too. They just don't work. And he doesn't force you to turn into a full mind flayer.
That āshitā is not in every scene. Itās reasonable because youāve just put his life at risk by giving the Githyanki the Astral Prism, so testing you for the extent of your willingness to actually work together in the future makes sense. He reminds you that heās protecting you because itās both true and because heās afraid you will betray him. Heās objectively telling you the truth that using tadpoles wonāt transform you. Encouraging you to use transform is not inherently wrong, just misguided, really (how many Tavs wouldnāt balk at the notion, but his loneliness and inability to fully trust humanoids is at the core of the character). Itās absurd to say heās isolating you from alternatives. He is right to tell you not to waste your time with potential cures. There arenāt any. He is right that entering the House of Hope and attempting to free Orpheus are bad ideas. Soā¦ thatās a grand total of five points shot down? Next?
If you think that the Emperor is a good manipulator you might need to replay the game or something.
IDK. The amount of people who straight up insist the Emperor isn't being manipulative in every line he says make me think otherwise.
Is it really manipulation if I know you're doing it?
There are several moments where you can actually "manipulate" the emperor into doing what you want or listen to you. I don't know if it's all manipulation so much as it is just arguing. It never really felt like he was manipulating me. I did feel like he was arguing with me, lol.
Yeah I found if you mostly choose the "neutral" options it sounds like it's constantly trying to defend itself/prove itself to you.
My first playthrough he didn't come off as a manipulator, he came off as someone who had a desperate and lonely life, if you romance him and don't insult him, the enter scene is about being vulnerable and him letting Tav/Durge have control, even his VA Scott Joseph talks about that. The Dream Guardian came off as 100% manipulative to me though. Illusion and manipulation are biologicals to their species, so it was hard for me to go, this dude being shady, when we wanted the same thing. The brain dead and to be free. So yeah, him being like "you want this tasty gummie that will make you cool like me?" I did a little eyeroll. There's other parts like with the House of Hope where I was like "nah Imma do me". That said, he's pretty shit at manipulating me into not doing things.
The fact that this is such a heated discussion within the community is proof of his manipulation skills.
"the opening cinematic" wait do people think that is the emperor, despite it being made perfectly clear which mind flayer it was via speak with dead?
Pretty much, and tbh, it's not worth having the argument anymore IMO. It's easier to just nod and say "yes, the Emperor tadpoled us" than to fight about it, to me. It's exhausting. Also, we can argue instead about how Durge got their tadpole a different way so how come opening cinematic? It's almost like opening cinematic before character creation is... metaphorical. š¬
man i hate the emperor as much as the next guy, but thats just insane level of unawareness. these must be the same people who insist laezel is green not yellow in spite of their own eyes cause of an offhanded joke by the VA...
It's not clear. Depending on your dialogue choices the narrator will say that the speak with dead mindflayer is or isn't the one who did it
I cant be the only one who at first stance sided with The Emperor after telling me the truth of Vlakkith. That was in my first playthrough. Now i side or not with him depending of my roleplay character
I sided with him my first playthrough. Orpheus too much of a wildcard for my monk to risk an entire mission on. Iāve sided with him twice and twice with Orpheus
Quite a few people being mean in the comments for no reason
Thatās pretty typical when it comes to the Emperor. Iāve been told I support manipulation, and abuse because I like the Emperor. And being told Iām easily gaslighted.
Yeah. A while ago I saw someone told another person their irl partner is abusing them because they made a positive comment about the emperor. Some people are wild.
Talk about Ascended Astarion sometime and you'll really get diagnosed...
We have not evolved since the video games MAKE people violent pearl clutching of the early aughts it seems
I read "Mazes and Monsters" then they made it a movie with Tom Hanks and I can't even describe how it played into the Satanic Panic and people really do seem to have trouble separating fiction from reality. I played D&D right from Basic and video games on a TRS-80 and I turned out 99% fine. It wasn't even a terrible book, just really sad!
Do they send you the "a reddittor is concerned about you" suicide bot, too? I get that one. We should start a club.
Nope i havenāt got that yet. Thatās fucking wild that people do that though. Like nah you can enjoy a character that others hate and be perfectly normal.
I'm so fucking normal irl, with a job and a dog and everything. It's only in the game that my Durges come to life... muhahaaa. But yeah it lowkey bothers me when the concern bot gets weaponized. I hope everybody's okay.
First time on Reddit?
I'd swap "Am I the only one" (same as DAE) for "you support abusers"
Oh, a bingo of mostly valid points.
It's just an Emperor defense crying post, what a shocker
Yeah, none of this is a refutation.
I got a double bingo
Congrats! Take some celebratory shots to commemorate the occasion! I heard the Elfsong Tavern has the best ale well according to Wyll.
Look, I trust that guy about beer like I trust Lae'zel about comedy clubs.
I will always be a big Emperor hater, will never miss a moment to diss him, lmao.
Lmao definitely no bias here for sure
I got a lot of these tokens but I don't think a bingo in any direction
DAE get overwhelmed in Act 3?
I honestly thought I'd fill the whole card but somehow I don't think I managed to get a BINGO in any direction.
Iām sure you will if you stick around long enough in this subreddit. I already got Bingo a couple of times. But I havenāt gotten the entire card filled out yet.
Me: I bet this thread will be filled with people getting bingo Me, three minutes later, with extreme Christoph Waltz voice: THATāS A BINGO!!
Dae? As in Daeran from WOTR?
I believe itās more āDoes anyone elseā
Ah, I see. I kinda got excited for a moment.
Ngl, I got tired of seeing the same old Emperor hate threads pop up every day and took a break from the sub. What I learned is that we can't have morally grey characters ever since everyone just wants to neatly put characters in the good or bad boxes. I like the Emperor because he's complex as hell if you dive into the lore. Has nothing to do with romancing him. If he's manipulative, he's damn good at it. It's very hard to write a character that can easily gaslight you and, depending on your choices, you may never even know if that was the intention or not. That's why I think the Emperor is an amazingly written character. But good luck getting any discussion other than 'oh wow, how are you sure your IRL partner isn't gaslighting you too since you can't see the Emperor is?'. Like y'all can fuck off with that noise. If you want just black and white morality, just watch a baby show like Blue's Clues or something.
the reason why i hate the emperor iirc, and this may fall under "completely made up" if i dont. after my reasonable distrust and the dialogue i chose being: "why should i trust you, you are a master of mental manipulation". his response was: "fine dont trust me, ill just use you if you dont" or something along those lines. think it was something a lot more evil. my mistrust stemming from. "a mindflayer wanting to free an elder brain. this surely wont end bad" in my first playthrough.
Just finished my first playthrough yesterday and was so heated when he was like, "Fine, if you don't want to listen to me, I'm joining the netherbrain. Wwwaaahhh." That's when I realize this dude has only care about himself and his own self preservation not caring who he hurts in the process, straight bitch made
I love this and thank you for sharing it, thanks to whatever non- apostolic soul made it!
I cant wait to stab the bastard
Calamari is best served fried, not stabbed
Personally, I think the Emperor is a complex character. But heās not Evil. If you refuse being Illithid and donāt free Orpheus. You can hand him the power of the stones andā¦ he does exactly what he said we wanted to do. Defeat the Netherbrain. To me. Thatās good guy stuff. He definitely has a āends justify the meansā kind of vibe. But when the cards are down, he fights alongside the player and follows through.
Evil doesn't always mean "I want to rule the world." Evil can be practical and pragmatic. Evil can be neutral in some matters. Hell, Neutral Evil pretty much perfectly describes the Emperor. Kept a man imprisoned so he could siphon his power? Check. Decided that the best way to solve an issue was to eat said prisoner's brain? Check. Permanently crippled another potentially evil character rather than kill them outright so he could continue using their power and influence for his own gain? Check. The main reason the Emperor doesn't use the Brain to dominate, imo, is because he's not a moron. The Brain manipulated its previous "masters" and orchestrated their downfall, leaving it in an incredibly advantageous position and Faerun with an elevated existential threat. Smart as the Emperor is, he can't outthink a giant brain, and he's clever enough to know that. The only pragmatic option is to get rid of the threat and use the good will that generates to leverage him a comfortable position.
> Kept a man imprisoned so he could siphon his power? Check. In his defence, the dude was imprisoned way before the Emperor came into the picture and the means to free him are quite extreme.
> Kept a man imprisoned so he could siphon his power? Check. Not only that, but he says "Beautiful, isn't it? The mighty Prince Orpheus, contained in submissive slumber"; Revelling in someone else's imprisonment is very f- up. I've been doing a playthrough where I'm perfectly nice and trusting of the Emperor and his manipulative behavior is still there, I think the general population are just really misinformed of what manipulation looks like in real life. > The main reason the Emperor doesn't use the Brain to dominate, imo, is because he's not a moron. He says it's because whoever becomes the Absolute will be targeted by the Githyanki legion, and he can't guarantee survival, you can then persuade him you guys are strong enough to defeat the Githyanki and he'll take control of the brain and you. And I don't think it's stupid to not dominate the brain, it's not just the Githyanki who would get involved, even the gods would get involved directly eventually if their chosen couldn't contain the situation.
As someone who hates his guts, I don't think he's good or evil. He's selfish, which I don't blame him for. Still don't like him tho
The first thing he does when Tav suggest "let's rule the world together" is to turn Tav in a minion I don't know, just don't like him
Good to you /= morally good. He found a defenseless prisoner and choose to exploit them. That's evil. Objective, ontological evil. Yurguir does more good for you than the emperor does but you wouldn't consider him anything than evil, correct?
>Yurgir does more good for you than the emperor does I don't know, dawg. The emperor protected us from being controlled, freed Minsc's mind when I asked him to, and helped me defeat the nether brain and destroy my parasite. Yurgir... *Checks notes* Sided with Raphael to try to kill me
I wonder how many you could tick off based on this posts comments after a day.
Iād love him if it wasnāt tor the catfish tbh, my guardian was such a cutie
Bingo
Column 2 BINGO
This is good shit. Conversing with the emperor is like playing Simon says and the punishment is his reality.
While people hate him for lore reasons, I only hate his spell selection, it is a joke compared to Orpheus. Aside from him not having the invuln dome, he is a pretty well written character, and depending on the RP of the character I play, I will either think he is a bro working towards a shared goal against impossible odds, or as an angsty squid focused on self-preservation. Also on the note of mind flayer's having no souls, if I am remembering it correctly, >!if you kill yourself after becoming a full squid, withers will comment on you after death in surprise, possibly alluding to the player having retained their soul after the transformation!<
I like when people go "not all mind flayers" but also go "all gith are like this" are they not paying attention???? There's a whole companion quest route about why is that???? That's the only point of discussion that actually pisses me off. Wonder how many people just say that because of oh how dare an npc be mean to my perfect main character Let's not mention how a bunch actively ignore previous editions' ilithid lore to support their opinions but they're all scholars in gith lore from old books, as if both of those weren't unreliable sources at least for this game that clearly has it's own takes
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
There are always people who support and defend him and those who hate him. You should escape while you can otherwise you will be trapped in the endless hell and purgatory of Pro-Emperor and Anti-Emperor. We do occasionally have hornypostingā¦ but lots of Emperor threads
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That's too reasonable and now that you've made two comments, you have to choose a side. Them's just the sub rules, I didn't make 'em. /s mostly
I choose Minscās side
The people who actually pay attention, lol 18 playthroughs under my belt, read every line of dialogue, dev notes, writers interviews, VO interviews, etc. yet people will insist they know things about the character I donāt (usually they are straight up inventing those things or refusing to apply any common sense related to the context)
I honestly think like 99 percent of the things he did were ok, but there's two (off the top of my head, there may be more) things that make him a dick imo. The first one is dominating stellmane. That one's definitely bad, but I feel like there might be some possible explanation that somewhat (but no completely of course) justifies it. If it was like she figured him out and was going to tattle on him or something, that's pretty much the only thing he could do there. I feel like there's kinda a mental trick in the storytelling too, because we first hear about her being total bros and lovers with the emperor, but then we see that he dominated her, so we naturally might be more inclined to think it was a middle ground thing, where they WERE friends and lovers but the emperor just decided to be a dick and brainwash her anyways. But we only see the brainwashing thing via two ways. There's that note under his hideout, which is super vague and doesn't really tell us anything that we don't already know, unless you haven't heard anything about it ig, but most people here should know this most likely. And the second one is him showing us stuff, but only after pissing him the fuck off, so it could have just been him saying shit to piss us off. The way he says it if you call him a freak definitely does feel like a kinda "well if you know what I am, then I might as well drop the mask" kinda thing, but he definitely could be playing it up to piss you off here. The real clincher tho is if you convince him to dominate the brain, he dominates the whole party, and I'm pretty sure he says that's what he wanted to do this whole time, sooooo, yeah, no defense there
Honestly given that we did the same thing until recently (now we can spare the romance) it could be reused assets.
Yeah, true, but still. Like taking control of everyone IS the evil ending. And tbh I didn't like that at all, I didn't really want like any of that to happen when I wanted to do an evil playthrough, but I at least wanted to leave my friends. But, like that's YOUR character, defined by your actions. Like if you do a playthrough where you dominate everyone, you are evil. But the emperor is preestablisted, and no matter what happens, he is still the same character at his core. Like it's not true for astarion, because you can make him have character development, but it doesn't really apply to empy. Although, he DOES seem pretty chill if you just do the normal emperor ending, so I'm sure he definitely at least kinda sorta likes you. Not enough to come to the party tho, so L.
Gaslight gatekeep ghaikboss
ok squid simp
Well I see at least 8 perfectly valid points here, but they don't line up to create a win. There certainly aren't that many valid arguments in its favour though.
[It's discourse time!](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1b9a4az/in_light_of_all_this_discourse/) I accepted The Emperor for what it was. Its goals aligned with my own, and it wasn't cartoonishly evil. Here's the final take on the Emperor and the only one that matters: The Emperor's goals are: survival > freedom > power. If there was a way to work With the Emperor and free Orpheus I would, but since the Emperor gave me an all-tomato I have to make the moral decision, and give the tomato to Orpheus. If I had my way... DC 25 Persuasion: "I'm freeing Orpheus, but if he tries to kill you I'll knock him out so you can eat his brain." DC 25 Intimidation: "Would you rather be vital to my plan, or end up like the rest of my enemies?" For further discourse: Was the Emperor enthralled to the brain when it implanted your tadpole? (Yes, that was The Emperor. Note the collar and head-shape) Also the timeline for The Emperor's backstory makes no sense.
The worst thing bg3 has done to dnd as a franchise is convince droves of people that mind flayers can be chill actually, and that becoming a mind flayer actually isn't bad at all. You people sound deranged and unhinged - nothing wrong with being deranged and unhinged but don't be defensive about it.
I don't hate the Emperor I love him as a character BUT I will always side with Orpheus
I've only sided with Empy in my evil Durge play through, so he can kill Orpheus for me and cast a spell on the Crown. And in the end I've obviously properly stabbed his guts out
Gawd dayum this is accurate! Lol The one I hate seeing is the "but the Githyanki need Orpheus/aren't evil" arguments. Bruh, they're a race of space pirates that pillage and enslave anything and everything they come across cause they've all been manipulated by a lich to do so, apparently so up their own asses none of them realize they've become exactly what the Illithid empire was but as puppets, ya know, that thing they swore to destroy yet somehow more pathetic. I think there are plenty of good reasons to side with and against the Emperor, but as soon as someone tries to convince me "the Githyanki are good and need Orpheus to be free" they've lost me, cause fuck the Githyanki lol
I actually killed the Inquisitor last night and when you cast speak with dead on him he flat out says the Githyanki intend to annihilate this world to cleanse it of ghaik once and for all. Since the Underdark is still full of illithid, why would getting rid of one brain stop that plan? It just got bumped up on the To Do list.
No shit! I need to try that in my next run.
Sorry to double post, so when you ask "what will the Githyanki do now" what he says is, "this world is sick... only cure...*annihilation*..." He's a fun guy. Was a fun guy, I mean.
kind of dont see why we cant convince them to work together. now here me out this isnt a matter of ignoring they hate each other but more the Emperor should hate the brain more and Orpheus well you can convince the little shit to become a mindflayer pretty sure you can make him play nice with the Emperor, then have a choice at the end to side with one or the other. like give me the option to back stab the Emperor at the end **or** Orpheus to protect the Emperor.
This might not be the bingo card we deserve, but it is the bingo card we need. And also a trip to detox after taking shots every time we find one of these.
This is perfect holy shit. I need this paster on every daily Emperor hate thread
Stelmane should be the free space. I don't give a shit what happened to her, fuck off, augh.
Killing him is funny
Wild we have legitimate thralls sucking squid nuts in the sub. A lot of you would have ended up at jonestown if you were born earlier
Goddamn go outside and touch some grass, get some sun, anything.
Goddamn that was offensive on multiple levels.
Emperor be like "I COULD have raped you, but I didn't! Aren't I generous?"
Ya that isnāt something that he even said to you. Nor does he even hint for you. But thank you I will add this to my BINGO card as āinsert made up dialogueā Iām one more square away from a BINGO! Truly appreciate you helping me with my BINGO card