Wyll is so fucking funny and no amount of acknowledgement about this could ever be enough. He's literally walking around being so casually hilarious completely under-the-radar. He calls Halsin a "thick hunk of an elf". He once accidently implied that he was fucking an ogre instead of killing it and then proceeded to absolutely stumble his way through explaining. He gets excited by Lae'zel talking about carnal pleasures. He canonically tells his pessimistic thoughts to shut the hell up. He volunteers to babysit Shadowheart's hypothetical werewolf babies as long as she gets him gloves. He tries to give Gale a hero moniker like his own. He jokes that his father, the Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate, can't spell. He calls Astarion "Mister Fangs". He makes up storybook chapter names for his own fucking adventures. As a child he got chased by the Flaming Fist for stealing fruit, nearly drowned trying to find mermaids in the harbor, and almost successfully broke into the Counting House. He reads monster erotica, and is not ashamed to tell you about it. He ranks eating pudding among life's greatest moments. He will, without shame and completely unprompted, meow at you. He is 24 years old.

look at my judge dawg I'm going to jail

Why have I never seen anyone talking about how when you first meet Gale you have to pull him from a dark magical void that's trying to eat him that he only got caught in because he saw something sparkly and reached out for it to save him...

And his story arc is about saving him about a dark magical hole that's trying to eat him because he sought out something magical because he thought it would help him and reached out to it when he shouldn't have...

cue the walk of shame back to the cottage cuz astarion forgot his gloves

“oh i like wyllstarion because they’re narrative foils” “oh i like wyllstarion because they have horrible crushes on each other and it’s so romantic and sweet” “oh i like wyllstarion when they’re divorced”. WRONG. I like wyllstarion because of how much it makes ulder ravengard’s life absolute hell. any iteration is funny but duke wyll trophy wife spawn astarion wyllstarion maybe the funniest. you abandon your son to the wild and the grips of a devil at age 17 and he comes back hero of baldur's gate and you already have to grapple with how the hell you apologize for something like that when the meanest most terrible invested in chaos and ruin VAMPIRE SPAWN in all of baldur's gate has made a home not just in your son's heart but also in YOUR home. AND THEY'RE GETTING MARRIED. AND HE HATES YOU. i'd kill myself

Halsin's sexiest feature isn't his kind eyes or his toothy, goofy smiles. It isn't his big, muscular body. It isn't that he's pretty well endowed or that he actually knows what the fuck he's doing in the bedroom. Instead, It's that quiet self confidence that makes him so sure of himself and what he wants. He knows who he is, what his kinks and boundaries are, and what he likes. He is unafraid to make his move.

I love that Halsin doesn't play head games, nor does he say anything to try and manipulate the player into saying yes. He's just Halsin, and what you see from him, or ask of him, is exactly what you get.

He is unabashedly real with his partners, and that's wonderful.

precious little bhaal babe

can you imagine how wild the whole of gale and tav's romance is from gale's perspective?

you keep secrets. shameful, terrible secrets. youre dying. every step is just a little bit harder than the last. youre a disgrace. if people didnt look at you with disdain, they were looking at you with pity. and youve got nobody to blame but yourself.

every moment, youre expecting the other shoe to drop, for tav to finally say enough -- you wouldn't hold it against them, youre more trouble than youre worth -- but then...?

it doesnt matter what it is. magical item consumption with no reason given. an awkward exit from an imagined kiss shared in the cradle of your ex's palm. revealing you could kill yourself, them, and everybody in a city-wide radius. defending you against one of your most powerful colleagues because he came baring mystra's will. dissauding you at every turn, to stay alive, to ignore a goddess's orders, because they think youre worth the space you take up. loving you ardently, hastily, easily, as though you have anything to offer them back. staying with you as you oscillate between self-destruction and ascension. never once stepping away from your side, even as the stabilised orb burns in your chest, begging to be used, and the crown, almost within reach, taunts you with your wildest dreams.

and that's just it, isnt it? you have the chance to give tav everything they could ever want at last, after so long of being a burden, and they tell you no. they tell you no. i want you.

you, the burden? you, the disgrace?

yes, you.

gale falling in love with tav wasn't like how the great novels describe. there wasnt any one moment that led to a grand realisation. there were no great leaps of faith toward each other.

falling in love with tav was like a warm candlelight and an even warmer hand in an endless void of black.

falling in love with tav was a gentle tug, a smile, and a 'this way.'

how could he not follow?

You deserve something real... I want us to be something real.

My favourite bit of BG3 lore is that Withers is legitimately responsible for the Dead Three, but he's probably too embarrassed to tell you, so every time you ask him to elaborate he just gives you a very stern, "Noooo."

I also love that the reason he's responsible for their uprising is because he got bored. He literally got bored of his position as Lord of the Dead and wanted to retire, so when these three morally questionable humans came looking for godhood he was like, "Hmmm. Yes, okay. Here. Take my portfolios. Fight over them. I don't care. I quit."

So after bowling with skulls in a friendly competition to decide who would get what portfolio, they took up his powers and wreaked havoc on the world. Only at that moment did Jergal, AKA Withers, AKA our precious Bone Daddy think, "I'm just now, internally, asking myself, in quite a worried way, whether I might've made an error."

So he joins your merry band and watches your escapades, calmly twiddling his fingers while you clean up his mess. He's happy to lend his aid, even to the point that he'll bring Durge back to life if they reject Bhaal, even though he technically shouldn't. But he's Withers. The rules don't apply to him. If Ao doesn't like it, he can descend from the Heavens and say it to his rotting face.

And the reason he saves Durge isn't necessarily because he likes them or because he's a morally good entity (though one certainly could make that argument), but because he wants to add insult to injury. He steals Bhaal's child with a big smile on his face, dubs them his Chosen, and praises them for rejecting all the power they were promised. But of course, he still doesn't tell them who he is—or rather who he was.

Then, when all is said and done, he throws Tav and their companions a cute little party. No one knows it's probably half a thank you party and half a "Withers is bored again" party. And if anyone misbehaves, he'll get irritated and whisk them away. Because how dare they? He put a lot of work into that.

And at the end of it all, he walks up to a mural of the Dead Three and basically goes, "Lmao. Thou didst fuck around, and thou didst find out." Just savagely roasting them.

And then poof!

He waves them into non-existence.

expecting to have to convince him again to Not Die but my bro gale finally wants to live so hard you gotta roll a 25 dice to convince him of using the orb... the grow...

As promised @valc0 a Gortash just for you!

does this resonate with ANYONE

Lets talk about Stillmaker, Durge’s other canon blade

Okay, so we already know that Durge had the Bloodthirst dagger which was created from Bhaal’s own blood and carried by his chosen.

But there is another dagger in the game you can find that also canonically belonged to Durge, Stillmaker.

We see Stillmaker portrayed in Dark Urge’s official artwork, and it’s also Durge’s blade in Idle Champions, as you can see.

I’ve noticed that Stillmaker matches Bloodthirst in design, but it is conspicuously green, as opposed to every other Bhaalian weapon I’ve seen which are red.

You know who else’s canon weapon has the same green coloring? Gortash. And who is the color green associated with? Bane. Stillmaker looks like it was made in the same design to Gortash’s crossbow.

I posit then, that being close to one another as they were, Gortash either made or commissioned Stillmaker to match with Bloodthirst and gifted it to Durge. It’s far more his style in looks, and I feel it’s something he would have done as he describes Durge as his nearest and dearest, and we know they worked very closely together and admired one another.

It truly makes my Durgetash heart flutter!

EDIT: Here is a close up of the weapons together in game!

EDIT #2: We were discussing on discord yesterday, Orin would have of course kept the Bloodthirst blade after dispatching Durge because it’s made of Bhaal’s blood and carried by his Chosen, but she would not have wanted some sugary gift from her sibling’s Ex and probably tossed it away and Dolor ended up with it, and that’s how it ended up in his stash.

EDIT #3: @arikandkade made an EXCELLENT addition to this theory and I’m adding it because it’s just such great information, thank you so much for this info!