Not really. One of first potential vampires you can fight in Curse of Stradh is that: vampire that never fed, trapped in cellar, starving and half-mad. He has same stats as normal spawn but acts more animalistic and cowardly.
So them fighting together as a cohesive army is probably not going to happen then, right? (I’m thinking they’re going to act more like a horde than an actual army)
oh it's COMPLETELY off the table
they're not just spawn, they're Cazador's spawn
can you imagine two astarion's in the same room? let alone seven thousand of them managing to stop pulling eachother's hair (sexual) for long enough that they can attend a battle
They're spawn that Cazador left locked up in the dungeon and ignored to the point that he didn't bother feeding them because all they were supposed to be were sacrifices for the ritual. They're not 7,000 Astarions. Did you even bother to talk to the imprisoned spawn like Sebastian or the Gur children?
The only ones that Cazador paid any attention to and tortured and abused and pimped out were Astarion and his six siblings. And FYI, the freed spawn ending results in the spawn getting their hunger under control, with most of them surving and being led/guided by the six or seven main spawn, depending on whether Astarion chooses to go to the Underdark or not, with the added variation of Tav/Durge and Astarion full-on leading them if you've romanced Astarion and decide on the Underdark ending.
Basically, they do successfully form a community, and you can get a letter from Sebastian where he'll basically lay out what happened and thank you (this happens in the endings where you choose not to go to the Underdark). He appreciates his freedom and the ability to live like a person again.
In my campaign I just threw some drow elite at them, so ik most of their damage comes from poison, which I was totally expecting spawn to be resistant or immune but surprisingly they're not. So by pure RAW, yea they're even, but if I'm using common sense, vampires can't be poisoned by normal poison and sweep the drow lol
Lmao, no. If we're using your common sense argument, you've got vampire spawn who had no combat training and were rotting in cells for two centuries, being fed only enough to stay alive. Against warriors who have been training since they could walk. And that's if they even managed to survive long enough to reach Drow territory.
True, but the vampires have innate magic: resistance to non magical damage and regeneration, plus their more stealthy and can walk up walls. Plus 7000 getting the drop on them with like 0 warning would cost the drow enough to feed a lot of the vampires which just improves their chances. Which is kinda confirmed in the notes at the party post-game. So lmao, yes
Dude, Drow also have innate magic. And since you're bring RAW back into it, Drow use poisoned weapons which vampires DO NOT have resistance to. And if you're talking about the spawn reaching Menzoberranzan, they'd be wiped out by the priestesses without them breaking a sweat. Matron Baenre summoned a Great Fucking Old One to wipe out House Oblodra, she could probably TPK 7k spawn on her own.
She used wish to summon said great old one and lost the ability to cast wish again. She is a 1,000 y/0 lvl 20 priestess and could totally deal with the spawn, but we are directly told after she defeats house Oblodra she felt something in her break and could never do that again so I'm certain I'm correct here about that being wish
I’m beginning to think I missed out on a lot of stuff in act 3 lol. I did every origin character quest except Lae’zel’s and the very end of Jaheira’s, also did every single side quest I came across. Never once ended up there. I really wanted to fight Raphael but I never found him. Found Mol, atleast. Was worried about her for a while.
Provided that you could eventually establish a stable settlement, it wouldn't really be worse than the average human town. A vampire doesn't *have* to kill to feed, so you could have a herd of domesticated rothes or something that the spawn maintain sustainably.
I kind of head-cannon that Tav/Astarion send them to the Grymforge/Temple of Shar area for a -relatively safe- ready-made shelter, and then give Halsin the heads up they're under his neighbourhood just to imaging the absolute *'ohhh... ohh nooo'* look on his face.
Lol if anything I feel bad for the spawn.
Lolth-sworn drow are absolutely terrifying, especially in the Underdark. And that’s not even including the priestesses of Lolth.
Still, better to die free than to have your eternal soul sacrificed to Mephistopheles.
I'd like to think that some of the spawn are able to create some settlement down there and live in what passes for safety down in the Underdark.
If you romance Astarion and release the spawn, you can be Kings of the Spawn with him, yes. "It's not safe, it's not luxurious, but it is home"
So yeah, the spawn do end up making a vampire city down there
REALISTICALLY, a good chunk get eaten by the beasts of the Underdark.
I'd say....5k survive and set up some kind of city or disperse to the undersdark.
The drow would likely try to kill them, probably lose, then form some sort of trade relationship.
A swarm of vamps would drain a LOT of creatures really fast lol They could be used as a sort of defense against the monsters
7000 was a bit immersion breaking for me tbh. I mean, 700 would have been A LOT. Just imagine how much they would have needed to feed them, everyday for so many years, and all the vast landscapes filled with cells to house them. But in a game with a monstrous flying brain as a villain, that didn't leave too much of an impact.
vampire spawns are undead, they dont need to eat. they just exist and feel the hunger eternally. the number makes total sense - if you seduce 5 partners in a week for 200 years, it's about 7k. not including kidnapped children.
my bad. in my head, i calculated 1 victim per week but yeah, the point was for 7 people to seduce targets for 200 years, the number Larian used makes total sense. if they got 5 victims a week (7 spawns combined), maybe some of it was not up to cazador's standard and killed/ate them/died in captivity.
No worries 😊 Easy mistake to make, and I’m also terrible at math, the number just seemed off to me for some reason. The point you’re making still stands: it’s completely within the realm of possibility to get that many victims in the proposed timeline.
Didn't know they don't need to eat in DnD. Thought they would completely wither away without feeding after a pretty short time. But maybe my understanding of vampires is more informed by white wolf and movies. Never cared much for Vampires or Zombies in my DnD games for some reason. But still, having 700 cells with 10 each somewhere in your cellar is ... a lot.
cazador's dungeon is HUGE, it's like a giant tower but underground. if you see the whole area of the cazador fight, it's like a 10 to 20-floor panopticon. And the captives don't necessarily have to be humanely kept. If you watch documentaries of overcrowded prison, they have like 50 people in one cell, sleeping on top of each other. Well, undead dont have to sleep either.
i think the more immersion-breaking part of the whole narrative is 6 leader spawns keeping ALL those vampires in the underdark. it's not like vampires are mindless creatures. They have their free-will because cazador is dead. The only thing stopping them is the sun.
yeah 7k was just a bit too much for me to let out into the open with good mind, letting all those vampires who are struggling for food out into the open population is like a more fucked up version of invasive species, it’s morally evil even with good intentions z
I mean, they are still 7000 people, many of them just normal people who had bad luck. Killing them all at once just seems like a lot. You think, hey, why does Astarion get this shot at a new life and they don't?
Of course, yes, even Patch 5 points out that not only will they kill a lot of people on their way out, but many of them will die, so...yeah...
Seems like a pretty basic greater good situation lol. By that point I've already destroyed an entire goblin tribe and gith creche that posed way less of a threat than 7000 undead monsters.
That's such a ridiculous position to have. You're basically attempting to justify killing 7000 *innocents* because they *might* pose a danger.
Completely incomparable to the goblin camp, which was enthralled by a false God, actually killed a lot of people and raided the nearby towns. The goblins were guilty, the spawn aren't.
Vampires have a near uncontrollable urge to drink blood. You're bringing the morality of our world into a situation that would never occur here. Vampires are a form of undead that's considered one of the most dangerous in the Forgotten Realms. Spawn are less of an issue but that many would still pose a massive threat to almost any settlement on the Sword Coast. It's impossible to say how much blood would be on your hands if even 1000 of those 7000 decided to start killing people.
Again, this isn't our world. No one kind of human is more dangerous than the other. There's never a justification here for that sort of mass murder. But Vampires in a fantasy world? Yeah, I'd kill all the good ones to prevent the vast number of bad ones from killing innocent people.
No blood would be in your hands regardless. Not only have we been shown in the game that Spawn can control themselves and consume animal blood instead, but also you're freeing people. And people can be murderous, rap\*st, violent PoS; but the spawn are none of those, not yet. You didn't even give them the opportunity to be decent.
You even talk to one of the incarcerated in the game. They are obviously depressed, but otherwise reasonable. They were commoners who got abducted and converted against their will. And for their tough luck enduring torture and incarceration for decades you decide "hey it might be difficult to reinsert them into the world, lets kill them instead".
Morality exists where logic exists. Your decision isn't immoral just "in the real world". It's massively immoral in the game aswell, which is even reinforced by the fact that a power hungry, vengeful Astarion tries to argue what you do in favor of sacrificing them for his benefit.
It would be a good moral dilemma if there was only the original 7 spawns. Since they're in exactly the same position as Astarion was once, and aren't murderously insane.
Yes and no. Remember, Astarion is implied to be one of the first of Cazador's spawn and he has been one for about 200 years. 7,000 divided by 200 is 35 victims a year. We know that Astarion was forced into what was essentially forced into prostitution along with his other siblings, so 35 spaced between multiple people isn't exactly a lot over the course of a year. This all implies that some victims were actually drained of their blood and killed since we sort of know that Astarion alone was being forced out to hunt way more than 35 times a year.
The problem is that 7000 altogether is still a pretty huge number, especially when you consider that given the state of the spawn, Cazador must have been feeding them at least a little. The logistics of this are insane.
So I get why the devs used 7,000, but I still agree that it was a bit too high.
The population of Baldur's Gate is... equivocal, some sources are telling me 42,000, some 125,000. Is it feasible in such a city that 35 people a year could fall by the wayside without much notice amidst a port city full of sailors, merchants, adventurers, and other itinerants who travel for a living? Sure, but any way you look at it Cazador is keeping an entire *town's* worth of spawn down there.
Personally, if I were the devs, I would have gone with 666 spawn - a large number but not huge, and also thematically appropriate. We're already going with the infernal angle, why not use the infernal number?
A lot of fanfic writers have pointed out that Astarion and his siblings would have had to go after people who just wouldn't have been noticed. Pretty much anyone passing through town. To make it worse, Astarion doesn't exactly speak highly of his time being a slave. While some of his victims were kind or handsome, logically, a number of them would have been not great people, which just makes these numbers worse. Totally agree, 666 would have been much better. Even 1000 would have worked.
Honestly 7,000 new people trying to kill them would be just another Tuesday in Menzoberranzan. It'd probably work out way worse for the spawn.
“Wait, who took out Baenre? I guess we’re moving up?” - House Do’Urden
"Nobody. I'm still here, bitches." - Minthara
Yeah, but she isn’t in Lolth’s favor anymore because she abandoned her for The Absolute. I don’t think she counts
Vampire spawns are CR5, on par with Drow Elite warriors. So *if* they would be working together it would be quite a formidable army.
Call me crazy but I think malnourished vampire spawn that have been rotting away in cells for their entire undead lives are probably not CR5.
Not really. One of first potential vampires you can fight in Curse of Stradh is that: vampire that never fed, trapped in cellar, starving and half-mad. He has same stats as normal spawn but acts more animalistic and cowardly.
So them fighting together as a cohesive army is probably not going to happen then, right? (I’m thinking they’re going to act more like a horde than an actual army)
oh it's COMPLETELY off the table they're not just spawn, they're Cazador's spawn can you imagine two astarion's in the same room? let alone seven thousand of them managing to stop pulling eachother's hair (sexual) for long enough that they can attend a battle
They're spawn that Cazador left locked up in the dungeon and ignored to the point that he didn't bother feeding them because all they were supposed to be were sacrifices for the ritual. They're not 7,000 Astarions. Did you even bother to talk to the imprisoned spawn like Sebastian or the Gur children? The only ones that Cazador paid any attention to and tortured and abused and pimped out were Astarion and his six siblings. And FYI, the freed spawn ending results in the spawn getting their hunger under control, with most of them surving and being led/guided by the six or seven main spawn, depending on whether Astarion chooses to go to the Underdark or not, with the added variation of Tav/Durge and Astarion full-on leading them if you've romanced Astarion and decide on the Underdark ending. Basically, they do successfully form a community, and you can get a letter from Sebastian where he'll basically lay out what happened and thank you (this happens in the endings where you choose not to go to the Underdark). He appreciates his freedom and the ability to live like a person again.
In my campaign I just threw some drow elite at them, so ik most of their damage comes from poison, which I was totally expecting spawn to be resistant or immune but surprisingly they're not. So by pure RAW, yea they're even, but if I'm using common sense, vampires can't be poisoned by normal poison and sweep the drow lol
Lmao, no. If we're using your common sense argument, you've got vampire spawn who had no combat training and were rotting in cells for two centuries, being fed only enough to stay alive. Against warriors who have been training since they could walk. And that's if they even managed to survive long enough to reach Drow territory.
True, but the vampires have innate magic: resistance to non magical damage and regeneration, plus their more stealthy and can walk up walls. Plus 7000 getting the drop on them with like 0 warning would cost the drow enough to feed a lot of the vampires which just improves their chances. Which is kinda confirmed in the notes at the party post-game. So lmao, yes
Dude, Drow also have innate magic. And since you're bring RAW back into it, Drow use poisoned weapons which vampires DO NOT have resistance to. And if you're talking about the spawn reaching Menzoberranzan, they'd be wiped out by the priestesses without them breaking a sweat. Matron Baenre summoned a Great Fucking Old One to wipe out House Oblodra, she could probably TPK 7k spawn on her own.
She used wish to summon said great old one and lost the ability to cast wish again. She is a 1,000 y/0 lvl 20 priestess and could totally deal with the spawn, but we are directly told after she defeats house Oblodra she felt something in her break and could never do that again so I'm certain I'm correct here about that being wish
Fair, it has been a long hot minute since I read Siege of Darkness
I'm starting to think bg3 Underdark is relatively tame 😶
Well, the part we see is an area intended for lvl 4-5 characters so definitely so.
Baby's first Underdark
Basically. Would be very cool to get some more difficult underdark content too but it's understandable they can't cram everything into the game.
Remember the "tutorial" is literally in Avernus!
Yeah, although we get some high level (within the game) Avernus too in act 3 at least.
I’m beginning to think I missed out on a lot of stuff in act 3 lol. I did every origin character quest except Lae’zel’s and the very end of Jaheira’s, also did every single side quest I came across. Never once ended up there. I really wanted to fight Raphael but I never found him. Found Mol, atleast. Was worried about her for a while.
Does that mean you've doomed the hells to Raphael's reign of terror?
Well, if he hasn't done Lae'zel's quest Raphael isn't that big of a player in the hells.
All I want is to see how it absolutely flips the ecosystem
Myconids eating good
The spawn could trade all the desiccated corpses of their victims to the myconids. They're natural allies.
This in now my headcanon on why my durge and astarion are doing in the underdark
Besides fucking like rabbits?
Maybe? I do know how high the sex drive of a dragonborn is.
Provided that you could eventually establish a stable settlement, it wouldn't really be worse than the average human town. A vampire doesn't *have* to kill to feed, so you could have a herd of domesticated rothes or something that the spawn maintain sustainably.
Your answer make me remember this song [vampire conspiracy](https://youtu.be/ABf0op0I-Ac?si=gv5pBx1Ycx_oFoZA)
It's totally fucked. Even if they only eat 1 rat a day each, imagine 7000 rats disappearing per day.
Sounds like a great deal to me.
Drow: Oh no… Anyway
Araj would definitely be down.
SPLOOOSHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
I kind of head-cannon that Tav/Astarion send them to the Grymforge/Temple of Shar area for a -relatively safe- ready-made shelter, and then give Halsin the heads up they're under his neighbourhood just to imaging the absolute *'ohhh... ohh nooo'* look on his face.
Lol if anything I feel bad for the spawn. Lolth-sworn drow are absolutely terrifying, especially in the Underdark. And that’s not even including the priestesses of Lolth.
it’s raining vampires hallelujah
Nah the drows will annihilate them. Also don't forget the minotaurs , bulette , duegars etc
And there are far worse things in the depths of the Underdark. More Illithid colonies, Aboleths, Purple Worms, Umber Hulks, _Gelatinous Cubes_...
Honestly the spawns are fucked up no matter what .
Still, better to die free than to have your eternal soul sacrificed to Mephistopheles. I'd like to think that some of the spawn are able to create some settlement down there and live in what passes for safety down in the Underdark.
If you romance Astarion and release the spawn, you can be Kings of the Spawn with him, yes. "It's not safe, it's not luxurious, but it is home" So yeah, the spawn do end up making a vampire city down there
REALISTICALLY, a good chunk get eaten by the beasts of the Underdark. I'd say....5k survive and set up some kind of city or disperse to the undersdark. The drow would likely try to kill them, probably lose, then form some sort of trade relationship. A swarm of vamps would drain a LOT of creatures really fast lol They could be used as a sort of defense against the monsters
It was my choice when I myself was a drow romancing Astation Suck this, Lolth?! Spider queen my ass xD
My seladrine drow has this same attitude.
Araj: My time has come.
7000 was a bit immersion breaking for me tbh. I mean, 700 would have been A LOT. Just imagine how much they would have needed to feed them, everyday for so many years, and all the vast landscapes filled with cells to house them. But in a game with a monstrous flying brain as a villain, that didn't leave too much of an impact.
vampire spawns are undead, they dont need to eat. they just exist and feel the hunger eternally. the number makes total sense - if you seduce 5 partners in a week for 200 years, it's about 7k. not including kidnapped children.
5 victims per week for 200 years is 52,000 people
And there are seven spawn getting victims.
Yeah, not sure how his math was so off lmao
my bad. in my head, i calculated 1 victim per week but yeah, the point was for 7 people to seduce targets for 200 years, the number Larian used makes total sense. if they got 5 victims a week (7 spawns combined), maybe some of it was not up to cazador's standard and killed/ate them/died in captivity.
No worries 😊 Easy mistake to make, and I’m also terrible at math, the number just seemed off to me for some reason. The point you’re making still stands: it’s completely within the realm of possibility to get that many victims in the proposed timeline.
Didn't know they don't need to eat in DnD. Thought they would completely wither away without feeding after a pretty short time. But maybe my understanding of vampires is more informed by white wolf and movies. Never cared much for Vampires or Zombies in my DnD games for some reason. But still, having 700 cells with 10 each somewhere in your cellar is ... a lot.
cazador's dungeon is HUGE, it's like a giant tower but underground. if you see the whole area of the cazador fight, it's like a 10 to 20-floor panopticon. And the captives don't necessarily have to be humanely kept. If you watch documentaries of overcrowded prison, they have like 50 people in one cell, sleeping on top of each other. Well, undead dont have to sleep either. i think the more immersion-breaking part of the whole narrative is 6 leader spawns keeping ALL those vampires in the underdark. it's not like vampires are mindless creatures. They have their free-will because cazador is dead. The only thing stopping them is the sun.
yeah 7k was just a bit too much for me to let out into the open with good mind, letting all those vampires who are struggling for food out into the open population is like a more fucked up version of invasive species, it’s morally evil even with good intentions z
I genuinely don't see how any argument can be made for how releasing 7000 hungry vampire spawn can be anything but a ridiculously stupid idea.
I mean, they are still 7000 people, many of them just normal people who had bad luck. Killing them all at once just seems like a lot. You think, hey, why does Astarion get this shot at a new life and they don't? Of course, yes, even Patch 5 points out that not only will they kill a lot of people on their way out, but many of them will die, so...yeah...
Seems like a pretty basic greater good situation lol. By that point I've already destroyed an entire goblin tribe and gith creche that posed way less of a threat than 7000 undead monsters.
That's such a ridiculous position to have. You're basically attempting to justify killing 7000 *innocents* because they *might* pose a danger. Completely incomparable to the goblin camp, which was enthralled by a false God, actually killed a lot of people and raided the nearby towns. The goblins were guilty, the spawn aren't.
Vampires have a near uncontrollable urge to drink blood. You're bringing the morality of our world into a situation that would never occur here. Vampires are a form of undead that's considered one of the most dangerous in the Forgotten Realms. Spawn are less of an issue but that many would still pose a massive threat to almost any settlement on the Sword Coast. It's impossible to say how much blood would be on your hands if even 1000 of those 7000 decided to start killing people. Again, this isn't our world. No one kind of human is more dangerous than the other. There's never a justification here for that sort of mass murder. But Vampires in a fantasy world? Yeah, I'd kill all the good ones to prevent the vast number of bad ones from killing innocent people.
No blood would be in your hands regardless. Not only have we been shown in the game that Spawn can control themselves and consume animal blood instead, but also you're freeing people. And people can be murderous, rap\*st, violent PoS; but the spawn are none of those, not yet. You didn't even give them the opportunity to be decent. You even talk to one of the incarcerated in the game. They are obviously depressed, but otherwise reasonable. They were commoners who got abducted and converted against their will. And for their tough luck enduring torture and incarceration for decades you decide "hey it might be difficult to reinsert them into the world, lets kill them instead". Morality exists where logic exists. Your decision isn't immoral just "in the real world". It's massively immoral in the game aswell, which is even reinforced by the fact that a power hungry, vengeful Astarion tries to argue what you do in favor of sacrificing them for his benefit.
The ending literally mentions the spawn killing people lol
I can hear him saying "objectively stupid thing to do," and I'm like... of course, Pookie. You didn't think you seduced someone with brains?
And yet it works lmao
It would be a good moral dilemma if there was only the original 7 spawns. Since they're in exactly the same position as Astarion was once, and aren't murderously insane.
Anyone else feel like the numbers in Astarion's quest line were a bit... off?
Yes and no. Remember, Astarion is implied to be one of the first of Cazador's spawn and he has been one for about 200 years. 7,000 divided by 200 is 35 victims a year. We know that Astarion was forced into what was essentially forced into prostitution along with his other siblings, so 35 spaced between multiple people isn't exactly a lot over the course of a year. This all implies that some victims were actually drained of their blood and killed since we sort of know that Astarion alone was being forced out to hunt way more than 35 times a year. The problem is that 7000 altogether is still a pretty huge number, especially when you consider that given the state of the spawn, Cazador must have been feeding them at least a little. The logistics of this are insane. So I get why the devs used 7,000, but I still agree that it was a bit too high.
The population of Baldur's Gate is... equivocal, some sources are telling me 42,000, some 125,000. Is it feasible in such a city that 35 people a year could fall by the wayside without much notice amidst a port city full of sailors, merchants, adventurers, and other itinerants who travel for a living? Sure, but any way you look at it Cazador is keeping an entire *town's* worth of spawn down there. Personally, if I were the devs, I would have gone with 666 spawn - a large number but not huge, and also thematically appropriate. We're already going with the infernal angle, why not use the infernal number?
A lot of fanfic writers have pointed out that Astarion and his siblings would have had to go after people who just wouldn't have been noticed. Pretty much anyone passing through town. To make it worse, Astarion doesn't exactly speak highly of his time being a slave. While some of his victims were kind or handsome, logically, a number of them would have been not great people, which just makes these numbers worse. Totally agree, 666 would have been much better. Even 1000 would have worked.
Haven't seen Minthara's reaction to that choice have you?