BG1-BG2 NPC Continuity **spoilers**

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This thread follows on a discussion begun in the SoA forum in a thread called "Faldorn factoid" concerning the fate of other BG1 joinable NPCs in the rest of the BG saga. Related issues are also touched upon in the ToB Montaron's body thread.

Here is a recap of all the BG1 joinable NPCs; feel free to offer revisions. (We could also cover non-joinable NPCs that are present in BG1 and BG2, such as Dradeel, Neb, or Elminster.)

Out of the 25 joinable NPCs in BG1:
5 are joinable in BG2: Edwin, Imoen, Jaheira, Minsc, Viconia
3 are killed before BG2: Dynaheir, Khalid, Montaron
5 are killed during BG2: Ajantis, Faldorn, Safana, Tiax, Xzar
1 will most likely be killed during BG2: Coran
2 survive BG2, but are non-joinable: Garrick, Quayle
9 are whereabouts unknown: Alora, Branwyn (tutorial), Eldoth, Kagain, Kivan, Shar-Teel, Skie, Xan (tutorial), Yeslick.

Goes to show the rough life of adventuring: half or more of the NPCs you have info on are killed before or during BG2.

As has been noted many times, the dialogue in BG2 seems to assume that your BG1 party was Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, and Dynaheir.

Three of the new BG2 joinable NPCs have ties to BG1: Aerie was Quayle’s adopted daughter/apprentice, Ajantis was Keldorn’s squire, and of course Sarevok is Sarevok.

More details on the BG1 Joinable NPCs who made it to BG2:

Ajantis (Windspear Hills): The good news is Ajantis finally became a knight of the Radiant Heart. The bad news is you are tricked into killing him by a red dragon.

Coran (Forest of Tethyr): Coran is used unwittingly by Safana to lure you into a trap set by wolfweres. If you are female, Coran is killed outright; otherwise Coran will be killed unless you are able to protect him.

Dynaheir (Irenicus’ dungeon): Apparently, Minsc and Dynaheir were adventuring with you when Irenicus captured you. Minsc tells you that Irenicus killed Dynaheir, but details aren’t given, and you never find the body. (Which begs the question, given the reliability of Minsc as a witness, and the lack of habeus corpus, is Dynaheir really dead?)

Edwin (Shadow Thieves’ Guild): Edwin has somehow managed to insinuate himself into the Shadow Thieves, where he holds enough of a position of authority to supervise several of your quests for the guild. He plays down having known you; apparently you didn’t spend too much time together in Baldur’s Gate. Joinable NPC

Faldorn (Druid Grove): Faldorn has become a Great Druid, the leader of the Shadow Druids, and the instigator of all the animal problems plaguing Trademeet. She doesn’t acknowledge adventuring with you in Baldur’s Gate. You have to kill her to solve the Trademeet quests.

Garrick (Temple District): Garrick is busy trying to woo a Lady Knight of the Radiant Heart with the help of a gnome. Eventually the gnome marries the Lady and Garrick runs off with a bridesmaid. Garrick doesn’t recognize you at all. (Or he might vaguely remember running into you in Beregost.)

Imoen (Irenicus’ dungeon): Apparently, Imoen was adventuring with you when Irenicus captured you. Strangely enough, Imoen seems to have had a similar experience at the hands of Irenicus that you did. Imoen also witnessed the killing of Khalid. Joinable NPC.

Jaheira (Irenicus’ dungeon): Apparently, Jaheira and Khalid were adventuring with you when Irenicus captured you. When you find her, she doesn’t know Khalid’s location or condition. Joinable NPC.

Khalid (Irenicus’ dungeon): Apparently, Jaheira and Khalid were adventuring with you when Irenicus captured you. Khalid’s body is found in such a bad state that resurrection is impossible, and Imoen foggily remembers Irenicus torturing or experimenting on Khalid in front of her.

Minsc (Irenicus’ dungeon): Apparently, Minsc and Dynaheir were adventuring with you when Irenicus captured you. Minsc tells you that Irenicus killed Dynaheir, but details aren’t given. Joinable NPC.

Montaron (the Docks District): Xzar and Montaron were trying to infiltrate the Harpers compound in the Docks District, perhaps for the Zhentarim, when Montaron disappeared. Xzar thinks Montaron is being held at the compound and enlists you to get him out. However, unbeknownst to you, the Harpers are using your attempt to find Montaron to destroy Xzar. After Xzar has been killed, you can find Montaron's body in the Harpers compound (though you might not be able to if you've already looted the compound).

Quayle (Waukeen Promenade Circus): Quayle retired from adventuring to run a circus. When you first meet him, he is polymorphed into a slime by a disgruntled gnome. He has adopted a wingless Avariel elf as a foster daughter and apprentice; this seems to have softened his once obnoxious character.

Safana (Forest of Tethyr): Safana hatches a plot with a wolfwere to collect a bounty on you using Coran as bait, but is betrayed by her co-conspirator and killed.

Tiax (Spellhold): Tiax has apparently lost what little connection to reality he once had and has been institutionalized in Spellhold. He helps you fight against Irenicus and is killed in the battle.

Viconia (Government District): Viconia had a very rough time of it after leaving your company in Baldur’s Gate; she tells all sorts of stories about persecution at the hands of surface dwellers and the revenge she took. When you find her, she is about to be burnt at the stake for being a drow, and she recognizes you and calls out for you to save her. Joinable NPC.

Xzar (the Docks District): Xzar has apparently moved up in the world when you meet him; he has a house in the Docks District, two apprentices, and an important assignment from the Zhentarim. He was still working Montaron, and the two were trying to infiltrate the Harpers compound in the Docks District, when Montaron disappeared. Xzar thinks Montaron is being held at the compound and enlists you to get him out. However, unbeknownst to you, the Harpers are using you to destroy Xzar. In the course of this quest, you kill his apprentices and bring about his death at the hands of a Harper assassin polymorphed into a bird.

Broadly, the questions so far have included:
1) The calendar time of the BG series, which begins with Charname in Candlekeep in FR1368, and continues with Charname in Irenicus' dungeon exactly a year later in FR1369. Are there continuity issues here? Does the BG series unrealistically compress time? Is it possible to remove your armor, clean and service your gear, memorize your spells, write 12 new spells in your spell book, sleep, put on all your gear again, and walk all the way across Athkatla in 8 hours? Can one go from being a mostly unknown to the head of a thieves guild in half a day? Can Charname really assend from rank novice to godhood in less than 2 years, well before his/her 22nd birthday?

2) NPC questions: How did Quayle find the time to retire to circus administration between BG1 and BG2, as well as adopt and train Aerie? Had he already taken charge of her before BG1, as JSBB suggests? Or, if that's the case, how did this self-absorbed CN gnome raise a LG elf as a foster daughter, and how is it that he seems like a wiser, more caring gnome in BG2?

3) Why am I spending so much time thinking about this?

[ February 12, 2005, 14:03: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

....is there any mod that puts Kivan into the BG2 game? he was *the* greatest NPC and so amazingly cool.

as to what you said:
2.yes, it's unrealistic, but it's a game and D&D has always been somewhat fast-paced

3.because you love the game like the rest of us?

 

It's also possible that Montaron got killed during BG2.

You can avoid or prevent their deaths if you really want to. (ie, cast invisibility to escape from Ajantis, cast Imprisonment/Maze on Tiax during the Brynnlaw battle)

In the case of Safana, Xzar and Faldorn you won't be able to complete their quests.

I think Xan and Branwyn are safely in the BG Ducal Palace. At least, I hope so.

 

Montaron is killed during BG2. He can be found in the Harpers' Hold, in one of the chests, if you follow the Harper storyline.
Dynaheir *is* killed in/before BG2. And it is her body that is lying before Minsc's cage. And he says it so -- that Dynaheir has been killed and he has been forced to watch.
Quayle -- I doubt it is he. It is (suggested) in BG2 that he was travelling with the circus for a long time, but have never been "that far north" by Aerie's recount. Anyway, it is Quayle's portrait when he's a slime, but then it is removed. Perhaps he was intended as a joinable NPC, but the designers decided against it, and removed his portrait from the game, but forgot that one moment when he's a slime. And, his name remains, but it is in so many places (including voice acting) that it would be logical to not change his name. Besides, Quayle seems to be a common name among gnomes.

Oh, and Biff the Understudy, don't forget him... I think there are more characters, but I don't remember.

 

Nice thread, but it really should have a spoiler warning in the title.

 

@Shelyid: Kivan of Shilmista adds Kivan to BG2, though it's still at beta currently.

@toughluck:
There are a lot more folks from BG that appear in BG2--offhand I can think of Elminster, Volo, Neb, Drizzt, and Tazok.

In terms of continuity, I don't thik there's a bigger disconnect than the retconning of Imoen the Bhaalspawn and <CHARNAME>'s mother in ToB.

There were also some indications that Shar-Teel was originally intended to be the captive in Yaga-Shura's lair, though I don't know how solid those are. According to early developer chats, Yoshimo's story is that he's looking for his sister Tomoko when he joins with Irenicus. Centeol from BG also makes allusions to Jon Icarus, the original name they had selected for Irenicus.

 

One more thing about Quayle -- it might be him or it might not. Yes, the portrait does make you wonder, but Xzar doesn't have one, neither does Faldorn or Ajantis, nor Safana or Tiax, though I don't remember them in the game. So it might be possible that either Quayle was to be a joinable NPC, or the creators wanted every NPC in the game to have a portrait (generic or not, it is a strange idea).

And about Icarus/Irenicus. I doubt they are the same person, because Irenicus is in the FR canon. Or it might be possible that Coran in fact mentions Irenicus, but doesn't remember his name and warps it.

 

@Shelyid: Darkest Day also adds Kivan to BG2, as an Archer.

 

It's certainly not definitive, but there is a lot of corroboration for Jon Icarus being Jon Irenicus. The Journal entry remains the best connection in my mind:

One other note: you encounter Sendai Argrim in one of the BG wilderness areas; she mentions she's part of the Argrim family of Amn. During the planar sphere stronghold quests, you meet her relative Lord Ketlaar Argrim.

 

now there are a couple of connections you have to really be into this to discover LOL.

 

thanks, ziad, camdawg, mucho appreciated

 

"In terms of continuity, I don't thik there's a bigger disconnect than the retconning of Imoen the Bhaalspawn and <CHARNAME>'s mother in ToB."

There are many Bhaalspawns in TOB, all of them your half-brothers, half-sisters. Does it say anywhere that Imoen is your true full sister? Or is she just another half-sister from a different mother?

But it does say in BG1 that she is a couple of years younger than you. So did Bhaal create his mortal spawns over a several year period? Maybe for the gods, a few years is just a heartbeat.

 

I think Bhaal actually walked as an avatar before the Time of Troubles to start seeding his children and continued during the ToT.

And in BG2, in the Jon's Dungeon, Imoen mentions to Jaheira that she's the same age as CHARNAME.

 

@SI:

Technically true; I might have been more specific and said: killed before you arrive on the scene.

Has this been tried? Does it break the Firkraag/Paladin stronghold quests to avoid killing Ajantis? Also, I think in my very first game I (rather callously) booted Nalia out of the party in Spellhold for Imoen, and she showed up again in the battle against Irenicus along with Tiax etc. IIRC, I kept her from dying in the battle, but she fell over dead automatically at the end...

I guess this brings up the question: what constitutes game canon, especially when there are branching story lines. I guess if you avoid the harper quests, then Xzar and Montaron are, in terms of your game, in the "whereabouts unknown" catagory. But I would guess we could assume that something happens in the game if it is an inevitable outcome of a quest; that is, if upon taking a quest, there are no other branching outcomes leading to a different result. "Breaking" a quest or abondoning it wouldn't count here.

@toughluck:

Just checked this; the body in front of the cage seems to be a dead male human thief sprite, so it can't be Dynaheir. Also, nothing Minsc says indicates that Dynaheir was murdered in front of the cage. Here is the relevant dialogue:

So Minsc doesn't say when where or how Dynaheir was killed, nor do you find a body, so the evidence of Dynaheir's death solely rests on the testimony of a delusional brain-damaged berserker.

But the only other time we run into the name 'Quayle' is if you did the Aerie romance, and Aerie wants to name the kid after Quayle. The evidence that the BG1 and BG2 Quayle are one and the same: 1) BG2 Quayle has the BG1 Quayle voiceset and (temporarily) portrait; 2) Aerie is a mage/cleric worshiping a gnomish god, as is BG1 Quayle, and BG2 Quayle is said to be the mentor of Aerie. So that just seems like too much of a coincidence for a game that has tried as hard as BG to keep continuity throughout the saga.

This is a kind of interesting question that I'd like to know more about. Irenicus seems to have entered the FR canon with the Athans novelization of the BG2 series that everyone seems to hate. As IIRC Athans is not listed on the game credits, I'm guessing he got a basic list of characters and events from the BG series game developers as the game was in development, and based his novels on that basic info without playing the game. So in the canon, Charname is some kind of brutal mercenary type named Abdel, Jaheira is a damsel in distress type, etc., and the experience Athans relates is nothing like what gamers thought it should be. So I would guess that the developers of the BG series were the ones to invent Irenicus etc (and the idea of Jon Icarus might have been an early draft), even if they were translated into the FR canon in a very flawed way.

But I would like to hear more from someone who actually read these books: what does the FR canon have to say about the events in BG1 and BG2? What kind of Charname is Abdel (i.e., your guesses on class, attributes, weapon specializations, alignment, etc)? How does Abdel end up? Who traveled with Abdel, and how were they portrayed? I've only read the first chapters on the SP site, and they start Abdel off in BG1 as a rather experienced and jaded mercenary, perhaps a NE fighter.

A related question here would be: what do you think the best 'canon' source is: the game or the text?

This has been given in other threads as proof that Charname must be human in game-canon terms, as none of the other races (except half-orc) are mature at age 20. This also leads to the other question: what are the most likely Charnames (in terms of race, class, alignment, etc) given the game-canon evidence from BG1 and BG2?

 

Abdel is the name for the default fighter charecter you can import into the game. Human - Fighter iirc.
The game is there for all to see. Since it introduced the Bhallchild phenomenon, I dont think anything else regarding the Bhallchild in Baldur's Gate can be taken as canon.

Imoen saying that she is the same age as <CHARNAME> amounts to nothing. She says that since the two grew up together as peers. However it need not mean that the two are of the exact same age. Aren't all children in a school/class assumed to be of the same age, regardless of their DoB?
Gorion may have rescued the two children at around the same time. If they have no prior memories, they would assume their life started together.
Elder races like Elf are still a problem, of course. Someone who has lived 90 years+ before coming to Candlekeep would retain their memory and would definately have made Imoen aware of the age difference.

 

@Shirikant: you're right about the importable Abdel, who for the record in BG2 is a NG human fighter, S18/95 D11 C18 I10 W9 Ch11, with 5 points in Long Sword and one point in Sword and Shield Style, and with the blond fighter portrait. In ToB, he's exactly the same, but with two points in Sword and Shield and three points in Axe.

This character is not importable in BG1; the portrait is given to a NG human cleric instead. It might be instructive to look at some dates: BG was released in November 1998, and BG2:SoA was released in October 2000; while Athans' novelization of BG was published in July 1999, and his novelization of BG2:SoA was published in September 2000. Given that it couldn't have taken Athans very long to write either book, his BG novelization postdated BG, while it likely predated much of the development of content for BG2.

By being published by WotC, Abdel would seem to be the canonical version of the events, at least for other FR novelists who want to say something about the fate of Sarevok, Irenicus, etc. Someone must have been making a nod to Athans when they included the importable Abdel. However, the game developers wisely chose to ignore Athans' work almost completely in BG2. Here is part of a reader review of Athans' BG book from amazon:

The style/content criticisms aside, this points to huge discrepancies between the WotC FR canon and the CRPG BG series canon. Of course, each of these might have internal discrepancies, as with the difference between the council of bhaalspawn shown at the end video of SoA (a bunch of hooded male humans) and the five in ToB. Canon only goes so far; when it impedes storyline, it should go.

 

@Bion:

No, but when you install TotSC, it creates a new "mission-pack save" & here the protagonist is, indeed, called Abdel, and is (IIRC), a NG human fighter, with +++ in Large Swords & Bows, and he uses Kivan's portrait. The party consists of Imoen, Minsc, Jaheira, Viconia and Edwin (how they got that to work is a good question, though!).

 

The new FR sourcebook Lost Empires of Faerun apparantly mentions the Bhaalspawn, though only in a sentence... I don't think it mentions Abdel especially. And most Forgotten Realms fans would disown the BG series of books anyhow - I don't think that Abdel himself is taken as 'the' canon Bhaalspawn from the games, rather I think the setting only acknowledges the existence of Bhaalspawn.

Certainly events of the games such as the sacking of Saradush definitely are not canon Forgotten Realms occurrences.

 

@The Magpie- only last night had the chance to look that up. You're right; in the TotSC Mission Pack, Abdel is still a NG human fighter, though his stats are a bit different from BG2 (S18/94 D19 C19 I07 W06 Ch18), as are of course the proficiencies and the portrait. Obviously, Abdel used a couple tomes, and obviously the developers didn't have a very high view of Abdel's intellectual capabilities.

@Andyr- there are a few FR timelines online; one of them, found here, inlcudes the following entry for year 1368:

Year 1369 lists "Baldur's Gate II" but gives no details. However, this timeline was last updated in April, 2001. In addition, from the site:

So I can't say whether this info was published by TSR or WotC. But this site is also pinned on the forgottenrealms.net forum as the "best timeline you can find for FR."

 

Damn. Now we've got to name all future protagonists Abdel.