Baldur's Gate 3: Who Is Mystra And What Does She Mean To Gale?

one of the recurrent themes that crops up again and again when talking to gail is that of the weave but what is the weave and who created it and why does gayle bear such love for the goddess mystra who is she what is her significance misra or mistral as she used to be called is a truly ancient goddess whose origins go back as with many primordial deities to the first great battle between seluna and shar legend has it that during this battle shah had gained the upper hand and had blotted out much of suluna's light in desperation soon he tore out a piece of her own magical essence and casted a char when it hit something unexpected happened char lost a portion of her own essence and the light and dark mixed merged and melted into each other as a new goddess emerged called mistral a being of pure magic neither light nor dark yet both inextricably bound to the weave and having been born of both goddesses mistral served as a force of balance between the two sisters shar and sulu but as mentioned prior before there was mystra there was a mistral a goddess of magic and somewhat more chaotic bent she existed to maintain or repair the weave many many millennia had passed with mistral in this role until a cataclysmic event took place one that gail himself mentions if you choose to get close to him or romance this event took place towards the end of the empire called netheril and netheril was an ancient empire found on the principles of magic where arcanus would later come to be called wizards wielded mighty magic and crafted spells of power never before witnessed by mortals there arose a wizard late in the empire's history called karsus karsus was the most talented arcanist of his generation and was born into a time when the netherese saw themselves at war with the faerun magical aberrations that opposed the netherese ambitions and magics determined that only he could save the netherese empire karsus began researching a spell of immense power that would forever change the history of olive faerun and more importantly magic itself you see most spells in dungeons and dragons range from level 1 to 9 with 9 often being regarded as the most powerful but this was not always so prior to the fall of netheril spells of level 10 and even 11 existed and karsus was about to embark on a quest to be the only mortal being to have ever cast a level 12 spell untold years went into researching it until this spell was complete as it required the absolute rarest of components in unparalleled preparation the spell was dubbed carcissus avatar a spell that allowed his caster to temporarily steal the divinity from a god deluded by his own hubris and his belief that he alone could protect netheril karsas casts his spell and chose the one deity that he should not have mistral his being swelled with untold power for one of the responsibilities of the goddess of magic was to regulate the flow of magic to and from all beings spells and magic items in the world and when her godly essence poured into him his mind and body were overwhelmed and he found that he was incapable of wielding such power mistral's hole in the weave was weakened and it began to unravel magical effects doubled in power briefly then became wild and chaotic to save the wii from permanent damage mistral chose to sacrifice herself which broke karsus connection killing him and stopped all magic for a brief moment in time the floating cities of netheril plummeted to the earth and the severine of his link also killed karsus and transformed him into stone as the last thing he saw was his entire civilization destroyed because of his actions these events would later come to be known as carcissus folly moments pass and mistral was soon reincarnated but this time as mystra who took a much more lawful stance on the use of magic compared to her more chaotic predecessor having borne witness to the chaos that karsus and netheril had caused by her decree all spells above level 10 were henceforth prohibited and any and all information on the spell of karsus avatar was sent on an eternal journey to the ends of the universe by the goddess misra as opposed to mistral saw herself primarily as an upholder of cosmic balance between the forces of law and chaos carrying little for morality and was much stricter than mistral was and existed in this incarnation for untold centuries until the events of the time of troubles when ao the over god cast the gods down from their realms unto faroon mystra of course was also cast down but would not accept her fate seeking to access her realm she challenged the god helm who had been tasked by lord ayo with guarding the celestial gates that led back to the divine realms of the gods and he had retained his divine power mistral was slain but later after the end of the avatar crisis immortal by the name of midnight was raised to godhood by eu and became the new incarnation of mystra goddess of magic albeit with a more benign attitude than either of her predecessors midnight had taken on the mantle of the goddess of magic for not but a few decades when she was murdered by the gods ciric conspiring with shar which led to a century of immense instability an event called the spell plague causing magic and reality itself to go awry after a century had passed mystra along with many of the other gods who had disappeared or had been slain was reinstated and essentially has the same status as she did prior to her death as best as one can tell at least naturally no discussion of mystra could be complete without mention of the weave in many ways the weave and mystra are one the same inseparable as they cannot exist without each other but put simply the weave is the source of all magic whether divine or arcane and might be seen as a kind of fabric that is worked upon it can be tugged and pulled and even torn but the weave possesses the ability of self-repair given sufficient time misra regulates the weave and determines via the weave the conditions that are required for magic to be used each casting of a spell rearranges the weave in subtle ways as spell casting can be seen as a form of working its fabric or weaving as it were now of course there is both theoretically and practically a lot more that could be said about the goddess mystra with her myriad exploits and interactions on faerun but what interests us the most is gail and his relationship to the goddess if you've made progress to any degree with your approval with gail and got him on your good side or possibly romanced him you will know his strange tale gail will tell you that he was a mage of great talent showing incredible skill at a very early age a prodigy as it were and that his talent drew the interests of the goddess mystra who has a history of being drawn to mortals of great magical talent as gail is by no means the first but misra showing interest in gail draws gail closer to her and she reveals herself gail claims to have possibly loved mystra but why the weave as hinted above is in some sense the very fabric of creation and as a magic user gael taps into this fabric with each casting of a spell it is his lifeblood so to speak he says much himself to him mystra is not just the goddess of magic but the goddess of all creation however as much as mystra had been impressed with him no mortal can hold the attention of a goddess for too long and in time her affections wandered and waned to gail this must have been far more than mere heartbreak or the feeling of rejection but rather the feeling of creation itself being torn away from him spurned by the goddess we are told he tried to regain her favor by doing something extremely foolish he in fact explicitly mentions karsus an albert name and speaks of some magic that was locked away in a book moments just after karsus's folly the magic that gail sought to return to mystra but this seemingly failed and instead he ended up with a netherese orb in his chest that requires the constant feeding of magic threatening to annihilate both him and his surroundings if it is not sated gail in some sense is not all too different from karsus though his motivations might have been different and when you suggest to him that he might suffer from just a tad bit of arrogance he disagrees and rebuffs you as having mischaracterized his ambition as something negative ostensibly gail seems good-hearted in a way that the other companions are not in a more traditional alignment bound setting one could easily see him as being neutral or chaotic good but his ambition has always been his desire to be the greatest wizard faerun has ever known and above all to regain the favor of the goddess mystra which means that for all his pretense of moral concern he probably would be willing to do virtually anything to regain his power and to recapture the favor of the goddess as to be perfectly honest it does not seem that he's truly learned his lesson after the debacle with the orb notice bluster and unmeasured confidence even in the face of odds that would demand caution and humility for all his fear of abandonment gail very much seems poised to abandon you should it suit his ultimate goals though i'm fairly sure he would do it rather reluctantly something along the lines of i hate doing this but i have no choice gail really really believes he's something special and deserves whatever it is he's chasing and that a great destiny awaits him as we're still only in early access it's impossible to tell if any of these observations or predictions will come true but gail coupled by his obsession with mystra makes me more than worried about having him in my party let alone getting close to him or trusting him only time will tell assuming of course we aren't blown to smithereens by a certain netherese's resorb as always thank you for tuning in please leave a like comment and subscribe as it really helps out the channel i will check you out later take care

Channel: Spell&Shield

Views: 9,702

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Id: g4ouNyQ26Iw

Length: 9min 29sec (569 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022