Baldur's Gate 3: Why Is Mystra The Most Important Goddess?

mistra is the most important deity and arguably the most important figure in the Forgotten Realms this may not seem to make much sense on the face of it but bear with me now there will be very minor spoilers related to Ballers Gate 3 in this video specifically references to historical events that gal himself mentions in conversation with you as well as the beginning of his backstory which most people are aware of by now so practically no spoilers if you wish to know nothing about the history of the Realms and its relationship to Ballers Gate 3 or the very beginnings of Gail's story then turn away now mystra is the goddess of magic in the Forgotten Realms d d setting and as such presides over every form of magic tied to the weavecrom colorful displays of Lights to powerful evocation spells such as Fireball and ice storm to the dark arts of necromancy if it is Magic related to The Weave something I will talk about in a bit then it falls within her purview and the weave can be understood as the fabric of magic itself from which magic is drawn this fact alone has massive ramifications beyond what you might think your first thought might be an entirely incorrectly so that mistress therefore the goddess of wizards and Arcane spellcasters and indeed these are the groups most attracted to mistress worship or at least those who overtly Revere her however it must be understood that she governs all magic which means that anyone at any time who chooses to employ magic even clerics of other gods who gain their spells from other gods have a form of divine permission from mystra the clearest example of this and hence her absolute control over this was during a conflict that took place well over a century prior to the events of Baldur's Gate 3 between a young incarnation of mystra and her former mortal friend cyric both of whom had been promoted to godhood by the over God Ayu barely a decade before the end of the time of troubles to combat zurich's mad machinations she withdrew his personal access to the weave and mind you he was a greater deity and then selectively allowed him to ground spells to his followers had she had wanted to she could have cut him off from The Weave completely including the ability to Grant clerical magic to his faithful and if she truly wanted to she could withhold access to Magic for every being whether mortal or God now ultimately this led to problems down the line with a tribunal of Greater deities who made it clear that her actions lay outside the parameters of the permissible and the laws that govern the gods but it does demonstrate just how much power Mr wields withholding access to the weave also runs counter to the portfolio of mistra and her desires which is to promote magic and spell craft above all else mystra is without question the most powerful of the Gods although she too is constrained by the rules of godhood as dictated by a the over God now Beyond this this fact also means that mistra is in large measure responsible for the maintenance of great portions of the fabric of reality itself perhaps not everything but very important parts as faerun is infused with magic and it is found nigh everywhere this is in part the reason why Gale your origin character or party member feels such an overwhelming attraction to the goddess it's not simply a matter of puppy love or being submitten by Divine charm no it's far more than just that because Gail as a former archmage and chosen of mistra had a taste of a direct pipeline to Creation itself when Gail talks about the weave he is in fact talking about reality and much of its constituent parts when you talk to him and get closer to him you very much see this in operation being reduced in power and suffering from his malady is akin to him losing touch with reality setting aside his power hunger and ambition of course now mistress station is the most powerful Gods means many things and one of them is that in the history of the Forgotten Realms she is in fact a powerful plot device that has moved and shaken Nations and to be perfectly Frank has begun and ended whole new editions of d d at the behest of Wizards of the Coast so who or what is mistra mystra was originally known as Mistral a different more chaotic incarnation of the goddess of magic and she was birthed as Legend has it as a result of the conflict between the twin sisters of light and darkness Saloon and Char respectively Legend tells us that suluna was losing her battle against Char and tore out a piece of her Essence a mode of light and hurled at a Shar forcing Char to lose parts of herself in the process and out of this mixture of light and darkness Mistral of being a pure magic emerged and is governed magic in the Forgotten Realms in various capacities ever since as mentioned prior Mistral was a very chaotic man and wanted magic to flourish as freely as possible with his few limitations as possible and therefore during her Reign prior to the fall of netheral there were at least theoretically no upper limits the potential use of magic even and especially for Mortals wielding magic assuming the required competence of course and for the longest time magic one could say was a free-for-all permitted of course by the whims of the chaotic Mistral I'll be making a separate video covering the full history of netheral in due time but the long and short of it is that a combination of fortuitous discoveries Elven Aid and above all the very LAX rules that Mistral had put in place had led to dizzying Heights of magical success in netheral and it must be said pave the way for netherol's Doom and a radical shift to policy in the part of mystra a related but separate incarnation of the Goddess nethery's Mages were called not wizards but arcanus and could wield Magic on the scale never before seen or witnessed since so much so that one nethery's arcanus that will be known to you through your conversations with Gail actually casts a spell called karsus Avatar the only level 12 spell ever devised in the history of the Forgotten Realms which allowed him to temporarily usurp the power of a god unfortunately for him and his miscalculations he chose Mistral something he immediately regretted as his mind was filled with Godlike power and the awesome responsibility and necessity of constantly maintaining the weave which in many ways can be likened to a fabric of reality and his mortal mind simply could not handle the task and snapped for an instant which seemed like an eternity in his failure magic ceased to function as Mitchell was dead and yet after this instant she was quickly reincarnated and took control of the weave again this new Incarnation was called misra and was far more lawful and rigid than the previous Mistral ever was and imposed numerous rules upon spellcasters magic users for example whether Claire chloricane by dictate of the Goddess would henceforth have to rest to recover their spells it would never again be able to cast spells above ninth level there are a number of theories to explain the Swift Reincarnation of misra albeit in a different form but the most prominent one poses the idea that it was Au the over God's doing over time Mistral had become absolutely necessary for the functionality and well-being of an intactoril and seeing this need but also how nethery's arcanus ultimately destroyed the cosmic balance Ayo had established and sought to maintain the new Incarnation would be far more lawful and restrictive concerning magic setting power limits on it in an effort to prevent further overreach on the part of Mortals all the while promoting it at the same time in a reasonable manner it is thus no coincidence that Gail refers to mystra as creation itself in some sense you know sculptural painting could ever do her justice only the fabric that she herself is that embodies The Weave Mr is all magic and as far as I'm concerned she is all creation and this also indicates how Mishra more so than any other deity functions as a plot device removing the story of The Forgotten Realms forward in essence our modern rules for DND born many decades ago seen in this slide stem from a rearranging of how magic used to work to how it works now because mistra made it so and for the longest time the lawful mistra remained just that until the fairly recent time of troubles over a century ago a tumultuous period of time that saw the death of many deities including most importantly Mr herself as she sought access to her Celestial realm and was destroyed by the only God left with his full power Helm who was assigned to guard the gate a new goddess emerged from this a mortal called Midnight who is permitted by Au to retain some of her mortal perspectives and sensibilities and with that certain moral inclinations being decidedly more good natured than her predecessors in this led as already mentioned to questionable decisions on her part during a Divine conflict but what was even more important in the time of troubles concerning mystra was her later death the result of a complot piloted and acted out by The Joint efforts of cyric the then God of murderer lies and Madness and Char the lady of the night with whom you're all too familiar by now I assume and who had manipulated the younger and Dumber cyric into doing her dirty work in an effort to realize one of her grand Ambitions to gain control of the weave for herself but even the goddess Shah could not have expected what would come next as it led to the cataclysmic event known as the spell plague unlike in previous times there was no instantaneous Reincarnation of mistra which has led to much scholarly speculation but needless to say mistra's death was catastrophic and uncontrolled magic ripped through not just faerun but the planes in the Multiverse itself unbeknownst to char with the collapse of the weave her own Creation The Shadow Eve ceased to function and there was chaos for decades as magic became at times uncastable and unpredictable and it even warped the gods themselves in the process but this was after a fashion yet another Mr related plot device which ushered in the less than successful fourth edition of DnD and remained the status quo until fifth edition aka the second sundarine when virtually all the Lost forgotten and dead Gods returned to faerun by the grace of EU and Wizards of the Coast Mr herself returned after nearly a century of absence to reaffirm her duty to the weave and the stability of magic and so we see that Mishra is far more important than any other God in the pantheon both in terms of her importance to the maintenance of cosmic order and reality as well as her utility as a plot device by Wizards of the Coast and we can also now far better understand why Gale so easily fell in love with her given his own precocious magical aptitude and love of magic many gods such as hell mortire stand for abstract principles but magic is in a sense as firm and solid a thing as one can imagine even if an individual himself does not wield it he can still be touched by it in Myriad ways and thus Gail is not wrong in saying that Mishra is a goddess of creation and one integral to the history of the Realms and Dungeons and Dragons itself thanks for tuning in before I go I'd like to invite you to my Discord server where you can discuss Ballers Gate 3 and Forgotten Realms lore with like-minded people and if you like my content you can leave a like comment share and subscribe it really helps out the channel and hit the Bell icon to be informed of my videos be much appreciated and I'll check you out next time take care

Channel: Spell&Shield

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Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2023