Baldur’s Gate 3 – Playthrough 18 – Introduction

As Tolkien put it, “This tale grew in the telling.”

This is an introduction to my pictorial fanfic in general, and to the story I’ve prepared based on my eighteenth playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3. It consists of about 750 images, selected out of a pool of over 7000, with captions added. It’s the most ambitious fanfic project I’ve created so far.

Placing that many images in a single post, or even a group of posts published at once, would be too much. I decided to break it up into eleven posts. There are actually thirteen parts, but one of the posts contains three parts.

The posts are set to auto-publish, with a new one every three days. After each is published, I’ll update the page links (“click for next post”) within older posts, and add the new one to my fanfic guide.

Of course, if you’re reading this after 03-Oct-2026, then they will all be there.

If you’d like to be notified when a new part appears, I suggest you subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or check out how to set up email notifications.

If you’re already familiar with my fanfic, here’s the first part of my playthrough 18 story. Otherwise, let’s get you up to speed.

Images

If you’re reading this on your phone, you may want to consider switching to a tablet or desktop. On a phone, the images may be too small to read the captions, which are a vital part of the story. Also, for those images that are links (they have a blue border around them), you may only be able to read the hovertext on a desktop browser.

In case it’s not obvious by this point: I freely include captions of my own in the screen captures that make up the fanfic pictures.

Background

As I’ve learned and experienced Baldur’s Gate 3, I wrote a series of posts documenting my playthroughs. Gradually, those write-ups transformed into fanfic.

For the most part, this fanfic revolves around a character of my own creation, Arctic Druid Angela. (If you’re interested in fanfic about the established characters in the game, there are much better resources than my blog.) She’s evolved from a surprise success in my eighth playthrough into an example of what can be done with a sub-standard build to a link between all my BG3 playthroughs.

Is she a Mary Sue? I dunno; maybe.

As my fanfic evolves, I make increasing reference to my previous stories. When I do this, I include an image link to the earlier tale, so you can catch up if you wish. For example:

Are the stories I create any good? I dunno; maybe. You have to judge for yourself.

Spoilers?

My BG3 stories assume a familiarity with the game’s story. If you don’t know who this character is, my fanfic will be meaningless to you. Play BG3 and find out!

Some of my fanfic includes references to story elements that a player might not see until after many playthroughs, such as the saga of the Dark Urge.

Druid Angela is a “Hero Hireling.” I assume that readers are familiar with working with hirelings in the game. If the following image’s caption is puzzling to you, you might try a hireling at least once (they’re quite useful). However, this is not required to understand the characters’ actions.

For some of my recent stories, I go beyond BG3 and include story elements from the games Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and from the D&D campaign setting Forgotten Realms in which all the Baldur’s Gate games are set. I include links to that material within the fanfic.

Since both those sources have been available for decades, I do not include spoiler warnings for anything related to them. For example, I explain who “Gorion’s Ward” is and fill the reader on their backstory, but I don’t warn the reader I might spoil their experience playing BG1 for the first time.

As for BG3 spoilers: This is only warning you’ll see for my playthrough 18 fanfic. I think I’m reasonably low on spoilers if you’ve played BG3 at least once and made some effort to read the notes and books you’ll find in the game. Otherwise, caveat lector.

OK, enough with the cautions and apologies. Let’s begin.