Baldur’s Gate 3 player finds hidden Gortash dialogue after 600 hours

Speak with Dead is one of Baldur’s Gate 3 most interesting spells. Not only because it, well, lets you speak with corpses, but it also gives you interesting insight into the people they were before. As one player discovered, this is particularly true if you use it on Gortash. 

Gortash is the chosen of Bane in Baldur’s Gate 3, which is not something that’s immediately obvious unless you do a little investigating. One of the most obvious ways to find this out, though, is when you use Speak with Dead on him. 

If you decide to kill Gortash, when you try to speak with him using the spell, you instead get to have a conversation with Bane himself. This is quite unusual, considering that when you use Speak with Dead on anyone else, you get to speak with that person. 

One player actually didn’t know this was possible, even after 600 hours of gameplay. “I had no clue this happened and I honestly love that they included this,” ‘knuckleparx’ shared on Reddit.

It’s a minute detail that gives us incredible insight into what Gortash’s life might have been like as the chosen of Bane. And, while it’s a strange mechanic, it does make sense, especially because Bane says this to you through Gortash’s body: 

“You seek Gortash? His soul is already suffering at my hands. That is the fate of all those who fail me.”

The implication here is that Gortash’s soul is no longer in his body, and no longer has any attachment to it like other bodies you find would. This could largely be because Bane’s followers often fall prey to his tendency to repurpose their bodies. 

To be more specific, followers of Bane in the Dungeons and Dragons universe (that Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on), especially young men, tend to lose their natural behavior in favor of more dark-minded, slick-talking mad men. 

Considering this, it’s not too wild to assume that Bane is hanging over Gortash constantly. Especially because Gortash is one of his chosen, too, Bane would want to keep tabs on the person who has sacrificed his life in service of the god’s intentions. 

You cannot talk with Orin or Ketheric using Speak with Dead once you have killed them, so it’s not clear if this mechanic works with them in the same way. Nonetheless, it’s a great conversation to have the next time you want to play through Baldur’s Gate 3.