Baldur’s Gate 3 Prequel Exclusive Clip Finds Neil Newbon Back as Astarion

Larian Studios lit a fire within fantasy nerds’ hearts when Baldur’s Gate 3 made its debut from early access on Aug. 23 in 2023. It had everything a fantasy lover would want in a role-playing video game: an exciting premise, deep character customization, an incredible backdrop set in Dungeons & Dragons’ Forgotten Realms, and an enigmatic cast of characters.

While everyone has their favorites, it’s undeniable that one particular character managed to sink his fangs deep into Baldur’s Gate 3 fans: the one and only Astarion Ancunin, performed to perfection by award-winning actor Neil Newbon. Each companion comes with their own fair share of woe, and Astarion is no exception. Astarion — once a magistrate in Baldur’s Gate — had his life changed forever after a ruling he made, when thugs beat him nearly to death.

As he lay dying, vampire lord Cazador Szarr came upon him and transformed him into a vampire spawn. It saved his life—but at a great cost.

Now, award-winning author T. Kingfisher (Nettle & Bone) and Random House Worlds are expanding on Astarion’s tragic background in a new book following the vampire spawn in a time before mind flayers took to the skies over Baldur’s Gate.

In this exclusive excerpt from Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion, we see our favorite vampire rogue make plans to rob a magical shop, only to encounter a creature most foul. Read on below or, if you’re more of a listener, then we’ve got quite the treat for you: Neil Newbon reading the excerpt for you. Go on, darlings, it’s to die for.

Read on for the excerpt

Well, he’d said that he was bored.

Astarion looked up the outside of the building and sighed heavily. It was four stories tall and built in that style of architecture common to the Lower City of Baldur’s Gate, where any bits of previous buildings on the lot were slathered with mortar and incorporated into the structure. These bits included a squat brick guardhouse, a glassblower’s chimney, and the remnants of a cathedral to some god no one remembered, full of complicated bits of buttress and a few broken gargoyles. It looked like a wedding cake made by drunken goblins.

He traced a likely route up with his eyes, took off his socks and boots, tucked them away into the shadow of a drainpipe, and got to work.

He hated spider climbing. He just wasn’t very good at it. Some people could calmly walk upside down on a ceiling as if gravity applied to other people. Aurelia was good at it. So was Violet, to his chagrin. Astarion could really only do it on all fours, and only if he took off his shoes. His brain kept insisting that no, down was that way, and while he didn’t fall off, he got extremely queasy and tended to stumble.

He looked around one more time to make sure no one was watching, then went up the side of the building, looking less like a spider and more like an anemic gecko with a fear of heights.

There were pigeons nesting under the eaves. They hadn’t woken up. Astarion made sure his feet were properly braced on a stone gargoyle, reached out, and wrung one’s neck before it even woke. He sank his fangs into the plump body, past the layer of feathers, and there it was.

Blood ran down his throat, thin and hot, stronger than whiskey, smoother than wine. It pulsed over his tongue as the pigeon’s heart beat frantically, the wings still trembling as the bird tried mindlessly to escape. Astarion gave himself over to a rush of sensation that made the best orgasm of his life seem banal by comparison.

When the pigeon’s heart had stopped and the rush had finally faded, Astarion picked a feather out of his teeth and set the small corpse down on the roof. Another? I do have work to do…

Well, perhaps one more.

He reached for another bird, and it opened its eyes and yelled, “Get off, you bastard! What’re you doing?”

Astarion groaned. The bliss of blood-drinking was driven out by the weight of his annoyance. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

The bird cocked its head to one side, studying him out of one beady orange eye. “Do I know you?”

“We’ve met.”

“Have we?” The bird thought for a minute. “Sorry. Memory’s not what it was. Who’re you again?”

“I’m named Petras,” Astarion lied, “and you’re Rooftop Henry.”

“That I am,” the bird said, settling down out of arm’s reach. “That I am.” He observed the roof with a proprietary air. “You robbin’ the place?”

“That was the plan.”

Image: Random House Worlds / Wizards of the Coast

Rooftop Henry nodded. “Good choice, good choice.”

Every burglar in Baldur’s Gate knew who Rooftop Henry was, although nobody knew what he was. He definitely wasn’t a bird, for all that he appeared to be a rather disreputable cross between a pigeon and a seagull. There were a number of theories, from a lost familiar to a wild-shaped druid who had somehow gotten stuck to a polymorph spell gone horribly wrong.

Astarion’s personal favorite was that Henry had been a smuggler who had acquired a load of magical items, been cornered by the Watch, and, in a desperate attempt to hide the evidence, had tried to swallow a wand of wonder.

Regardless of his origin, Rooftop Henry fell somewhere between an extremely clever parrot and an extremely dim person. His memory for most things wasn’t good, though he knew down to the minute when the local inns put their trash out. On a good night, he was willing to act as sentry in return for a bite to eat. He was, in fact, a member in good standing of the Thieves’ Guild, though it was rumored that the treasurer covered his dues herself after he had attempted to pay in regurgitated herring.

“Breaking in, are we?” the bird asked, gazing over Astarion’s shoulder.

“That was also the plan.” Astarion worked his way around to the other side of the gargoyle and leaned down to examine the nearest window. The latch was absurdly easy, which meant that there were almost certainly alarm spells in place. He unrolled the soft leather strip that held his tools—lockpicks, assorted instruments, and a diamond ring so gaudy that he would never dream of wearing it but which served admirably for cutting glass. Yet another thing that Cazador didn’t know about. The Guild maintained several safe houses around the city with lockers where one could keep tools, a change of clothing, or even loot that had gotten too hot to handle. Astarion kept his equipment in one of them and made sure that his own dues were paid up regularly. Death was nothing compared to what the Guild would do if they found you working independently.

“Hey. Hey, mister.”

Astarion selected a thin metal implement with a hook on the end, which he’d stolen from a healer who specialized in tooth extraction. It was also very good for catching hidden wires.

“Hey, you. Mister vampire.”

Astarion sighed. He thought about denying it, but the drained corpse of the pigeon was literally six inches to Henry’s left. Fortunately, the odds of Henry remembering this conversation in an hour were minimal. “Yes?”

“You don’t want that window, mister.”

“Don’t I?”

“Nah.” Rooftop Henry began preening under one wing and appeared to get distracted. Astarion had reached out with the hook and was mere inches from the window frame when the bird remembered what he was saying. “There’s spells on that one.”

“There are spells on all of them, I imagine.”

It was impossible for a bird to smirk without lips, but Henry tried. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

Astarion leaned back and gave the bird his full attention. “I assume that means there’s a window that isn’t spelled?”

“Might be, might be. I happen to know there’s one built at just the wrong angle by that chimney over there.” He gestured with a wing. “There’s an owl sleeps there during the day.”

“An owl.” Astarion folded his arms. “So is this owl a wizard? Has he dispelled the alarms on a window?”

“Don’t be daft.” The bird spat on the shingles. Astarion had never seen a bird spit contemptuously before and decided that he didn’t need to see it again. “It’s a regular owl. Eats mice and rats. Then it does what owls do…” He looked expectantly at Astarion.

“Makes more owls?”

“No, you addlebrained bloodsucker!” Henry bounced up and down on clawed red feet, clearly irate. “Don’t you know nothin’ ’bout birds? It pukes up owl pellets. All the bits and bones and hair that it don’t want cluttering up its guts.”

“How unpleasantly biological.”

“Yeah, well. Ashes to ashes, shit to shit.” He spat again. “Point is, the pellets hit the window every time, which sets off the alarms, so after about two tendays, the apprentice who sets all the spells stopped doing that one.”

Astarion sat up, suddenly very interested. “Have they, now?”

“Yep. Could even show you the window.” Henry cocked his head to one side, purely birdlike. “’Course, I’d expect a consideration in return, belike.”

Astarion smiled, keeping his lips over his teeth. “Naturally. May I offer you a dead pigeon?”

“After you’ve had your mouth on it? Shove off. I may be a bird, but at least I’m not a bloodsucker.”

“That is really not how vampirism works.”

“Says the vampire.”

Astarion rubbed his temples. He didn’t even know if birds could become vampire spawn. It had never really come up. I suppose I could ask Cazador, but… no, I don’t want to have to explain any of this.

“Fine,” he said. “What do you want?”

Rooftop Henry told him.

“You’re serious?”

“Serious as the pox, mate.”

As deals went, it was one of the easiest Astarion had ever made. “Very well. Assuming this window is useful to me, I’ll get it for you.”

“Shake on it?”

“How, exactly?”

Rooftop Henry stood on one leg and extended the other. Hoping that no one on the roofs of Baldur’s Gate happened to be looking in their direction, Astarion carefully shook the little red claw.

“Right,” Henry said. “C’mon, then. And go easy on the shingles, unless you want a quick trip to the ground.

Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion by T. Kingfisher, published by Random House Worlds, will be released on Sep. 29.