It’s New York Comic Con (NYCC), which means we’ve been dead in the ground long enough, and it’s time to start living again.
On the first day of the con, Collider’s Deputy News Editor Maggie Lovitt spoke with author T. Kingfisher (real name Ursula Vernon) and Neil Newbon (who voices Astarion in the game and audiobook) about the development process behind the prequel novel, Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion. Don’t worry, readers: if you haven’t gotten to check this title out, there are no spoilers here.
To kick the panel off, Vernon discussed how long the book was in development, noting, “I’m trying to do the math. I think I was approached in…early 2025, and I already had a crap load of books due that year, and I’m like, no, that’s fine, I’ll just shove all of those out of the way. We (Vernon and Newbon) didn’t speak until we did a little interview thing together, like a month ago? I did, however, listen to like 50 bazillion YouTube compilations of Astarion’s lines for the game.”
When it came to researching the massive world and lore of Dungeons & Dragons 5e, Vernon worked closely with the Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) and Penguin Random House teams: “Well, first we did a lot of brainstorming with the Random House and the WOTC reps, basically what sort of plot they were looking for and laying out some ground rules, like I couldn’t create new monsters, which kiboshed a plot or two I had…and then a lot of digging into obscure bits of D&D lore. And I’m a big nerd from way back when, but every now and again, we would hit a snag where I would be like, yeah, it’s Mordenkainen’s dancing sword, and then they would say, ‘ We don’t actually have that in 5e.’ And I’m like, you got rid of Mordenkainen’s dancing sword? So yeah, things like that.”
When Newbon was asked about his involvement in the making of the audiobook, he shared: “Oh, pretty last minute, I should say. Gosh, I think it was June or something like that. But we did it in five days. So I was in the booth for five days, talking to myself with very little direction, which sounds fun. It’s really kind of weird. It was kind of an interesting experience of being in my own head, outside my own head, trying to be present in the character, whilst also doing another 30 characters or something like that. So it was kind of a weird experience. I quite enjoyed it, as I’ve never done an audiobook before.”
When approaching how to play a pre-tadpoled Astarion, Newbon shared his thought process: “I think it’s interesting, because essentially, Astarion in this instance is not the Astarion that you meet in the game. The story takes place, like, 50 years before or something, right? But not only that, but he hasn’t met you yet. I think that is a very important point to make, that you help him change. I think that’s kind of something, which I thought was quite exciting…And trying not to perform him as I would have done in the actual game, specifically, because he’s not there yet. So that was also an interesting challenge, to find the habits that he still has, the rhythms he still has as a defense mechanism, or as, you know, when he’s trying to get what he wants, when he’s trying to be very malleable and very agile through moments.”
According to Vernon, not much of the original drafts were left on the cutting room floor, but a lot of the collaborative work on the book’s development gave her some power in deciding some canon in the Dungeons & Dragons universe: “Every now and then I would like send off a question, and they would come back and be like, there is not a canonical lore ruling on this, so what you say is now canon, and I’m like, you have given me too much power.”
If you’re craving more Baldur’s Gate 3 lore, Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion is available now at your local bookstore and wherever books are sold. If you want to hear more of Astarion’s charismatic voice, then be sure to get the audiobook on Audible, Libro.fm, and Google Play Audiobooks.
