IGN has an exclusive excerpt of Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion, including narration by Astarion actor Neil Newbon himself.
Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion, from author T. Kingfisher, is a prequel novel set before the events of Larian’s role-playing masterpiece, Baldur’s Gate 3 . It follows Astarion during his time in servitude to the vampire lord Cazador Szarr. Stephen Rooney, one of the senior writers of Baldur’s Gate 3, was consulted to help ensure the novel’s authenticity within the game’s world and lore. The audiobook version is narrated by Neil Newbon, and you can see photos of Newbon in the recording booth below.
“This was the one of the very first scenes I wrote, part of getting the geography of the city set firmly into my mind,” T. Kingfisher told IGN. “That was over a year ago and it’s hard to believe that the book is so close to coming out. You live with these things in your own head for so long, and I’m delighted that other people will finally get to see it!”
Random House Worlds will publish Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion on September 29, 2026. You can hear Newbon’s narration in the video below.
In this excerpt, Astarion goes slinking (not skulking) through Baldur’s Gate, seeking fresh blood for his master.
Excerpt:
It was a lovely evening in the Lower City of Baldur’s Gate, which meant that it was foggy but not actually raining, the rats weren’t swarming and nothing untoward with tentacles was coming up from the sea. The ladies, gentlemen, and others of the evening were out in force, the drunks had not yet been turned out of the taverns, and Astarion was slinking through the shadows.
Slinking was a very specific sort of movement, and not to be confused with skulking. Snakes slink, of course, as do cats and cat burglars and most assassins. Thugs and bruisers and most people who break heads for money skulk. (Wolves, interestingly enough, can do either.) The difference is in the fluidity of movement. If you see someone skulking, you wonder who’s going to get their bones broken, whereas if you see someone slinking, you wonder if they’ve got any bones at all.
Astarion slunk past the open door of an inn, where raucous laughter poured into the night. Too busy for his purposes, and too loud. One on the next street was quieter, but he knew for a fact that it was where the Flaming Fists went to drink, and the mercenary troop tended to get very unhappy when their people went missing and had a tendency to turn over rocks to see what was underneath.
As one of the dwellers under metaphorical rocks—albeit a very handsome one, thank you—Astarion was not inclined to stir up trouble.
He kept moving, making a slow circuit past the various inns and taverns. Seven Sins was a tiefling bar, and he’d stand out like an orchid in an abattoir. The Hagstone was perfect—quiet, tastefully appointed, generally full of men hoping to meet other men for conversation and possibly more. It was so perfect, in fact, that he’d taken his last prey from there and figured he should give it a few more tendays before he tried again.
He paused thoughtfully across the street from the Toad’s Ghost, which was holding what appeared to be a poetry night. That might be promising. You could almost always find someone in the back, watching with glazed politeness and absolutely desperate to leave. Of course, the downside was that you also had to listen to poetry. He made a mental note to come back in an hour if nothing else presented itself.
The fog was thickening, muffling the sounds of footsteps and drunken revelry. It barely stirred as he passed. A member of the Watch went by barely an armslength away, but the light of his own lantern reflected off the mist blinded him to Astarion’s presence.
Perhaps I should make use of this fog…
He generally disliked taking people off the street, since inconvenient bystanders had a habit of showing up at just the wrong moment. Not that any bothered to show up for me when I was bleeding to death in an alley, the curs. But with fog this thick, who would ever know?
He turned south toward the docks and continued his slink.
By the time he reached the Sea Tower district and the seedy neighborhood surrounding the docks, the fog was so thick that you could no longer cut it with a knife. You’d need an axe at the very least. The lamps that marked the doorways of taverns shone like lighthouses above the street. Voices echoed strangely off buildings, stretched and distorted, so that it was nearly impossible to tell where the speakers were, or what exactly they were saying.
He paused across the street from Rat’s Run. In many ways, a marvelous place, full of drunken sailors that no one would miss. Perfect for picking up a stranger and luring them back to Cazador’s palace. The owner was a very…interesting …lady who owed him a favor and wasn’t above indicating when she would like someone killed.
He took out his glasses, put them on his nose, and the mist immediately turned them opaque.
“I am foiled at every turn, it seems,” he muttered to himself. The glasses were exceedingly flattering, or so he had been told by numerous people, some of whom had even gone on to live out their natural lifespans. Unable to check in a mirror himself, he had been more than a little worried. The glasses were also host to a very minor illusion, so small and harmless that anyone who sensed it would chalk it up to vanity. Many people wore such charms—necklaces that magically disguised a double chin, earrings that smoothed a pocked complexion, that sort of thing. (In one memorable case, it was underwear that corrected the spelling of a lower back tattoo, a fact which Astarion learned when the underwear came off and he found himself gripping hips marked with the elven characters for “bladder infection.” Fortunately the human man under him had taken his shout of laughter for passion and Astarion had excused himself afterward to go and laugh hysterically in private.)
In Astarion’s case, his glasses turned his eyes blue. It was all well and good to have red eyes when the lights were off, but when he went hunting somewhere well lit, the glasses made life rather easier.
He put the glasses away. The Rat’s Run would be there tomorrow and the next day and probably for the next hundred years after that. Tonight, he would find a victim in the fog.
Astarion made his way along the waterfront, keeping the buildings tightly to his left. The fog was even thicker here, draped over the docks like a funeral shroud, and the last thing he needed was to misjudge a distance and stumble over the wall. The bay here didn’t count as running water but it was cold and full of all sorts of dreadful things. Fish pissed in it. So did sailors. Astarion really did not want to have to squelch home smelling like an estuary.
He passed another spill of light, from a bar, where a halfling was playing an accordion in front of an audience that did not seem to be accordion aficionados. I could probably get more applause by walking in, grabbing that bard by the throat, and dragging them out.
A large piece of dock equipment loomed before him. It looked like a crane, but being nautical, it was probably called a larboard mizzenpoop or something like that. Astarion did not feel the need to clutter up his mind learning names for things on boats. They all sounded like tawdry sex acts, possibly performed with a dead fish.
He leaned against the mizzenpoop for a few moments, letting his eyes adjust to the fog. Small red lanterns gleamed along the street, appearing and disappearing as the breeze off the ocean twisted the fog into strange shapes. Prostitutes, most likely. Hard to do business if the sailors can’t find you.
Astarion did not hunt prostitutes, even though they seemed like they would be easy prey. Not because he was a good man—it was to laugh—but the ladies of negotiable affection watched out for each other, and they would rapidly have noticed that those who went with a certain pale elven client did not come back. Immortality was all well and good, but being tossed into the Chionthar River would mean a short, brutal death by running water.
Petras, who had all the brains of an orange tabaxi, had attempted to hunt prostitutes when he was newly made. Astarion didn’t know what had happened, just that Aurelia had found him in an alley, bloody and shaking and stinking of sewage. It had taken a fair amount of blood to get him healed up and coherent and he wouldn’t talk about it even now.
Truth be told, Astarion had a certain fellow-feeling for prostitutes. The amount of times he’d used his body to lure a victim into Cazador’s clutches probably qualified him for membership in their guild.
As if summoned by the thought, the fog around him flickered red and a voice said, “Hey. You there.”
Astarion swung around and saw a red lantern approaching him, held by a slender figure in clothes that might have been revealing if he could see anything but an outline in the mist. He sighed internally.
“Madam, I’m flattered, but afraid that I’m not looking for company this evening—”
The prostitute came closer, lifting her lantern. “No. I’m looking for you.”
“Me?”
She nodded. She was small and waif-like and Astarion guessed she had at least three knives on her person. “I’ve seen you here before. With your red eyes.”
“They aren’t red,” Astarion said reflexively. “It’s a reflection.”
She stepped close enough that he could see her skeptical expression. Her own eyes were big and brown and could probably look liquid and adoring. At the moment, they looked like frozen agate.
“Ugh. Fine, you’ve caught me. My grandmother was a drow. A dear woman. Had a remarkable way with a snake-headed whip.” Astarion let a faraway look cross his face. “Grandfather always said that’s what attracted him to her in the first place.”
The woman snorted. “Save it for the marks.” Her accent was pure Waterdeep and her ears proclaimed half-elven ancestry. “I’ve seen you before, sometimes with a client. Sometimes a client I know.” She lowered the lantern a little. “Then I don’t see them ever again. Funny, isn’t it?”
Astarion tensed. He could probably overpower her, and no one would notice in the fog, but all the reasons he didn’t hunt prostitutes still held. I could dump her body in the bay. She’d wash up and it would look like she just fell off the dock in the fog. Gods, what a waste of effort, though. All that work and I still wouldn’t have anything to bring back to the old man.
He could practically smell her blood, but he knew better than to dwell on it. Cazador’s proscription was clear. Thou shalt not drink the blood of intelligent beings. Astarion’s victims belonged to the master vampire alone.
He didn’t let any of that show in his voice when he drawled, “You make me sound like a dangerous man, madam. I like it, but wouldn’t that make approaching me…unwise?”
The woman cocked her head. “Three people know I’ve been looking for you. I don’t come back, they know why.”
A chill sank into Astarion’s gut. “And why, exactly, have you been looking for me? Other than my superb good looks.”
“Need your help.”
“My help?” Astarion smiled at her, letting just a little too much canine show. “My help doesn’t come cheap, my darling.”
She gestured over her shoulder with her free hand. “There’s a human named Boris who drinks at the Green Eel. He fancies himself a sailor, but he’s the son of a merchant captain. Won’t have him on the ships anymore. He’s a drunk and a bastard.”
“Sounds delightful.”
The woman’s eyes bored into his, clearly unconcerned about their red sheen. “He doesn’t pay enough to be as rough as he is, and he’s getting rougher. He broken Sheena’s arm last tenday, and the magistrates won’t even hear the case.”
“They wouldn’t,” Astarion said. He wouldn’t have, when he was a magistrate. If a rich brothel owner had brought a suit, that would be another matter entirely, but a street prostitute’s word against a merchant’s son? You’d need a signed eyewitness statement from the head of the Temple of Tyr to even get in the courtroom door. “What do you want me to do about it?”
The woman from Waterdeep smiled beatifically at him. “I want you to make him disappear too.”
