hi! so I saw a reddit post a few days ago about a dead aasimar (Omar) who can be found in the House of Healing - but what was interesting is that they said it was *his* wings Balthazar took for Marcus. I always thought they were Aylin's wings; isn't there a line about how Balthazar experimented on her early on, or Isobel reacting to the wings/realizing what Balthazar did, something like that? or did I imagine that? I would love to hear your take on this! (I don't know if I can send links in asks, but it's r BaldursGate3/comments/1gxo0tm/)
Oh, hey! It's Olam the Dead Aasimar Harper, my own personal favourite basically nonexistent NPC to shower with utterly disproportionate levels of attention! He's the guy I brought up in the final part of Moon-chosen, Moon-guided, who Aylin hears about and then really wants to retrieve and give a proper burial to. Entirely because of my aasimar fixation and because I love playing around with Aylin being an aasimar but also absolutely not being a regular aasimar, and how she'd feel about others both like and unlike her.
Olam is indeed the only other aasimar in the game. I love the little story we get told there, via one journal and one note, and one fight against a special animated armour.
The full text of his journal aka "a chilling account of an aasimar Harper's final tendays in the cursed lands" is here, and I find it a really nice bit of writing and an insight into that period - piecing together all these little bits and pieces about what happened to the Thorms and Reithwin and the armies on both sides is my favourite part of the game. Act 2 my beloved.
'All beings should walk free of fear', I was taught. Oh, if only were I granted such a fine fate.
So, Olam is a Harper who fought against Ketheric a century ago, and was there when the curse first happened. He was some kind of spellcaster (his insistence on research and experimentation screams wizard, to me) and he had an affectionate bird familiar called Corvin, presumably a raven. In his experimentation and efforts to lift the shadow curse, he accidentally animated his own armour, which you can fight in that acid pit area. But he ultimately failed, and then he succumbed to the shadows, alone. Tragic stuff, right?
You've activated my trap card! By which I mean I saw that post, saw videos of "you won't believe this NPC you missed!!!" go viral, saw people take it as gospel and start parroting misinformation about a very specific fandom interest of mine again, and got so frustrated I almost started posting WELL ACTUALLY Reddit comments. Horrifying.
Instead I get to ramble here! Thank you so much for providing an excuse (genuinely). It's kind of like the oathbreaker/disowned by her mother nonsense, people just can't seem to leave Aylin alone and let her have any of her actual damn story beats and themes and it grinds my gears. And just like the Child of the Moonmaiden stuff, someone has already added it to the BG3 wiki with zero sources, and now it's spreading like wildfire based on absolutely nothing. What a glorious microcosm of our reality.
Salt aside, thank you for the question! Let me actually answer it, and dig out exactly what is in the game itself.
TL;DR: While nobody looks at the camera and says as much, I'm convinced the wings are Aylin's, and that Balthazar had nothing to do with this guy.
First of all, and my simplest point: regular 5e aasimar don't actually have physical wings. One subtype of them (or, more recently, one of their three once-per-day "transformation" options) gives you this:
You can use your action to unleash the divine energy within yourself, causing your eyes to glimmer and two luminous, incorporeal wings to sprout from your back.
Two luminous, spectral wings sprout from your back temporarily.
This lasts for a whole minute, and then you have to long rest to do it again. Of course, BG3 plays around with 5e rules and adapts them as needed, and there's no actual BG3 aasimar set of racial abilities implemented in the game. There's only Aylin who has the wings on by default, and there's our wingless boy of the hour, Olam - who is a corpse statted as "Human" if you right-click inspect him, so no help there. The only actual mention that he is supposed to be an aasimar comes from the description of his journal I quoted up there, and from the inspiration popup that some character backgrounds get when you find him (Sage and Acolyte, to be specific).
On a personal note, as a player of aasimar characters who've died by being thrown from great heights after having used up their wings for the day, believe me when I say I am deeply envious of whatever Aylin has going on in the wings department. She makes them appear and disappear in a flash at will and it's very cool. I love it. There's a special graphical overlay of feathers fluttering down all over your screen sometimes when she's around. I am enamoured.
Next, in the Marcus confrontation, Isobel doesn't give any signs of recognising the wings, nor does she comment on them specifically - she's shocked by Marcus' betrayal as he's been with them for a long time and nobody ever suspected a thing. I checked the dialogues/devnotes to see if there's anything else there, and there isn't. It's delicious angst material, certainly, the implications are deeply horrifying, and several people have written about it, me included, in tumblr posts and in fics, so you've probably seen the idea around a bunch. Not in the game itself, though.
Moving on, here's the full text of Balthazar's note you can find in Moonrise, titled "A Little Gift":
Marcus - I assume no explanation is needed for just how rare these appendages are, and I trust you shall make good use of them. You have a golden opportunity to please the General. Do not squander it. Access to the unwilling donor has proven difficult since the harvesting, but if I am afforded the opportunity, I shall pass along your gratitude. B.
This is pretty much it with regards to the wings explicitly. Speak With Dead on Marcus doesn't give anything related to the wings either. The only other thing is a little exchange between Z'rell and Marcus at Moonrise if his mission was a success, part of a series of little dialogues where she keeps rebuffing him and his efforts to get his hard-earned "audience with the General":
Marcus: I am free to do more for the Absolute, Disciple. Anything. Z'rell: Would you cast yourself from the tower-top? Marcus: Of course. I have the Absolute's wings to catch me. Z'rell: Off you go, then. I've always wanted to try those ballistas.
Ah, Z'rell, always a delight.
Now, let's look at the relevant final line in Balthazar's note.
Access to the unwilling donor has proven difficult since the harvesting - Balthazar, the necromancer who makes dead pixie moonlanterns, does not have big problems navigating the shadow curse like the Harpers do. Thus, getting to a corpse in the House of Healing morgue a little ways away from Moonrise is not the access problem he's having, nor is it the bunch of zombies that stalk the place. Rather, it is that Shar is angry at Ketheric who betrayed her for Myrkul and is keeping him and his out of the Shadowfell. I've so often seen people rather bafflingly confused by why Balthazar needs the player's help getting to the Nightsong prison when he's the one who imprisoned Aylin there in the first place, and this is why. He tells you as much himself - for instance when you actually enter the Shadowfell:
Balthazar: It seems Shar bears a grudge against my master, General Thorm, and so sought to prevent me from entering in his name. Luckily, you were the perfect agent in helping me slip past her defences. Now the Nightsong is within reach.
As for the unwilling donor bit, and your question of whether there is a line about how Balthazar experimented on Aylin early on - not really? He calls her "his masterpiece" a bunch and loves objectifying her in very specific and gross ways. There's again no mention of wings specifically, but what they do say is he cut out her tongue at least once before:
Nightsong: Ramblings most unsane. Poor Balthazar, for maggots ate his brain long ago. Balthazar: Hold your tongue, Aylin. Or I'll take it away from you again.
They make it so very easy to hate the guy - and agree with Aylin when she says her "heart lit like a full moon when you struck down that cadaver". Here is all the overworld banter you can hear from them, which fleshes out their relationship a bit more. Shocking spoiler: Balthazar is revolting.
Balthazar: As much as I savour our conversations, it's high time we got started. Nightsong: Do what you will. I cannot prevent you. But you know as well as I, I will come for you. One day. Balthazar: Poor child, so enthralled by gory revenge fantasies. You may find yourself disappointed by reality. Nightsong: Let us find out.
Nightsong: Someone's coming. Another Justiciar, I presume. Balthazar: Do you hunger for more company? Am I not enough to keep you sated? Nightsong: I'd [rather] live a thousand years in solitude than lay my eyes [upon] thy putrid visage again. Balthazar: Only a thousand?
Nightsong: Hatred makes you so hideous, Balthazar. Balthazar: Unkind, Aylin. Unkind and incorrect - I could never hate my masterwork. Nightsong: Perhaps you're right - perhaps you're incapable of feeling at all. Balthazar: Please, Aylin - spare me. Your insults grew tired and shopworn years ago.
Balthazar: How long has it been so far? With my work, time just slips away from me. Nightsong: A hundred years. Balthazar: A mere interlude for the likes of you and I. But nevertheless, perhaps it is time for a new chapter. Nightsong: Do as you will. You can pierce my flesh, but my heart beats on, forever.
There's also a tidbit if you ask Aylin how come all it took to release her from the prison was a friendly hand on her shoulder, and she'll tell you Balthazar "taunted and cajoled" her about how easy it would be to break the spell, if anyone just thought to try. So considering all of this, you bet he'd just love to "pass along gratitude" to Aylin and tell her alllll about how they used her own stolen wings to kidnap Isobel, of all people.
So basically, yeah, Balthazar is the one who's been in the Shadowfell prison most often, before Ketheric's relatively recent turn to Myrkul and Shar barring the way in response. We're given the above general vibes and implications of what he was doing there, and the rest is left up to our own gory imaginations. As Gale put it:
A dismal place for an aasimar to spend her existence. Especially with that necrotic toad for company.
There is no connection between Olam and Balthazar at all in the game, but there is one connection between Balthazar and the House of Healing - a negative one, notably.
You find Olam in the morgue of the House of Healing, which is Malus Thorm's stomping ground. It is his laboratory and research notes you find there, not Balthazar's. Malus complains in those very same notes found there that he gets the dregs of cadavers to experiment and mess around with because his nephew Ketheric is letting his Evil Chancellor Traytor Balthazar get first pick and keep the best for himself.
So no, Balthazar did not experiment on this guy or "harvest" anything. Olam is a fairly regular Harper who we can imagine may have lasted a bit longer in the necrotic curse because as an aasimar he'd presumably have necrotic damage resistance and the ability to cast light. He's been dead for about a century, and that's about it.
Aylin is the one the note clearly points to, and, setting aside all the crunchy mechanical and nitpicky details about who does or doesn't have wings and for how long, on every meta and storytelling and textual and subtextual and thematic and classically tropey level, Aylin is the only relevant person those wings could (and should) have come from. It is evocative, it is part of the chilling tale of her betrayal and captivity and serves to paint a vivid picture of the depths Ketheric and Balthazar have sunk to, as well as make Aylin's immense rage and desire for vengeance all the more visceral - and ultimately satisfying.
