filthy hierophant

if the old letters hadn't included the queer implications in the first place, the new letters would have been fine and tonally fit the writing in a different direction than the original ones. but they were queer, and it's somewhat cruel to give players a piece of an ability to see themselves reflected in the world and then take it away. i'm not calling the devs homophobic and i really doubt the intentions behind the change were centered around the queerness, but i think the oversight on how it would come off to remove queer content is a mistake. i would feel the same way if the changed content centered a character i didn't care about or didn't like-- i think you have to stand by your original commitment to queer players.

in my head, he worships bane both because it's a practical way to attain power-- align himself with an existing cause with goals that bolster his own-- and because bane is a figure who represents achievement of gortash's own desires. he genuinely admires bane, but also knows the value of paying tribute to his superiors, whom the power trickles down from.

there's also the potential that, by aligning himself with bane, he could be certain of who his soul belonged to, which is a form of control over his own destiny. and gortash loves control.

i personally can't see a potential split from bane, were it to happen, being fear-motivated so much as a practical acknowledgment of the worldview that gortash himself is a pawn of bane just as gortash's own subordinates are pawns to him, and gortash can be discarded for failure. gortash's delusional self-importance seems to make him genuinely see himself as bane's asset, but as things go to shit towards the end of act 3, the stance of the dead 3 becomes closer to razing it all as a cosmic chess move than preserving the plan, and that includes everything gortash wanted. in the end, gortash is another replaceable mortal whose fate would have hinged on his performance in manipulating the board away from certain disaster in his god's eyes (practically unachievable per the game's themes, but that's a different post) and the ultimate will of his god when that doesn't happen. i would even go so far as to say that gortash is more conscious of and comfortable with this arrangement than most, from the way he responds positively to the dark urge splitting from bhaal when bhaal no longer serves a purpose to them, and potentially because of his house of hope upbringing wherein he was exposed to the idea of souls as bargaining chips to align with a cause or to lose. so, i think a gortash split from bane would be almost amicable in the sense that he is aware that bane is part of the ecosystem of power and makes choices about his subordinates that gortash himself would make, even if it became impossible for gortash to deny that he has no upwards ground with bane after failing him.

maybe, before the events of the game, durge was held back by their father's ambitions, which they diligently cultivated out of a desire for acceptance, or fear, or lack of purpose outside of the cult, but never had as complete an interest in as they feigned. and gortash, as close as he was, could see that durge was pulled in directions that ran counter to their true desires, and their true strengths-- bhaal wants a brutish killer, but gortash respects a brilliant schemer.

maybe the dark urge who returns to baldur's gate with a tadpole in their head is more in touch with their own power than they have ever been, since they've been given the space to build an identity outside of bhaal. gortash can respect this unfiltered dark urge for the real brilliance that he always saw in them, now on full display instead of languishing under the rigidity of bhaal's teachings.