Astarion, the sharp-tongued vampire spawn who joins your party in the first hours of Baldur’s Gate 3, spends the game clawing his way out from 200 years of ownership by Cazador, his master and tormentor. Players can choose to help him (or not) in many ways — supporting his ascension to true vampire ascendant or talking him out of it; freeing other spawn trapped in Cazador’s dungeon or letting him have his revenge instead; building up enough trust that he tells you the truth about himself before you find out some other way, or…not. Saving or condemning Astarion, whether you love him or can’t stand him, is baked into the character and the game. A new modded Baldur’s Gate 3 campaign takes that same tension and strips away everything else, leaving just you, Astarion, and your decision to betray him (or not).
“A Dream of Silence: ReVamped,” by modder lizardphunk, is a full three-act campaign that adapts an existing piece of interactive fiction into something you can play directly within Baldur’s Gate 3. “A Dream of Silence,” a Twine game by Abigail Corfman, tells the story of a monster called a Bastellus, which builds nightmares out of a character’s worst memories. When dropped into Baldur’s Gate 3, that story now stars you and Astarion, trapping you both in a shifting nightmare-maze version of Cazador’s mansion. The mod gives you four different outcomes to track for Astarion — devastation or redemption, both are on the table — and six new characters, including a handful of vampire spawn. Perhaps you and Astarion come out the other side of this nightmare closer than ever. Perhaps things go terribly, and there’s no way to take everything back. Only one way to find out.
The original “A Dream of Silence” puts you in Astarion’s mind as an incorporeal presence, rationing a small pool of energy between three abilities — Speech, Touch, and Sight — just to keep him tethered to reality. One IFDB reviewer described Astarion in that game as “starving and dying of loneliness,” losing a little more of himself with every day you fail to reach him. If you’re romancing Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3, this original text game and the mod are both excellent ways to potentially doom your relationship or make a happy ending feel all the more earned. If you’re doing an evil run…just be prepared to live with the consequence of your actions. lizardphunk’s interpretation of Corfman’s story carries the resource management and the heartbreak into the full Baldur’s Gate 3 experience. There are hidden interactions scattered across specific in-game days, previously inaccessible weapons to track down, and, if you explore thoroughly enough, a new feline NPC to pet.
Running “A Dream of Silence: ReVamped” only requires the ability to navigate Nexus mods (instead of Larian’s in-game mod menu) and about 1.3GB of space — and, unfortunately, this mod only works for Windows PC at this time. Note that you can’t play this mod as origin Astarion. You’ll need to play as another character in order to betray him. There’s also no voice acting anywhere in this mod. This was a very deliberate choice on the part of the modder, who’s made it clear that reusing an actor’s lines for dialogue they never recorded, with AI or not, is something they’re not willing to do.
Once you’ve waded through the six hours of custom content — and, if the dice treat you well, fought your way out of the Szarr Mansion — you’ll have made scarring choices that Baldur’s Gate 3 itself never gave you the option to make. Whether you save Astarion or not is up to you. Whether you regret it afterward is a different question entirely.