Shadowheart

Shadowheart is an origin character and a recruitable companion with the Acolyte background. She is a half-elf and a Trickery Domain Cleric first appearing during the Prologue.

As a loyal servant of the goddess Shar, Shadowheart can be cold and calculating, willing to do whatever is necessary to serve the Dark Lady with utter devotion. She can be first found on the Nautiloid during the prologue where she serves as a temporary companion, and can be properly recruited at the start of Act 1 as well as be romanced by characters of any gender.

A devout follower of Shar, Shadowheart is the sole survivor of a holy mission undertaken on the Mistress of the Night's behest. She alone must deliver a relic of immense power to her coven in Baldur's Gate, while threatened by a strange new magic that is burgeoning from within. Her faith plays an important part in her story throughout the game, and she can be steered to or away from it.

Shadowheart can be recruited as a temporary companion during the Prologue on the Nautiloid by freeing her from the Mind Flayer pod. She can then become a permanent companion during Act One.

Shadowheart is first encountered on the Nautiloid during the Prologue, trapped inside a mind flayer pod. She can be freed by interacting with the nearby console or using certain class-restricted dialogue options on the pod. If she is freed, she will join the party as a temporary companion.

Shadowheart likes finding pragmatic and efficient solutions to problems. She appreciates discretion, privacy, and open-mindedness. Shadowheart generally responds well to acts of heroism. While she is afraid of wolves, Shadowheart loves animals and will always react favourably to positive interactions with them and negatively to cruelty towards animals. As a devout Sharran, she also approves of acts against Selûne and Selûnites in general.

Shadowheart dislikes those that disapprove of her worship or people pressing her for answers or details. She does not like needless cruelty or violence and can respond unfavourably to being too open with untrustworthy or unknown individuals. Straying from Shar's mandates results in Shadowheart being punished through the wound in her right hand, a reminder to follow Shar's wishes.

Shadowheart can be romanced by characters of any gender, and is one of the few characters willing to have a casual relationship. Throughout it, she will have to deal with the topic of her identity and how the idea of love fits the Sharran concept of self-sacrifice for their goddess.

Shadowheart has straight, coal-black hair kept in a long ponytail segmented by ornate silver rings. Her fringe hair is kept short and straight, revealing her brows beneath and a scar running from her nose to her right cheek. Hair adorns her face on the sides, reaching past her chin, her pointed ears barely peeking through them, and her eyes, light-green with speckles of yellow, are contoured by dark make up. Though rarely seen, she has a black circular mark on her right hand, a wound given by Shar used to express her disapproval, causing Shadowheart pain whenever she misbehaves.

She complements her Sharran attire with a silver circlet worn above her fringe, simple, yet elegant, displaying her goddess' holy symbol, a black disc, as well as an argent hairpiece at the base of her ponytail, reminiscent of the decorations found in Sharran temples.

After the events of The Chosen of Shar, if Shadowheart turned from Shar, she will dye her hair silver and part her fringe off-center, showing more of her forehead.

Zealously devoted, independent and headstrong, she prefers pragmatic solutions to issues, decisive action and staying uninvolved in the problems of others. While she initially seems guarded and reserved – hesitant to reveal information about herself – she is in fact amnesiac, with little memory of her own past. Fiercely devoted to Shar, she won't tolerate any slights against her goddess, often reacting defensively.

Still, Shadowheart displays traits that are often at odds with her Sharran training. She has a fondness for flowers and animals, disapproves of indiscriminate violence, prefers relatively peaceful resolutions to conflicts when possible and often sympathizes with the plights of party members. She can be as sarcastic as Astarion, and doesn't shy away from dark humour. She is introspective, and often harbours doubts as can be seen by romancing her.

High half-elf.

Trickery Domain Cleric.

Early life:
Born to parents Arnell and Emmeline Hallowleaf, Jenevelle, as she was named, was raised in a Selûnite household in the forests outside Baldur's Gate. Devout followers of the Moonmaiden, they worshipped her in quiet seclusion away from the city, raising young Jenevelle in the ways of Selûne. In time, she would take part of an ancient Selûnite initiation rite: abandoned in the wilds, she would have to rely on her skills and faith to fend for herself, proving herself as a devout believer once she returned.

Yet Shar, Selûne's dark sister, had other plans for the child, and commanded Viconia DeVir and a cadre of Sharrans to kidnap the child. They kidnapped Jenevelle's parents and took young Hallowleaf to a secret cloister of the Dark Lady in Baldur's Gate.

Jenevelle would be brought to the Cloister of Sombre Embrace, a Sharran temple in Baldur's Gate set up and ran by Mother Superior Viconia DeVir after her previous endeavours in Waterdeep had failed. Viconia's mission, given to her directly by Shar, was to mould young Jenevelle into a champion of the Dark Lady, an effort that would ultimately take almost half a century. Jenevelle resisted the indoctrination at first, but the brutal training she would be put through, being lied to that her parents perished defending her from wolves, as well as repeated forced use of the temple's Mirror of Loss, would slowly erase her past and in time forge a new identity: Shadowheart.

Though the Mother Superior was especially cruel with Shadowheart, forcing her to use the Mirror of Loss more than with any other acolyte, Shadowheart was able to retain a few memories from her past thanks to Rennald, a young tiefling acolyte undergoing similar training. Any time she would be subjected to mirror training, Rennald would do his best to remind Shadowheart who she was afterwards. Thanks to him, and whatever scattered notes she was able to jot down between mirror trainings, Shadowheart was able to retain some parts of her identity, such as her fondness for flowers and animals. The two became good friends, and one of the few blessings during her time in the cloister.

At some point during Shadowheart's last stages of training, whispers of the rise of a mysterious cult would reach the Mother Superior's ears. This Cult of the Absolute as it was being called, was quickly gaining traction among the populace and threatened the Sharran influence over the city. As luck would have it, the Sharrans would capture a Githyanki scout who, after being subjected to merciless torture, revealed the existence of a githyanki artefact of immense power that the cult were desperate to find. Such an artefact could prove an asset for the Sharrans in thwarting the absolutist presence in the city, and so the Mother Superior quickly formed a party of elite devouts, tasking them with its retrieval. Though deemed a suicide mission, Shadowheart and four other companions set out to fulfil what they believed were Shar's commands.

The group was able to locate the Mysterious Artefact though at great cost: Shadowheart was the only survivor. Disaster wouldn't stop there, however, as she soon found herself captive at the hands of mind flayers. How and where she was captured is never explored, however, at some point during her capture she became tadpoled and kept imprisoned in a pod awaiting ceremorphosis.

75kg (150lb)