Amelyssan

"Remain dust, my foolish god."

Amelyssan the Blackhearted was a priestess and Deathstalker of Bhaal whom that deity entrusted with the task of resurrecting him. Having foreseen his death during the Time of Troubles, Bhaal came to Toril years before the event and mated with mortal females of different races, producing offspring called Bhaalspawn, who were to slaughter each other and fuel his rebirth. Amelyssan's task was to perform rituals that would complete Bhaal's return. However, her own goal, at least towards the end, was to gather all the power of Bhaal's essence released from his children into herself and become a goddess. Posing as a benefactor of the Bhaalspawn under the name Melissan for most people, and gathering together The Five with promises of great power once Bhaal would be resurrected, she manipulated events to the point where nearly all Bhaalspawn were killed, and came close to achieving her goal. However, one Bhaalspawn defeated not only The Five - which suited Amelyssan's plans - but also the prospective goddess herself, beating her in an epic battle in the Mana Forge and gaining control of all of Bhaal's essence for themselves. Having been welded to the essence, her soul was annihilated permanently when it was removed.

Role in the game
Amelyssan is the final adversary in the Baldur's Gate II game expansion Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, and thus in the whole Baldur's Gate series. She first appears when the player character teleports from the Pocket Plane into Saradush, posing as a benevolent woman called Melissan. She has been trying to lead some of the citizens to gain audience with Gromnir Il-Khan, a Bhaalspawn who currently controls the city. The guards at the gate refuse to allow entry, and are about to attack the townspeople when the player character's party appears and has to fight the guards. "Melissan" guesses their identity and talks to them after the fight, telling that the city is under siege by the forces of Yaga-Shura, another Bhaalspawn and one of The Five, who wants to destroy all the Bhaalspawn she has gathered there supposedly to keep them safe. Melissan tells the player character that to end the siege, they must first deal with Gromnir, who is only making its problems worse, and then find a way to kill Yaga-Shura, who is a seemingly invulnerable fire giant. When the player character finds a way to the palace, they will see an apparently paranoid Gromnir accusing Melissan of wanting to destroy all the Bhaalspawn, which despite his paranoia will later turn out to be true; other people in the city generally regard Melissan as a well-intentioned meddler. After having killed both Gromnir and Yaga-Shura, the player character will find the city in ruins and all the Bhaalspawn within killed, apparently in spite of the best efforts of Melissan, who has remained unscathed. She tells them that they will next need to kill Sendai and Abazigal, two of The Five and among the most powerful Bhaalspawn, and that she will meet the party in Amkethran.

Once the player character makes it to Amkethran, they will not find Melissan there, but the monk Balthazar will welcome them coolly, saying that she passed by and left. After the player character has gone on to destroy Sendai and Abazigal as well, they will find out that Melissan had a hostile confrontation with Balthazar. When they confront him, he will reveal that he is another Bhaalspawn and member of The Five, though drawn into the group not by Melissan's promises of power but the desire to destroy all of his kind. After he attacks and is killed, all of The Five will be destroyed, and the player character will see a final revelation in the Pocket Plane, which includes the Solar summoning the shades of both Melissan and Bhaal, and revealing that she is really Amelyssan, the most trusted Deathstalker of Bhaal, who was to resurrect him but now only wants the power for herself. After this revelation and a final test, the player character is ready to dissolve the Pocket Plane and move onto the Mana Forge, where Amelyssan waits, in a previously unseen form with a body the size of a small giant's.

The final battle against Amelyssan consists of several fights with no possibility of rest in between. First, Amelyssan will fight and be forced to retreat into the column of energy in the middle of the Forge; then, the player character will need to fight powerful guardians protecting each of the lesser energy sources on the plane, each time cutting one off that one and forcing Amelyssan to fight again. During the different battles she will use different tactics such as summoning Slayer Shadows (resembling the monstrous version of that avatar of Bhaal) and abyssal creatures. When she is finally defeated, she will remain alive but unable to fight, and the Solar will appear, declaring the battle over by divine decree. The player character will now have all the essence of Bhaal, and once they decide what to do with it, they will leave the Mana Forge, leaving it to explode, taking Amelyssan with it.

Traits and powers
Amelyssan was capable of convincingly pretending that her greatest desire was to help other people (besides of masking her alignment as lawful good), but her true personality as seen in the game was irredeemably evil. She was megalomaniac and completely remorseless, regarding others as nothing but tools. She is not shown as having any redeeming qualities, nor is she given any background beyond the time she was already a chief priestess of the Lord of Murder. She had little tolerance for others trying to limit her in any way against her will; she believed she was a goddess already, and wanted to be treated accordingly.

The assertion that Amelyssan was a god was nothing but wishful thinking on her part, but it was true that she was immensely powerful. She had apparently been a Deathstalker, which means a member of a special order of assassins in Bhaal's church, but in the game she shows no such abilities. Instead, she has cleric and mage levels, the great number of each probably granted to her by the Bhaalspawn essences she has consumed. Nearly equivalent to a demigod, she casts a relatively small number of spells in the final battle compared to most powerful mages, complementing them with close combat and other special abilities such as summoning. She is arguably the most powerful creature in the game (certainly in terms of levels and experience given), and forces a long, prolonged and varied battle, although other creatures with instantly deadly attacks and the like (such as demiliches) may be more difficult in the sense that they don't give the chance for a long battle. She is also immune to most types of energy, as well as to the Time Stop spell, which means that casting it is likely to give her an advantage more than to the player. One weakness she has is that, like Demogorgon, she appears on a given spot out of nowhere, giving the player a chance to lay traps (especially Spike Traps) that are guaranteed to hit her immediately.

Games

 * Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

Novels

 * Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal