Two hundred years of service to a vampire lord who treated him like furniture came before Astarion ever clawed his way out of that grave with a knife and a grudge. That stretch is finally getting written down.
Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion lands Sept. 29, penned by T. Kingfisher, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling fantasy author. It’s a prequel, set ahead of the 2023 game’s events, and it tracks the High Elf through his years of servitude under Cazador Szarr.
Which is a daring subject to pick. Astarion’s backstory is the piece of him the game parcels out in fragments, mostly filtered through his own unreliable deflection. A novel doesn’t get to look away from it.
Larian’s own writers had a hand in it
Stephen Rooney, senior writer on Baldur’s Gate 3, consulted on the project so it would stay consistent with the game’s lore and world-building. That counts for more than it might sound like. Tie-in fiction lives or dies on whether the people who built the world put their stamp on what you’re reading.
And for anyone who’d sooner listen than read, Penguin Random House Audio is releasing an audiobook narrated by Neil Newbon, who took Best Performance at The Game Awards in 2023 for his work as Astarion.
Newbon reading out Astarion’s worst years in Astarion’s voice is the sort of casting that writes its own press release.
Four books in 2026, and that’s only the opening
The novel sits inside a new collaboration between Wizards of the Coast and Random House Worlds, built around the game’s lore and characters. Random House Worlds intends to release four titles under the initiative in 2026, and plans for 2027 and beyond will be revealed later.
That publishing push is already underway. Clarkson Potter put out Baldur’s Gate 3: The Necromancy of Thay in July, a blank grid-paper notebook that recreates the in-game item. It comes with foil stamping, an embossed skull on the cover and illustrated “clasps” meant to keep its unholy contents away from the wrong hands.
August brought The Official Baldur’s Gate 3 Coloring Book from Ten Speed Press, gathering 40 black-and-white line drawings of characters, settings and creatures out of the game, illustrated by Jaki King.
Yes, a cookbook exists, and yes, certain dishes are romanceable
Ten Speed Press follows on Nov. 3 with A Feast for a Tenday: The Official Baldur’s Gate Cookbook by Andrew Wheeler. Inside are 65 recipes, sorted by course and by camp location.
Anything intended for sharing gets stamped “Romanceable.” Someone at that publishing house knows precisely who the buyer is.
The game that swept everything keeps growing
None of it is happening in isolation. Larian Studios’ 2023 RPG, set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, was the first game ever to win Game of the Year at all five major award ceremonies.
Back in February, HBO said it was developing a series that picks up after the game’s events. The title is simply Baldur’s Gate, and Craig Mazin, whose credits include Chernobyl and The Last of Us, is running it.
Read it, watch it, play it. Still, the Sept. 29 book is the one that unsettles me a little, because Cazador’s house was never somewhere the game let you linger. Kingfisher has to.