Turns out your abyssal tattoos in Baldur's Gate 3 are the D&D equivalent of accidentally getting 'egg drop soup' inscribed in Chinese characters
Baldur's Gate 3 is the gift that keeps on giving. Even aside from already-released and upcoming patches that are doing things like giving Karlach a new epilogue and restoring 1,500 lines of missing Minthara dialogue, there are still plenty of little secrets, references and easter eggs tucked away that people are still uncovering. The latest? The tattoos you can select as body art during character creation.
One set of tattoos that you can slap on your BG3 character is actually in a script called Barazhad, which is used by D&D's primordial and abyssal creatures. But, as spotted by TikToker thewingedbaron, Larian didn't just whack a bunch of cool-looking sigils in and call it a day: Barazhad characters all have English equivalents, so the studio took the opportunity to weave in a few hidden messages in there.
What do they say? Well, it's almost like poor Tav has been stencilling the names of body parts onto themselves in case they forget which one's which, Nameless One-style. The row of Barazhad characters across their head reads, uh, “FOREHEAD,” the ones on their chin? “CHIN”. Their cheeks? “LEFT CHEEK” and “RIGHT CHEEK”. You get the idea, but there is one unintuitive addition. The string of characters that decorate your character's collar don't say throat, or neck, or oesophagus, or anything like it. They read “LARIAN STUDIOS”. Gotta rep the brand.
I've attached some clean screenshots of the tattoos below, and you can find a Barazhad translation guide here. You can confirm for yourself that, yep, Tav sure does seem to have experienced the Faerûn equivalent of getting “Spicy beef noodles” tattooed across yourself in Chinese characters because someone totally promised it meant “strength”.
(Image credit: Larian)
(Image credit: Larian)
(Image credit: Larian)
That's my headcanon, anyway. To be honest, I'm almost surprised there's not an encounter with a tiefling where you learn that your totally rad infernal tattoos are actually completely ridiculous (and where someone asks what on earth a “Larian Studios” is), but there's always time for that later. With the second patch put to bed, I imagine the third is only a matter of time. There's still time to put in an awkward conversation with Karlach, Larian.
