10 Hauntingly Dark Secrets In RPGs

7. A Baby For A Summon - Neverwinter Nights: Shadow Of Undrentide

Neverwinter Nights is an excellent classic CRPG and, don’t worry, even twenty years ago this genre was still capable of being incredibly grim.

Shadow of Undrentide is the first expansion pack for the game, released in 2003. It contains a side quest where a woman named Nora Blake tells you her house was attacked and her husband and baby, Tynan, are still inside. Once inside, you find the husband dead and the baby held hostage. Using persuasion or dexterity you can successfully get the baby back and then if you’re a normal person, hand it back to its mother. If you don’t do that or you just want to be evil you can keep the baby which, look, is already pretty bad but we’re only just getting started.

Allegedly the game originally let you sell the baby to an evil Wizard but they took that option out. No matter because things still get horrifying from there.

In the game’s second expansion, Hordes of the Underdark, if you port in your character you’ll still have the baby in your inventory. You’ll happen upon a beholder bridge control panel into which you can deposit the baby and out pops a permanently summoned monster bearing the same name as the infant once a day. This will take the form of either a drider or a goblin.

That’s a pretty gentle way of saying you just sacrificed a kidnapped baby in order to turn it into a monster. Congratulations.