Imoen

"Yer all buffle-headed!"

Imoen is a prominent character in the Baldur's Gate series of role-playing games for the PC. A human with an alignment of Neutral Good, the game's back story states that she grew up alongside the main protagonist in the quiet hamlet of Candlekeep under the tutelage of a wizened mage named Gorion. She is voiced in both games by Melissa Disney.

Baldur's Gate

Imoen is the first recruitable character the player encounters in Baldur's Gate; she speaks to you before your departure from Candlekeep, and shows up outside the citadel to accompany you on the road immediately after Gorion's fall. She begins the game as a highly dexterous thief, which makes her useful for opening locks and disarming traps, but her high intelligence score made her a popular choice for dual-classing into a mage partway through the game. Even though she is the first character to join the party, she has the least to say: out of all the potential party members, Imoen is the only one who never engages in any spontaneous dialogue with the others. She is exhaustively loyal, though, and will not abandon the group no matter how evil the player's in-game choices are - but she will complain about mutton-mongering riffraff if the party's reputation drops too low.

Baldur's Gate II

For storyline purposes, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn not only assumes that Imoen remained with you throughout the first adventure, but also that she was dual-classed into a mage at level 7. She is the one who frees you from your cell in the starting dungeon, and if you choose to leave with her, she will make several mentions of a severe pain in her head as well as talk about the horrible things you find as you traverse the dungeon. From the start, she is equipped with an unremovable belt, which serves the purpose of keeping her from accidental death too early on - this belt will be gone later on. Whether or not she leaves the dungeon with you, she will be at the exit with you, where she and your captor, Irenicus, both are taken away to the mage prison of Spellhold by the Cowled Wizards of Amn.

The next stages of the game involve slowly gaining the means to retrieve Imoen from Spellhold, and in the process, much is learned about Athkatla, the protagonist, and Imoen herself. When she is eventually found, she may rejoin the party, and just like in the first game, Imoen will never want to leave your group, no matter what you do. She continues to play a pivotal part in both the rest of the game and in the Throne of Bhaal expansion, even though the expansion doesn't make the most out of the potential her character has. Despite her suffering and the changes that are more or less forced upon her, Imoen does regain a semblance of her old self, and will, especially in the expansion, joke around with almost every party member available.

Due to a last minute change, Imoen was accidentally shortcharged 25 points from her thieving skills at the start of Baldur's Gate II. An unofficial patch released through the fansite Baldurdash.org corrected this oversight along with a minor miscalculation in her THAC0. She also lacks at least one proficiency point, and some of her dialogues in don't trigger due to code misspellings; later mods correct these issues.