In the high fantasy medieval world of Forgotten Realms lies the continent of Faerun. Baldur's Gate is one of the biggest and most important trading towns and city-states on the continent. The young ward of mystical monk Gorion, whose name, sex, race and class are defined by the players, lives in the keep of the monk order Gorion belongs to. He or she has never been outside or known anything about his/her parents. One night, the ward has a disturbing nightmare. In the morning, Gorion sends the ward away for his/her protection. The ward is joined by her/his best friend Imoen, a skillful thief. Their adventure soon takes a dark turn when they witness Gorion's murder by a strange man in the forest. After some adventuring, the ward meets Jaheira, a half-elf fighter and druid, and her beloved husband Khalid, both of whom are old friends of Gorion. They offer help and a goal - to investigate the suspicious shortage of iron ore that has befallen the land recently and made everyone paranoid that it's actually a sabotage by the neighboring city-state that's supposedly about to invade them. The ward's party soon meets other joinable characters like the amusing heroic and not-quite-sane ranger Minsc, who has an imaginary deadly pet hamster and best friend Boo, and who's on the quest to save his beloved mage wife Dynaheir from a villain, as well as prove himself worthy of the title "heroic". There are also evil joinable characters like Edwin Odesseiron, an evil mage who wants to see Minsc's wife dead. Besides iron ore shortage, the ward must also deal with constant attacks on his/her life. Eventually, it becomes clear that these are in fact actual assassination attempts and that someone very powerful doesn't want to see the ward live much longer. All clues point to Baldur's Gate as the place to look for answers. The town has recently been plagued by mysterious disappearances, important people starting to act really strange and uncharacteristic and all around eerie atmosphere at night. There's even talk of a secret war between supernatural and hellish foes. The ward and his party must get to the bottom of things, help or hinder the people who need their help and choose their own path of heroism or villainy.