Let’s add a friendly image so that people don’t see any spoilers by accident.
So, the way I see it the Emperor probably tailed Shadowheart’s team who liberated the Astral Prism. Maybe he even got the Nautiloid and some cultists and Mindflayers from the Elder Brain so that he could extract Shadowheart’s team. Orin left her sibling on there for good measure. Mindflayers doing Mindflayer things they abducted Shadowheart.
But as soon as the Prism was close enough the Elder Brain lost its grip on the Emperor. Probably just him because he already was able to leave an Elder Brain once. Seeing the opportunity he killed the Mindflayers near him and took control of the Nautiloid.
Being the practical Mindflayer he probably sought to build an army of tadpoled people with super duper Illithid powers to fight the Absolute. He went to Baldur’s Gate to find more people and thus snatched up Tav and the others.
The Githyanki were in close pursuit and disrupted him so he had to flee. When the Nautiloid arrived on Avernus he hid inside the prism.
I’m not quite sure where Lae’zel fits into all this. She probably went aboard the Nautiloid to get her Mindflayer head but was captured instead. She didn’t know anything about the Prism because it was way above her paygrade.
What do you think happened? Or is there an official version of the events that lead up to the game?
The Emperor said that he found the artifact first and that it (Orpheus) freed him from the brain’s influence while he was within it. Then he looked to make allies on the outside, which meant using the power to free the people who were conveniently nearby
I’m sure he tried to pick out the strongest ones that were available, but it’s all presented like he had to be inside in order to wield its power and be free of the brain, and we were allies of convenience.
Not to say you’re wrong, because we don’t even necessarily have to trust his version of events. He was, after all, trying to make sure we would accept him when we discovered he was a mind flayer
It’s explicitly stated by the Netherbrain in act 3 that they allowed the Emperor to escape their thrall, anticipating all of the events leading to him discovering Orpheus and your adventuring party - as well as the the chosen of the Dead 3 discovering the Crown of Karsus and the Ilithid oubliette under Moonrise Towers. It is implied that the whole idea for the creation of the Cult of the Absolute and planned power grab by the Dead 3 was also anticipated/orchestrated by the brain from the beginning.
That is stated, but I’m not sure I’d consider the Netherbrain a reliable narrator. I feel like it was an attempt to intimidate the party. The sheer amount of secret knowledge and unlikely events that come together to begin freeing the brain at the end of A1 seems beyond the ability of an elder brain, which is all it would’ve been when it formed the plan.
The whole idea that it would use use an artifact that had only been seen once, very briefly, with no measurement or understanding of its true capabilities, to evolve itself into a being powerful enough to overcome the control it was submitting to as part of its plan… I know elder brains are scary smart, but this seems a ludicrous proposition.
Consider: what part of its plan could it not have achieved simply by tadpoling Gortash and anyone else to begin with?
Now it could be that what the brain says is canonically true and this is just weaker writing, but until I see confirmation I think the brain was trying to demoralize the party into thinking they’d always been dancing to the brain’s tune the whole time and everything they had done had been in service to its plot the whole time, when the truth is it has been (very capably) trying to regain the upper hand since Ketheric’s death.
Orin’s sibling was the first of the Absolute’s tadpole victims, weren’t they? Haven’t played in a couple months but that’s what I remember from the dark urge storyline.
I was also under the impression that the emperor was in the astral prism since before the story started. I’m not sure if the mindflayers knew about the emperor either since they just left the artifact in a bag on the ground - their mission seemed to be all about tadpoling people
The story was left open to interpretation but I’m inclined to think the emperor was not involved in any kidnapping or tadpoling.
And Lae’zel was definirely part of a mission to recover the artifact (for Orpheus - they definitely don’t know about the emperor) and got captured, she wasn’t just hunting mindflayers
Fuck I’ve got to finish this game before I read this post… I am 10 hours in and it feels like I’ve hardly started.
And Lae’zel was definirely part of a mission to recover the artifact (for Orpheus - they definitely don’t know about the emperor) and got captured, she wasn’t just hunting mindflayers
But when you ask her either about the Prism or the dragon riders she has no idea what they are about. She thinks they are just hunting the Nautiloid. She knows that there are Githyanki symbols on the Prism but that’s it.
Are you implying the mindflayer who abducted us was the emperor, not some rando? I missed that if so. I thought our abductor was dead on the ground in early act 1, the one who tried to make us feel compassion towards it or whatever. I just presumed an absolute lackey
Our abductor isn’t the near dead illithid near Astarion. None of the illithid that you can interact with in act 1 are our captors as far as i can tell. I think this because i once picked up all the illithid bodies and sent them to camp to see if the Dror Ragzlin illithid still accuses you. It does.
I thought that the one with Dror was our captor, but maybe it’s the one we fought the cambions with. The narrator tells you it’s the mind flayer that was on the ship, I guess it’s a little vague
The Narrator says that mind flayer near Ragzlin isn’t your captor.
This mind flayer’s build is smaller, its garb plainer - a fearsome creature even in death, but not the one that tormented you.
Then the first time Ragzlin asks who killed it it shows you this memory:
You see a clawed hand open a holding pod - devoid of flesh, only darkness.
Then Dror asks a second time and the mind flayer responds with this memory:
You see a clawed hand open the holding pod. The murk clears to reveal a face. Yours.
So we don’t have clawed hands first off. And we never opened a holding pod except Shadowheart’s. So is the illithid making it up? Did Orin (or another doppleganger) pretend to be us? Those are my two guesses at what’s happening.
