|
|
|
old hand
|
OP
old hand
Joined: Jul 2009
|
Larians Mind Flayer lore makes no sense. Lets start with Larians revelation that they have no soul.
Why? All living things have a soul. Thats the definition of living. If you do not have a soul but still move you are either a construct or undead. The entire process of becoming a lich revolves around removing your soul and storing it in an object.
But mind flayer are obviously neither of those as no anti-undead ability works on them.
It gets even stranger when you consider that even mind flayers have deities, which follow the normal rules for them including providing an afterlive for the souls of the deceased. Except apparently not? They must have a lot of free time.
But ok, lets roll with it. What are the effects of having no soul? Mainly that you cant be raised from the dead. Can't return a soul when there is none in the first place.
Which also means that the soul of the host is free to return.
Which brings us to the embodiment of Larians failure, the Emperor.
When the soul is gone it means that the host is dead. Which matches D&D lore. The tadpole doesn't transform you, it eats and bursts out of you xenomorph style. And that is no well guarded secret, people with knowledge about mind flayer ecology would know that.
And that makes the story of the Emperor very unbelievable. Starting with Ansur. Why would he even try to "heal" the Emperor when its a completely different being instead of ressurecting Balduran? Why even put up with a mind flayer in the first place? (And how a single mind flayer is supposed to solo a adult dragon remains a mystery. The Emperor certainly sucks against Orpheus Guard.)
And the big problem is that as a new being the mind flayer would have its own personality and memories. It might choose to absorb bits and pieces from its host, but it is its own person.
Yet Larians "story" depends on all of that being thrown out of the window despite even referenced in the game a few times of the tadpole eating away your brain and that instead mind flayers retain the personality and memories of their host completely. Not only in case of of the Emperor, but also in the ending choice when freeing Orpheus.
Because if mind flayers are their own person, how can you even know that the flayer created by you or Orpheus would even want to stop the brain or would be able to (ignoring for now that Orpheus can turn into a mind flayer without a tadpole as by this point Larian stopped to even try to present a coherent story).
This goes even so far that the mind flayer/former tadpole could commit suicide because its a mind flayer. Why? How?
Tl;dr
Larians mind flayer lore makes no sense and heavily clashes with D&D lore imo just because they wanted to shoehorn the Emperor in.
|
|
|
|
|
|
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Mar 2020
|
I agree 55%? You're right that it is a change in the lore but I'm okay with it. Largely because mind flayers were / are one of my least favorite parts of DnD lore . . . It's a change because mind flayers have a god and an alignment and therefore have souls. But, again, no one really cared about Ilsensine and they never played an important role in any major FR event . . . If anything mind flayers make more sense without a god. On things being living without souls - Tolkein also played around with this with Orc. Borrowing from Aquinas Tolkein had a distinction between fëa and hröa - soul and body. Orcs only had hröa being able to move, eat etc but no immoral force that survives the body. The story of Ansur was one of the few bits of the Emperor's story I like - it really shows ceremorphosis for the terrible fate it is. I agree, if your soul dies when you transform than what remains is a pod person / a facsimile / a hollow husk with the memories of the previous host. Ansur was a good friend in denial - he was hoping against hope for a cure. (and a wish spell or divine intervention would have worked).
If you do transform the right thing to do is kill the brain before your mind flayer nature asserts itself and then kill yourself. But, ya know, if you do that Jergal should save the hero by ensuring that their soul makes it to the afterlife.
Last edited by KillerRabbit; 06/10/23 02:55 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
old hand
|
|
OP
old hand
Joined: Jul 2009
|
I agree 55%? You're right that it is a change in the lore but I'm okay with it. Largely because mind flayers were / are one of my least favorite parts of DnD lore . . . It's a change because mind flayers have a god and an alignment and therefore have souls. But, again, no one really cared about Ilsensine and they never played an important role in any major FR event . . . If anything mind flayers make more sense without a god. On things being living without souls - Tolkein also played around with this with Orc. Borrowing from Aquinas Tolkein had a distinction between fëa and hröa - soul and body. Orcs only had hröa being able to move, eat etc but no immoral force that survives the body. The story of Ansur was one of the few bits of the Emperor's story I like - it really shows ceremorphosis for the terrible fate it is. I agree, if your soul dies when you transform than what remains is a pod person / a facsimile / a hollow husk with the memories of the previous host. Ansur was a good friend in denial - he was hoping against hope for a cure. (and a wish spell or divine intervention would have worked).
If you do transform the right thing to do is kill the brain before your mind flayer nature asserts itself and then kill yourself. But, ya know, if you do that Jergal should save the hero by ensuring that their soul makes it to the afterlife. Tolkien has nothing to do with it, D&D is by now its own thing and within its lore mind flayer not having a soul makes no sense. And considering that getting a true ressurection for Balduran would probably be more easy than whatever cure Ansur had in mind, what is there to be in denial about? Considering Ansurs status, the wealth of Baldur's Gate and how famed Balduran is obtaining a true ressurection (or even just ressurection, depending on how you rule on the bits and pieces that fall of during transformation) would have been trivial for him. Heck we would have theoretically been able to ressurect Balduran (or Ansur) with the scroll we get.
Just one of the many problems with Ansur.
Although I have to reread the necromancers notes in act 1 to check whatever changes Larian made to ressurection. They are quick to throw D&D away to force their story in.
And there is no "before the mind flayer nature asserts itself". The mind flayer is and has always been the mind flayer (well, tadpole). There is no one else who could contemplate suicide, let alone act on it. All that is nonsense invented by Larian because they wrote themself into a corner.
Last edited by Ixal; 06/10/23 03:53 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
apprentice
|
|
apprentice
Joined: Oct 2023
|
I am no hardcore D&D rules lawyer but even the little I know about Mindflayers you are both kind of wrong.
The Illythid are not just the tadpole that burst out of the host and becomes the Mindflayer. The tadpole consumes the knowledge and all that is the host eventually gathering enough psychic energy to force the host to change to its new body form. Consuming the matter of the host to create the new host. This is partly why the Gnomes make poor hosts for Mindflayer tadpoles... because they lead to "small" mindflayers and they tend to keep their gnomish antics. So I tend to look at Mindflayers more like the "Zombie-ant fungus" that gradually eats the brain of the host ant until it controls it and then bursts out of it using the remainder of its hosts husk to act as food for its continued growth.
|
|
|
|
|
|
enthusiast
|
|
enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2020
|
I agree 55%? You're right that it is a change in the lore but I'm okay with it. Largely because mind flayers were / are one of my least favorite parts of DnD lore . . . It's a change because mind flayers have a god and an alignment and therefore have souls. But, again, no one really cared about Ilsensine and they never played an important role in any major FR event . . . If anything mind flayers make more sense without a god. On things being living without souls - Tolkein also played around with this with Orc. Borrowing from Aquinas Tolkein had a distinction between fëa and hröa - soul and body. Orcs only had hröa being able to move, eat etc but no immoral force that survives the body. The story of Ansur was one of the few bits of the Emperor's story I like - it really shows ceremorphosis for the terrible fate it is. I agree, if your soul dies when you transform than what remains is a pod person / a facsimile / a hollow husk with the memories of the previous host. Ansur was a good friend in denial - he was hoping against hope for a cure. (and a wish spell or divine intervention would have worked).
If you do transform the right thing to do is kill the brain before your mind flayer nature asserts itself and then kill yourself. But, ya know, if you do that Jergal should save the hero by ensuring that their soul makes it to the afterlife. I think the bit with Ansur when we finally see him, he should acknowledge his naivety. Because as a player, especially one that doesn't know much about the lore I kept getting conflicting information and I thought it was going to be clarified but it never was. Ansur should have said a shade of Balduran killed him, the real Balduran is dead and he was too stupid to realize it. Then we would need Withers explain to us why Ansur's soul stuck around and tell us Mindflayers are soulless one more time and really drive that point home. So in one of the endings if we become a mindflayer it is clear, our character is dead and we are operating their murder still running on old memories. Or at least let us know the soul loss is a delayed process... i dont know its just all confusing and it sucks the joy out of the ending because I dont understand the stakes.
Last edited by Eddiar; 06/10/23 11:45 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
apprentice
|
|
apprentice
Joined: Sep 2023
|
I think it's fine for lore to evolve. We can't operate rigidly on ideas that were formed 40 (or 50?) years ago. Having a bit of variance also makes mindflayers significantly more interesting than the one-dimensional villainy one would expect from something that is little more than a fully grown parasite.
Also, if the player character transforms into a mindflayer, the Narrator specifically says that it's possible for them to be an exception to the norm, like the Emperor. I'll take that.
Last edited by RoseL; 06/10/23 12:50 PM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Jan 2021
|
The more I experience this game, the more I realize that Larian was just really, really 'loose' with the lore of the setting. Which is a shame, because it makes it feel even less of an experience shared in the same universe as BG I + II even after the timeshift/retcons going from 2e to 5e. Just way too casual with how it ignores/changes established lore. I would have *hoped* that a game in which Mindflayers play such a big part Larian would full-on deep delve into their lore and wow us with the depth of their portrayal using the fairly large reservoir of stuff that's been written about them. Instead it's very surface level, and not really interested in getting much of anything 'right' .
|
|
|
|
|
|
apprentice
|
|
apprentice
Joined: Sep 2023
|
I think the no souls still works. They aren’t really born and they are extremely alien so I don’t think their gods would work the same way, especially considering their afterlife goal is to be fused into a conglomerate as a new elder brain. The only god I can even think of is Thuun and we honestly don’t even know if that is a god, a philosophy, a monster, or something more
|
|
|
|
|
|
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Jan 2021
|
them having souls despite their belief to the contrary I think worked pretty well with the 'mindflayers think they'll live on as part of the elder brain after death, but it's all bs'. monstrously intelligent and powerful creatures that at the end of the day are mere unwitting servitors despite their egotism to even more powerful entities.
What does retconning it actually accomplish? The plot doesn't really make that much more sense with the retcon. The Dead three's big plot is already pretty shaky as is. Retconning Mindflayers to being soulless creates if anything makes more awkward, since the player can become one without a game over.
Heck, apparently vampires have souls now too, so Larian is just really inconsistent here,
|
|
|
|
|
|
member
|
|
member
Joined: Apr 2021
|
100% agree! Some of this is on Larian (though, a pothole at the base of any story-telling game is a staple of the game industry in general) and part on WotC with their burning desire to make everyone "good" as they understand it. It messed DnD lore pretty hard.
However, some of it is on DnD and 5e in particular. Resurrection kills so much vibe in so many stories, that it is one of the first mechanics to be homebrewed or outright removed from many tables. Balduran could be simply resurrected, Astarion can be simply resurrected, we have the means to do so but have to ignore the obvious.
|
|
|
|
|
|
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Mar 2020
|
I think the bit with Ansur when we finally see him, he should acknowledge his naivety. Because as a player, especially one that doesn't know much about the lore I kept getting conflicting information and I thought it was going to be clarified but it never was.
Ansur should have said a shade of Balduran killed him, the real Balduran is dead and he was too stupid to realize it.
Then we would need Withers explain to us why Ansur's soul stuck around and tell us Mindflayers are soulless one more time and really drive that point home.
So in one of the endings if we become a mindflayer it is clear, our character is dead and we are operating their murder still running on old memories. Or at least let us know the soul loss is a delayed process... i dont know its just all confusing and it sucks the joy out of the ending because I dont understand the stakes. Having Ansur acknowledge his naivete would be nice!  Like @Alaric and @RoseL I think it's good evolution of the lore. The mind flayers were really designed for the Spacejammer setting and they seem much more like aliens than, say, vampires despite the mechanical similarity between the two monsters. (By mechanical similarity I mean both reproduce by corrupting others and the corruption ruins the soul - turning to evil in the case of the vampire) I think soul destruction was needed because WotC is "downplaying" and likely eliminating alignment. And if you don't turn to evil you need to know that this is transformation with consequences. And without Bane's revelation the Absolute plot makes little sense . . . When I was playing EA I was most worried about how Larian would deal with the lore - ironically, I think Larian has done a great job with the lore and WotC is the one screwing up. As I keep saying the game is like a good junk shop - the main story is a shambles but if you root through the junk you find some amazing things. Now where I agree with you completely is that the end game just sucks - there should be a way to avoid becoming a mind flayer otherwise your victory feels like a defeat. And Larian has a pretty easy way to do it: Orpheus: " . . . . yes, but the ghaik was never had access to my full power. Even in my stupor I was able to resist The Emperor. If we can get to the brainstem I can subdue the Elder Brain long enough for you to take control of the crown." easy peasy But they also need to work on the entire relationship with the emperor. Any path other than "I trust you guardian, let me slurp up all these tadpoles" isn't supported. The Tav who realizes that they are being manipulated by an evil monster comes across as a petulant child "you disgust me" "I will kill you when I get a chance" The Emperor on the other hand gets some good lines. The end game just sucks and needs to be changed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Oct 2020
|
The origins and lore of the ilithid is also a bit vague. One of the major players in their lore isn’t even an issue here, Atropus. Never quite put these two together, was their rule over the planet Glyth before or after the Gith rebelled? Atropus: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/AtropusGlyth: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/GlythGranted, these acts could pave the way for a BG3 expansion, etc. Battling against the effects of the primordial Atropus would definitely be a high level game set up possibly even to Demi god player levels…
Last edited by avahZ Darkwood; 06/10/23 08:04 PM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
apprentice
|
|
apprentice
Joined: Oct 2023
|
100% agree! Some of this is on Larian (though, a pothole at the base of any story-telling game is a staple of the game industry in general) and part on WotC with their burning desire to make everyone "good" as they understand it. It messed DnD lore pretty hard.
However, some of it is on DnD and 5e in particular. Resurrection kills so much vibe in so many stories, that it is one of the first mechanics to be homebrewed or outright removed from many tables. Balduran could be simply resurrected, Astarion can be simply resurrected, we have the means to do so but have to ignore the obvious. Facts about WotC pretty much destroying what made D&D different with the alignment system and how some races were inclined to be one alignment or another with a few outliers. Examples of which are the Drow and Drizzt Do'Urden who was one of the less than 1% of Drow that have turned their backs on Lolith. It wasnt until nearly 40 years later that WotC decided to depart from these hard line ways.. not in a good way. Now anyone can be a Paladin and run around doing whatever they wanted when previously the idea of a chaotic evil paladin was impossible to even dream of in D&D...or the idea of a lawful good orc... LOL the concept of that is even just hilarious.
|
|
|
|
|
|
member
|
|
member
Joined: Apr 2021
|
Facts about WotC pretty much destroying what made D&D different with the alignment system and how some races were inclined to be one alignment or another with a few outliers. Examples of which are the Drow and Drizzt Do'Urden who was one of the less than 1% of Drow that have turned their backs on Lolith. It wasnt until nearly 40 years later that WotC decided to depart from these hard line ways.. not in a good way.
Now anyone can be a Paladin and run around doing whatever they wanted when previously the idea of a chaotic evil paladin was impossible to even dream of in D&D...or the idea of a lawful good orc... LOL the concept of that is even just hilarious. Exactly. And now we have hivemind brain-eaters, who can totally break free from the elderbrain on a whim, and become good because they only eat brains of bad people. Peace and harmony all over Faerun!
|
|
|
|
|
