Unless they changed it, there are several people who indicate that although you aren't changing YET, you will. It's only a matter of time, and when you change, it will be sudden and terrible, and everyone around you will die. Off the top of my head, these include:
The hag
The elf guy in the Hag's Lair who sees his reflection in the mirror
I'm pretty sure Gale says it or hints at it
I thought Halsin also suggested this
Nettie gives you a vial of Wyvern Poison BECAUSE she's afraid you'll turn at any moment
Raphael CERTAINLY says it
And I'm fairly certain Omeluum also says it. That's why he offers the ring, to help you prolong your situation to buy you more time
Yes. Characters need to rest to recover, but when you have the potential of transforming into a monster at some future ambiguous time, you would naturally ONLY rest if necessary. I don't care if someone tells you that it won't manifest right 3. You have a brain eating monster in your head, and every moment you waste is a moment closer to it eating your brain.
Need I also remind you that while with Omeluum the tadpole actually delves DEEPER into your brain. He actually causes it to wake up and stir. Yeah. Sleeping after that makes no sense to me.
I absolutely agree that any sane person would not rest knowing there's a bug eating away at their brains. But unfortunately the game does not translate this very well due to how the resting mechanic is implemented. It locked the story away behind this mechanic so I as a player, have to ignore the story immersion of minimal rests in order to experience the story fully. If the resting mechanic didn't lock the story away, I personally would never rest at all as I don't have a need to nor from a story perspective would want to.
I am in my current playthrough about to enter Grymforge. 0 full rests, 0 consumables, 0 resources spent. But I do have over 100 partial rests because I want every bit of the story which is absolutely insane.
So if anything it's the resting mechanic they need to tweak and improve in order to make sense with the story. Personally I think not making companion stories dynamic as we go along the world was a terrible mistake.
As for the NPCs, what they're offering us are presumptions because they assume we're dealing with a regular tadpole which is on a timed schedule, while some of the more powerful ones see there's power in it. Only a handful know that the tadpole is enveloped and that the magic surrounding it is preventing ceremorphosis. Once and if that stasis is gone, yes we are by all means screwed and a ticking time bomb that should avoid resting by any means possible, even as a gameplay mechanic. So their assumptions are correct assuming that the stasis breaks, but nothing indicates that the stasis will succumb to the passage of time, especially due to our Dreamer.
- The Hag's whole schtick is bestowing various methods of torment upon anyone that crosses her path. Her whole lair is filled with people suffering in eternal torment. Absolutely zero trust in whatever she says. She even plucks your eye out.
- Lorin is suffering by seeing the future in which all of his fates are exclusively negative, even ours. Don't you find it a bit curious how every single fate he sees is negative and how much it torments him. Precisely because eternal torment is the Hag's schtick.
- Gale is a party member so he knows what we know and simply presumes ceremorphosis is eventually going to happen, so it's natural to think it will.
- Halsin studies them and knows there's magic surrounding them and presumes that it's only a matter of time. However he doesn't know for sure, so presuming is a natural thing.
- Nettie gives you the poison out of fear as a precaution because she does not know what is going on. You can ask her if any of the others have transformed.
- Raphael is a devil playing with you by trying to cash-in on the fear of ceremorphosis due to our lack of knowledge. He is very well aware of the tadpole's power and wants to see that power continue to grow, because if you try to outright accept his offer he will reject you and tease you; "Oh that's disappointing. I prefer when my clients put up a fight... only to realize victory was never an option". There's far more to it than what he lets on.
- Raphael will also send his own agent to save you from certain death if you're imprisoned by Priestess Gut, to make sure you keep feeding that tadpole power by using it.
- If you talk to Gale afterwards, he mentions that Raphael's true intentions are not entirely us and quotes the Cormyrian rhyme stating that;"...maybe we should grow our own nails(to find what his intentions truly are)".
The only person that actually knows anything for sure is the Dreamer, whom I find so interesting because they and the tadpole are at each other's throats. The tadpole wants to do its natural thing to transform, but the Dreamer is trying to achieve something else entirely and seems to be keeping it at bay and even seems to have saved us from the fall and keeps saving us from other situations by warning us about threats mid-sleep. And they definitely aren't the tadpole nor the Absolute.
There's also the tiny little detail that, on the mindflayer ship, we pushed a button and turned a person instantly into a mindflayer! I don't believe we have any reason to suspect our tadpole situation is different from that person. So it's perfectly likely that, at any moment, whoever has control over these tadpoles could instantly transform us. Maaaybe we would have to be captured and put in a special pod for that, but maybe not.
Actually there is a reason to suspect it is different.
- The Nautiloid's original crew were all murdered by the Absolute Mindflayers, who infected our party. Since in the beginning cinematic you can see the Absolute Mindflayer take a short look at the original crew before carrying on to abduct more victims for Moonrise Towers, which is then interrupted by Githyanki kith'raks.
- If you look closely at all the corpses and survivors, majority of them are wearing Absolute necklaces and have gone mad. Would make sense if two opposing Mindflayer factions were having telepathic wars between each other on the ship.
- And then to make matters worse, forces of Avernus also invade shortly after where the imps can be observed bullying the mentally unstable cultists, so they must have been in that state before Avernus.
The woman in the pod was most likely a victim of the original crew before the Absolute ones took over the ship, since she isn't wearing an Absolute necklace and is used as a plot device for story purposes to give the player an idea of what to expect from Illithids. Which I think it did beautifully because I avoided resting like the plague in my first playthrough exactly because of that ^^
One thing is for sure though, we are the only ones seeing the Dreamer and we're supposed to hear the Dreamer during the Nautiloid escape (implied by companions and ourselves during camp scenes). The cultists and True Souls only hear the Absolute's voice, but we hear both.
