One thing I find interesting and I've seen nobody speaking about it is, to my eyes, that the mindflayers are pretty much the underdogs on this mess and something is wrong with them or with their tadpoles in general.
The moment you start the game and the mindflayer that puts the tadpole in your eye appears, there's already a dead mindflayer on the ground before the fight with the githyanki starts. It makes me wonder if they're and actual threat or they're being used and abused.
And ofc considering the new tadpole is new lore they can do whatever they want with it as long as WotC agrees and from what Sven has said they pretty much have complete freedom.
If we have to kill literal weakened gods or their avatars at level 12 I think it would make sense to chose between growing your onw personal power via tadpole and other stuff, or growing in strength via allies and the power of friendship, wich is what I think they're going from what we heard on the PFH
It is all a speculation from my part but I would not call them underdogs. That death count could be actually due to dabbling in a very dark magic (aka a radiation-like side effect). I am left with the impression from one particular scene in the EA that they play a strong role in the whole Absolute thing and it is possible they might be pulling the strings. They are certainly being backed by another entity (which might try to double cross them) but they have definitely acquired enormous influence and power. The recovery of the nautiloid technology is one of the proofs for that.
From the Forgotten Realms wiki
By the late 15th century DR, nautiloids had become extremely rare. A few mind flayer colonies still had access to a nautiloid, but kept their existence hidden and only used their ships for evacuation of the elder brain in case of an emergency or rarely during an offensive maneuver, owing to their constant fear of being detected by gith hunting parties. At this time, the illithids had lost the secrets of constructing new nautiloids and did not dare risk losing the few they had left.
The fact they are using those as an offensive weapon is disturbing indeed.
