So firstly, regarding the Philip Athans quote, damn, poor guy. He didn't so much write a bad book as he wrote a draft that really hould never have been presented to the public, and given he couldn't actually get access to the game, he really never had a chance.
Secondly I have another timeline question.
I was under the impression that the founding of Baldur's Gate was like, 100s of years in the past or something like that, and Balduran was a human. So I'm kind of confused by the fact that he apparently stumbled upon the mindflayers in Moonrise Tower. That implies that mindflayers were under there all throughout the time Kethric was doing his thing as a Sharran and as a selunite before that, and they were just never noticed.
There's nothing wrong with that sequence of events technically, but it just feels narratively... off. Like, the presence of the Hive there and the fact it had no impact on Kethric'swhole story as it was happening feels like a coincidence that should mean something more. That tower was the base of an evil army and before that the base of a very devout following of a good god, and was even visited by the emissary of said god. Those two ships passing in the night just feel... out of what somehow. It feels like the writers made Balduran's change happen at moonrise to connect events more, but the connection only strains credulity for no real reason. If it were up to me, I'd not have said where he was changed, he just became a mindflayer somewhere, it doesn't really matter where.
Or maybe I'm just completely off on the Balduran timeline to begin with.
