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.
Luck is a HUGE element in this story. In no particular order, some of the luckiest ones are:
-Durge happening to be on the same Nautiloid that Thrall Emperor uses to steal the Astral Prism - remember that the Brain had nothing to do with placing Durge there, this was done by an uninfluenced Orin (remember: Durge becoming a pawn in the Design simply meant that the Brain simply looked upon it's disgraced master with disgust and would have used him as a lowly soldier or worker - at the very least there is nothing to suggest that the Brain somehow influenced Orin to place Durge in that Nautiloid)
-Emperor failing to tell everyone about the Mind Flayer colony once he was freed for the first time
-Ketheric develops Durge Amnesia and forgets he used to work together with him
-The Accelerated Grand Design documentation not being destroyed by Mephistopheles
-That dormant Mind Flayer colony just so happened to also house a dormant Elder Brain and at least one Nautiloid
-Emperor ending up with Durge and the rest of the origins could be either insanely lucky or (partially) intended by the Brain
-Durge somehow not dying to Orin's very much fatal blows
-Sharrans catching wind of the Astral Prism Heist is incredibly (un)lucky
-Emperor failing to appear as Balduran (aka himself) in Dream Visitor segments is incredibly unlucky
The thing is, extremely rare events happen ALL the time in real life. Just the other day, I was thinking how cool it'd be for one of my university classes to be cancelled. Lo and behold, as the class was coming up, we got a notification of cancellation as our professor suffered a road accident and he totaled his car (no one got hurt, by the way). This event allowed me to go out shopping with my mum, where we happened to run into some cans of Almdudler, something we haven't seen in a long, long time in our country, creating a satisfying payoff.
Here is the mechanical workings of luck: things seem lucky because we don't know all the mechanical elements of how that event occured. When you are watching something in the third person, you of course see that the teacher had an accident and that Almdudler cans were supplied just a few days back. However, the person in the story experiencing them has blindspots to these events, therefore appearing as lucky. It is also important to know that most of mankind's greatest stories begin with an incredibly lucky chain of events. Just the right people showing up just at the right time with just the right amount of knowledge and resources to begin an exciting journey.
However, even the third person will be frustrated by what they will experience as "luck" when the mechanical components of an event in the plot is not explained properly. Take
Balduran for example - we all know he is a heroic adventurer. So why wouldn't he tell ANYONE that there is a dormant colony that needs to be purged? It is just so incredibly lucky that he chose never to think, acknowledge and consider such an action, which in turn allowed for the Absolute plot to occur many years later. It is frustrating to say the least, because how will the third person keep their suspension of disbelief alive if anything could occur at any point? Maybe the Brain just decides that once the Dead Three are gone, it will be all nice n cozy and they're gonna have a tea time with Durge and giggle at the absurdity of those idiots. But that would be incredibly jarring, because there is NOTHING that would ever suggest that the Brain would become subservient to the Durge again.
Which is why, regardless if we're speaking of nitpicks or the largest of plot holes, I am an enthusiastic advocate for any and every game company to extend their QA to storytelling as well, and why I have written this timeline up. Also...
Or maybe I'm just completely off on the Balduran timeline to begin with.[/spoiler]
Speaking of that timeline
How is the Emperor even still alive? Mind Flayer are not immortal but live around 125 years, or 250 if they are an Ulitharid. But Balduran lived nearly 500 years ago.
AAAAAAAHHHH this bothers me more than it should. So maybe Balduran got tadpoles as an old man, so around 1100-1180. Mindflayer Balduran makes it to 1300s at the latest, not 1400s. Then again, this Elder Brain is weird and ancient.
I guess I can edit this info in to OP. Ouch.
EDIT: I have also been made aware that Ketheric in the late 1300s and early 1400s used Aylin in the Shadowfell to create Dark Justiciars by having each and every one kill her (without the Spear of Night of course) - yet Aylin still claims that she hasn't been visited by anyone in a hundred years in Act2 (in 1492), including Balthazar with his Soul Cage. How does time work in the Shadowfell? Because if this question gets the right answer, that is the only way to actually be able to establish a proper chronological order of just exactly what on Earth happened over there. Now, I am currently not at my PC, so I can't hop in-game and check - I will do that once I'm around, but I'm just wondering if anyone can fact check this. Either the right answer to the question or Aylin completely lost her track of time, which is psychologically understandable, but we are also speaking of a demigod who never at any point showed any signs of psychological degragadion.
