I feel like Larian could have saved a lot of time if they just gave the player character the Artifact from the very beginning. You wake up, get out of the pod, and an Artifact on the floor flies into your hands.
It clears up the timeline:
-Emperor steals Artifact from Vlaakith.
-Shadowheart fails to steal it, having gotten caught.
-Emperor opens Artifact and gets in.
-You find Artifact and it is drawn to you.
Then they wouldn't have had to spend all that effort making different permutations to ensure that the Artifact absolutely ended up in your possession from Shadowheart.