Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion The Emperor tadpoled us!

Here's my take on all this with Early Access details fully taken into consideration;

All the evidence during Early Access supports this being the Emperor tadpoling the entire party after going rogue, because Daisy in EA would refer to the party as "her Chosen" and Shadowheart as "her beautiful weapon" as the prologue evidently displayed a clash between two different mindflayer factions aboard the Nautiloid (the Emperor making his move) because the mindflayer on the floor prior to getting tadpoled was already dead along with most of the Absolute cultists already mentally broken (which only a rogue mindflayer can do).

And considering how creepily manipulative Daisy was in EA depending on how the player treated her, the Emperor's personality behind the persona at the time was likely written to be 10 times worse because Larian clearly wanted him to truly embody what a mindflayer is. A heartlessly cold, calculating, manipulative psychic control-freak with far less moral ways to achieve his goal because he was quite literally willing to sacrifice the entirety of the Sword Coast using us as his Chosen, including us if we proved too stubborn. We were quite literally "his beautiful weapons", as Shadowheart still mentions even in full release.

Which is why Daisy was the way she was. She'd play nice as long as the party played nice, but if the party didn't play nice then she'd resort to direct threats and even force.

The essence of this personality still lingers even today in the Emperor although not as extreme nor direct, because if the player mistreats the Emperor in ACT 3 he will become very angry and show the party what he could've done to them by sharing memories of Duke Stelmane being dominated by him. Which fits his raw personality from Early Access because the tadpoles were a way for Daisy to initiate communication and slowly gain control over the player. The more the player used the tadpole, the stronger the psychic signal from it became which allowed Daisy to first only be able to communicate while the player was unconscious, and eventually even when they were fully awake. And if the player pissed her off, she would become furious and resort to direct threats (which we unfortunately never got to see, but we'd probably get dominated in certain parts of the story just like Stelmane was).

So I agree. This 100% was the Emperor in Early Access, however...

Because Larian noticed a vast majority of players kept entirely avoiding this aspect of the story since players couldn't for the life of them pick up on all the clues clearly hinting that Daisy ain't the tadpole nor the Absolute, this entire aspect of the game got rewritten and streamlined to make Daisy a benevolent Paladin Guardian instead who clearly stands against the Absolute, with the Emperor being much more emphatic and diplomatic in a friendly way as the focus of his narrative becomes the humanization of his character and whether his feelings are genuine or just an imitation.

He's doing what he must to survive because that's who he is, a survivor. A pragmatic whose most of his feelings towards our party are truly genuine because he could've done far worse to us, but naturally he's also simultaneously lying through omission by telling only what he considers important to tell to keep us focused on the job at hand. He has no use for petty human drama and trivialities, he's beyond such things because he sees the bigger picture when the fate of the whole existence is at stake, so who could blame him when he does truly end up saving the world and us multiple times.

Despite everything in Early Access clearly pointing towards the Emperor; in full release his appearance slightly changed to make him unique and the entire other half of the prologue that had all the evidence clearly pointing against him has been removed. Which is why the cinematic today is a sea of contradictions in relation to actual in-game lore due to the rewrites and unfortunately ends up being just a very fancy eye-candy intro cinematic and nothing more. One could say that he wiped our minds after tadpoling us, but alas the reality of the things is it is a very expensive cinematic created incredibly early during development so it no longer fits the actual in-game narrative because the party quite vividly remembers both the eye-insertion and the mindflayer who did it, yet does not whatsoever recognize the Emperor.

His Early Access version was a hardcore anti-hero who would have undertaken any action necessary no matter how immorally disgusting to achieve his goal and would have dominated us without any hesitation once we pissed him off. Which is an era of the game when the tadpoles and choices around Daisy truly were a severe consequence both in terms of gameplay and roleplay.

Another high quality post from Crimsonrider, nicely done.

I agree 90% but here are the bits I'm skeptical about:

While I think daisy became the emperor, in EA Daisy was the absolute speaking through the tadole. The absolute allows people to live in a fantasy world on their choosing while it dominates people. You saw this in EA with the thralls on the main deck. While a battle raged around them they thought they doing things like taking care of the farm. If Orin kills Zevlor and you speak to his corpse it's clear that he's living in a similar fantasy. The absolute restored his paladin powers and led his people to safety.

Daisy's promise was like the offer made to the protagonist of the film The Devil's Advocate The devil wants our hero to agree to deal that would bring about the end of the world and the triumph of hell over heaven. But our hero wouldn't be care about the deaths, screams, gnashing of teeth ect. He'd be experiencing pure bliss that could take any form he liked. The thrill of winning a court case or the first smile from a skeptical juror. Whatever the bliss - conquest of the sword coast, seeing Cazador burning in the sun, the approval of Dark Justiciar Kethric Thorne - the Absolute could deliver if you joined her down by the river.

Or to put it differently, Daisy was offering power and a trip to experience machine:


Now to be fair your interpretation does a better job explaining one of the first illithid slates we encounter. It speaks of another rogue mindflayer disconnected from the others which would support a 2 mind flayers interpretation

As it stands it works as the emperor talking about Omelleum. But, again, the two mind flayers theory doesn't deal with the nature of Daisy's seductions. She and the absolute use the same seduction strategy.

2.


That's certainly the way he presents himself to the party and the way he would want to be perceived. But that's at odds with his actions and, as the book says, we need to judge illithids by their actions not their words. The emperor cares about his life and his independence. Full stop.

The emperor only wants to save the world because he has to live in it. Unlike Omelleum he would be happy to see the world burn if burning it could guarantee life and liberty for him. We see this in his decision to join the absolute when Orpheus is released and we see this in his decision to control the brain and become the emperor who oversees the grand design.

Someone cared about the world before their own life - someone like Gale - wouldn't make such a decision.

But when you spoke to them it was clear that they were lost in fantasy world and that fantasy was the mechanism of control. I can't remember every one but I do remember that one spoke about getting bulls in back into the barn. Lae'zel would chide you for taking time to talk to people so out of the their senses. The waking dream turns you into a thrall but it doesn't 'shatter' you in the sense that you are incapable of doing things like operating cannons or working to put out fires - you just believe you are putting out a barn fire, not a nautaloid fire. It stands to reason that the deeper one dives into the fantasy the greater control the absolute had.

Rats in the Flour

I do miss how that whole bit set up an element of unease. When the first thing the flayer says to us on the bridge is "Thrall..." it's like 'oh shit, hopefully we don't end up like those other peeps who got enthralled!' The fishermen got nixed too, so it's a little more confusing now I think, since the first we encounter is probably Brynna. So we only hear secondhand about how everyone has been losing their minds. I thought the first rendition rattled the nerves a bit more, cause all the npcs we meet initially (excepting the origins) are all pretty much off the deep end. I thought it would have been a cool set up for some more surrealist interludes where it's just not clear whether what we're experiencing is real or not, but that element is sorta lost by staging scenes in environments that announce what's going on and telegraph it way in advance. Pretty hard to confuse anything going on inside the Astral prism with a dream reality delusion being imposed on us from outside, cause the environment is all lit up in the rainbow hues and even if we don't understand where we are, it's not like we're getting gored by bulls instead of Gith monks or anything of that sort.

I thought that if we indulged the tadpole overmuch we might lose control, if not of our specific actions or choices, that what we'd see/experience as one thing initially might actually prove to be another thing entirely. So for example, thinking we're killing assassins of Bhaal, but where it's in fact some Flaming fists who were just trying to help us, or vice versa. Though I guess that might have been too punishing. I thought for Durge that the haunted one background could key off that too, so that we're haunted by the things we did in-game in a more pronounced way. I don't mean that we suddenly see that it's been a mind flayer all along, I mean where the reality itself breaks down and we begin to question whether anything that we've done since hitting the beach is truly real, or if still trapped in the pod, or any of those riffs on the solipsistic nightmares. You know, where we start to wonder, ok if the Dream visitor isn't what they seem, is Shadowheart also maybe just another trick of the mind worm? That might be too convoluted to work all that well for straight forward adventure narrative, but it would have allowed for some flexibility in other areas. Orin does pull some nightmare tricks out of her pocket, but we never really question whether it's a dream or if the visions are reliable. Whereas with the first nautiloid prologue that would kinda stick with me, like flour on the rats I guess lol.

Cliffnotes, I thought they'd go more Total Recall with it at the end, or 1899 for a more recent example, that sorta deal. Walls of reality crashing down, script gets flipped on its head etc.

ps. I think it would be cool if the narrative of the game folded this concept into it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return because then you'd get a oblique on the story structure justification, just for the mechanical reality of replaying it endlessly, but only in slight variations. In such stories the protagonist always has the goal to break the loop somehow, to get outside of it, even if it's just in the small ways. Or just to reconcile that whole idea, that if you love it in part, you also kinda have to acquiesce to loving the whole too, cause the return is eternal like that. No backsies hehe. I just think it sounds like a cool theme for an expansion campaign too. Like it just has that ring to it, that could maybe lean into where the whole thing started out. Like as the literal first thing to flash across the screen in BG1, gazing into the abyss lol

I can't think of anything more cerebral

Interesting connection on the Astarian attack - I hadn't put that together, that the guardian might have woken us. Insightful, thanks.

While I don't think you've made the case that the cultist nightmares have been sent by the Absolute you might be right that the emperor has transformed their dreams into nightmares so as to disable them. They were living with Daisy down by the river until the emperor made the river run red with blood.

You've made a compelling case but here's where it falls down:

I think you've only shown that Daisy uses the motives they thinks will work. This is consistent with The Emperor's end boss narrative: he knows all of your weaknesses, and so do they. (here assuming that Emperor 2.0 is Daisy 2.0)

Astarian isn't motivated by sex he's motivated by fear it's the pillar of his personality, it's his cardinal trait. He is secondarily motivated by vengeance. (as we see in the Gur camp) But Daisy does make Astarian's nightmares into a revenge fantasy. After being terrified by Cazador Astarian gets to dream about dragging him into the sun and watching him burn.

Imagine that. Imagine if he could control the tadpole. He would never feel afraid again. And he would have his revenge.

We see how much this fantasy appeals to Astarian in the flophouse scene - if only that were Cazador. So Daisy offers Astarian, a creature out a nightmare, a very dark fantasy.

But it's still wish fulfillment: soon Cazador will learn fear me.

Both Tav and Shadowheart got to dream about people they found attractive.

To reiterate, we're agreed that The Emperor is piloting the nautaloid and but I think the cultists were put into fantasy land by Daisy-Absolute. What you've shown me here makes me think that the emperor altered their dreams.

Having a similar personality does not explain why Daisy had to wait for the player to start using the tadpole powers to be even able to contact them. You needed to use them a few times, once was not enough. The emperor is in control of the prism (or rather Orpheus). So why would he shield himself (in EA) from being able to contact the player?

And if you recall the old Shadowheart encounter that happened if you did not recruit her, the way the prism extended influence over her was not through the dream lover. It befudled her mind, the voices telling her to find you. That encounter was even in early EA, because I've managed to trigger it on my first playthrough.

On the other hand, if Daisy were your tadpole, it would make sense, because the tadpole was not likely to be in control of the prism. Perhaps the emperor was sitting in the prism already (but was lacking the means to communicate), perhaps it was only Orpheus, but it seemed to be protecting you from Daisy as well as the absolute.

It's not really important so I don't wish to derail the thread further by disproving the "Daisy = Absolute" or "Daisy = Tadpole" beliefs. This was all disproven during Early Access and especially with full release, so it's pointless in my opinion to discuss that.

Point of the story is; the in-game lore during Early Access certainly used to perfectly connect the narrative of the Emperor being the one to intentionally tadpole the party and then project himself as the enticing Daisy while inside the artefact to protect his Chosen as they take on the Absolute, since Early Access characters along with their motivations and personalities were far more rougher around the edges than they are today, so such crude methods were a perfect fit.

Unfortunately the rewrites streamlined the narrative to make it comprehensible and likable to the general public and by doing so punched way too many holes into the consistency of the lore and its characters, which is why the cinematic today contradicts the actual in-game lore and cannot be taken as fact because the party quite vividly remembers their parasite insertion and the mindflayer who infected them, so it cannot be the Emperor anymore no matter how one tries to roleplay it.

Personally I enjoyed the narrative of Early Access far more as I found it fascinatingly consistent and wonderfully in-depth with danger looming around every corner. It truly felt like a very serious, intricate and mature gritty story with severe consequences that really wanted to explore the theme of not knowing who to trust.

I don't see this perfect conntection from the EA lore.Well, from what I recall if you used the illithid powers often enough in EA, the [illithid] dialogues would get replaced by the [true soul] tag. Which would indicate that Daisy was leading you towards joining the flock of absolute cultists, which is at odds with the emperor trying to keep free from the elder brain control.

Daisy was promising power and everything that you desire, while showing you the destruction of Baldur's Gate. The emperor is a rogue illithid that wants to continue his shadow life in the same city, running his crime syndicate. These two don't really align either.

If the Emperor were planned to be a important character during EA he would also be in the artbook, which he is not, together with the Guardian. Daisy on the other hand is.

At best he would have been a side character similar to Omelumm to show an alternative to Daisy (whi as pointed out was associated with the Absolute).

[quote=Crimsomrider]It's not really important so I don't wish to derail the thread further by disproving the "Daisy = Absolute" or "Daisy = Tadpole" beliefs. This was all disproven during Early Access and especially with full release, so it's pointless in my opinion to discuss that.

What #saeran said. Your power of deduction are impressive and you deserve to recognized for how much you got right. But you've not proven that Daisy wasn't the absolute in an early draft. One of your predictions was correct: there are rival ghaik factions. And yes we agree that the emperor tadpoled us and was piloting the craft.

But Daisy? She could have been either The Emperor or the Elder Brain. I'm going for the absolute - that best explains the [true soul] tag and datamined content that Tavs with [true soul] could be dominated by Nere. (and still exists in some form with his Honor mode boss fight)

What #saeran said. Your power of deduction are impressive and you deserve to recognized for how much you got right. But you've not proven that Daisy wasn't the absolute in an early draft. One of your predictions was correct: there are rival ghaik factions. And yes we agree that the emperor tadpoled us and was piloting the craft.

But Daisy? She could have been either The Emperor or the Elder Brain. I'm going for the absolute - that best explains the [true soul] tag and datamined content that Tavs with [true soul] could be dominated by Nere. (and still exists in some form with his Honor mode boss fight)

On the topic of the emperor himself, there is one scene from the trailer which, in the context of the game lore, does not quite make sense, and that is the mind flayer mural. The stone mural depicts an elder brain and illithid hive, but the brain is not shown as the center point; a single mind flayer holding a staff is. This doesn't quite make sense, because a brain would not need a general-commander of their forces, when they can mind control them all. I think Larian even sort of tried to incorporate this scene in the final battle, but this only works if you side against the emperor; if you ally with him, the mural seems to refer to nothing.

Unless the mural is supposed to show a single a mind flayer ruling both the brain and the hive, which could have been possible with the reassembled regalia of Karsus (described in the book Gale wants; you cannot reassemble them in the game as the scepter is missing). Perhaps this was the emperor's intended original role, to become the final antagonist and a ruler of his kind, controlling both an elder brain and an army of illithids. It could in theory also refer to an evil protagonist, except you don't really need to turn into a mind flayer to control the brain.

That's a general problem with the character of the Emperor and the game's story at large. For all the game's freedom of choice, the main story doesn't do much to respect your decisions. You can find out all the game's secrets in books, letters etc. but it rarely gets reflected in the actual dialogue (Kagha being the exception that proves the rule). With the Emperor in particular, "reactivity" is practically non-existent and most of the choices you get to make in regards to him simply end up not mattering at all. That wouldn't be a problem if the role he plays wasn't so absolutely integral. In retrospect, it would have been prudent to cut the character from the game and have us be protected by the prism itself (some dialogue still hints at this being the original vision) and spend more time on the characterisation of Dead Three's champions. It would have made for a more focused experience. With the Mindflayer stuff being as unengaging as it is, the Emperor appears mostly as a distraction that gets more frustrating with every playthrough.

There was always an Emperor it's just that it was a different character.

I remember there was a datamined line about how terrifying a mindflayer emperor is. There is also the MtG card showing what looks like the Emperor (blue eyes though) tadpoling someone, "Your mind belongs to the Emperor now".

Looking at the appearance of the Emperor he is larger than the other mindflayers and is dressed in a more regal manner. I think originally, the guardian(Desire) was Orpheus and the Emperor(Daisy) was meant to be the restorer of the Illithid Empire. This would explain why if you side with Orpheus he says he's putting an end to the nascent illithid empire and why the Emperor randomly decides to join the brain. So, yeah I think the original Emperor tadpoled us.

This changes when Larian decided to turn the Emperor into the guardian. It's pretty obvious that the Emperor backstory cutscenes were added pretty late since they're not even animated. Him being called the Emperor because he controlled trade or something is such a poor cop out. Which means whoever tadpoled us is some random irrelevant illithid which makes the cinematic also irrelevant.

I guess all of this fallsunder the guise of "subverting expectations" AKA terrible modern writing?

Agreed. I like the idea An evil boss being a master manipulator is interesting. And makes sense that the emperor has enthralled Tav with a charm person spell - the only reason I could imagine sitting side by side with someone I just stabbed - but Tav's inability to say anything critical until the last moment is frustrating. And the few lines that do suggest that Tav is feeling distrustful read more like an outline than a completed work: "I don't trust you"

Might as well be "revise this line before publishing" or "placeholder: distrust"

And so the emperor speaks and we listen. I've said this before but WotR did a better job with the queen and herald. You can respond to the queen with honor and dignity or with scorn. You can treat the herald as a trusted ally or as a burden. You can even tell him to shut up.

The emperor cannot have too much reactivity, because he is a plot device. If you repeatedly tell him that you don't trust him because he is a mind flayer, he will force the vision where he mind thralls Stelmane on you. But then the story continues as usual, even though the emperor would have to be an idiot, and not a mind flayer with genius-level intellect, to not consider the protagonist allying with Orpheus against him. He doesn't even try to turn your companions against you, something that Raphel warns you about, but never actually happens in the game.

If they had committed to a fully evil Emperor that manipulates us into working for his plan that would have been fine. But as it stands he's really neither here nor there and for all his grandstanding about the superiority of Illithid minds he doesn't really seem to have a plan either.

Just like the companions are all player-sexual the Emperor is basically player-aligned. Some may point this out to be just another layer of clever Illithid manipulation but I don't think it's that deep, nor is the dialogue well-written enough to hint at some meta level narrative about biases turning into self-fulfilling prophecies or whatever. He's really just a void of a character that shifts and contorts based on where the player wants to take the story. Want him to be good? He's good. Want him to be evil? He's evil.

Because none of the outcomes are actually in any form related to the previous characterisation of the character and your treatment of him, any resulting story beats will fall flat and lack pay-off. Take my first playthrough for example. I avoided anything tadpole related like the plague and distrusted the Guardian/Emperor for trying to manipulate me into using them so I tried to free myself from his influence as soon as possible by stabbing him in the Prism during the Githyanki Creché quest. He then tells me that this was a test that I failed but it has absolutely no ramifications for the story. Then at the end of act 2 when you see his true form revealed, I killed him only to be greeted by a game over screen so I had to load a save game and undo my decision. Then at the very end when the game finally decides that I no longer need the Emperor I don't even get the choice to kill him and instead he makes that choice for me.

If you're going to put a character in the game that only exists to undermine the main character's agency then at least turn them into a proper villain instead of denying us any sort of satisfaction. It's especially funny since Raphael effectively functions in the exact same way and the culmination of his storyline is one of the best moments in the entire game.

From a storytelling/writing point of view, I think it's more than clear that the Emperor was always within the prism, even back in early access. Some people were so certain that Daisy was the tadpole and got stuck on connecting that to the Down by the River song.

But the whole point of it was to subvert the obvious. To provide a "twist" if you will. You expect the dream persona to be a product of the tadpole. Of course you do. It's designed that way. Then twist! It's not! That was the point. And if you're clever enough to see the clues then you can predict it.

So the first twist is that the dream persona is not the tadpole. The second twist is that the entity responsible for protecting you is a mind flayer. The third twist is that the mind flayer is Balduran.

The game is constantly trying to surprise you and keep you on your toes.

*

Unfortunately, there's good reason to not like what they did with the Emperor. They tried something, and I applaud that. But it didn't entirely work. A lot of people simply didn't like the Emperor as a character, and that's a big deal. I don't just mean they didn't like him. They didn't even love to hate him.

Well said!


I think that theory is incorrect. Tis the problem with cleverness, clever people tend to conflate their own cleverness with reality. But clever people are no less capable of constructing sky castles than the rest of us - indeed they are even more likely to prefer the products of their cleverness to reality. Which is what happened. Some very smart people figured out 95% of the plot before full release and imagined they got it 100% correct

If you told Daisy something like "I'm not resisting you! Please love me my dream luver and give me all your power" She would say something like "you're right, you're not resisting me are you? something else is". Who knows what that other force that was resisting Daisy's seductions? Orpheus? The Emperor? . . .

Or perhaps it was the tadpole that resisting? But that doesn't doesn't fit with the tadpole's reaction to the Omelleum potion which is still in the game: it feels larger and somehow pleased with itself. And it's happy to give you powers even if doesn't control you yet.


Agreed. I love to hate to Raphael in a way I don't love to hate the emperor. With TE I mostly feel frustration. With nearly every other dialogue tree in the game I can find an option that seems to fit my character. But not with TE conversations.