Let's add a friendly image so that people don't see any spoilers by accident.
So, the way I see it the Emperor probably tailed Shadowheart's team who liberated the Astral Prism. Maybe he even got the Nautiloid and some cultists and Mindflayers from the Elder Brain so that he could extract Shadowheart's team. Orin left her sibling on there for good measure. Mindflayers doing Mindflayer things they abducted Shadowheart.
But as soon as the Prism was close enough the Elder Brain lost its grip on the Emperor. Probably just him because he already was able to leave an Elder Brain once. Seeing the opportunity he killed the Mindflayers near him and took control of the Nautiloid.
Being the practical Mindflayer he probably sought to build an army of tadpoled people with super duper Illithid powers to fight the Absolute. He went to Baldur's Gate to find more people and thus snatched up Tav and the others.
The Githyanki were in close pursuit and disrupted him so he had to flee. When the Nautiloid arrived on Avernus he hid inside the prism.
I'm not quite sure where Lae'zel fits into all this. She probably went aboard the Nautiloid to get her Mindflayer head but was captured instead. She didn't know anything about the Prism because it was way above her paygrade.
What do you think happened? Or is there an official version of the events that lead up to the game?
Are you implying the mindflayer who abducted us was the emperor, not some rando? I missed that if so. I thought our abductor was dead on the ground in early act 1, the one who tried to make us feel compassion towards it or whatever. I just presumed an absolute lackey
The mindflayer that infects the pc in the intro certainly looks like the Emperor. No other in the game with that same sized collar as the Emperor.
Our abductor isn’t the near dead illithid near Astarion. None of the illithid that you can interact with in act 1 are our captors as far as i can tell. I think this because i once picked up all the illithid bodies and sent them to camp to see if the Dror Ragzlin illithid still accuses you. It does.
I thought that the one with Dror was our captor, but maybe it's the one we fought the cambions with. The narrator tells you it's the mind flayer that was on the ship, I guess it's a little vague
The Narrator says that mind flayer near Ragzlin isn't your captor.
Then the first time Ragzlin asks who killed it it shows you this memory:
Then Dror asks a second time and the mind flayer responds with this memory:
So we don't have clawed hands first off. And we never opened a holding pod except Shadowheart's. So is the illithid making it up? Did Orin (or another doppleganger) pretend to be us? Those are my two guesses at what's happening.
I could be talking crazy here, but in regards to the clawed hand situation - perhaps the mind flayer is seeing it's own hand opening a holding pod? I don't know if more context is given in-game, but based on the quotes you provided it doesn't explicitly state that the face belongs to the claw-handed figure. Maybe the memory you see is of the mind flayer opening your pod?
I hadn't thought of that! Good call. It's very ambiguous no matter how you read it.
I was wondering that too. I haven't finished the game yet so I was waiting for some confirmation that the Emporer was the one who infected you and Lazael.