Orin’s sibling was the first of the Absolute’s tadpole victims, weren’t they? Haven’t played in a couple months but that’s what I remember from the dark urge storyline.
I was also under the impression that the emperor was in the astral prism since before the story started. I’m not sure if the mindflayers knew about the emperor either since they just left the artifact in a bag on the ground - their mission seemed to be all about tadpoling people
The story was left open to interpretation but I’m inclined to think the emperor was not involved in any kidnapping or tadpoling.
And Lae’zel was definirely part of a mission to recover the artifact (for Orpheus - they definitely don’t know about the emperor) and got captured, she wasn’t just hunting mindflayers