CONGRATULATIONS

The first branch is the disgusted rejection - the one where the player calls him a freak. his reaction is to show you how right you are. a mind controlled Stelmane, how the partnership was puppeteering. "you are my puppet", he tells you. "You have no other choice, if I must, I will force you."

he does not force you to do anything, after that. the threat is there, of course, but it's hollow. empty.

should this be taken at face value? can we trust him, even now, that he is telling the truth? it is certain that he mind controlled stelmane, yes. But was he the one who made her ill?

two items put that into question. a) stelmane's portrait, hung up at his desk along all his treasured possessions from before and after he became an illithid (balduran's butter fork, to go with the butter knife. his old sword, a recipe for fiddlehead soup, his dog Rascal's collar. the emperor's outfit, container for brains, chains for his "meals".)

If he's a liar about everything, why does he have a framed picture of Stelmane? He would not have been able to physically go back and set things up in a Knights of the Shield secret hideout while he was stuck inside the Astral Prism in our pocket from the hells, down to the Underdark, unless i'm getting the timeline of this story majorly wrong.

and b) an account of stelmane's illness.

Stelmane's condition got worse *after* Balduran/the Emperor disappeared, captured by Gortash and the cult of the Absolute.

Make of that what you will. Is this an actual testimony, or something he somehow planted there for you to find, despite the logistical difficulties in doing so? You decide.

2. The violent rejection is the only branch where he does not tell you how big the elder brain has grown. I think that is because there is an actual reaction on his end; something vicious that he's unused to feeling. Not the cold, calculating pragmatism he was praising in the player character three lines ago. Compare the first branch to the following two paths:

What i think is: Balduran uses you. The sole thing he cares above all else is his continued survival, any power gained that way is a side benefit to his goal. If you even get the Orphic hammer, even "as leverage," even as you threaten him, he does not "force you" to do anything, as threatened above. Ansur died, yes, but is self defence murder? Neither Ansur nor Balduran deny that Ansur tried to mercy kill Balduran as he slept.

What I also think: you have to succeed at perception check, in the third guardian dream, to figure out that "the hurt runs deeper than they're willing to show you." then, an insight check (something that requires wisdom, what you use to resist, or lean into, the tadpole's hivemind) "beneath the resilient veneer, a touch of fragility. they need comfort." This allows you to hug them, if you desire - something they say "it has been a very long time since someone did that. for [me]".