When the first two games in the series came out, along with other D&D-based computer RPGs like Planescape: Torment, I had next to no understanding of D&D. I played Magic: the Gathering in the 90s when I was a kid, but D&D was an enigma to me - one that no one I knew played.
I was not from some conservative region - quite the contrary - and while I did have an aunt who denounced RPGs, I'm sure my own parents would have been fine with it as long as I wasn't spending as much cash on it as I was on Magic.
Anyway, now that I'm a D&D fanatic, it's fun to see the trailer and actually understand what's going on:
What we see is the inside of a Nautiloid - the flying cephalopod organic ships used by the Ilithid, or Mind Flayers, some of the most insidious and ancient bad guys of D&D lore (who are very much inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, particularly Cthulhu.) We see a bunch of dead ilithids in this ship, but one living one, who has captured both a green-skinned Gith woman and you, the player character.
The Gith were once enslaved by the Ilithid, used for labor and imbued with some psionic abilities, but they eventually rose up and rebelled. In fact, the reason the Ilithid now tend to hide deep below the surface of the world in the Underdark is because the Gith have gotten very good at finding and exterminating them. The Gith underwent a schism, dividing between the ruthless and totalitarian Githyanki and the philosophical and enlightened Githzerai. We don't know which of these the woman is, as they're really only separated culturally, rather than physically.
Anyway, the ilithid picks out some "tadpoles" from the pool there and allows them to burrow into the Gith lady and your heads. This is the first stage of "cereomorphosis," which is the way that Ilithid reproduce. It's a horrific process in which the tadpole gradually grows inside the victim's head and mutates the body within, taking control of it, until the infected is transformed into a fully-grown Mind Flayer.
It looks as if the unnamed Ilithid is trying to replenish the crew of this ship, as we see a bunch of his kin dead on the ground. The ship flies over Baldur's Gate - the gritty, crime-plagued city in the Forgotten Realms - and begins abducting people with the Nautiloid's tentacles, presumably either to convert them or to feed on their brains.
However, in the midst of this brazen attack, a portal opens and several Githyanki riding on the backs of red dragons attack the ship (the Githyanki long ago made a deal with a brood of red dragons,) chasing the Ilithid and damaging its ship.
Presumably, the early part of this adventure will involve your character trying to remove the parasite from their head. I'm very curious to see who this Gith woman is - is she a Githyanki, and those attackers were trying to rescue a comrade, or is she Githzerai, and likely to be killed by the Githyanki along with the Ilithid?
And can she be saved, or is she going to become a mind flayer?
Anyway, it's nice to know the lore enough to feel like I can speculate about this.
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