I just found the 'real' cause of this. I was baffled at first, because I had done away with BPILYICH.bcs intentionally. But after a bunch of tracing down, I spotted it in the GENERIC CREATURES component (of all places!). There's still an entry in BPSCRIPTS.2da that improperly changes the ILYICH override script slot into BPILYICH. Proper fix is to delete this line from the 2da, which I've done for the next version. Another quicker workaround for now is to open DUECLA01.cre in an editor and change BPILYICH to ILYICH.
I had to pick BPILYICH.BAF from an older BP (I took BP v181 alpha 2002) and makes a mini mod to install the script. This fixed it.
Would it be possible for you to post this fix publicly? I am having the same problem with Ilyich and I'm not sure i trust my plebian skillset to do as you described.
Thank you for the concise explanation and shall do .