Hello Veeky Forums

>Getting your brain sucked out sucks
10/10

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Little bit, if they take the right eagle spirit option. They still need to land at the end of their turn, though.

Thid is assuming they jump off the ground with their own two feet, right?
What if they were to jump off of something taller, like say a cliff, or tower?
>pic related

also wheres that one from?
I love this low poly stuff

I think it's an ingame model from either final fantasy 11 or 12

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Find a way to acquire/download this: TSR 9569 The Illithiad

Fantastic suggestion. Thank you very much.

Lords of Madness from 3.5. Also has sections on other aberrations.

Checked
I can also second this, a good source of info on them and other creepy-crawlies

Thanks. I read this many years ago, but didn't pay much attention to the mind flayers. Sadly I no longer possess a copy.

Came in here to post this.

OP, if you can't find it, I can get you a copy.

>Volo's Guide to Monsters
Anyone got a PDF download?

Its in the trove

Have you heard of the Illithiad?

Otherwise, there was a whole adventure path regarding the mind flayers trying to extinguish the sun.

There is "Lords of Madness : Book of Aberrations" in 3.5 which had a whole chapter dedicated to the Mind Flayers, their society, etc. Solid read.

Seconding the Illithiad.
Dawn of the Overmind is another good 2e book, truly epic and renowned hi-lvl adventure module across the stars, crysmic af.

Thank you.
>
Still waiting on this user to come back and share his insights on mind flayer society.

Do you happen to have a link on-hand?

Can probably be found in most /osr/or /2eg/ troves.

Fair enough.

Has there been any work or discussion put into proto-illithids or descendent-illithid variants?
Looking at the basic info presented in some of these resources, I feel like they could easily fit into an ancient civilization role as well.

Sorry anons! I'm back now.

What sticks out the most in my memory is all of the slaves the illithids possessed. In the novels I read, they went full Roman, and just stole other races left and right, then mindfucked them into oblivion so they literally wouldn't even think of being free. They even had full on gladiator pits (or at least ONE) where they watch and place bets while forcing the slaves to fight. They have their slaves do EVERYTHING for them. From making furniture, to clothes, to cleaning. Hell, they probably have slaves dedicated solely to wiping their asses for them.

The most interesting thing, though, is that drow are the most highly prized slaves. And they serve the Elder Brain alone. If I am remembering correctly, they have the softest most dexterous hands. (which is why this stuck out to me, Drizzt is a blade wielding warrior, hello, what are calluses????) And thus, they spend their entire life in servitude to the Elder Brain, gently massaging away brain cramps, and soothing the Elder Brain with constant bowls of warm water dribbled over it.

Not really. I had a crazy bit of alternative fluff I wanted to share- the illithids were the slaves of the gith rather than the other way round.

A long time ago, there was a massive, galaxy-spanning gith empire. Overseeing countless species, it was capable of miraculous feats of engineering and psionics. But it was decadent beyond belief, and relied on slaves to keep it running.

The gith engineered mind flayer tadpoles to make animals psionically active and able to be telepathically controlled. This reduced labor shortages immensely. They also engineered their dependence on brain matter (mainly cloned) to make them less likely to survive in the wild. The physical atrophy that occurred when used on a humanoid was inconvenient, though- and was, in fact, considered anathema. The Elder Brains were used as massive repositories of knowledge, and formed a sort of psionically linked internet.

But then, an Elder Brain gained sentience, with or without the influence of Ilsensine. Staging a massive uprising, it proceeded to mind-flayerize much of the gith population and enslave the rest, using its own corrupted brain matter to infect the other Elder Brains with its thought processes.

It was only a matter of luck that led to a gith victory- Zerthimon wanted to abandon the decadent way of life that led to the creation of the mind flayers, but Gith wanted to rebuild the empire through conquest. The split resulted in the beginnings of the githyanki and githzerai.

Sorry for the wall-o-text.

Don't forget A Darkness Gathering and Masters of Eternal Night, which form the first two books of the adventure trilogy.

dnd.rem.uz/3.5 D&D Books/Lords of Madness - The Book of Aberrations.pdf

I am so happy to see this thread. Had a big passion for those in the past. Previous comments gave you the biggest books: illithiad, book of darkness, dawn of the overmind...
Make sure to realize that each book present a version of the mindflayer race and concept. The lore on them, including their origins, change between books. Make you own pasta sauce with what pleases you the best for your campaign.
Also spelljammer can give you data on the illithid psi-tech for fantasy space ships :)

Right, I'm mostly looking for inspiration and other takes on mind flayers over the years. I'm looking to incorporate mind flayers as a central part of an eberron campaign.
(I'm a sucker for airships and robits)
One of the first ideas I came up with was making one of the players' major quest-givers a/handlers a mindflayer in disguise who is actually trying to find a way around his reliance on feeding upon other sentient creatures.

My favorite bit of Mindflayer lore has always been 'the Adversary'. Basically, it's a legendary Mindflayer who retained their human mind during and after the transformation, and is sorta like Mindflayer batman.

In my setting, illithids are parasitic body snatchers that are floating, disembodied heads. They find a recently decapitated humanoid and graft themselves onto the neck stump, becoming the body's new head. Their new bodies don't rot away since they're for all intents and purposes alive again.

Things get really nasty if they manage to get an exceptionally strong body. Their physical abilities are rather weak, but their mental attributes are crazy nasty.

In the game I ran, the barbarian in the group was killed by one, and her body was stolen. After the mind flayer head settled on its new perch, the party was nearly single-handedly destroyed from stronk psionic head+stronk barbarian body. The illithid escaped and went on to become a major villain for the rest of the game.

It was comedic in a sort of way, how a main villain was now a squid head on the decapitated body of a barbarian woman, but holy hell was it a nightmare to face.

Oh yeah, and the illithid had a kid while using its human body, and that kid went on to become a magic user with aberrant taint, thus beginning a cursed bloodline. Just as the illithid planned

terrible

If your quest giver is the Adversary, you could surprise even more your players.

In eberron, mind flayers can be interesting even more if you play them psipunk on this magicpunk setting. Psigenetics to get rid of the brain dependency?

Up to you what you'll do with the daelkyr genesis which is imho less badass than the time traveler genesis.

So, Dead Space then?

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Interesting idea.
I ws actually planning in having them be the head of a dragonmarked house, with a fully-functioning Siberys mark manifesting on their body. It was mainly meant to designate them as someone plainly important in the campaign.

As for removing the dependency, I have a couple of adventures planned revolving around the finding, theft, loss, and re-acquisition of an artifact I'm calling the Golden Brain( or maybe crystal? I haven't quite decided upon the material).
This artifact functions as a sort of horn-of-plenty for mindflayers.

I was also actually thinking about working them into being an ancient proto-civilization, that was largely responsible for the creation of the Eberron world in the first place.

Why do illithids need to eat people brains? Why can't they eat monkey, cow, goat, lamb, pig, or any other animal brains?

As psionic beings, they require the thoughts of sentient beings, as well as the boring grey goop of brain matter
Atleast tbat's my take on it.
And besides, they wouldn't be as creepy if they just ran around hunting animals all day.

I loved the Illithiad back when I owned it, the leather daddy suits they used to raid the surface always stuck out to me

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=illithid

Huh. Neat.