Illithids know that only through the domination of others can they actualize their inner desires, needs...

Isnt there something about the psychic energy rather then the brain matter itself is what sustains them? I imagine lesser creatures might just not have enough, maybe they would have to eat an impossible amount of their brains in order to sustain themselves.

They need human to create true illithids and at least humanoids races to create intelligent semi-illithids.

? No? Illithids are in human monsters with no concept of or desire to experience empathy. They dominate thralls as a means to an end

Is it objectively good to burn them and scatter the ashes?

Deus Zarus, and the Vult to slaughter Illithids.

Well, they reproduce by using live mammalian humanoids of height between 5 to 7 feet.
The brains they consume have to be of a sentient creature, as they feed on the psychic essence and not the material. 1/week is the usual, 1/month is the minimum

>Is it truly a requirement for illithids for the brains they eat to be sapient?

Yes

They also claim it tastes better if the creature was suffering or experiencing terror before it died

Fuck off

Illithids want thralls to further their plans of returning to the astral sea so the can get back to conquering it. The only thing they deserve is a decapitation

Not about good or evil. There is an inherent disparity between the eatER and the eatEE. And if the eatEE can wipe out the eatER they damn well better, and fast. Otherwise you end up like cows here on good ol' Earf: fucking cattle.

In the name of The Burning Hate we shall purge these parasites of our Plane!

No Idea. I just meant there's no point in trying to endear a race that ENSLAVES MINDS to the race who's MINDS they ENSLAVE. Because, you know, that's silly.

Well, it doesn't line up with existing lore, but it's a neat idea. I've often thought it would be neat if there was a high-Int race that thought of humans as working animals/pets, but in such way that said humans didn't feel taken advantage of.

Too much of a minefield to actually run, but the idea appeals.

Give it tits and you've got the start of an anime.

humans eat all body parts

I like the explenation in Lords of Madness (the 3.5 book of aberratons) that Mind Flayers don't, in fact, need to eat brains, at least not to survive - for that they eat normal food.

Rather, eating brains is what keeps them sane. A mind flayer who goes a long time without eating a brain will start to act...strangely, apparently having gone insane.

ALSO, Lords of Madness is what introduced us to the neothelid: an illithid tadpole that was never implanted nor eaten by an Elder Brain, usually a result of the latter's destruction and the tadpole eating all of its fellows in the brine pool and then moving on. It grows into a hugely long psychic worm-thing. The thing is, neothelids - at least in Lords of Madness - were just as intelligent as Mind Flayers, or at the worst nearly so. They just had utterly alien, incomprehensible mindsets.

Therefore isn't reasonable to conclude that Mind Flayers who don't eat brains for a long time aren't *going insane*. Rather, their minds are reverting back to their more natural state, that of a neothelid, and it is the Mind Flayer that represents the truly unnatural evolution of a neothelid.

It also puts the kibosh on their typical argument of "well, we need to survive to". The fact that neothelids are a thing, and again are just as intelligent as mind flayers, shows that no you don't need to eat brains to survive. You just choose to.

I like your post a lot. But to play devil's advocate: Aren't the neothelids eating brains by the very act of cannibalizing their siblings? Thus, that is how they survive?

It's not clear if neothelids need to eat their siblings to become neothelids; or if they're just hungry and their siblings are the only viable source of food for the first part of their lives, and only by eating each other will they survive long enough to grow to a size where they can escape the brine pool.

I favor the latter explanation, which makes mind flayers (or rather, the elder brains) particularly evil - they don't feed their own kids, forcing them to turn to cannibalism when the Elder Brain dies (otherwise the tadpoles are either eaten by the brain or undergo cereomorphosis before starvation becomes an issue). It's entirely possible that part of a neothelid's apparent "insanity" is just knowing that they had to kill and eat their own siblings in order to live.

Likewise, mind flayers going "insane" is the result of a neothelid mindset re-asserting itself but in a body that is completely alien to what its mind is equipped to handle.

It probably doesn't help that the Elder Brain would eat *them* when it was alive, as well as probably psychically fuck with them a lot as a way to mentally "keep in shape".

Pity the neothelid.

So basically, they need to eat humanoid brains to maintain a humanoid personality template?

>Is it truly a requirement for illithids for the brains they eat to be sapient
Yes.

Evil is subjective, the race being eaten is as moraly clean to genocide them as the illthid are morally right in eating that species brain.

Only the loser can say who was wrong.

So the mind flayer's mind is a result of the union of the humanoid body and the parasitic proto-flayer, kept staple by the consumption of brains.

The abstinence of that action causes their mind to revert to the original neothelid's mind set.

So what would cause their mind to revert to the personality of the humanoid that underwent cereomorphesis?

I don't think that can happen. The host's brain is gone.

I do recall something about Ilithids sometimes retaining small traces of the hosts' personalities and these being somewhat embarassing.

As said, the mind flayer tadpole actually eats and physically replaces the host's brain during cereomorphosis, so it can't happen.

So there's no possibility of a "good" Illithid?
good

Anything is possible, but I wouldn't count on it.

There is one in Complete Divine, or the other holy book, DDO and Neverwinter online but the idiot who wrote the CD one stated it as female, (Dumbass) and the reason it's good is because of Stockholme syndrome, so that's kind of fucking hilarious in itself. It's not the first time they've done that, completely disregarding what they've built up to with Lords of Madness and the Illithad.

A prime reason why Illithid of evil is that the trauma caused by Cerebromorphis actually passes on post the transformation leaving the host Illithid in everlasting perpetual psychic AGONY feeling nothing but the most heighten of negative emotions. Only by mastering their psionics at the age of 20 can they actually compose themselves, and until then, Illithid are subject to the use of Psionic stones they inscribe in their settlements that imbue them with feelings of ease, and the Elder Brain itself serves a part of this process. Nevermind the fact that post-transformation, Illithid may exhibit Habits of their world self, or at worst, a partial personality, which are the hard coded-remnants of their donor body's self imposing on their behavior in a similar vein to how the human mind works if you cut the connecting part of the brains two hemispheres.

In fairness to the CD illithid, Lords of Madness wasn't published until a year or so later, and the idea of illithids having genitals goes back at least to the Drizzt book "Exile", where Drizzt is being strangled by one and in order to escape knees one in the nads (the line goes something to the effect of "Drizzt didn't know anything about the anatomy of a mind flayer, but he saw a basically humanoid shape and so allowed himself some assumptions")

There was that Illithid captain in the Spelljammer novels who was probably at least neutral in that he only ever ate kobold slaves and used his mental powers to make sure they weren't in pain while he was chowing down on their brain.

Illithad in 2e had the Herm change though. The Drizzt book probably came before though. They were at the herm stage in 3.5 with the CD (Was that the 3e one or 3.5? I forget.)

I remember reading a neat interpretation of Illithids on some OSR blog or other.

You know the way that if you use a tool long enough your brain starts to think of it as an extension of you? For example, instead of thinking "I'll turn my car's steering wheel to the left" you just think "I'll go left"
Illithids being a telekinetic and telepathic species, they see everything within telekinesis range as being "them". This includes sapient creatures as the mental domination thing is essentially a reflex.
To an Illithid, a victim resisting mind control feels kinda like your arm suddenly going rogue and trying to murder you. Suffice to say it freaks them out.
I can't remember how it explained how Illithids relate to each other though.

To extend this idea a bit, you could say that Illithids not being able to control their slaves is seen as a mental illness. Like if you saw someone having a fight with their own left arm.

Exile was published in 1990, which only would have been a year into 2nd Edition's run. I don't know when illithids got described as hermaphrodites, but it could have been later.

3.0 was 2000 to 2003; 3.5 was 2003 to 2007.

Illithiad is in 1998 it seems. Though they might have mentioned in 2e the hermaphroditism earlier, I might not have all the stuff for it.

Yes

Well, there's no inherent reason genitalia and the parasite-host thing couldn't both happen. Illithids dominate a host body and warp into a mind flayer, when two mind flayers mate the offspring is a neolithid that needs to be given a host of its own.