Quote Originally Posted by KillianHawkeye View Post
The fact that mind flayers are actually invading the past from the remains of their crumbling empire at the end of time is pretty stupid, but at the same time it could be an episode of Doctor Who which is kind of awesome. It also gives rise to weird questions about their possible relationship to humanity and whether or not they were the cause of their own existence.
I'm not sure that's canon. The Illithiad has excepts from the the Sargonne Prophecies and the Astromundi Chronicles that first introduce the concept of a Far Realm into D&D cosmology, and also seed a narrative that illithids are the results of wizards who've probed the boundaries of the future and were horribly warped. There is an implied intersection between time manipulation and the Far Realm within these fragments, though it is not explicitly stated.

What is however, is that the illithid empire was not in a distant future of existence, but the distant past. The illithids had an empire that spanned uncounted prime material planes, and their might was so great that even the eternal Blood War paused to take notice. Where you are correct is that the Sargonne Prophecies strongly imply that illithids traveled to the distant past from the future, and from there built their empire.

I can't recall anything from the 3.5 aberrations monsterbook that specifically contradicts the origins of illithids, and most certainly shouldn't their distant past empire. There is some corroboration in Lords of Madness to the time-travel backwards in the Aboleth section: given their unique racial memory, aboleths can remember the entirety of their forebearer's knowledge, to Origin. They have no collective memory of the creation and rise of illithids, they simply appeared.

Moreover, the greater established history of races makes no sense if the illithid empire was in a distant future. The children of Gith would not exist now in the contemporary D&D present if the rebellion and destruction of empire hadn't happened in a distant past. Even in the hypothetical that it was in a future from which the illithids and proto-gith escaped, it would breach canon in that the Far Realm is the conduit of time travel, and horribly warps those that meddle. Illithids clearly have paid the Far Realm tax, and the gith have not.