What would an above-ground Illithid city look like?

[polymphus]

Hey all,

I'm currently creating a custom world for an upcoming 5e campaign. It's got heavy Lovecraft influences, and is set in a human city ruled by Mind Flayers. The PCs will be a small gang of rebels trying to return the city to human control.

The Illithids took is over perhaps 30-40 years previously, and have changed a lot of things about the city to better suit their biology.

What would this city look like? Some thoughts I've had

1) it seems like an individual Mind Flayer can't control that many humans at a given time. Even if they have 50-100 each (which seems like a lot given the lore I've read), they're going to need a large number of non-mind-controlled servants to work for them, and they're going to need to use other means to control the populace. This makes me think there'd be a mind-controlled and heavily-armed police force as their main tool to enforce their will. Maybe controlled lieutenants in command of uncontrolled units, even.
2) since they generally live in the Underdark, sunlight is gonna be a huge problem. Since they're the ones in control, a lot of human activity is going to have to move from day to night -- sleep cycles shifted 12 hours etc, with daylight being a time when they're weaker and more vulnerable. I imagine they'd be living in palaces etc with the windows either boarded up or removed entirely.
3) maybe some sorta large magical scrying objects around the place, to let the illithids and their servants monitor what's going on in.

What else could I put in there? What would the city look like? How would society change?

[Grizl' Bjorn]

Not a complete answer, but on the specifically architectural aspects of the city- NEVER be ashamed of the classics. Lovecraftian architecture, and fan-art of the mythos, is your friend here. Plagarise it unashamedly while adding your own zest to it. Google image 'cthulu city', 'arctic city' etc.

[VoxRationis]

I imagine it would look a lot like a concentration camp. Architecture would be designed to reinforce a total lack of control on the parts of the human inhabitants, with tons of double-gates and internal walls to restrict movement. There might be a whole other elevated layer of the city for the illithids and their personal guards/servants, depending on how much they're investing in altering the structure of the city to fit their ends. I wouldn't expect a lot of human guards; illithids would prefer to get more bang for their buck by directly controlling small numbers of tough creatures like minotaurs or ogres. Besides, the ogres are less likely to develop sympathies for the human populace or be involved in a rebellion.

[Mechalich]

Illithids primarily view humans as a food source. Sure they keep some around as bodyguards/manservants, but for the most part the purpose of a large human population is as a brain supply.

So there's a two-fold goal - insuring the city retains the necessary territory to continuing supplying the human cattle with the necessary resources in the face of rival powers while at the same time churning out as many humans as possible. Depending on how often your illithids have to consume a brain, the number of humans needed to keep the community going is massive even at small absolute numbers of illithids. The old Illithiad postulated 1 brain per month, which means every single illithid is churning through a minimum of 12 humans a year. At that level 2-3 illithids are capable of equaling the background death rate from all other causes on their own (this is obviously too high, you'll want your illithids to eat less). So even a massive metropolis might only be capable of supporting a few hundred illithids at best.

I imagine that the illithids controlling your city don't necessarily live in it - at least not in the human parts. They probably live in an underground/fully-enclosed complex near the city center and coordinate their rule primarily through some intermediary class. Probably via members of some species they are not inclined to feed upon but they can control with relative ease (gargoyles perhaps). Also something carnivorous, to feed on all that leftover human tissue the illithids do not need. This overseer class is also likely to serve as the army that defends the city from outsiders.

If the illithids have the freedom to do so - meaning they are ruling openly and they don't have to worry about offending the neighbors, expect them to massively restructure society along the lines of a human-breeding operation. So the gender ratio will be skewed, with the bulk of the adult population being females who undergo nearly constant mandated pregnancies. Adult males will be limited to a small number of mind-controlled breeder specimens. Most of the workforce will be conducted by juveniles, who get converted to brain food once they achieve adulthood, possibly after a brief program of psionic treatment to make them 'flavorful.' It goes without saying that this would be incredibly awful for all the humans.

[Vogie]

I would see it as an Arcology-style massive city-building. I would expect large areas for farming - the roof of the building, as well as vertical farms down the sides, to feed the humans. That way, the Illithids have a the main section of the city largely in a faux-Underdark on the inside. While the Illithids would start by largely mind-controlling the populace, after a generation or three without outside intrusion, the human population would become used to the oppression and simply live in the Arcological building for status-quo-based safety, a la "The Island", "Soylent Green" (or any of the other Psych-It's-Actually-A-Dystopia stories).

You could have a class structure for the humans similar to a Feudal serfdom or communist collective-farm, but with all nobility/state controls replaced with Illithids - there are mostly serfs (divided between farm work and childcare), a fair amount of artisans, and those few who rise up to be the valets & bodyguards of their Illithid overlords. There's going to be a large turnover of people (if each Illithid needs 12+ brains/year for food), so procreation is wildly encouraged, and there is some sort of romanticized retirement that all of the human inhabitants are looking forward to.... not knowing that it's actually them getting their brains consumed.

[Blake Hannon]

[Bohandas]

1) it seems like an individual Mind Flayer can't control that many humans at a given time. Even if they have 50-100 each (which seems like a lot given the lore I've read), they're going to need a large number of non-mind-controlled servants to work for them, and they're going to need to use other means to control the populace. This makes me think there'd be a mind-controlled and heavily-armed police force as their main tool to enforce their will. Maybe controlled lieutenants in command of uncontrolled units, even.

IIRC canonically their primary means of control was brainwashing.

For inspiration on this perhaps look into things like 1984, The Giver, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, To Serve Man, and They Live

Not a complete answer, but on the specifically architectural aspects of the city- NEVER be ashamed of the classics. Lovecraftian architecture, and fan-art of the mythos, is your friend here. Plagarise it unashamedly while adding your own zest to it. Google image 'cthulu city', 'arctic city' etc.

To that end see my post on the surreal worlds thread in which I discuss how to construct non euclidean and multiply connected maps

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...18&postcount=7
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...Surreal-Worlds

[Wampyr]

Okay so I ran a game a while back in which a city on the surface world had been inhabited by mind flayers. I can't remember everything off the top of my head but I'll do my best with the important stuff.

The laws of the city banned psionic practice, as psionic capability is what caused their former slaves, the duergar and the gith, to become independent and rebel. Necromancy is also banned, as undead cannot be harmed by psionic attacks in any way. The punishment for these crimes differed. Psionic practice resulted in brain consumption, due to the nutritional value of a psionically enriched brain. Necromancy was punished by execution and destruction of the body by evil clerics and blackguard that were employed by the mind flayers. (I believe arcane practices in general were banned.)

The elder brain controlled a hoard of about five thousand thralls. To accomplish this, crystals that channeled psionic power were placed around the city in defensive positions. There were four of these crystals in the city, each about the size of a refrigerator. Each one was only an extension of the elder brain and controlled around a thousand thralls. The thralls could not leave the region of their psionic crystal or the brain would lose its grip on them.

The crystals were always guarded by at least one mind flayer and either mind-controlled thralls or mercenaries. The crystals themselves emitted a slightly weakened psionic blast every 1d4 rounds (rolled after every blast) but they were to busy to do anything else (This was my way of avoiding the crystal just mind-controlling the whole party at once.)

An npc that I made using the 3.5 psionics rules created and sold wards that granted +4 on saves to avoid mind control. 3/5 players had one.

In the city there was a large bath-house, in which brains were stored, and new mind flayers were bred. The baths were full of slime rather than water of course.

The Elder Brain itself was in an inconspicuous cave system beneath the city being guarded by more mind flayers, and their unlikely allies, the duergar.

The duergar were promised a share of the city and allowed to keep their own slaves in return for aiding the elder brain. As time passed the players saw more and more duergar showing up in the streets and kicking in the doors of the un-mind-controlled citizens.

Hope this helped, and feel free to use as much of it as you want.
Sorry if there are any typos, I did this very quickly.

[raygun goth]

one mind flayer eats one brain a month, minimum

so thirty illithids eat 30 brains a month

a city eats hundreds

assuming the brains they are eating are 16 years old (again, a minimum, The Illithiad tells me they need adult brains), the metabolic cost to get to an edible brain for the mind flayer is 192 brains, which means for each illithid there needs to be a support structure in place that can handle one death per month for over 192 months

about 20,000 brains for a city

that's minimum, that's like eating ramen every month

you can't sustain that by raiding, so you build a city, and you need to keep the humanoid population happy, well-educated, and self-sustaining. You can get a population to love you as long as you build a code of conduct by which becoming an illithid is the best thing that can ever happen to you, and feeding your bosses with your brain lets you live on somehow (you live on in happiness if you're good, you live on in terror if you're bad), and within one generation I guarantee you can get the populace to do anything you want, no direct oppression needed.

so my argument is that despite the weird squid cult religion, mind flayer cities are actually quite nice places to live.

as long as you don't break the law.

[noob]

And do not mind never living more than 30 years.

[raygun goth]

And do not mind never living more than 30 years.

The point is that the illithids aren't killing everyone for their brains. For everyone who gets eaten, there need to be a few hundred extra just to support that brain you ate - you're not going to eat all the farmers, carpenters, livery workers, street sweepers, cobblers, limners, coopers, and the like. You're only going to be eating the people you need to eat. It's not like cows where you can slaughter 100% of the population, in this scenario, your cows have to double as your ranchers and civic leaders and private citizens, because if you start filling those positions with mind flayers, that's 12 more brains a year, and that has a metabolic cost of at least 192 more brains. Humanoids get to live a perfectly normal life and either criminals or people who specifically petition to be eaten get to be eaten are the only ones who get eaten.

Like, ok. About 3% of the US population commits violent crime. That means that, assuming a modern crime rate (medieval crime rate is much higher), that you can get 3 brains out for every hundred brains you put in, under the strictest definitions. So you put in a population of around 400 humanoids per illithid and you don't even have to start cutting into your nonviolent citizens at all. How many people does Menzo-what-the-heck have in it? Between 30,000 and 60,000 (wow, it's tiny - Memphis in 2k BCE was that big), so at 45,000 pop, it could support about 1350 illithids without even dipping into reserves.

[Gwaednerth]

The point is that the illithids aren't killing everyone for their brains. For everyone who gets eaten, there need to be a few hundred extra just to support that brain you ate - you're not going to eat all the farmers, carpenters, livery workers, street sweepers, cobblers, limners, coopers, and the like. You're only going to be eating the people you need to eat. It's not like cows where you can slaughter 100% of the population, in this scenario, your cows have to double as your ranchers and civic leaders and private citizens, because if you start filling those positions with mind flayers, that's 12 more brains a year, and that has a metabolic cost of at least 192 more brains. Humanoids get to live a perfectly normal life and either criminals or people who specifically petition to be eaten get to be eaten are the only ones who get eaten.

Like, ok. About 3% of the US population commits violent crime. That means that, assuming a modern crime rate (medieval crime rate is much higher), that you can get 3 brains out for every hundred brains you put in, under the strictest definitions. So you put in a population of around 400 humanoids per illithid and you don't even have to start cutting into your nonviolent citizens at all. How many people does Menzo-what-the-heck have in it? Between 30,000 and 60,000 (wow, it's tiny - Memphis in 2k BCE was that big), so at 45,000 pop, it could support about 1350 illithids without even dipping into reserves.

But then we get into the question of crime and deterrents. If the truly horrible fate of having your brain devoured awaits anyone who commits even minor violent crimes, then that might deflate the violent crime rate, forcing the illithids to create situations that create the violent crime they need to survive. Alternatively, the same practices might be lead by greedy/gluttonous illithids who aren't content with one brain per month (I mean, consider how few humans are content with mere subsistence, especially factoring in that the illithids are a ruling class). I could see some really interesting tensions surrounding a group kind of like the Black Panthers who call out the illithids for manufacturing poverty to drive up crime to get more brains. You could also have some groups arguing that excephalation is cruel and unusual punishment just like real world opposition to the death penalty.

[raygun goth]

But then we get into the question of crime and deterrents. If the truly horrible fate of having your brain devoured awaits anyone who commits even minor violent crimes, then that might deflate the violent crime rate, forcing the illithids to create situations that create the violent crime they need to survive.

There's no evidence that deterrents have any effect on crime.

Alternatively, the same practices might be lead by greedy/gluttonous illithids who aren't content with one brain per month (I mean, consider how few humans are content with mere subsistence, especially factoring in that the illithids are a ruling class). I could see some really interesting tensions surrounding a group kind of like the Black Panthers who call out the illithids for manufacturing poverty to drive up crime to get more brains. You could also have some groups arguing that excephalation is cruel and unusual punishment just like real world opposition to the death penalty.

Well, of course you will. That's how society works.

But if your religion centers around getting your brain eaten, you can get good people to do anything. I mentioned that if you make sure that the afterlife is only attainable through the mouth of an illithid, you'll get people trying to jump in. Good people are rewarded in the illithid mind-gestalt, the bad are punished.

It is literally that simple. You get people believing in what you say, you can get them, as a community, to not just allow, but actively participate in any number of horrors, as long as you code it as virtuous and you only need to have one generation to do it.

[Bohandas]

There's no evidence that deterrents have any effect on crime.

I think you mean there's no evidence that the death penalty is a more effective deterrant than prison

[Bohandas]

The point is that the illithids aren't killing everyone for their brains. For everyone who gets eaten, there need to be a few hundred extra just to support that brain you ate - you're not going to eat all the farmers, carpenters, livery workers, street sweepers, cobblers, limners, coopers, and the like. You're only going to be eating the people you need to eat. It's not like cows where you can slaughter 100% of the population, in this scenario, your cows have to double as your ranchers and civic leaders and private citizens, because if you start filling those positions with mind flayers, that's 12 more brains a year, and that has a metabolic cost of at least 192 more brains. Humanoids get to live a perfectly normal life and either criminals or people who specifically petition to be eaten get to be eaten are the only ones who get eaten.

I think the illithids would still eat them once they were so old they could no longer work

[Zorku]

1) You can absolutely pull off hierarchy to get more use out of mind control, but after 40 years you're getting generations that were born into this, so the expectations should be radically different. You could probably litter this with references to The Tripods book series, and just have some coming of age ritual where "the best" humans were selected for mind control. Like any good villains, they make it look like their mind control is much more specific than it actually is, and try to suppress information about how they can actually just drop it off of one servant and apply it to a pesky intruder if they really need to. With folks that have grown up under heavy propaganda, the chosen servants would mostly still do whatever their masters wanted them to even when the mind control drops for awhile. If they painted that as a spiritual experience they might even be able to just cycle the mind control through a much larger pool, potentially bringing it to the "all post-puberty humans" levels from those books.

2) The tripods have a nice answer there as well. There's a big dome city filled with thick gas that's hard on the humans in it (though that can be said of the air in most post-industrialization cities.) If it's just a windowed dome they could tint the glass nice and dark to make the place more underdark-y, and you'd use have some poisonous gas included if I've sold you on this book reference. You could even use the minor withering effect as a cover story for how the masters eat their slaves; "Oh Bob? Yeah, reached the end of his lifespan at the ripe old age of 22. You know that thing you people say about how fast bright candles burn."

While we're going with novels, you could basically arrange the city like that Hunger Games civilization. Rich central district with a bunch of dirty farmer and peasant type districts around it. Realistically, you need basically all of the farms halfway out to the next city to be making the short trip to sell their crops in the city so that they can buy plows and such, when the 3-10 towns in the same area get saturated/run out of money. If the illithids don't screw with whatever level of mercantilism was already present, and the outer districts of the city still look fairly normal and go about their business, simply referring to that dark dome up on the hill as "the noble district," then farmers would probably still make the same trip they've always made to sell their crops. Religious leaders and the like denouncing this whole thing would be the major threat that the masters had to quash, but given the mind control and some scrying, that's pretty easy to do right up until you get that resistance effort rolling.

Assuming some method of surveillance as per 3), you'd want the resistance set up with a cell structure. Probably only one person in a cell gets orders from some contact or even via dead drop (good place for snapping a brick in half, hollowing it out, and then using the mending spell to seal a note inside of it,) and if they're really paranoid then then person pretends that they're the contact and gives the note to a fake-leader in the group, and all sorts of other quirky nonsense like that.

But then we get into the question of crime and deterrents. If the truly horrible fate of having your brain devoured awaits anyone who commits even minor violent crimes, then that might deflate the violent crime rate, forcing the illithids to create situations that create the violent crime they need to survive. Alternatively, the same practices might be lead by greedy/gluttonous illithids who aren't content with one brain per month (I mean, consider how few humans are content with mere subsistence, especially factoring in that the illithids are a ruling class). I could see some really interesting tensions surrounding a group kind of like the Black Panthers who call out the illithids for manufacturing poverty to drive up crime to get more brains. You could also have some groups arguing that excephalation is cruel and unusual punishment just like real world opposition to the death penalty.

Did crucifixion or the electric chair greatly reduce crime? Of course not. Did everyone in the society that used those tools think that there would be rampant crime if they stopped doing it? Yuppers.

If the illithids really want a few extra criminals it seems easy to mind control a citizen and make them start behaving violently, struggle against the peacekeepers, and spit obscenities the whole time they are being lead through the doors that people don't come back out from. I don't see why a populace would wise up to that, and as long as one side of the political spectrum thinks that this is how things have been for quite awhile and that you shouldn't rock the boat (with the mind control I'd honestly be surprised if only one side of the political spectrum leaned that way,) you're in the clear, at least until some underground resistance movement breaks out; but you've got a mind controlled army. What's the worst that could happen?

[VoxRationis]

The point is that the illithids aren't killing everyone for their brains. For everyone who gets eaten, there need to be a few hundred extra just to support that brain you ate - you're not going to eat all the farmers, carpenters, livery workers, street sweepers, cobblers, limners, coopers, and the like. You're only going to be eating the people you need to eat. It's not like cows where you can slaughter 100% of the population, in this scenario, your cows have to double as your ranchers and civic leaders and private citizens, because if you start filling those positions with mind flayers, that's 12 more brains a year, and that has a metabolic cost of at least 192 more brains.

Assuming you want a food populace with luxuries like shoes and clean streets. It's easier and cheaper to keep them in squalor, and frees people up for consumption.

[raygun goth]

Assuming you want a food populace with luxuries like shoes and clean streets. It's easier and cheaper to keep them in squalor, and frees people up for consumption.

And it makes them more likely to revolt.

Once you have it going, you're not really paying into the system. That's how the Tripods worked in the aforementioned novel. Once you have the system set up, your believers will start making up their own crazy excuses as to how awesome you are, while simultaneously oppressing each other.

Squalor is more expensive and deadlier to your product in the long run (yes, I know, chicken farms, blah blah, but also remember that in this case the chickens are self-aware and capable of improving their own situation). That's how poverty in an economic system works. If you keep them in squalor, they will start questioning your unquestionable religion much faster and much more dangerously. The same will happen if it's too nice, as well. I'm imagining a city that looks, on first glance, like an almost normal human city, people just talk about how great the Silent Masters are rather than about how great Pelor is, and with some very odd architectural features.

Plus, the point isn't that they want as many dumb, dirty people as they can get. They want as many smart, clean people who taste better. Wars have broken out over pepper. Deadly, bloody wars.

[Zorku]

(yes, I know, chicken farms, blah blah, but...)
They want as many smart, clean people who taste better.

So in this case the chickens from a chicken farm also taste like cardboard that's been sitting out in the rain, while free range chickens are more like what you might get at the kind of place you have to get reservations for at least a month in advance. Neither option is feasible for very long, but you get your factory style breakfast cereal from the violent convicts, a rather nice home cooked dinner from a portion of the other people that don't want to wither away from bone-itis but think they've got a good enough brain to "live on" through the masters, and the occasional delicacy through a variety of means that don't raise too much suspicion.

Only way the resistance gets wind of any of this is via a letter that was sent out as soon as some paranoid scholar stopped checking in, explaining that they would have definitely amended this note if they ever changed their mind about the whole petition process, yet everyone watched them say their goodbyes and walk through the point of no return, all of a day after the last time the reaffirmed the letter.

[raygun goth]

yessss

Definitely. And of course, there will be a resistance - much like there was resistance to social structures in the middle ages: not very big, worried only more about the finer points, and interested in getting the vote. I just wouldn't imagine the resistance would be very effective - after all, the Silent Masters can read minds pretty easily, and it'd be remarkably easy to make sleeper agents out of a resistance cell leader. The point is to make it look like the resistance is somewhat effective - permissible dissent is a sign that society is healthy, so planting false flags that the resistance is all terrorists and making sure that it is perfectly acceptable to make your dislike for the current government known will make the society look healthy even to people on the outside, because that is your goal. The appearance of healthy civilization.

Got to drum up an honor code - that's the quickest, easiest way to get society thinking the way you want it, make it "honorable" or "honest" to do what the mind flayers want people doing. After all, that's why we're still enamored with the sword and consider things like poison cheating - it was drilled into our culture that the sword is good and poison is bad and it still has some power over us all these centuries later.

[Bohandas]

Plus, the point isn't that they want as many dumb, dirty people as they can get. They want as many smart, clean people who taste better. Wars have broken out over pepper. Deadly, bloody wars.

Maybe something like The Matrix then. It ceryainly makes more sense here than it did there. I always wondered why the machines didn't just use chains.

[Zorku]

yessss

Definitely. And of course, there will be a resistance - much like there was resistance to social structures in the middle ages: not very big, worried only more about the finer points, and interested in getting the vote. I just wouldn't imagine the resistance would be very effective - after all, the Silent Masters can read minds pretty easily, and it'd be remarkably easy to make sleeper agents out of a resistance cell leader. The point is to make it look like the resistance is somewhat effective - permissible dissent is a sign that society is healthy, so planting false flags that the resistance is all terrorists and making sure that it is perfectly acceptable to make your dislike for the current government known will make the society look healthy even to people on the outside, because that is your goal. The appearance of healthy civilization.

Got to drum up an honor code - that's the quickest, easiest way to get society thinking the way you want it, make it "honorable" or "honest" to do what the mind flayers want people doing. After all, that's why we're still enamored with the sword and consider things like poison cheating - it was drilled into our culture that the sword is good and poison is bad and it still has some power over us all these centuries later.

Parts of that sound like you're mixing oil and water to me. Opposition is a sign of a healthy society, but rebellion of the terror variety is specifically aimed at convincing people that society isn't healthy, that the current rule is illegitimate and unable to maintain the security of order. The flashy attacks and such are more like advertising than warfare, though they rely on people thinking about them as warfare.

You cast burning hands on a couple of market stalls in the bazaar, kill some guards, and get out of there or otherwise deny the political system the ability to dole out justice, and then you turn around as if you're not the problem and start asking the people in the streets why the masters can't do anything to protect them from this kind of thing, and insist that everything was a paradise back when folks were being oppressed by whatever tyrant ruled over them before the masters (and nobody really remembers that crap, so eventually they accept that kind of propaganda out of desperation, trying the only thing they can to get out of this nightmare.)

This is kind of a limited take on terrorism, but it's also easy enough to use in a narrative. Strong opposition has a lot more to do with democracies being healthy, but that's more about peacefully handing off power to your political rivals on amicable terms so that people are free to choose whichever party offers them the best deal. A healthy monarchy (if that's even a fully cogent concept,) doesn't necessarily include anything like that, though we do think much more highly of the ones that slowly signed away their power to open up their government for that kind of thing... once those kinds of ideas started to gain any ground.


You could probably do a very 90's America kind of thing with a rebel movement, where people couldn't tell the difference between the two big options (we're pretty used to hearing that stance in the news today, but before people figured out how to make jokes about it it was so much less distinguishable,) and they form as kind of a third party.

If you're infatuated with the kinds of things I'm talking about, then half or more of the terrible things that rally people to start an underground rebel movement in the first place are fabrications (which actually works pretty well for a long campaign structure anyway...) and by the time they actually learn what's going on and why they should actually be fighting the masters they've got so much innocent blood on their hands that the few people that actually know the full story are left wondering if it was worth it... but you can just as easily present only atrocities that the masters are actually committing, and have your rebellion try to evacuate areas before they -merely- blow up statues and similar monuments, in order to run a substantially simpler 'black and white morality' campaign if you're more concerned with the heroic type story.

[JNAProductions]

Best answer. Made me laugh out loud. :)

I'll echo the two-layer sentiment. An underground layer, or lower layer, of cattle (well, humanoids with tasty brains) and an upper layer of wondrous architecture for the Illithids themselves.

[VoxRationis]

Maybe something like The Matrix then. It ceryainly makes more sense here than it did there. I always wondered why the machines didn't just use chains.

And put the simulator-machines out of jobs? The Matrix may be what muckraker types call a pork project, but it stimulates the economy!

[Nifft]

So hmm... the Illithids want to eat interesting, clever, spicy brains -- yet not kill all the people who will advance society & give them cool new technologies or art or whatever.

Basically we want to identify:
- Clever people; who are also
- People society would not miss.

Luckily there are several categories of such people:

• White collar criminals, especially in finance. Very clever, highly destructive to society. Sluuuuuuurp.
• Dishonest politicians. Not always clever, but some probably are. Also highly destructive. Sluuuuuuuurp.

I'm sure there are others.

= = =

What the city would actually look like... it should have floating buildings with tentacles dangling down. Doors have "privacy fringes" of tentacles, which you brush your head against as you enter a room. Showers jet water from wall-mounted tentacles. The entire city has been habituated to not flinch when they feel tentacles on the head.

[Bohandas]

The Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man and the movie They Live are kind of required watching for this I think. (also Soylent Green and possibly Cloud Atlas)

[Zorku]

So hmm... the Illithids want to eat interesting, clever, spicy brains -- yet not kill all the people who will advance society & give them cool new technologies or art or whatever.

Not exactly. The notion of progress is rather new. For most of history people expected civilization to basically be stagnant, for their kids to basically grow up leading the same lives they did, for the same troubles to be persistent nuisances and the same resources to be around to harvest forever. As we get a little bit past the typical eras of D&D we start to see more wide sweeping fashion trends and innovations, but people tended to not really understand that "we only domesticated the giant riding salamander 100 years ago" so they thought that basically everyone would have just used a giant riding salamander to move their belongings through the swamp, say, 500 years ago, or several thousand years ago.

Illithid lore kind of lets us play that in either direction, but maybe they don't care about that stuff and the humans don't either. The illithids basically just need a bunch of artists, with however much variety is practical.

Basically we want to identify:
- Clever people; who are also
- People society would not miss.

Luckily there are several categories of such people:

• White collar criminals, especially in finance. Very clever, highly destructive to society. Sluuuuuuurp.
• Dishonest politicians. Not always clever, but some probably are. Also highly destructive. Sluuuuuuuurp.

I'm sure there are others.

If they encouraged a thieves guild sort of group to emerge, but the city typically had and abundance of cheap magical locks on all the doors, they could probably skew that industry heavily in the arcane trickster and spell thief direction. Those folks aren't necessarily philosophers, but they've got a certain blatant wit and ability to see through complexity.

[Nifft]

Not exactly. The notion of progress is rather new.

According to Lords of Madness, the Illithids we know may have come backwards in time, from their empire at the end of time, specifically to ensure the eventual ascendance of that empire.

So... it ain't new to them, and it's their city.

[Zorku]

According to Lords of Madness, the Illithids we know may have come backwards in time, from their empire at the end of time, specifically to ensure the eventual ascendance of that empire.

So... it ain't new to them, and it's their city.

Yeah, I alluded to that. The progress that their thralls make doesn't necessarily have much to do with their empire's progress.

[kraftcheese]

Basically we want to identify:
- Clever people; who are also
- People society would not miss.

Sounds like the mind-flayers should be eating us nerds!