What if Mind Flayers...

[sjeshin]

What if instead of elder brains being the absorbed soup of old age mind flayers, it was actually an organism entirely apart from them, enslaved some by force, then through raising generation after generation with education telling them they were meant to only go in humanoids of a certain type and shape? What if that enslavement is what caused their decline and at the first sign of trouble the elder brains bailed to the past with their slaves? What if neotheillids are the natural state of illithids? They still have high intellect and are far more physically capable. Maybe they conquered the universe not these parasytic abominations? What if mind flayers can overtake any being, like dragons and make dracoflayers and just don't know it? Yep I think that's my next campaign idea. Does anyone see a hole in this?

[Faily]

What if instead of elder brains being the absorbed soup of old age mind flayers, it was actually an organism entirely apart from them, enslaved some by force, then through raising generation after generation with education telling them they were meant to only go in humanoids of a certain type and shape? What if that enslavement is what caused their decline and at the first sign of trouble the elder brains bailed to the past with their slaves? What if neotheillids are the natural state of illithids? They still have high intellect and are far more physically capable. Maybe they conquered the universe not these parasytic abominations? What if mind flayers can overtake any being, like dragons and make dracoflayers and just don't know it? Yep I think that's my next campaign idea. Does anyone see a hole in this?

That could be an interesting adventure...

Also googled Illithid Dragon, and was not disappointed.

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wik...stealer_dragon

[ExLibrisMortis]

Elder brains in symbiosis with mind flayers: they bring it brains and carry out its commands, and in turn, it organizes and leads the cabal... it sounds promising. Some ant species take over other species' colonies, and some species raid other ant colonies for workers. I could see elder brains doing something very similar.

It's not unlikely that there is some sort of backwash from the consumption of primarily humanoid brains. Or perhaps that "backwash" is really what they were after in the first place: blank brains with no strong powers of their own, to better assimilate into the greater mass of brains--as opposed to dragon brains, which come pre-loaded with major elemental power.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Hmmmm it did always strike me as odd that the Illithids of the dying universe of the future were able to murder their elderbrains to power the time portals. Illithids obedience to elder brains is pretty firm and gets stronger as Illithids get closer to the tank.

This reminds me of my chronotrigger campaign where the PCs killed all the Illithids that had traveled back in time in the prehistoric era thus completely removing Illithids from the world's timeline.

[Silly Name]

Hmmmm it did always strike me as odd that the Illithids of the dying universe of the future were able to murder their elderbrains to power the time portals. Illithids obedience to elder brains is pretty firm and gets stronger as Illithids get closer to the tank.

That issue would be solved by the Elder Brains themselves ordering the Illithids to murder them to power the portals. Maybe the Elder Brains knew that this is what was going to happen all along, and are ensuring that a stable time-loop is created, so that the Mindflayers may exist in the, the present and the future.

[DrMotives]

Brainstealer dragons are pretty cool, and course there are the roper-illithid things (name escapes me at the moment), plus the half-illithid template to create your own horrors. And yeah, by lore the neothilids are the natural state of illithid. They're explicitly amphibians, and the name neothilid is neoteny + illithid. A creature with neoteny is a larval form that reproduces without metamorphosis into an adult form. Real world examples, there are tadpoles that never become frogs (salamanders, really) and lay more tadpole eggs. There are also some carnivorous caterpillars that breed without ever becoming a moth or a butterfly.

A neothilid that's working to take down regular mind-flayers could be the central NPC of a high-level campaign easily. It could be run like a crime story, with a faceless worm as the real Keyser Soze behind low-tier minions offing each other in a bid to weaken the power of a parent group of illithid that are trying to use them as agents among the food races. Just when the players think the mind flayers are the big bad and strike them down, they find out that they acted out the part written for them by the neothilid all along.

[Fizban]

I like it. Much like Drow, Mind Flayers are overrated- their DCs aren't that high, the effects they use aren't ironclad, and Magic Circle makes any "take over the world via direct mind control" plan laughable. And much like the Drow, their society is painted as a self-defeating edge-fest which is completely unsustainable once you apply any population metrics. Mind Flayers have tons of SR and can stun people real good at closer ranges, but on a macro scale they're dependent on the DM letting them win. Wreck some unprepared or unlucky PCs? Sure! Take over the universe? Ha.

Neothelids on the other hand are just terrifying. I wouldn't expect them to take over the universe any more than dragons, but having dragons rule everything in spite of their default fluff because dragons are powerful is pretty common, so yeah. Neothelid abilities include DR/-, mass mind control, just melting people in a cone instead of stunning them, teleporting at will, and chasing people through teleport at will (because for some reason there's no arcane trace teleport, but there is a psionic). Neothelids don't include any reproductive info so you do technically have to add a line that allows them to spawn flayer tadpoles.

So a flayer timeline where Neothelids, capable of face-melting all but the hardiest of heroes and chasing down most who run away, eventually decided to take over. Then another psionic creature with less physical but more mental ability, the tentacly brains, noticed the weak mutants that occur when a tadpole finds its way into a humanoid. So they capture some tadpoles, raise some mutants as a new brainwashed clan, and time travel to the past in order to overwrite their old Neothelid masters. It's not really any less narratively self serving than the original version, but it's different.

[Florian]

What if instead of elder brains being the absorbed soup of old age mind flayers, it was actually an organism entirely apart from them, enslaved some by force, then through raising generation after generation with education telling them they were meant to only go in humanoids of a certain type and shape? What if that enslavement is what caused their decline and at the first sign of trouble the elder brains bailed to the past with their slaves? What if neotheillids are the natural state of illithids? They still have high intellect and are far more physically capable. Maybe they conquered the universe not these parasytic abominations? What if mind flayers can overtake any being, like dragons and make dracoflayers and just don't know it? Yep I think that's my next campaign idea. Does anyone see a hole in this?

Take a look at the Dominion of there Black, this is how PF handles Mind Flayers and Elder Brains, is pretty elaborate and already goes above and beyond the direction you want to take.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I think a straight neothelid/illithid comparison is a bit unfair. Yes, neothelid are much stronger, but they are also 25 HD with 15th-level manifesting, which is 17 extra HD for only 6 levels of manifesting.

I would assume that a it takes a lot of time for a larval flayer to mature into a gargantuan neothelid, they are comparatively defenseless while they do (larval flayers are CR 1 with 2 HD), and an ecosystem can't support that many neothelid. Illithid, on the other hand, are immediately 8 HD with mind blast and 9th-level telepath manifesting; they need twenty years to mature after ceremorphosis, but at least they won't die to random drow, and they can live in packs more easily. In the remaining century of their lives they can take many more class levels than a neothelid could. It only takes an illithid six levels in psion to have a manifester level equal to the neothelid, and they can take all ten levels of Thrallherd before approaching the same HD.

When comparing the two, it's a matter of trading pure physical power for concentrated mental power, and the mental power is much more useful when building a galaxy-spanning empire. Of course, mental power probably plays into the elder brain's preferences too, because it's a better ratio of brain-to-body mass, wasting less energy on those inedible bodies to grow more tasty food.

[atemu1234]

I like it. Much like Drow, Mind Flayers are overrated- their DCs aren't that high, the effects they use aren't ironclad, and Magic Circle makes any "take over the world via direct mind control" plan laughable. And much like the Drow, their society is painted as a self-defeating edge-fest which is completely unsustainable once you apply any population metrics. Mind Flayers have tons of SR and can stun people real good at closer ranges, but on a macro scale they're dependent on the DM letting them win. Wreck some unprepared or unlucky PCs? Sure! Take over the universe? Ha.

Neothelids on the other hand are just terrifying. I wouldn't expect them to take over the universe any more than dragons, but having dragons rule everything in spite of their default fluff because dragons are powerful is pretty common, so yeah. Neothelid abilities include DR/-, mass mind control, just melting people in a cone instead of stunning them, teleporting at will, and chasing people through teleport at will (because for some reason there's no arcane trace teleport, but there is a psionic). Neothelids don't include any reproductive info so you do technically have to add a line that allows them to spawn flayer tadpoles.

So a flayer timeline where Neothelids, capable of face-melting all but the hardiest of heroes and chasing down most who run away, eventually decided to take over. Then another psionic creature with less physical but more mental ability, the tentacly brains, noticed the weak mutants that occur when a tadpole finds its way into a humanoid. So they capture some tadpoles, raise some mutants as a new brainwashed clan, and time travel to the past in order to overwrite their old Neothelid masters. It's not really any less narratively self serving than the original version, but it's different.

It's worth noting Neothelids take an entire pool's worth of resources to 'create', though. What could have been hundreds of mind flayers takes a long period of time to incubate and become a Neothelid.

[Fizban]

It's worth noting Neothelids take an entire pool's worth of resources to 'create', though. What could have been hundreds of mind flayers takes a long period of time to incubate and become a Neothelid.

Depends on how many tadpoles are assumed to be in a pool. Checking Lords of Madness, apparently they somehow differentiate between the ages, such that the 2 or 3 survivors after 10 years from a particular spawning are pulled at the 10 year mark (unless a bunch of MFs all spawn simulataneously and then they just take whatever few are left and a new batch of MFs line up). All the Neothelid entry says is that there is one survivor from "thousands" in the pool, but each MF spawns a thousand, so a Neothelid could be worth as few as 4 or even 2 normal MFs (as an Elder Brain pool could have as low as two thousands and still have "thousands" and as low as 2 or even 1 survivor from each of those thousands). Sure, the Elder Brain's pool may have hundreds of thousands, but that's a may.

Not that it matters, since I specifically said you'd have to add spawning to Neothelids if you wanted them to be the true origin of MFs in the first place. Not hard to reverse engineer, just have them barf out however many thousand eggs into an isolated pool somewhere and you're fine. They're big enough to make a rather larger volume. Also, aren't the illithidae supposed to be part of a Far Realm infection (from the same "alien and hostile world)? Terrifying tentacled worms from beyond who do the thing where the thousands of spawn eat each other until only one is left, and then a human falls in one of their pools one day and one of them yeerk's its way in and creates the first Mind Flayer? Yeah, way cooler.

Incidentally, the most threatening thing about Mind Flayer society is that they come in cities. That is, they have a reproductive cycle that produces adults in 30 years (rather slow) and have multiple kids (4-9) with a bunch of innate hit dice and magical powers (devastating). If not constrained by a hard requirement of brains, they would be a major threat. Giants are similar with even more raw combat and siege capability, but massive food requirements if one stops to think. Yuan-ti on the other hand don't have any specified reproductive rates I can find- but they eat normal food and can make up percentages of overworld cities, which translates to thousands and makes it clear that they are city-capable, while still being born with the extra hit dice and magic that will make a city of them crush an equal sized city of humanoids.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Also, aren't the illithidae supposed to be part of a Far Realm infection (from the same "alien and hostile world)?

No, they're from the future (at least, according to Lords of Madness), forming a stable time loop. That's why the aboleth are terrified of them: their racial memories go back beyond the first conflicts between Law and Chaos, but they don't remember the illithid.

Aboleth are, incidentally, from a Far Realm infection. Piscaethes the Blood Queen seeded the Material with the aboleth, who more or less said "Well, that's your prerogative as an elder horror from beyond the bounds of sanity, we guess" and went on their separate ways.

Incidentally, the most threatening thing about Mind Flayer society is that they come in cities. That is, they have a reproductive cycle that produces adults in 30 years (rather slow) and have multiple kids (4-9) with a bunch of innate hit dice and magical powers (devastating). If not constrained by a hard requirement of brains, they would be a major threat.

Absolutely. LoM even goes to calculate that it would take a population of around 250 humanoids to sustain one mind flayer through natural population growth, and that's on a meagre diet. It's a good reason to ask the question "How will future Illithid have been feeding themselves, if it takes that many non-illithid?". They'd need entire planets devoted to brain growth. Expected plot twist: Earth's next for harvesting!

[liquidformat]

Man I guess I should actually read through LoM rather than just look at all the classes and monsters... Anyways that lore reminds me of stargate goa'uld. But based on those numbers one large city would need an entire world to keep it fed...