Mind flayer

Mind flayers, also known as illithids (meaning "mind flayers" or "mind rulers" in Undercommon), were evil and sadistic beings, feared by sentient creatures on many worlds across the multiverse due to their powerful innate psionic abilities. Dwellers of deep Underdark areas, these alien humanoid-looking aberrations sought to expand their dominion over all other creatures, controlling their minds to use them as hopeless slaves and devouring their brains for sustenance.

Description
Mind flayers were humanoid in appearance, but with an octopus-like head with four tentacles surrounding a lamprey-like mouth. They were warm-blooded amphibians who hated sunlight. Their hands had three long reddish fingers and an opposable thumb.

Illithids fed on the brains of sentient creatures (mainly humanoids). They were the only kind of sustenance that could sustain the mind flayer physiology, which required hormones, enzymes and psychic energy that only brain tissue could provide. Feeding was an euphoric experience for a mind flayer, as it absorbed its victim's memories, personality, and fears. Mind flayers healthy from brain-rich diets excreted a kind of slimy mucous substance that coated their mauve skins. The psionic energy also left traces of the original prey's individuality on a mind flayer's culture and sense of aesthetics.

Individual mind flayers were rarely found alone; rather, they were usually accompanied by two or more slaves mentally bound to them. Typical enslaved races found among mind flayers included grimlocks, ogres, quaggoths, and troglodytes.

They were capable of speaking Undercommon and Deep Speech, but preferred telepathic communication and would attempt to mentally dominate any non-slave, non-illithid they met. Their natural psionic abilities also made them respected in the eyes of the drow, beholders, duergar, and the other dominant races of the Underdark.

The abundant psionic abilities of mind flayers allowed them to levitate at will, as well as detecting thoughts of nearby creatures and dominating or charming any kind of creature in their vicinity. Additionally, there were reports of mind flayers capable of innately casting suggestion. They were also capable of teleporting themselves via plane shift.

Some illithids dedicated themselves to studying and honing their innate abilities. Known as illithid psions, they were capable of even more remarkable feats of psionic power, including telekinetic abilities akin to mage hand and telekinesis; further mental control abilities such as charm person, command, sanctuary, fear, crown of madness, phantasmal force, and confusion; and even divination abilities such as guidance, true strike, see invisibility, clairvoyance, and scrying.

Personality
Mind flayers were tyrants, slavers, and planar voyagers. They viewed themselves as masterminds, controlling, harvesting, and twisting the potential of other creatures to further their evil and far-reaching goals. Although they cooperated to achieve a goal, they would back away at the first sign that something was not profitable to their self-serving interests.

However, despite their aggressiveness, illithids were ultimately a paranoid and fearful race. They were relentlessly hunted by the gith, so any mind flayer colony's first priority was concealment and survival.

Combat
In spite of their lack of physical abilities, mind flayers were feared by all beings in the Underdark because of their great mental prowess. In addition to the small array of mind-affecting spells which every illithid had at their disposal to take control of their prey, they also frequently employed a powerful mind blast to affect a multitude of foes. The mind flayer's mind blast was a 60-foot (20-m) cone that stunned anyone caught within it.

Normally, a mind flayer would use its mind blast ability to stun a few foes and then drag them away to feed. Once it had its victims, it would attach all of its tentacles to the head of its victim. Then, the mind flayer sucked out the brains, instantly killing the victim, as long as it only had one head. The mind flayer used its other spells mainly to enslave its minions and keep them under total control, as well as on the battlefield.

They also had the ability to craft psionic seals.

Society
Mind flayer communities typically ranged in size from two hundred to two thousand, and that was counting only the illithids. Each mind flayer in the community likely had at least two slaves to do its bidding. In these communities, the number of slaves often far outstripped the number of mind flayers. For example, the illithid city of Oryndoll had a total population of just under 24,000 as of 1372 DR, but mind flayers accounted for only about 4,300 of that number.

When problems arose or the mind flayers wished to discover some secret, they formed inquisitions. These inquisitions were made up of a team of mind flayers, not unlike an adventuring party—each mind flayer used their own talents and abilities to achieve the inquisition's goal. If a situation was too large for just an inquisition to handle, the mind flayer community put together a cult. A cult was much larger than an inquisition and was spearheaded by two mind flayers who constantly vied for greater power within the cult.

Although mind flayers willingly came together to achieve an end, they were always vying for more control in the community, but even then they were always beneath the elder brain. The elder brain was the heart of the community. Held in a pool of briny fluids, the elder brain consisted of all the brains of the dead mind flayers in the community.

Mind flayer names were strains of thoughts and images that identified them to other members of the race. Since these names were too complex to be pronounced or even expressed in words, other races of the Underdark adopted rough translations in Undercommon by usually combining descriptive words that conveyed the general idea of the mind flayers' original names in order to identify them.

Reproduction


Illithids were all hermaphrodites, and once or twice in their life they would lay a clutch of eggs from which tadpoles hatched. The tadpoles were kept in the elder brain tank, where they were fed brains by caretakers and engaged in cannibalism for around 10 years. The elder brain also fed exclusively on tadpoles. Tadpoles that survived to maturity were put through the ceremony of ceremorphosis, where they were implanted in a humanoid victim and devoured its brain, taking its place and merging with the body and transforming it into a new illithid. Only some humanoid species were suitable hosts for illithid tadpoles.

Some tadpoles, quite rarely, were born as ulitharids, which were biologically bigger, stronger, and more powerful and cunning than regular mind flayers. They became ulitharids or illithid-nobles, and possesed six face tentacles instead of the regular four. Elder brains would often consider destroying it, as it would doubtlessly prove a rival, but many learned instead to manipulate the ulitharids, and use them as viziers or advisors instead.

A urophion was a subspecies of mind flayer created as guardians for a mind flayer community. An urophion was a roper that had survived the tadpole implantation process. They were usually treated as second-class citizens but were permitted to join with the elder brain upon death.

Religion
Mind flayer religion was once non-existent. In the time when they had invaded the shield dwarf kingdom of Shanatar and captured many shield dwarves, the mind flayers had no gods. Originally, their plan was to create a superior race of dwarves, skilled in both mechanics and psionics that would be loyal solely to the mind flayers. However, when the dwarves began to stage uprisings and rebellions, the city of Oryndoll, where the experimentation was occurring, was plunged into chaos. The only reason the city did not fall to the duergar rebellions was because of the sudden appearance of the mind flayer god Ilsensine. Since Ilsensine's appearance, the mind flayers became deeply religious and began to develop the formidable psionic powers that the race was known for. Ilsensine's favored proxy was Lugribossk.

Mind flayers once had an additional god called Maanzecorian, who was killed by Tenebrous, the undead shadow of the demon lord Orcus, though this fact was unknown to most.

Illithid magic
Although most mind flayer arcanists were wizards, a few were also born with the gift of sorcery. Because a mind flayer sorcerer was naturally more intelligent than other mind flayers, it was better able to resist psionics. For the most part, an illithid with the gift of sorcery would use defensive spells such as greater invisibility and resist energy as well as spells to further hinder enemies, such as ray of exhaustion and touch of idiocy.

A mind flayer who decided to follow the path of wizardry could become an undead creature known as an alhoon or an illithilich.

Subraces

 * Alhoon: An undead mind flayer that had achieved a lesser form of lichdom.
 * Ulitharid: A superior version of a illithid.
 * Vampiric illithid: A feral illithid with vampiric powers.

History
Some theorized mind flayers to be aliens from the future (as stated in The Sargmne Prophecies), who had come back in time to prevent the end of the world. Facing extinction, they sent the greatest spelljamming fleet in history back in time. Due to their futuristic technology and ships, many believe that they were a cursed in-bred mutant offspring of humans from a distant world. Some even believed that they might have originated in the Far Realm, or at least were warped by it.

An untold number of millennia in their past, mind flayers were the most powerful race in the Inner Planes, commanding vast empires from the Astral Plane that spanned multiple worlds and were kept under control by their nautiloids. At some point, the gith, their most prominent slave race, rebelled and brought down the entirety of the mind flayer empires in the Astral Plane in less than a year. The surviving mind flayer enclaves in the Material Plane were constantly and mercilessly hunted down by raiding parties from both the githyanki and githzerai factions, bringing the illithid race to the brink of extinction.

Sometime around -11000 DR, illithid refugees from the planet Glyth arrived on Toril and founded the city of Oryndoll in the Underdark.

In -8100 DR, the illithids from Oryndoll attacked eastern Shanatar, starting the twenty-year long Mindstalker Wars. The war ended with a retreat of the illithids, but they managed to capture and enslave the dwarves from Clan Duergar, who were experimented with during the following millenia and eventually became the duergar subrace. Around -4000 DR, the duergar slaves rebelled and broke free from the mind flayers, subsequently founding several holds across the northern Underdark. In -1850 DR, the city of Oryndoll was attacked by the duergar as part of a series of attacks against all their enemies.

The mind flayers were first contacted by the Netherese in -1064 DR.

In 153 DR, an army of illithids and lycanthrope slaves invaded and conquered the dwarven city of Gauntlgrym. The ruined city remained disputed by groups of aboleths, duergar, drow, and illithids until it was retaken by the Companions of the Hall in the late 15 century DR.

In 1154 DR, the town of Ch'Chitl was founded by an illithid cult seeking to establish a partnership with Skullport. The city's elder brain planned to use the town as a foothold in a move to enslave Waterdeep. In 1250 DR, however, the city was attacked by githyanki, mortally injuring the elder brain and derailing their invasion plans. In 1385 DR, the city was ravaged by the Spellplague, which created horribly mutated mind flayers with extraordinary psionic abilities.

Sometime in the mid-13 century DR, the illithids managed to reestablish their domain on Glyth, from where they conducted selective breeding experiments with oortlings. Around that same time, there was also an illithid colony in a free-standing object in Realmspace known as the Skull of the Void, in which they performed breeding experiments on beholders. Sometime in the late 14 century DR, Glyth was laid to waste by the elder evil known as Atropus, who had been concealed in one of the planet's rings.

In the late 15 century DR, mind flayers had lost the knowledge of how to construct their plane-crossing nautiloid vessels. Since the illithis knew that the end of the nautiloids would mean their permanent exile in the Material Plane, a few colonies were dedicated to rediscovering the secrets of nautiloid construction.

Notable mind flayers

 * Galuum
 * Grazilaxx
 * Methil El-Viddenvelp
 * Yharaskrik
 * Xetzirbor

Appearances

 * Adventures:
 * Out of the Abyss
 * Computer Games:
 * Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear
 * Baldur's Gate: The Black Pits
 * Neverwinter
 * Neverwinter Nights 2
 * Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
 * Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace
 * Novels:
 * Archmage (mentioned)
 * Homeland
 * Exile
 * Night of the Hunter
 * Rise of the King
 * Servant of the Shard
 * Siege of Darkness
 * Sojourn (mentioned)
 * Starless Night
 * Tangled Webs
 * The Companions
 * The Ghost King
 * The Orc King (mentioned)
 * Vengeance of the Iron Dwarf (mentioned)
 * Windwalker