Illithid
In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, illithids (commonly known as mind flayers) are monstrous humanoid aberrations with psionic powers. They live in the moist caverns and cities of the enormous Underdark. They believe themselves to be the dominant species of the multiverse (see Spelljammer), and use other intelligent creatures as thralls, slaves, and cattle.
Mind flayers first appeared in the official newsletter of TSR Games, The Strategic Review #1, Spring 1975.
Illithid Abilities
Illithids have four octopus-like tentacles around a beaked or lamprey-like mouth, and require the brains of sentient creatures as part of their diet. An illithid who snares a living creature in all four of its tentacles can extract and devour its living brain. One of the most feared powers is the dreaded Mind Blast, where the illithid emits a cone-shaped psionic shockwave to incapacitate any creature with its mind for a short amount of time. Illithids also have other psionic powers, generally telepathic in nature, although their exact effects have varied over editions. Other powers include a defensive psionic shield and powers of psionic domination for controlling the minds of others.
Weaknesses
As an aberration, a mind flayer tends to have a very poor Fortitude save. The trick is to select attacks that take advantage of this weakness while bypassing its very strong spell resistance. Many spells of the conjuration school are perfect for this. For example, cloudkill, a 5th-level sorcerer/wizard spell, has a Fortitude save and doesn't allow SR. Almost all of the "cloud" spells have this advantage (stinking cloud at 3rd). Even spells that allow a Reflex save that bypass SR are extremely useful.
Illithid Biology
Illithids are hermaphroditic creatures who each spawn a mass of larvae twice in their life. The larvae resemble miniature illithid heads or four-tentacled tadpoles. Larvae are left to develop in the pool of the Elder Brain. The ones that survive are inserted into the brain of a sentient creature. A human gives best results. Upon being implanted, the larva then grows and consumes the host's brain, absorbing the host's physical form entirely and becoming sentient itself, a mature Illithid. This process is called Ceremorphosis. Illithids often experiment with non-human hosts, but ceremorphosis involving other creatures usually fails, killing both host and larva.
When an illithid undergoes ceremorphosis, it can occasionally take on some elements of the absorbed host creature's former mind, such as mannerisms. This typically manifests as a nervous habit and/or reaction, like nail-biting or tapping one's foot. An adult illithid has even been known to hum a tune that its host knew in life. Usually, when a mind flayer inherits a trait like this, it keeps it a closely guarded secret, because, were its peers to learn of it, the illithid in question would surely be killed. This is due to an illithid legend of a being called the "Adversary." The legend holds that, eventually, an illithid larva that undergoes ceremorphosis will take on the host's personality and memory in its entirety. This "Adversary" would, mind and soul, still be the host, but with all the inherent abilities of an illithid. Although due to the current game mechanics of ceremorphosis, total assimilation of the host's personality and memories is technically impossible, there may at some time be a game supplement elaborating this point.
Occasionally, ceremorphosis can partially fail. Sometimes the larva does not contain enough chemicals to complete the mutation, sometimes there is psionic interference. Whatever the reason, it has happened that ceremorphosis has ended after the internal restructuring, resulting in a human body with an illithid's brain, personality and digestive tract. These unfortunates must still consume brains, typically by cutting open heads (as they lack the requisite tentacles.) These beings are sent as spies to the surface, where they easily blend in with humans.
The illithid society also maintains a long-standing taboo. Every so often, a mind flayer community is attacked and its inhabitants must flee. This leaves the larvae unattended. Bereft of exterior nourishment, they begin to consume one another. The survivor will eventually leave the pool in search of food (i.e., brains). These unmorphed larvae are known as Neothelids. If the neothelid consumes an intelligent creature it will awaken to sentience and psionic abilities, while retaining its memories of savage survival. In Complete Psionic, it was revealed that illithid have a step between larva and neothelid called Larval Flayer, which look like an overgrown tadpole. The existence of these beasts is a guarded secret among illithids, and it is considered impolite to speak of them.
Illithid Society
An illithid city is ruled by a creature called an Elder Brain which lives in a pool of cerebral fluid in the city's center. When an illithid dies its brain is extracted and taken to the pool. Illithids believe that when they die their personality is incorporated into the Elder Brain, but this is not the case. When the brain of an illithid is added to the Elder Brain, the memories, thoughts and experiences are consumed and added to the sum of the whole, but all else is lost. This fact is a closely guarded secret of the Elder Brains, since all illithid aspire to a form of immortality through this merging process. An extremely ancient Elder Brain is called a God-Brain because its psionic powers are almost limitless.
One theory states that illithids are not native to the planar multiverse; they are refugees from a far distant future. They ruled an empire that spanned almost the entire universe. The seat of the empire was an artificial world called Penumbra, an immense disc of matter that encircled a sun. After the fall of their empire, the mind flayers largely abandoned this world, which is now inhabited by savage tribes descended from thralls of various races, including forerunners and grimlocks. To escape the outright destruction of their species at the hands of their enemies, the surviving illithids came up with a risky but ultimately successful plan. By sacrificing many of the still surviving Elder Brains, a massive psionic rupture was formed that allowed the illithids to escape their time and flee into the past. Because of this, the mind flayers were brought into existence long before they would have evolved naturally, giving them another chance to establish their star-spanning empire. Other theories hint that their origin is from outside of the standard known cosmology, perhaps even hailing from the Far Realm.
Though intensely ordered and lawful in nature, every society has its black sheep, and illithids are no exception. In illithid society, these black sheep—those illithid who choose to ignore their psionic abilities and instead develop arcane magical skills—are quickly banished. These illithid-mages often seek to transform themselves into undead creatures called illithiliches (a kind of lich more commonly known as an alhoon).
Illithids typically communicate through psychic means. They project thoughts and feelings to each other in a way non-illithids can scarcely comprehend. Instead of typical alphabet-based writing, illithids write by making marks consisting of four broken lines. They use each tentacle to feel the breaks in the lines, making it basically similar to braille. However, the illithid written language is extremely complex, as each line modifies the preceding lines through explaining abstract concepts associated with the above words in ways no human can understand; only by understanding all four lines simultaneously can the meaning be understood properly.
Illithids revere a perverse deity named Ilsensine, and once had a second deity named Maanzecorian.
Other references
Mind flayers appear in other role-playing games, including Angband, Final Fantasy and NetHack. They rule an Island of Terror in Ravenloft called Bluetspur, where their God-Brain is actually directed by the mind of a human psion. The mind flayers themselves were originally inspired by either by the Spawn of Cthulhu from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos or (perhaps more likely) by the Thrint from Larry Niven's "Known Space" setting who, like illithids, have three-fingered hands and tentacled heads, are powerful psionicists, and ruled an ancient empire finally destroyed by a slave rebellion. Certainly, Charles Stross was inspired by the Slaver Empire of the Thrint when he created the githzerai and githyanki. In the world of Tenebrae: the Emblem of Ea, the illithid are a long-forgotten race from outside the eidolons' creation, an ancient evil who blend science, religion, magic and philosophy in unfathomable ways and, now freed, approach the rest of the world with a cruel curiosity that has lead them to wipe out entire villages and use innocents in their twisted experiments.
A particularly unfortunate mind flayer plays the main role in the webcomic Mind Flayed, having somehow been transported to Toril's surface mid-ceremorphosis.
Illithids are one of the primary factions in Spelljammer.
In a coming Doctor Who episode there are a race who resemble the Illithids called the Ood.
References
- Baase, Kevin, Eric Jansing, and Oliver Frank. Monsters of the Mind, Dragon Magazine #337 ([[Paizo, 2005).
- The Strategic Review #1, (TSR, 1975).
- Cook, David, et al. Monstrous Compendium Volume One (TSR, 1989).
- Gygax, Gary. Monster Manual (TSR, 1977).
- Moore, Roger. Ecology of the Mind Flayer, Dragon Magazine #78 (TSR, 1983).
- Cordell, Bruce. Monstrous Arcana: The Illithiad (TSR, 1998).
- Williams, Skip, Tweet, Jonathan, Cook, Monte. Monster Manual (WotC, 2000).
- Baker, Rich, Jacobs, James, Winter, Steve. Lords of Madness (WotC, 2005).