Among D&D's stable of original monsters, there are few I'm more fond of than mind flayers*. Here's a take on them. Not a revolutionary one, but hopefully interesting enough to get me excited enough to run with them as a campaign frame.
It should be noted, none of this is cannon to Coris, which is my principle setting, and the one that most of my writing on this blog centers on (save for the previous two chainlink posts, which are for something else I think). Or at least, they're not for this current version of my setting. When I go through and make Coris Continuity II, where the Gods probably don't exist and the Celestial Empire that nearly doomed the world were a bunch of space alien elves, I might throw in some squid men for variety's sake. Maybe that's when the Meyasoa will finally be canon as well. Who knows. Anyways, on to the boring prehistory stuff.
The Boring Prehistory.
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| Art by Wayne Reynolds |
There was a time where every star in the sky was theirs. The long arm of their ancient empire reached endlessly across time and space to grasp at worlds unknown, to know them, to take from them their treasure, to feast. To them, other life in the galaxy could be nothing more than cattle or sheep dogs, beasts born for slaughter, or for servitude. They were not cold and emotionless, at least not totally. They didn't have much love, but they had art, philosophy, ideals, maybe even religion, in some alien sense. At this time, there was no hatred in their actions, everything in the universe was simply beneath hate. Their evil was mundane, banal, uncaring. Nobody hates the sheep for giving up its meat, they simply don't think of it.
They were masters of psionics, a power born of the mind, with the ability to shape the body. Most of their technology was founded on their own psionic abilities in conjunction with bio-engineering, a craft they had essentially mastered. Their ships, their computers, their fighting machines, all of these things were grown. Sometimes these were creatures of their own creation, often they were things the illithids discovered and molded into a desired shape.
They fell the way any great empire falls, it was a slow and painful demise, death by a thousand cuts. A military defeat here, several bloody revolts there, a dash of bureaucratic breakdown, a pinch of infighting. If you were to ask them, though, the end came with one final act of revolt at the hands of a species only recently enslaved. A rebel leader arose with enough tactical wit and political clout to form an alliance, which struck at the heart of the already dying empire. Their perfect world died when the rebellion kicked down the doors of the royal palace and took the head of the Eternal Emperor, the bedrock which their empire rested upon. In but a moment, their world died.
There were pockets of resistance out there for some time, but they all began to break down due to a lack of sustainable food sources, infighting, and pressure from newly forming alliances. The only place where they managed to establish a foothold worth anything is here, wherever that is. To them, our world is the ultimate galactic backwater, an undeveloped, pre-industrial piece of shit, ruled over beings no more intelligent than cattle. Even so, with their numbers so diminished, their technology broken or breaking, their leaders dead and gone, any attempt at an overt, hostile takeover of our planet would be suicidal. Even if they should succeed against our world's meager technology and power rooted in superstition, hose who finally felled their empire still patrol the stars, searching for any sign that their work is not yet done.
This infuriates them. If you should meet one, know that this fury is all they have left in their hearts, a ferocious, undying anger towards anything other than them. They will have sophisticated, self-deluding justifications for everything they do to you, every act of torture, every cruel experiment, every brain sucked out of its skull, but in their hearts, their anger is the only justification they need. Their small clutches of society are dominated by this anger, by a need to put things right again, to restore themselves to glory, to punish their enemies for rebelling and to punish us for merely existing. When you know how they live, it's easy to see why they are so angry indeed.
Invasion
Now, they've become very good at hiding, with most taking to the world's subterranean depths. Some live aboard the last of their great ships, if their cloaking technology still works, floating along in the planet's upper atmosphere, descending only to feed. Others live within the seas, dwelling off the coast in camouflaged glass domes. Wherever they live, it's usually close to humans, because our brains are the only decent food on this planet. They try to be subtle, preying on only the easiest of targets, but even this will cause attention eventually. Much of their scientific work is dedicated to easing this tension by creating artificial brains, their most recent attempt, which has been successful enough to spread amongst most of the known colonies, involved the creation of a new creature, created from simian DNA. They're not especially intelligent, which poses a problem for the mind flayers. It makes meals dull, uninteresting, flavorless. Still, it's better than discovery, so human brains are a rare delicacy, eaten in celebration.
The other reason they live near humans is because they need manpower. In the grand scheme of things, humans aren't the most desirable servants, but we stick around primarily because their limited genetic fabrication processes do not allow for the easy cultivation of psionic talent. That's something they have to find, and fortunately for them, latent psionic ability is decently common in human life, about found in maybe 5% of the population. Every illithid is psionic, of course, but given there are so few of them, they're better off recruiting and awakening humans (brainwashing and torturing these latent psionics until they have a massive seizure and their powers awaken). Human thralls may serve as guards, hunters, assassins, spies, and laborers, depending on their abilities, which vary from the spectacular, to the pathetic, to the grotesque. If they are exceptionally powerful and the brainwashing and awakening haven't totally fried their brains, they might even be allowed to serve as technicians.
When the Emperor died, this didn't just represent the head of the state being eliminated, but essentially a universal collapse in long range communication for the illithid empire. The Emperor was less of a ruler and more of a gestalt consciousness of minds, broadcasting a psychic signal that interfaced with all illithid technology, allowing for easy and near instant psionic communication between the most disparate reaches of the empire. The Emperor's minds also dictated much of the empire's actions, with a cold, emotionless sort of logic, coordinating its actions like some sort of galaxy spanning brain. In its absence, flayers have had to adapt, and many are attempting to replicate the role of the Emperor with psionic fulcrums of their own design. Such creations take the form of massive brains, the first of which were allegedly seeded from bits of the Eternal Emperor's very own grey matter. These brains are large enough they need supportive scaffolding as to not collapse under their own weight. They're effectively very powerful supercomputers, able to perform thousands of complex calculations in mere seconds, broadcast psionic signals across countries, and coordinate between one another. Their maintenance is of utmost importance to a colony, who tend to them fervently, with a sort of religious devotion. Thralls gently scrub away any dirt or grime that collects on their bulk, moisten them with fluid, and prune any tumorous growths that are skewing calculations. Technicians attune to the brains psionically, reading their output and feeding them fresh data, while monitoring their output to make sure it seems consistent with reality.
These brain computers would be incredible if not for the fact that they all tend to be mildly sapient and in possession of a conscious will. Unlike the supposedly dispassionate, analytical Emperor, they have obsessions, fears, desires, and grudges. This fact makes them unpredictable at times, and if not properly cared for, they may even attempt to enthrall their entire colony for their own usage. Leadership in any given colony is split somewhat haphazardly between these machines and a handful of mind flayers, and at any moment, a brutal power struggle could emerge between the two. If the computers weren't essential for coordination between and within colonies, it would be easy to leave the technology behind, but so far nobody's found a better alternative, and so they remain.
Growing Pains
This is true of much of what the illithids do. A colony is full of half measures and band-aids, solutions are often simply tourniquets wrapped around a bleeding stump, hastily tied to afford the colony just a little more time. Their reliance on unclean and chaotic biological technology, as well as unpredictable and, by comparison, ineffectual human psionics, is utterly infuriating for them. They are constantly searching for ways to return to their former levels of heightened psionic technology, and constantly failing. Most illithids are old enough to remember the twilight years of their empire, and are consequently filled with fury when they contemplate how far they have fallen. Younger illithids are a rarity, for producing them is perhaps the most frustrating thing of all, for those who remember how easy child rearing once was.
Illithid spawn are small, voracious tadpoles, that look something like tiny squid. They spend the early days of their life suspended in shallow pools of brine, where they drift aimlessly, eating any biological material they come into contact with. Once they're large enough (about the size of your index finger), they're plucked from their pool, and inserted into a suitable host. They will move towards the host's skull, devour most of its brain, before connecting their nervous system with that of the host body, wiring directly into their brain stem. At this point, they fill the entire cranial cavity of the host, and will begin to slowly make changes to their claimed body. They remove and eat the eyes, protruding a set of temporary sensory organs through the empty lids, these can sense light, but can't see very well. Their other tentacles pass through the body's mouth. This is what they will look like for a few months, though their body will quickly begin to change as the growing illithid secretes a set of appropriating hormones. The body's skin will shed, revealing a new, oily purple layer of the epidermis. The skull will soften, giving way to the squid's head, now finally fit with proper eyes. Their brain is soaking up knowledge like a sponge at this point in time, especially from other mature mind flayers, from whom it may inherit some basic personality traits and short memories. At this point, it's ready to go to work
The process is unwieldy, even at the best of times. In the days of the empire, there was a species of host bodies grown by illithids, to smooth the whole process out. You can tell if an illithid was born before the fall if they only have four fingers, a telltale sign that one of these host bodies was used to usher them into the world. The host brains were theoretically functional, but each body was functionally not alive, they lacked any sort of subjectivity. Now, without these bodies, illithids must be implanted into humans, who do have such subjectivity. This makes things messy, because newborn illithids will inherit some of their memories or quirks, which makes them particularly unruly. The vast majority of these new converts are still illithids at heart, they have the same deep seated hatred for our kind, but their nostalgia for the empire is foggier, and sometimes nonexistent. This has lead to a deep generational divide in their societies, yet another conflict bubbling beneath the surface, ready to boil over at any point in time.
The Plan
Even amidst their lack of coordination, their limited resources, and their unwinnable situation, they continue to plan. There is no unified goal amongst illithid colonies, indeed they often hate one another nearly as much as they hate us, but something of a doctrine has emerged over the years.
They are dedicated to secrecy above all. None can know they exist, that they move against the world in the shadows. Any action that would expose their existence is tantamount to suicide. If a colony intends to throw off their cowl, to break the masquerade, they will be dealt with swiftly. Any humans who witness an illithid are likewise dispatched with extreme prejudice. There can be no possibility of discovery.
Many of their dreams of world domination are stifled by a lack of technology and manpower, so they continue to work. Every colony is trying its best to advance its technology as quickly as possible. As said above, they often fail, but breakthroughs are being made every year. There is a slow, definite creep forward amongst the most prominent groups.
Of course, if overt domination is a no go, that makes something more covert a rather attractive option. The most ordinary seeming of thralls become spies, living in human society, carrying about their daily tasks as normal. Many are installed in positions with proximity to power. Through these means they have learned much of our world's culture, our art, philosophy, ideals, religions. They have learned how deeply we can hate one another, and conversely, how deeply we love as well.
They despise us all the same. Every new drop of information is read through eyes clouded by venom, poured over and examined with the same disgust one might regard a particularly unusual insect with. Each new fact about us is more kindling to stoke the cold fire in their hearts, to steel their resolve and push them to new heights of depraved cruelty. At night, when their brain activity drops into what could only barely be called sleep, I suppose they dream of the day in which they can cast off the shadows settled like a cloak about their existence and scour this world of our presence. I suppose they wake up grief stricken at this fantasy's current impossibility. I suppose, it is possible they spend some mornings weeping, if they are capable of such a thing. Only our destruction can make them whole, only our sorrow will bring them joy. One day their dream will be realized, maybe one day soon. Until that day comes, they will work ceaselessly to bring it about, so they continue to work in the darkness. For now.
*Gelatinous Motherfucking Cubes, baby.
