I was having a conversation with a friend about illithids, and she had a pretty novel idea that got my gears turning a bit. Essentially, present the illithids as a force sorta like the Combine from Half Life 2, which she tells me were less of a specific species of being and more like a hodgepodge of "domesticated" species. Great, very creepy, and very stolen by me. So, here are some vassal species of the former illithid empire. All of them can be found in small pockets across our fantasy planet where the mind flayers now hide, but some are more common than others. They're created through clone technology, and are pretty far removed from their original biological processes of reproduction and behavior. It's possible that the native humanoids of this planet will reach such a point as well, should the illithids win. The original names of these species aren't known, only their equivalent designations in the illithid language.
Type 1: Visced (Dogs)
Quadrupedal bodies, with bug like segmented carapaces. The torso is bulbous and potbellied, reminiscent of an aphid's body. Their heads have large slashing maws, oriented sideways, like pincers, bedazzled with red, beady eyes. On their chests, they have two smaller limbs which stay tucked close to their body, like a praying mantis's claws. They aren't especially sophisticated limbs but they can still manipulate objects, and on occasion you will see one with a broken down laser gun strapped to its chest, looking something like a camera worn on a strap about one's neck.
They are soldiers first and foremost. They're quick and efficient with their hunting, and their illithid modifications mean that they can work as a sort of collective hivemind, bouncing thoughts and attack patterns back and forth between one another's brains with great speed. They can also spray their foes with acid, which is always a plus. Their relative scrawny frames means they're not great for manual labor, so they tend to be one of the less popular morphs employed by colonies, who are more interested in hiding than in fighting. Still, they are very good at what they do, and so some groups that employ a more aggressive abduction policy might keep them around for raids or hunts.
Type 2: Szedi (Seals)
Resembles something between an ichthyosaur and a sea lion in body plan. They have large, multifaceted eyes and bodies covered in white bristly fur. Where the mouth would be on any ordinary animal, there is a large tentacle with a sort of hexagonal shape to it. The tentacle can split open like a flower, revealing the actual beast's mouth. Each sixth of the split tentacle is lined with small needle teeth.
They are fully and completely aquatic, and are therefore used by the flayers who take refuge on the sea floor. They serve as scouts, explorers, laborers, and guards. Their tentacles are surprisingly strong, and can perform a variety of complex tasks. When they fight you, they'll go for your limbs, closing their appendage around an arm or a leg, before twisting violently. A few seconds of this will probably leave the limb torn and mangled beyond repair.
Type 3: C'chetil (Leeches)
These things are small, and really less of a worker than a tool. Small, chubby worms, about the size of a fist, pale white. Blue veins crisscross their bodies beneath their rubbery skin. You can faintly see where their eyes used to be, now recessed and covered with skin, a vestigial organ, as sensory input is no longer a necessity for these lifeforms. Essentially just a stomach/digestive tract and brain. They are, in effect, very powerful calculators.
They lack the ability to perform the more nuanced tasks of a brain computer, but they're exceptionally versatile. They can crunch numbers, calculate the appropriate trajectories necessary for interdimensional space travel, or act as a private journal. To use one requires letting it latch onto you (typically mind flayers do this at the base of their skull), at which point it starts connecting to your brain through a psionic link, while drinking your blood. It's possible to train them to only respond to specific brain waves, effectively "locking" them against an intruder's peeping thoughts, or even to deliver psionic attacks to whatever they're attached to. Some colonies have figured out how to get them to mindjack a body and control it for a while, but such a strenuous task has a very real possibility of making them explode in a shower of tepid goo.
Type 4: Lithet (Apes)
Giant four limbed creatures. They walk like gorillas, but are far taller than they are wide, and are much leaner. No fur to speak of, they're covered in rough, grey scales. Their tongues are long, muscular, and prehensile, with light barbs across the surface. They can use them to manipulate more delicate tools which their hands would not operate, but even so, they risk breaking objects not designed to accommodate their girth.
These guys are common as laborers, guards, and livestock, since they have five brains (one primary one, and four sophisticated brain-like nerve clusters that run down their spine). Typically they lack psionic capabilities, but their clusters mean they serve as potent amplifiers for psionic activity. Having one nearby is like juicing for illithids, it gives them a potent reservoir of mental energy to draw on as they perform psionic tasks. That and their giant size makes them exceptionally well suited towards being bodyguards as well, which can be eaten under emergency situations (they can lose 2-3 of their secondary brains before they actually die, at the cost of reduced coordination and a lesser psionic resevoir).
Type 5: Ngthed (Satellites)
If you didn't know any better, it would be easy to assume these things weren't alive. They're roughly spherical (more like a many sided polyhedron), with a segmented chitinous shell surrounding their body. Like a weird, quasi-organic soccer ball. Their otherwise uniform shape is broken by a set of several multifaceted eyes along one side of their body. They do have limbs, four tentacle like structures lined with sticky filaments, along with two wide "wings" of sorts, large crescent shaped sheets of white gauze like skin. Most of the time they remain tucked away beneath their shells. No mouths, they photosynthesize.
They're the illithid's equivalent of spy satellites, they even communicate with one another through radio waves. They hover due to an innate psionic ability instilled in them long ago, allowing them to enter the lower atmospheres of planets. Previously, they lived exclusively in space, or the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere, using their gossamer wings to float along, collecting the sun's energy. Now, they keep tabs on nearby human communities, absorbing data, tracking movement, keeping tabs on important figures. They're not great fighters, but they can disorient foes with targeted electromagnetic bursts, or, failing that, ram into them with their bodies. They are also a delicacy amongst illithids due to their unique brain structures, though their consumption is tricky, as they are resource intensive to clone and very useful for avoiding conflicts with humans.
Type 6: Illishen (Chirurgeons)
They are not a separate species from illithid, but rather the result of a tadpole raised in specific conditions. They are fed grey matter of exceptional quality, but never allowed to implant into a host. They receive several augmentations and are dosed with hormones that guide their growth, turning them into a strange bulbous sort of thing, with a head like a ball. They are permanently fused with several c'chetil, and have four metallic stilt like legs grafted onto their body. They are given arms as well, fit with a vast array of surgical tools.
They are responsible for raising the clones of a colony. Their specific shape is necessary for the task because they are both surgeon and incubator, for at least the early stages of a clone's life. Their body serves as a genetic library, with a catalogue of all illithid servitor species. They use their body to "print" the early stages of a given clone, typically some sort of fetal being, until it can be surgically excised by their own hand, and nested inside of the cold embrace of a glass tube. They are also exceptional medics and researchers, and specialize in mending wounds and vivisecting test subjects. In some colonies, they hold positions of power, and may serve as trusted leaders. In others, they are treated as just another class of servitor.
The End
Rarely you may find an illithid implanted into one of these bodies rather than a human form, though this practice is uncommon. Illithids regard non-humanoid body plans as less aesthetically desirable and unwieldy. Plus, the brain matter required for an illithid to come out as normal needs to be of decent quality, and the poor cloning capabilities of modern colonies means that every part of a servitor is filled with tumors.
Illithid clones are not self sufficient, and not especially intelligent, but it should be noted that all of these beings are descended from species capable of sophisticated thought, love, art, culture, etc, before the illithid colony went and made genetically modified drones out of them. Somewhere out there, they still exist too. On some Jovian moon, warrior clans of alien dogs war with one another for the honor of their liege lords, and sing chittering songs beneath the night time glow of the gas giant that they orbit. Strange, benthic worms, not measured in inches but in feet, glide through their homes, juggling between five conversations at once while they suck the black blood of sea-cows into their mouths. Strange ball like beings float around their white dwarf star, singing hymns that glide on the solar winds towards the antennae of other disciples. It is even theoretically possible you could meet one, somehow. They would surely fight alongside you against their once-oppressors with a righteous hatred. They would see the strange creatures that were created from their brethren and react with the same mix of hatred, disgust, and sorrow that you would upon finding human sleeper agents. Illithids are the worst.
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