Anab.. Here the promised stuff! (this takes to long, Arf Edena I know how u feel now)
THIS IS SPECIFICALLY FOR ANABSTERCORIAN; SOME OF THIS INFORMATION IS IN NO WAY KNOWN TO YOU SINCE ONLY ILLITHID ARE AWARE OF IT AND THEIR CUSTOMS, PLANS AND WAYS OF LIFE.
Anab. enjoy, I promised the entry of the Illithid in Lords of Darkness and well.. here u got your official candy my man
MIND FLAYERS
"The taste link is active," sugglir sent to his assembled peers. "Begin," came the collective response.
"Human food-creature," sent sugglir to the bound captive, "you are being honored by being chosen as the subject of pa'nur. My mind and yours are linked. When I feast upon your brain, you shal sense it, and savor its taste as much as I do. In this way, perhaps your souls shall be convinced to tread the world in the future as an illithid, rather then as a surface cattle." With that, Sugglir's tentacles bored their way into Kilimur's skull.
Kilimur screamed, but as he died he learned that the mind flayer found his brain to be quite delicious.
The mind flayers are rightfully feared for their evil, their power, and their diet of the brains of intelligent creatures. They assemble in great cities in the Underdark and enslave entire colonies of sentients to work for them and serve as sources of food. What prevents them from immediatly conquering the world, in addition to their very specifique dietary needs, is their inherent self-serving nature ---- even a slight setback causes an Illithid to flee in the interest of preserving its own skin.
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BRIEF HISTORY
As with beholders, the origin of the illithids is the scource of much speculation and little fact. Some think they came from another plane, some from another time or from across the sea of night (Explanation to GH people, Sea of night is Faerun realm space). Others theorize that they came from a place outside the normal considerations of Faerun's cosmology. There are other worlds where mind flayers rule and all other races are their livestock, and it was ancient slave rebellions against the mind flayers that resulted in psionically active races such as the duergar. As things stand, mind flayers are scattered across the worlds, and noone can point to a specifique place where they originated.
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ILSENSINE
While all mind flayers revere Ilsensine, their evil deity of knowledge, conquest and mental power, few choose to devote themselves to the deity and become clerics. Each illithid city has a handful of clerics that remain somewhat apart from others in the city. Ilsensine is said to look like an enourmous green brain trailing countless tentacles that elad throughout its cavernous realm and into the hidden corners of all planes. Its symbol is a brain with two tentacles. The domains associated with it are Charm, Evil, Knowledge, Law, Mentalism and Tyranny. It's favored weapon is the tentacle (whip).
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CITIES OF THE ILLITHIDS
A mind flayer city is a hideously beautifull place, alien in construction and designed to suit creatures that can naturally levitate. Openings to palatial tunnels rise in staggered levels up the sides of great caverns, ramps instead of stairs, and the lowest level is relegated to slaves and slave handlers. At the center of the city in a large building that houses the elder-brain, the aggregate intelligence and memory of mind flayers that have died. Within the elder-brain's pool swim the tadpolelike young of the race, which implant themselves in a humanoid host when they reach maturity, eventualy transforming the host body into the form of a adult mind flayer.
Mind flayers work to advance the plans of their community and divide themselves into smaller groups for specifique purposes, such as creating attack strategies, planning slaving runs, searching for a way to dim the light of the sun, or creating magic items to enhance their psionic abilities. Illithids encountered outside a city are either agents of these smaller groups or (very rarely) traitorous citizens marked for death. Whether associated with a city or not, mind flayers vigorously compete with each other, rarely pooling their powers, even when working towards the same goal.
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HIERARCHY
The head of a mind flayer city in the elder-brain, which telepathically links all the illithid minds within a mile of the city itself. The elder-brain is parent, orator, judge, arbiter, governor, and library for the illithids. Imbued with vast psionic power from its constituent preserved brains, the elder-brain cannot move and has no ability to physically defend itself, but its mental powers can effortlessly bring any mind flayer to its knees.
Below the elder-brain is the Elder Concord, a counsil of mind flayers representing each of the various illithid creeds (factions). The Elder Concord sets goals for the community, elects officials for various duties, and takes care of most of the responsibilities for ruling a community. Underneath the Elder Concord are the "common" illithids of the citym which either work alone or agglomerate into inquisitions or cults. Below the common ilithids are the many slaves of the city, which do all the actual labor, act as the city's military arm, and eventually end up as meals for the mind flayers. A city usually has one or two races of thralls to maintain its breeding population.
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MOTOVATION AND GOALS
mind flayers wish to dominate the world so that they may live lives of luxury, feasting upon the refined minds of carefully bred thralls and honing their psionic powers to a fantastic degree. how each illithid plans to see this goal achived may differ --- some wish to blot the cursed sun that prevents them from easily waging war on the surface, some wish to amass great armies of slaves, some to create psionic items of incredible power, and some have even stranger and more incomprehensible goals. Ay motivation is a means to the desired end of world domination.
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RECRUITING
Mind flayers do not recruit. To them, other races are only potential slaves. Only when it is to their advantage or when greatly outnumbered do they ally with others instead of enslaving them, and any "recruited" by the illithids are eventually going to be charmed and enslaved by them. Almost every type of creature with discernible intelligence may be found as a illithid thrall.
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ALLIES
Mind flayers have few true allies, although they sometimes make temporary alliances with other underdark cares. They keep slaves of almost any race; the most common ones are grimlocks, because grimlocks breed fast and are willing to eat the remains a hungry mind flayer leaves behind. The illithids also frequently have chuul as slaves, and use many Underdark adapted animals as spies (the illithid scour the animals' brains to get teh information they wants, bypassing the limited intelligence of the creatures).
Mind flayers sometimes lead small bands of doppelgangers, a type of group known as a druuth. The shapechangers are able to infiltrate various organisations and societies, providing their illithid masters with valuable information.
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ENEMIES
The illithid have many enemies --- namely, almost every creature that isn't an illithid, because no sane mind would volunteer to be enslaved and eaten by these monsters. However, some beings in particular are frequent foes. Deep dragons and drow compete with mind flayers for living space and slaves. Undead of all kind kinds are hated and feared, for they are immune to most psionic powers, forcing the mind flayers to use their own natural attacks or wast valuable slaves.
The Duergar are the most ardent foes of the mind flayers. Once a normal clan of dwarves, after being enslaved and tampered with for generations, the duergar shook themselves free of their mental chains and emerged into the underdark as a new subrace of dwarves. The duergar have never forgotten their enslavement, and they train all their soldiers in illithid fighting tactics.
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Hope you can make some use of it Anab. and maybe some others can make use of it as well!
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Tnx Edena
btw you missed a post of me above I'll edit this post later and paste it below for you to read again.
