D&D 5E Are Mind Flayers slimy?

[Angel Tarragon]

Which lead me to Lords of Madness, The Illithiad, and Volo's Guide to Monsters.

The bit about Thoon was extrapolated from Monster Manual V after I realized that cult doesn't wear robes.

Thanks, I still need to get LoM & MM5 into my 3.5 collection.

 

[Blackrat]

I went through some of my older books, and much of what Leatherhead wrote seems to be from 2nd edition Monstrous Manual.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Apparently:

They are warm blooded, but have a silvery blood (presumably to better carry the psychic energies they feed on as nutrients). Their skin soft and is moistened with mucus, which gives off a smell that can best be described as extremely faint and akin to a combination of garlic or onions and vanilla. However, because they are totally bizarre creatures, they don't breathe through their skin like a normal slimy creature does. Instead they are forced to use the lungs they "inherited" from whatever host creature they were morphed from. The mucus only holds in water, and more importantly, psionic energy.

But the kicker is:

The reason they put on robes is because they develop a warped sense of aesthetics as a byproduct of eating humanoid brains and being subtly influenced by their thoughts. Most peoples think that people with mental powers (A.K.A spellcasters) wear robes, therefore the Mindflayers think they should wear robes, as a kind of memetic infection. Mindflayers of Thoon don't suffer from this "contamination" (they have a bigger contamination problem), and don't wear robes as a result.

What is your source for this information?

The bit with them smelling like vanilla, garlic or onions sounds like experience with eating them.

 

[Doug McCrae]

They're soft, slimy, sticky, and smell terrible. And if they were true to the source material they'd regenerate like trolls.

The odour arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable... It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity... green, sticky spawn of the stars... great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water... There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves... For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form

 

[pogre]

My sons were terribly disappointed that mindflayers apparently have skeletons. My youngest said, "Awww, I thought they were cephalapods!"

 

[Mirtek]

They must be kind of moist as one of the key differences of undead mindflayer liches is their dry Skin

 

[TheSword]

They must be kind of moist as one of the key differences of undead mindflayer liches is their dry Skin

I was going to say this. Lords of Madness and the Illithiad are the best sources I’ve seen, with more in The Underdark. Both the 3.5 and 2nd edition version. Alhoon, or Ilithiliches are referenced in Ruins of Myth Drannor (one of the best source books/boxes ever!)

 

[Oofta]

I always thought they were soft and cuddly, smelled slightly of polyester and stuffing.

Oh wait, maybe I'm thinking of the wrong version?

 

[TwoSix]

Finally, someone on this forum asking the real hard-hitting questions!

 

[Prakriti]

We are not slimy.