D&D 5E DMs, do you ever have trouble thinking small?

[cbwjm]

A renegade mind flayer has moved in to a house in the middle of the city, unbeknown to the city at large and now, people are disappearing around the city. First it was the homeless and the unwanted in the run down part of town known as the warrens, but recently someone of means has disappeared while on one of their jaunts down into the warrens to mix with "the common folk". Time to bring in the investigators and find out what happened to them.

 

[ScaleyBob]

A large part of coming up with an Adventure with either Illithids, or Aboleths is deciding what their motivations actually are. The Illithid in my game was after some where safe, with a food source and was trying to find a Chull nest to use as followers. The fact it was in the Burial Mound the PCs were looking for was simply narrative coincidence.

Illithids generally seem to want brains, slaves or knowledge - how about a single one trying to infiltrate a Library to steal something, or maybe several competing Mind Flayers all trying or the same thing. Working at cross purposes, with the possibility of the PCs maybe setting them off against one another. In the 4E background they talk about 'Brainmoss' a possible replacement for the never ending hunger for brains, which occurs only very rarely naturally, and the secret of its cultivation has been lost. Even a small patch of the stuff can draw in Illithids, making it perfect plot hook to use them. Maybe the city has a Botanical Gardens,or there's a mad Botanist that has a pot plant of the stuff. Cue psychically controlled plants, and a mad chase to get to the plant before the Illithid, or to get it back if it's stolen, or if a particularly mercenary party, an interesting bargaining session with an Illithid.

As for Aboleth's they're just weird. I've only ever used one once, and that game finished before I could reveal it. It was lurking underneath Freeport, slowly sliming the Snakemen beneath the city, and absorbing the secret knowledge in the various libraries in the cities. I stole the idea from the Laundry Files of making it an Infovore - a creature that survives on knowledge, so it was devouring the contents of the libraries and leaving the books blank. The campaign ended due to a mixture of reasons - lack of inspiration on my part, a fractious parting of the ways with a player that left a bit of a bad feeling with both me and the other GM, and that fact that the other GM in the party was also running a Freeport set game, and several of the players were getting confused over what was happening in each campaign.

Given the very Cthulhu Mythos feel to Aboleths, you could probably reskin any of several short Call of Cthulhu adventures using it, rather than whatever Mythos critter the adventure uses.

 

[Oofta]

Mind flayers

Hazing Ritual:
In order to prove itself to the other mind flayers, a single individual is sent alone and with no resources to live in a city. It has <insert appropriate time frame here> to overthrow the local government and to sow chaos. If it succeeds, it can come back and lead the takeover of the world.

Look at the Pretty Lights
While munching on brains, an illithid experiences euphoria as it devours the brain of a humanoid, along with it's memories, personality and innermost fears. So what happens if the illithid chooses the wrong brain? Maybe it believes it really is Billy the Wild Mage that has been transformed into an illithid. It seeks the help of the adventurers to find out who cursed it, and who is killing off it's closest friends.

For an Aboleth

Fish in a Tank
An aboleth was captured by some nefarious force and entrapped in what is effectively a giant fish tank. It slowly gained enough power to slay it's would-be-master, but now it's trapped. With limited resources, it is trying to get free and back to it's real plans. It's been slowly influencing people when it can but the magic of the cage limits what it can do.

Lich

Bored Now
Who though eternity would be so boring! Sure, conquering countries is fun to plan, but then there's all the overhead of maintaining all those minions. So every once in a while the lich will acquire some random "adventurers" and put them through a series of trials just for fun, ending with a final confrontation. Even if the adventurers do manage to win the game, the lich will just reform. If the adventurers fail, their souls will be sacrificed to power it's phylactery.

For old Time's Sake
Along a similar vein, the lich is reminiscing about the old days when they were a living person and decides to travel back to their long forgotten homeland. While there, why not have some fun? Nothing serious, just a little destruction and chaos as a change of pace. That, and it's time to fill up the phylactery with a new soul and why not grab some descendant of a long dead nemesis.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Now I'm picturing E.T. but with an illithid.

 

[Croesus]

I like these, but I want to take it a step further.

What about an adventure where it's about what the mind flayers are trying to accomplish? The idea of one or two trying to survive, or a McGuffin hunt in a hive, are both cool (and I'm definitely adding them to my file), but what about an adventure that's driven by a local colony trying to do something/make something happen? Where they're acting, rather than reacting to circumstances?

It's an old idea (most are), but how about a small colony that is suffering from some sort of plague and they don't know how to fix it? Could be anything - something environmental, "mad cow" disease, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, or some such. Other illithids will have nothing to do with them, for fear of spreading the disease, so they have to coerce, trick, or recruit people to help.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: "Bored now"

I had one sandbox campaign world plot line in which there was an army of evil rising, swearing allegiance to a lich king. As it turns out, the Lich king himself is actually brain damaged: essentially, he has Alzheimer's, so he's not interested in anything beyond the walls of his stronghold, learning and relearning and relearning spells from his slowly decaying library.

Once upon a time, he had been the force behind the army, but the real power now lies with his undead warrior assistant.

 

[Fleetwood C. DeVille]

How about a Mind Flayer fine cuisine outlet. A disguised Mind Flayer operates a prestigious university on the surface world, which attracts and nurtures the finest minds in the realms. Secretly, the top 10% graduates of the university are kidnapped and sent down to the main Illithid colony far in the Underdark for consumption as gourmet meals./

There was something very close to this as part of a short adventure within an old boxed set. (My aged brain cannot recall which one.) The characters see ads for a new restaurant and go dine. The lighting was dim (candles) and all the patrons (illithids) were robed and unrecognizable. It even had a brain-themed menu handout.

The best part was the look on the player's faces when they realized they were in a restaurant surrounded by mind flayers. Unless the party did anything incredibly stupid, they got left alone.

Sometimes even the bad guys just want to enjoy a stress-free dinner.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Re: "Bored now"

I had one sandbox campaign world plot line in which there was an army of evil rising, swearing allegiance to a lich king. As it turns out, the Lich king himself is actually brain damaged: essentially, he has Alzheimer's, so he's not interested in anything beyond the walls of his stronghold, learning and relearning and relearning spells from his slowly decaying library.

Once upon a time, he had been the force behind the army, but the real power now lies with his undead warrior assistant.

So, basically...

No. I will not break the "no politics" rule. I will not break the "no politics" rule. I will not break the "no politics" rule. I will not break the "no politics" rule. I will not break the "no politics" rule. I will not break the "no politics" rule. I will not...

 

[Kalshane]

Lich

Bored Now
Who though eternity would be so boring! Sure, conquering countries is fun to plan, but then there's all the overhead of maintaining all those minions. So every once in a while the lich will acquire some random "adventurers" and put them through a series of trials just for fun, ending with a final confrontation. Even if the adventurers do manage to win the game, the lich will just reform. If the adventurers fail, their souls will be sacrificed to power it's phylactery.

I actually ran a campaign along these lines once. My players were asking for an old-school "kick the doors in" adventure with a bunch of dungeon crawling and hunting for the MacGuffins needed to defeat the big bad like we played when we were kids. So I came up with the idea of this ancient vampire sorceress who had grown tired of her existence but wanted her demise to be legendary. So she concocted a "death by adventurer" plot where she created a bunch of dungeons and hid various items of power which could help defeat her within them, then went and "bloodied the nose" of the nearest kingdom and left taunting notes, basically daring them to challenge her power. The king promptly did what she expected/hoped for and pulled together a team of adventurers to gather these items and put an end to her.

Actually ended up being one of the best campaigns I ever ran. My players still talk about it, 12+ years later.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why not a shadow game in which groups of adventurers- or even individual ones- are being used as playing pieces.

Think...Go, with the mastermind behind one side being a Lich, the other, an Aboleth.