D&D General Help me build a mini-campaign: The Mindflayer Empire returns from the far future

[Eyes of Nine]

What would be cool is if the Mind Flayers were invading Earth 2020; and the characters get to meet (and save?) the players.

 

[Redwizard007]

Great idea, you could base some of the pace off the Dungeon campaign that they did for the Gith invasion. I think it was called Insurrection.

As someone currently running a campaign using Incursion, I feel obligated to point out that it is only an outline with some stat blocks and the DM is required to build the actual adventures, and is heavily catered to githyanki, although it did give suggestions for using other races.

Personally, I'd use the gith invasion as the basis for an alternate power base to counter the Illithids. They could turn your world into a war torn wasteland while enslaving the natives to bolster their army, or make surgical strikes on vulnerable illithid bases. Just remember that githyanki may be allies of convenience, but they have their own motivations and probably consider the destruction of your planet beneath their notice.

 

[mordenkainendogpissbeer]

I'm actually in the middle of prepping a full Gonzo Universe Game on roll20

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The Rule Sets to start with

S&W White Box (it's free and has a good core foundation)

Ruins of Arduin (Arduin is the OG play anything, anywhere, and anytime game.)

Skyscrapers & Sorcery (Modern City Magic with Dragons) *has a monster that is a dead ringer for Mind Flayers

White Lies (She said her name is Janette Bond)

White Star (yes we are going to Space and Beyond!)

White Box Gothic (Spooky Stuff - Yes!)

more rule sets all for S&W White Star

Have Death Ray Will Travel (Campy Golden Age Sci Fi)

Stark Space (Space Edge Lords & Cyperpunks)

Outer Space Raiders Omnibus Vol 1

Star Sailors from Okum Arts Games for S&W White Star (Magical Girls why not)

 

[mordenkainendogpissbeer]

from Ruins of Arduin
Also, certain Character Classes from the Swords & Wizardry Whitebox derived White Star RPG are acceptable in a Ruins of Arduin game: Star Knights, Sisters of the Aquarian Order, Aristocrats, Mercenaries, Robots, and Two-Fisted Technicians.

I think the Star Sailors would go good with the Star Powered Mages from Ruins of Arduin.

Mindflayers could have angered governments and have Cleaners from White Lies sent after them.

 

[hawkeyefan]

A few resources from the 2E era that may help....

“Monstrous Arcana: The Illithiad”. This is the definitive guide to the Illithids and has a ton of lore. I don’t recall that it touches on the time travel stuff, but it definitely delves into the science aspect. It’s an excellent resource for inspiration.

There was also a trio of adventures that went along with it: “A Darkness Gathering”, “Masters of the Eternal Night”, and “Dawn of the Overmind”. This revolved around their goal of darkening the sun, but they could be tweaked if needed, and you’ll likely fond some good material within.

Finally, “Chronomancer” was a book about temporal magic, those who use it, and the impact it has. This may be worth a look, especially if you expect any additional time travel in your campaign.

All are available on the DMsGuild or DriveThruRPG for a pretty reasonable price.

 

[squibbles]

there is an interesting theory of behind the Mind Flayers, that the reason there is nothing that remains of their destroyed empire, is they actually escaped into the far future, taking their greatest works with them... So I have the basis of a pretty great storyline set up; that the Mind Flayers not only escaped with their Empire into the far future, but took the time to refortify and militarize. Now, after fully dominating the universe at the end of time, they have returned to the present to conquer the Material Plane, in EVERY TIME.

Maybe this is not your jam, but that setup seems like that would create time paradoxes. Wouldn't it butterfly-effect-to-death the mind flayer empire at the end of time if the mind flayers returned to conquer the present (err... past).

Riffing on this idea:

• maybe there is a fanatical mind flayer faction at the end of time that is broadly okay with this, but that has enemies.
• Said faction has a specific reason for arriving at your player's planet that makes it worth-while for them, i.e. buried tech that they weren't able to take with them in the escape, the prophesied mind flayer messiah, a magical land of milk and honey-brains.
• The hostile mind flayer factions at the end of time could also time travel to the present for a sweet sweet terminator ripoff. (which is one way to give your players a faux-Pillar of Autumn to escape faux-Reach upon)
• Though the anti-fanatic mind flayer faction might not want to work with the players for fear of a-sound-of-thundering-to-death their co-factionists back at the end of time. Which could set up a fun terminator-related mystery.
• Also, intra-mind-flayer dissension provides a pretext for the empire at the end of time to not immediately steamroll your player's planet.
• It would depart from the Reach storyline setup, but maybe you could throw in elements of the Covenant civil war as the invasion escalates... or kick things off with a massive nautiloid space battle visible from the ground, and seed some damaged mind flayer ships into the player's hands before the planet gets rolled.

My first idea was relatively simple, to use Halo: Reach as the basis of the storyline as a crew of heroes attempts to defend their world traditional D&D-fantasy-world from the invading Nautiloid armada that has inexplicately appeared in the sky, complete with legions of enslaved Duergar and Gith, armed with advanced technology from the pages of the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

So much awesome.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Maybe this is not your jam, but that setup seems like that would create time paradoxes. Wouldn't it butterfly-effect-to-death the mind flayer empire at the end of time if the mind flayers returned to conquer the present (err... past).

Riffing on this idea:

• maybe there is a fanatical mind flayer faction at the end of time that is broadly okay with this, but that has enemies.
• Said faction has a specific reason for arriving at your player's planet that makes it worth-while for them, i.e. buried tech that they weren't able to take with them in the escape, the prophesied mind flayer messiah, a magical land of milk and honey-brains.
• The hostile mind flayer factions at the end of time could also time travel to the present for a sweet sweet terminator ripoff. (which is one way to give your players a faux-Pillar of Autumn to escape faux-Reach upon)
• Though the anti-fanatic mind flayer faction might not want to work with the players for fear of a-sound-of-thundering-to-death their co-factionists back at the end of time. Which could set up a fun terminator-related mystery.
• Also, intra-mind-flayer dissension provides a pretext for the empire at the end of time to not immediately steamroll your player's planet.
• It would depart from the Reach storyline setup, but maybe you could throw in elements of the Covenant civil war as the invasion escalates... or kick things off with a massive nautiloid space battle visible from the ground, and seed some damaged mind flayer ships into the player's hands before the planet gets rolled.

So much awesome.

So personally, I loathe the "butterfly effect" theory of time travel, mostly because I find that it almost always breaks down in various ways, and just makes everything not work eventually.

So I only use two theories of time travel ever, which I detail below (and I haven't picked which one to use yet).

- Multiversal Time-Travel:

This is time travel in Avengers: Endgame. Essentially, when you travel in time, you create an alternate timeline instead of changing "your" timeline.

- Self-Repairing Time-Travel:

This holds that when someone does time-travel, this damages the timeline, and it needs to repair itself. Either it does this minutely to create a "loop" so that the time travel is still possible and doesn't impact the flow of time, or it changes the timeline so that the time-travel never happened. There may also be an organization/anitbodies that the timeline spawns to literally just destroy the time-travel at its source (time police!)

I'll probably go with the Multiversal Time-Travel, as that makes more sense in this context (it's a bit like Thanos invading the future with his army, except the Mind Flayers are invading the past).

 

[SkidAce]

I think Multiversal Time-Travel is more "logical", but I don't like it.


"Why are you sad Archimedes? We saved Danica the High Mage from the clutches of eternal torment and saved the world!"

Archimedes, sighing sadly, "DID we though?"

 

[NotAYakk]

Destructive 2 dimensional time travel.

When you travel back in time, your original time line is destroyed at or around the point you leave. (the same technology that allows time travel lets you sustain it for a non-zero period of time; this is actually the hard part, because otherwise when the first iota of contact you make with the past happens, your time line ends).

The act of time travel successfully requires you to disconnect your timeline branch at the point where you are going, push matter back to before that disconnect, and stabalize your time line long enough to send back what you want to send back.

After the stabalized period, your entire universe falls apart and ends, without foundation.

The time between the point of disconnect, and the time you travel, remains "in existence", and is a valid target for time travel.

Interestingly, going forward in time is easier (after all, we do it all the time). Reaching one of those dead branches is not easier, because there is no "flow of time" you can follow to reach it.

-------------PCs--x-...-x---x---x---MF Empire------MF Time travel
                  |     |   |   \- Invasion 1
                  |     |   \- Invasion 2
                  |     \- Invasion 3
                  \- Invasion N-1

each of those x is a cut in the timeline. The Mind Flayers eat the universe in each Invasion, then go back in time to a reachable point and eat another universe.

At the moment the MFs invade, there is already an invasion later on in that time line. It is still there. And if you beat this invasion, that later invasion still happens. And if that one is beat? Another one happens. All the way to the end of time. And once they win, they roll back through time and continue their invasion. So the MF victory is inevitable, unless you cheat.

Having a unified elder brain is important to maintaining identity here. As each elder brain sent back in time is an earlier-time copy of the ones that arrived earlier, it is prepared to integrate with it if it exists, and then this 'patches' all of the MFs that arrive.

This permits a small number of MFs and troops to be sent back in a 'cluster'; the last wave sent first, then another duplicate wave sent just before it in the newly spawned timeline, etc. So sending back 1 piece of elder brain, a handful of MF, and a handful of troops and supplies... repeated 1000s of times over 1000s of duplicate timelines results in an invasion force that reassembles. Once large enough, it consumes reality (and magic), then leapfrogs back a bit further, sending a scouting party, then reinforcing it each and every cycle of universe destruction.

The Elder Brain at the end of this process has continuity of awareness since the end of time, going back over each invasion. It has lived every moment of time from now until the end of the universe repeatedly. It has literally seen all that there is to happen.

Which leads to how the PCs win.

They can, and should, win in their time line. They should sacrifice everything -- I mean, they should be building bombs out of gods. It should be scorched earth, and involve using weapons they cannot duplicate, and it should be by the skin of their teeth.

Then have a new invasion occur. All fresh troops. The PCs are naughty word.

But they have a time travel device, and some key informatoin. So they can bop back in time to the start of the initial invasion (just them and a few macguffins), meeting their younger selves at the start of the campaign. They do a strike on the initial MF invasion in this timeline, getting the coordinates for the "end of time".

Then they invade the end of time, the start of the MF horde, and win. This erases themselves and the entire MF invasion, and possibly time travel itself (as maybe it is fueled by a unique artifact or event, which the PCs destroy as part of their plan). As a last step, they send back something that ends the mind flayer empire in their own time somehow, rewriting all of history from the start of the campaign on?

I'd suggest a box, with a big button on it. And a message, from themselves, to "go to location X, push this button, then run as far as you can for 24 hours". It contains a weapon that calls down a beam that smashes through the earth, forming a volcano, and kills the elder brain of the mind flayers. Or something similar -- this "god weapon" should be related to one of the weapons they use to defeat the first mind flayer invasion.

Or something like that.

 

[Lidgar]

For other tech ideas, might want to check out 2e Mongoose Traveller. Also, imagery from Avengers Infinity War comes to mind - especially the last battle. Perhaps give the PCs a way to gate in allies when all hope is lost, similar to that scene...