Ilithid Elder Brains

tk32

First Post
Hello, I'm DMing a fairly open world 5th edition campaign. One of the side quests was for a warlock in the party that decided to jump through a portal that was a skin blanket from undead that was engraved with runes. By speaking a command word, the blanket formed a portal the ancient sword coast, that in this campaing (About 500 years after the cataclysm of Tiamats summoning - Which despite winning, threw the sword coast into chaos. Timat defeated, sent the evil dragons into a rage that despite the aid of the good dragons, left the sword coast in shambles, the citizens fled inland and setup new cities 1000 + miles from the sword coast, seeking shelter wherever they could. My twist on RoT was that Thay coordinated Tiamat's summoning to distract people from it's new inventions to make itself an economic powerhouse. )

Thayan's new inventions (a merging of twisted wizardry and using dried up and ground up undead as fuel drove it to be powerful over the next 500 years. Over time, Illithids came out of the sea to take up the weakened sword coast. Setting up a camp within the confines and protections of demolished ruins. However, the manipulations Thay has done has (possibly intentionally) closed plane shift magics. The other planes are sealed. Only powerful ancient portals that were direct connections to specific planes are able to break through the planes.

This has left the dead to be unable to die and provided a ever increasing source of undead supply. The Githyanki thought the Illithids had done this (of course) and were openly seeking out the Illithids.

The PCs weakened the besieged Illithid camp by destroying some of the guard posts that were in servitude to the illithids. This allowed the Githyanki in. The pcs needed something the Illithids had. So, in exchange for not killing the PCs outright and what the PCs asked for, the Illithids agreed. The corrupted warlock (whom serves an evil Patreon - Orcus) Was open to these dealings and snuck arcane protected box containing illithid fluids and a baby illithid Elder Brain. They wanted him to smuggle it inland a few thousand miles away from the sword coast, where the brain could feed on undead brains aplenty and setup a new Illithid colony inland. Helping deal with the undead problem, the warlock didn't think this was a bad idea. (His intelligence is 8... So, not the brightest warlock...)

So, in short, he placed a baby elder brain in a protected area, and left. The PC got trapped on the Astral plane on another adventure and 6 years went by. But technically only 1 day for the PC.

So, now he's returning to see what his brain friend has been up to. Would the elder brain have achieved adult status in 6 years or would it be an infant still? I have found nothing on the lifecycle of elder brains. So, I just assumed they started out with less knowledge and therefore less size and they started from the Ulitherids brain. (Just with his knowledge, and his brain's size initially until he consumed more brains.)

I want to make him close to an adult now, (Like medium sized vs. small or tiny). And have several powerful servants in place to feed him brains.


Thoughts?
 

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Well...

In official D&D lore (Volo's), Elder Brains start out as special Mind Flayers known as Ulitharids, which eventually crack their own skulls open, allowing their brain to slip out into a nutrient pool. The brain then grows to full size in a few months.

However, this is your campaign, so you can really do whatever you wish to the Elder Brain life-cycle.

Furthermore, I don't think that knowledge affects the size of an Elder Brain.
 

It was my understanding that the word 'Elder' in Elder Brain meant it was old and was probably an ilithid before it became an Elder Brain. But, in any case....can elder brains feed on undead? I didn't think so but, if this one did find a way, maybe the brain is corrupted and is now an undead Elder Brain. Which would be baddass....I think 6 years is plenty of time to reach maturity. "Why are there undead everywhere?! and why are they so smart and why do they seem to have a Hive Mind??"
 

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