Inspired by Lords of Madness (Updated with 65% more ideas, and 74% more confusion)!

[Mouseferatu]

Actually, this was my exact thought when I read that line. However, given that illithids had an empire at the end of the universe....perhaps the illithid ARE aboleths or at least what they become eventually.

That's basically what I meant by "evolutionary process"--that I thought it was a cool idea that aboleths eventually evolved into illithid.

 

[Flyspeck23]

That's basically what I meant by "evolutionary process"--that I thought it was a cool idea that aboleths eventually evolved into illithid.

And that's how I've read your post

So how to implement that into a homebrew? How does this father/son-relation play out? Are they even aware of the connection? Maybe only the illithid know, but how does that influence their opinion about aboleths? And if the aboleths know, are they trying to change the future so that they'll not turn into illithids?
And so on.

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

Nice concept Mouse - never been a big one for using either race having but may have to look into them now.

If you're going for an evolutionary process then you probably need to come up with some intermediate forms. Ever play werewolf? If so you need to figure out what the Hispo, Crinos and Glabro are to the aboleth lupus and illithid homid. I'm not saying you need these to be alive in your game (or neccessarily even stat them out) but if you know what they are, you can figure out how they got that way, then you can figure out what needs to be happening in the game in order to instigate that metamorphosis.

So...

Assuming a middle that is bipedal but still monstrous then you need an intermediate form that is somewhat bear-like - i.e. has legs, comfortable out of water for longer than your standard aboleth, and able to rear up on the hind legs for a little if it wants to. The legs don't need to be homologous with humanoid legs (who says the bone structure of an illithid is actually that similar to ours) they only need to serve the same purpose (i.e. get over terrain that an aboleth can't). You want to keep the tentacles away from this because you need them to be the illithid head tentacles later.

You need evolutionary pressures to drive it out of the water which will start of the process of developing limbs to walk on. From there the legs gradually evolve to the point of only using two rather than four - first because they need to climb rocks better then later because tools become important. OK that mirrors human development but it's not a bad evolutionary path.

Ultimately if you still want to play with aboleth and illithid the way they are these factors don't matter - you just need to develop the framework to figure the plotline... so on the basis of the above...

Illithid are conspiring to dry up the aquatic environments of the aboleth in order to drive them out of the water and start the evolution into becoming illithid. As much as possible they are trying not to kill their ancient ancestors but they need to prevent them from living in water that they may evolve into the glorious empire of the illithid.

Drop me an e-mail if you want any more thoughts on this - I'm an evolutionary biologist and this is the sort of thing I really enjoy.

 

[yennico]

Or the ilithids made a time travel back in time because they have seen something in the future that they will either degenerate them back to aboleth, some disease that only kills ilithids or they are alle killed by an superior force so they want to create more ilithids by evolution from aboleths to ilithids so the can deafeat that force.

 

[KaosDevice]

Ever play werewolf? If so you need to figure out what the Hispo, Crinos and Glabro are to the aboleth lupus and illithid homid.

Sooooo.....you're talking weresquid here?

 

[Ry]

I did something similar with the Faranth (from some 3.0 Dungeon magazine) - maybe you could use them as an intermediate stage.

 

[Chris Tavares]

Assuming a middle that is bipedal but still monstrous then you need an intermediate form that is somewhat bear-like - i.e. has legs, comfortable out of water for longer than your standard aboleth, and able to rear up on the hind legs for a little if it wants to. The legs don't need to be homologous with humanoid legs (who says the bone structure of an illithid is actually that similar to ours) they only need to serve the same purpose (i.e. get over terrain that an aboleth can't). You want to keep the tentacles away from this because you need them to be the illithid head tentacles later.

Interesting ideas, but you're missing an important part of illithid "biology": the actual illithid doesn't have legs, or arms. It's a tadpole, and is only vaguely humanoid because the tadpole invaded a humanoid body and ate out it's nervous system. Kinda like the Goa'ld from Stargate SG1 if you've ever seen that show.

So there's no evolutionary reason to have a humanoid form; just the ability to take over and metamorphosise (is that a word?) a humanoid host.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

...
Illithid are conspiring to dry up the aquatic environments of the aboleth in order to drive them out of the water and start the evolution into becoming illithid. As much as possible they are trying not to kill their ancient ancestors but they need to prevent them from living in water that they may evolve into the glorious empire of the illithid.

An alternate thought would be that the Illithid most definitely don't know they came from the aboleth, and look down on them as animals. There were many eons of intermediate forms after all. The Illithid looking at the Aboleths as ancestors would be kind of like us looking at a shrew and saying the same.

So, perhaps they are drying up the Aboleth habitat in furtherance of some other goal thus inadvertantly setting up the conditions of their own creation? They don't really even take notice of the aboleth in the process. They're like dolphins caught in tuna nets. Inconvenient, expensive, but no big thing to the people doing the catching. Perhaps some of the Illithid that are more grounded in "real world" physics and cause-and-effect take notice of the similarities between themselves and the aboleth. They might put the pieces together and speak out against the destruction of the aboleth, only to be decried as "dangerously logical." These beings, after all, are intimately related to the kind of universes with screwy causality (Far Realms, etc). Attributing their creation to a logical, temporally feed-forward process like evolution would likely be a form of heresy in their society.

Or, even more amusingly, they are actively TRYING to wipe out the Aboleths because they find the creatures loathsome. Chain of effect the same.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Interesting ideas, but you're missing an important part of illithid "biology": the actual illithid doesn't have legs, or arms. It's a tadpole, and is only vaguely humanoid because the tadpole invaded a humanoid body and ate out it's nervous system. Kinda like the Goa'ld from Stargate SG1 if you've ever seen that show.

So there's no evolutionary reason to have a humanoid form; just the ability to take over and metamorphosise (is that a word?) a humanoid host.

Hmmmm... that makes the evolutionary path very different, but you can still do it with the "drying out their habitats" routine. They pulled a standard juvenilization schtick, keeping the larval form into the adult stage (I forget what it's actually called). This allowed them to invade smaller, deeper subterranean habitats that weren't affected by the drainage. The parasitism developed after they encountered subterranean humanoids in the new habitat.

 

[Gez]

The Morkoth and the Kopru could be the missing links between aboleths and illithids.