Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6097104" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok, I'll go ahead and tell you what I think you should do.The Ithilid High Council has decided that humanity would make an excellent long term food source, but that in its current state it is simply to wild and dangerous of an animal to make husbandry of the species profitable.  It therefore has concieved of a plan to improve the breed, resulting in a species suitable for domestication and more fit for consumption.  To this end, about 50 years ago after centuries of experimentation, it successfully produced a prototype model - the first of a new a highly intelligent human subspecies with increased cranial capacity which is nonetheless completely docile in the presence of an mindflayer, completely unable to shield or protect its mind from mindflayers, and willing and even eager to be devoured and eaten.   Unfortunately, before the breeding population could be exploited, a group of wild humans disrupted the experiment and killed all but one sample of the tame breeding stock (then infants).  These humans were eradicated (or so the council believes), and the project restarted sadly without the benefits of the best minds that had been devouted to this esoteric project.   The project was put on the back burner, some thought that the interferance in the project was proof it had been poorly conceived from the start and instead advocated continuing research in exterminating humanity like the plague it is, but the surviving single prototype was thought to retain some salvagable value.  It was provided with suitable mental conditioning, and then released into the wild with instructions for reproducing itself with the eventual goal of patterning the wild population after the successful prototype.  This prototype is now a respected human archmage which you'll locate in your campaign world under whatever cover suits you.The prototype has a multistage plan:1) Natural reproduction: Experiment in natural breeding with willing and unwilling partners as can be provided.  When the children of these unions reach sufficient maturity, expose to Illithids to test reaction.  Those that respond favorably, suffer to live and direct to continue the experiment.  Those that show fear can be salvaged as food.   This stage of the experiment could yield good results in the long run, but is very slow even by accelerating the breeding program via regularly obtaining unwilling subjects.  Also, some few experimental subjects escape observation, and so cannot be later tested - though they presumably will spread their nature unwittingly to the general population so its not a total loss.  At present, the are perhaps 100 direct descendents of the prototype, only a fraction having knowledge of their true nature.  The oldest are about age 25.  The most successful experiments act as prototype ones direct trusted underlings, though there are some worrisome signs that the blended nature leads to imperfect results, remenent instinctual self-preservation, remenent compasion and sentimentality, etc.   Many dozens have no knowledge of their heredity.2) Cloning: A suitable population of direct descendents has allowed the second stage of the plan to commence, breeding large numbers of sexually desirable clones to distribute amongst the wild population where they will be preferably bred with and gradually replace the natural strain.  To this end, a rural village has been recreated to provide cover for the cloning factory.  Genes are carefully selected to maximize docility and obedience, while providing a suitable range of phenotypes so as to avoid alarming the wild population and alerting them of the danger.  Rapid generation and maturation of clones has allowed several hundred mature specimens to be obtained, and these are already now breeding in the wild.   However, very high maturation rates produce subjects which frighten the wild population.  To produce the best results, slower more natural maturation rates are used together with education in normal wild human behavior and sufficient psychic surgery is used to remove memories of any unnatural experience from the subjects memories before release into the wild.3) Neutralization-  The most ambitious project is to modify wild human pathogens such that they will, upon infection, not result in death but rather produce mutations which approximate those found in the prototype.  When fully developed and released, this patheogen is expected to rapidly convert the greater mass of the wild human population into docile and eager slaves, content to fatten themselves and maintain their own health in preparation for being used as food stuffs.  Isolated pockets of immune humans can then be leisurely hunted if it suits such Ilithids which are stimulated by such sport.At the start of the campaign, stage 2 is underway and stage three is in the final stages before completion.</blockquote>

Verification