Thinking Outside the Box

[demiurge1138]

Pack-hunting illithids, telepathic coordination...
Instead of "new ways to cook a sacred cow", I'm getting "When Illthids Attack: Tonight on FOX!" This is why I love the boards.

Demiurge out.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Like everyone's said, every DM should do what inspires him.

As to the idea in question, I find it difficult to accept a highly intelligent savage race (savage in the sense of primitive, barbaric,) only because I believe intelligence naturally leads to more orderly cultural advancement. Perhaps that's the problem others have had. Then again, perhaps not.

 

[Xarlen]

Pack-hunting illithids, telepathic coordination...
Instead of "new ways to cook a sacred cow", I'm getting "When Illthids Attack: Tonight on FOX!" This is why I love the boards.

Demiurge out.

"It sucked the front of ma brain out, but me and Jim Bobby, we's still got our school learnin' that we was teached, yup. Even when I poked that wiggly tentacle thing with a stick."

Hee.

Yeah, I could see savage Illithids as more Cunning then purely intelligent. Instead of Scheming for domination, they sure as hell know how to kill you if you get in their territory.

I keep putting them akin to Raptors.

 

[Xarlen]

Oh!

Illithids form by taking an Illithi larve and placing it into the skull of a humanoid. It eats the brain, then takes over the body, slowly morphing into an Illithid (Remind you of Aliens, anyone?).

What would happen if the Larvae ended up in something else? Imagine if it ended up in something quadripedial. Or something somewhat intelligent, like primates? A big Gurrila Illithid, or something Grell-like.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Oh!

Illithids form by taking an Illithi larve and placing it into the skull of a humanoid. It eats the brain, then takes over the body, slowly morphing into an Illithid (Remind you of Aliens, anyone?).

What would happen if the Larvae ended up in something else? Imagine if it ended up in something quadripedial. Or something somewhat intelligent, like primates? A big Gurrila Illithid, or something Grell-like.

Have you seen Draconic Lore, from Fantasy Flight Games? It's basically a small Dragons-and-Related-Creatures-Only monster book, and the critters are definitely hit-or-miss. But one of the hits is the Cthonian dragon, a Cthulhu-esque dragon created by the implantation of Illithid spawn into the brain of a captured dragon. Nasty creature, that one...

 

[Xarlen]

I have Necromantic lore.

Mmmm. Tentacle Dragon...

 

[demiurge1138]

Mouseferatu, Xarlen, that's actually sorta how this came up. On the homebrew forums, there is a thread about "aberrant dragons", one of them based on illithids. I commented on how I could use it, and the rest, as they say, was history.

Demiurge out.

 

[Torx]

There's a nice way you could go about making a primitive mind flayer race work (like the yaggol (sp?) in Taladas). I'm no history major (actually I am) but I've heard that ancient civilizations formed because of one thing: cultivation. Each of the three staple crops (rice, wheat, and corn - going east to west) were developed and cultivated at different stages. Once a crop is cultivated, a society has no need for hunter-gatherer types and it creates something no one has ever had before: free time. This free time is used for a variety of purposes (building, tools, religion, etc) and civilization springs forth.

Coming back to mind flayers, you could have a food scarcity (brains) be a good reason for the society to be degenerate. This has to be over the course of centuries (millenia would be better...but not always plausible). The illithids could be seperated from intelligent brain - forced to eat animals and the like...so on and so on. Something recent has forced the decadant society to "find" human/elf/dwarf civilizations, maybe continental drift - whatever. But this would give you a plausible head start, negate all the arguments against this kind of illithid society forming (too smart, extra-planar, lawful, etc).

Hope this helps!

 

[Ashy]

The old 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium for the Dragonlance setting had an entire race of degenerate Illithid who had lost much of their intelligence and many of their abilities. So obviously someone likes the idea. (And while I personally wouldn't want my flayers to be like that, I see no problem with the concept.)

As far as different mind flayers go, wait until you see what I've got planned for our favorite squid-heads in Scarred Lands, assuming Joe lets me run with everything I want to at some point.

OOOooooo! Ari, ya need to email me - you should see some of the ideas I did NOT send into the CCIII Open Call! They fit right up this alley!

 

[Aust Diamondew]

My advice is to do whatever you want. The game needs more people who think out of the box. Even if I don't persoanly like some of the ideas.