Illithid (il·lithid)
Basic Information
Anatomy
Illithids have humanoid bodies, with octopoid heads. They have four tentacles around a lamprey-like mouth, and require the brains of sentient creatures as part of their diet. An illithid who snares a living creature in all four of its tentacles can extract and devour its living brain. Illithid eyes are pale white, and though their vision is limited to roughly 60 feet, they can see perfectly well in both darkness and light. Their sense of hearing is slightly poorer than a human's; they have difficulty distinguishing between several sounds mixed together. Their skin is mauve and covered in mucus, and is very sensitive to sunlight; illithids who make extended forays to the surface must wear protective clothing to maintain their skin moisture.
Among the most feared illithid abilities is the dreaded mind blast, where the creature emits a cone-shaped psionic shockwave with its mind in order to incapacitate any creature for a short amount of time. Illithids also have other psionic powers, generally telepathic in nature, although their exact effects have varied over editions. Other powers include a defensive psionic shield and powers of psionic domination for controlling the minds of others.
Genetics and Reproduction
Ceremorphosis
Illithids are hermaphroditic creatures who each spawn a mass of larvae twice in their life. The larvae resemble miniature illithid heads or four-tentacled tadpoles. Larvae are left to develop in the pool of the elder brain. The ones that survive after 10 years are inserted into the brain of a sapient creature. Hosts are determined in a very specific manner. Hosts generally are humanoid creatures that are between 5 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 2 inches tall. The most desired races for hosts are humans, drow, surface elves, githzerai, githyanki, grimlocks, gnolls, goblinoids, and orcs. Upon being implanted, the larva then grows and consumes the host's brain, absorbing the host's physical form entirely and becoming sapient itself, a mature (but still young) illithid. This process is called ceremorphosis. Illithids often experiment with non-humanoid hosts, but ceremorphosis involving other creatures usually fails, killing both host and larva. Occasionally, ceremorphosis can partially fail. Sometimes the larva does not contain enough chemicals to complete the mutation, sometimes there is psionic interference. Whatever the reason, it has happened that ceremorphosis has ended after the internal restructuring, resulting in a human body with an illithid's brain, personality and digestive tract. These unfortunates must still consume brains, typically by cutting open heads (as they lack the requisite tentacles). These beings are often used as spies, where they easily blend in with their respective host types.
Illithids are hermaphroditic creatures who each spawn a mass of larvae twice in their life. The larvae resemble miniature illithid heads or four-tentacled tadpoles. Larvae are left to develop in the pool of the elder brain. The ones that survive after 10 years are inserted into the brain of a sapient creature. Hosts are determined in a very specific manner. Hosts generally are humanoid creatures that are between 5 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 2 inches tall. The most desired races for hosts are humans, drow, surface elves, githzerai, githyanki, grimlocks, gnolls, goblinoids, and orcs. Upon being implanted, the larva then grows and consumes the host's brain, absorbing the host's physical form entirely and becoming sapient itself, a mature (but still young) illithid. This process is called ceremorphosis. Illithids often experiment with non-humanoid hosts, but ceremorphosis involving other creatures usually fails, killing both host and larva. Occasionally, ceremorphosis can partially fail. Sometimes the larva does not contain enough chemicals to complete the mutation, sometimes there is psionic interference. Whatever the reason, it has happened that ceremorphosis has ended after the internal restructuring, resulting in a human body with an illithid's brain, personality and digestive tract. These unfortunates must still consume brains, typically by cutting open heads (as they lack the requisite tentacles). These beings are often used as spies, where they easily blend in with their respective host types.
Ecology and Habitats
Illithids spend much of their time in intense study and experimentation, gathering knowledge of all sorts that will enable them to eventually reconquer the universe and hold it for good. They frequently meddle in the politics of other races through subtle psychic manipulation of key figures, not to cause chaos but so as to better understand the dynamics of civilization. They regularly probe the minds of surface dwellers so as to gather intelligence and learn about new advances in magic and technology. Illithids also do a good deal of research themselves, mainly focused on developing new psychic powers.
Illithids regularly conduct raids on all sentient settlements to acquire new thralls, because their existing stock of sentient thralls do not breed fast enough to satisfy their food and labor needs. Typically, a group of mind flayers will teleport to the settlement and swiftly incapacitate them with their psychic powers. The captives will then be marched all the way to the illithids' underground settlement by specially trained and conditioned thralls. Great care is taken to cover their tracks.
Illithids typically dwell in dim, underground settlements, usually in the Underdark.
Illithids also have a strong presence in the phlogiston and spheres beyond. The primary spelljamming ship used by illithids is the nautiloid, a 35-ton craft resembling a nautilus. Nautiloids are 125' to 180' long, including the tentacle-like piercing ram. The ship's coiled shell provides the comfort of enclosed space and protects the illithids from the rays of solar bodies. Less common illithid vessels such as the 25-ton squid ship, the 70-ton octopus, and the 100-ton cuttle command also resemble the cephalopods after which they are named.
Additional Information
Social Structure
An illithid city is ruled by a creature called an elder brain which lives in a pool of cerebral fluid in the city's center. When an illithid dies, its brain is extracted and taken to the pool. Illithids believe that when they die their personality is incorporated into the elder brain, but this is not the case. When the brain of an illithid is added to the elder brain, the memories, thoughts and experiences are consumed and added to the sum of the whole, but all else is lost. This fact is a closely guarded secret of the elder brains, since all illithid aspire to a form of immortality through this merging process. An extremely ancient elder brain is called a god brain, because its psionic powers are almost limitless.
Since the elder brain contains the essence of every illithid that died in its community, it functions in part as a vast library of knowledge that a mind flayer can call upon via telepathy. The elder brain in turn can communicate telepathically with anyone in its community, issuing orders and ensuring everyone conforms.
Illithids generally frown upon magic, preferring their natural psionic ability. Psionic potential is an integral part of the illithid identity, and the elder brain cannot absorb the magical powers of an illithid mage when it dies. They tolerate a limited study of wizardry, if only to better understand the powers employed by their enemies. However, an illithid who goes too far and neglects his psionic development in favor of wizardry risks becoming an outcast. Denied the possibility of ever merging with the elder brain, such outcasts often seek their own immortality through undeath, becoming illithis liches called alhoons.
Civilization and Culture
Major Organizations
Illithids revere a perverse deity named Ilsensine.
History
The origins of the illithids are often shrouded in mystery, with often various conflicting accounts.
The unknown, insane author of the book; Lords of Madness, states that illithids are refugees from a far distant future. Facing extinction at the hands of some unknown adversary, they sacrificed a large number of elder brains to generate a temporal rift that transported the survivors aeons into the past, but little more than a mere two thousand years before the present.
Another book; The Illithiad and The Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters suggests they may be from the Far Realm, an incomprehensible plane completely alien to the known multiverse. There is no mention of time travel in this theory, although it is mentioned that time travel may be one of the ways of reaching the Far Realm. The illithids emerged somewhere and somewhen countless thousands of years ago, beyond the histories of many mortal races, and spread from one world to another, and another, and so on. It is explicitly stated in this book that the illithids appear in some of the most ancient histories of the most ancient races, even those that have no mention of other races. In these two differing versions of the story, much of the variance hinges upon a fictional text called The Sargonne Prophecies. The Illithiad described the Prophecies as misnamed, and that much of it sounds more like ancient myth than prophecy. Lords of Madness takes the name more literally, and states that The Sargonne Prophecies are in fact prophecy — or, perhaps more accurately, a history of the future.
Yet another version of illithid origins comes from The Astromundi Cluster, book written and distributed before The Illithiad. This version holds that the illithids are descended from the outcasts of an ancient human society that ruled the now-shattered world called Astromundi. The outcast humans eventually mutated, deep underground, into the mind flayers. This boxed set also introduced the entity known as Lugribossk, who was depicted as a god of the Astromundi flayers then, but was later retconned into a proxy of the god Ilsensine. In the retconned history of the illithids found in either The Illithiad or Lords of Madness, the emergence of illithids in Astromundi becomes a freak occurrence due to the intervention of Ilsensine through its proxy, since the illithids of Astromundi have their own histories as emerging solely upon that world.
However and whenever it occurred, when the illithids arrived in the Material Plane of the far past, they immediately began to build an empire by enslaving many sentient creatures. They were very successful, and soon their worlds-spanning empire became the largest one the multiverse had ever seen. They had the power — in terms of psychic potency and the manpower of countless slaves — to fashion artificial worlds. One such world was this empire's capital, called Penumbra, a diskworld built around a star, which was a thousand years in the making.
Eventually, the primary slave race of the illithids developed resistance to the mental powers of their masters, and revolted. Led by the warrior Gith, the rebellion spread to all the illithids' worlds, and the empire collapsed. The illithid race itself seemed doomed.
Fortunately for the illithids, Gith was betrayed by one of her own generals, who believed she had grown tyrannical and over-aggressive. Civil war erupted, and the race factionalized into the githyanki and the githzerai. This disruption allowed the illithids to retreat to underground strongholds where they still dwell.
Legend claims the original home of the gith forerunners was a world known as Pharagos. Currently it is described as, "an unremarkable Material-Plane world, a far cry from the hotbed of magical activity and divine intervention that is the Forgotten Realms campaign or the World of Greyhawk." Beneath the Wasting Desert on that world, however, is the petrified corpse of the long-dead patron deity of the ancestors of the gith races. As is recounted in most 1st and 2nd edition sources, the ancestors of the gith forerunners were a human civilization before being modified by countless generations of illithid breeding and profane science.
After Gith's rebellion, she led her people to the Astral Plane. While a few subject races and surviving illithids remained on Oerth, the gith forerunners have departed the world, seemingly for good. If they retain any interest in the ruins of Zarum, it is well concealed. A portion of the ruins of Anithor were eventually colonized by the drow of House Kilsek, who named their new settlement Kalan-G'eld.
Statistics
Conservation Status
Least Concerned
Size(s)
Medium
Origin(s)
Abberant
Type(s)
Humanoid
Sub Type(s)
Psionic
Challenge Rating(s)
Least Concerned
Size(s)
Medium
Origin(s)
Abberant
Type(s)
Humanoid
Sub Type(s)
Psionic
Alignment
| LG | NG | CG |
| LN | N | CN |
| LE | NE | CE |
Mind Flayer
Arcanist
Psion
Arcanist
Psion
7
8
8
8
8
General Information
Patron Deity
Ilsensine, the Great Brain
Maanzecorian, the Philosoflayer
Vision
Darkvision
Activity Cycle(s)
Any
Diet(s)
Brains
Average Lifespan
Up to 125 years
Average Intelligence
Hyperintelligent
Homeland(s)
Far Realm
Underdark
Language(s)
Undercommon, Deep Speech, Qualith
Favored Climate(s)
Any
Favored Terrain(s)
Underground
Ilsensine, the Great Brain
Maanzecorian, the Philosoflayer
Vision
Darkvision
Activity Cycle(s)
Any
Diet(s)
Brains
Average Lifespan
Up to 125 years
Average Intelligence
Hyperintelligent
Homeland(s)
Far Realm
Underdark
Language(s)
Undercommon, Deep Speech, Qualith
Favored Climate(s)
Any
Favored Terrain(s)
Underground
Appearance
Average Height
6 ft (1.8 m)
Average weight
Same as most humans
Skin color(s)
Mauve
Eye color(s)
Solid white
Distinctions
Facial tentacles
6 ft (1.8 m)
Average weight
Same as most humans
Skin color(s)
Mauve
Eye color(s)
Solid white
Distinctions
Facial tentacles
History
Genetic Ancestor(s)
Subrace(s)
Ulitharid
Alhoon
Genetic Descendant(s)
Notable Civilizations
Notable Organizations
Notable Illithid
Subrace(s)
Ulitharid
Alhoon
Genetic Descendant(s)
Notable Civilizations
Notable Organizations
Notable Illithid
Origin/Ancestry
Aberration
Conservation Status
The Illithid species is constantly on the verge of destruction by the Gith who hunt them down, and by the wayward adventure who puts a stop to their nefarious plans of terraforming.
Geographic Distribution
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