An Alternate Ecology of Mind Flayers

“From the dawn of time we came … moving silently down through the centuries. Living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the gathering, when the few who remain will battle to the last. No one has ever known we were among you … until now.“ - Highlander.

I'll get to why this applies in a minute. Stick with me.

Illithids. Mind flayers. Eaters of brains, parasites or symbiotes that change their hosts into something unspeakable, and destroy their original mind.

They first appear in the very early days of D&D. They are product identity, synonymous with the game. Created by Gary Gygax, they are terrifying creatures with strange mental powers and an insatiable hunger for the brains (and memories) of sapient creatures, usually humanoids.

Across the many editions, they have been given many different origins. They have been an ancient fallen empire, a star-faring menace, an aberrant civilization from deep in the Astral Plane, beings from the Far Realm, and even refugees from a hideous future where they ruled all, but something worse destroyed them, and they fled into the past to try again. In their long history, whether it be past or future, they may have twisted the duergar and the derro into their present forms, subdued the quaggoth, subjugated the kuo-toa. It is generally agreed that their empire was the source of the Githyanki and the Githzerai. In their subterranean cities, they are accompanied by lesser versions of themselves, and other creatures from wherever it is they came from: intellect devourers, illithidae like embrac, kigrid, and saltor, maybe more things. Who knows what else might have crept through time and space with them?

I do. Or at least, I have some ideas. Here's where I suggest you go read my other article, An Alternate Cosmology of the Far Realm, either in the supplement Spawn of Khaos on DM's Guild, or here on my blog. Might wanna read the Alternate Ecology of Aboleths, too, because I'm building on concepts from both. Go do that and come back. Done? Good.

In my Alternate Cosmology of the Far Realm, I posit that the Far Realm is many things at once. It's the world next door that developed differently, it's the alternate timeline, it's the distant future, it's the far past. Because what it mainly is, is Outside. Outside our frame of reference. The beginning of time and the end are the same, there, because there is no time. The Far Realm existed before the gods made Creation. It will exist after. Except...that it never existed and never can. That's the point of it. It doesn't exist. It is not a place, or a point in time. It transcends those concepts, those realities. And it is, ultimately, the source of everything. More directly, it is certainly the source of all aberrations. THINGS That Should Not Be. Cosmic horrors...because the space between the stars is thin enough to touch that Outside place. Et cetera, ad nauseam. (Nausea probably won't take long.) Now that we have that out of the way, let's focus on illithids. I already made the comparison between aboleths and spermatozoa and/or larvae. They certainly look that way, incomplete. And they greatly resemble the much smaller illithid tadpoles. Go look at pictures of the two, and tell me I'm wrong. I'll wait. I'll even put the pictures here.

See what I mean?

Does it mean anything? It could. It could just be coincidence. But what fun is that?

What if . . . just what if, mind you . . . it means they are related? Related more closely even than just being eldritch horrors from beyond time and space, one from before all things, one (sort of) from after. I postulated in my Alternate Ecology of Aboleths that aboleths actually are larvae, or spematozoa of sorts, looking for the egg they are meant to fertilize or the host they are meant to parasitize. I built a giant who had been so affected in Spawn of Khaos. I built illith-skum...creatures that had been changed by aboleth mucus into servitors and underwent ceremorphosis into something different.

What does that mean for the illithids? We know, at least according to me, that the aboleths were spawned before Creation in the depths of pure Khaos before there were even planes or worlds. That this is the dark abyss they remember before the gods. There are two interesting things to note about that: One, time doesn't exist out there. Two, space doesn't exist out there. So...before doesn't matter, it's now. After doesn't matter, it's the same. And size doesn't matter. There is no frame of reference. No rules of physics. That tiny tadpole on the left, and that large thing on the right . . . are the same size, out there. They might even be the same thing. (Might. Might not.) Imagine one of them, entering the world at the beginning, appears large in our frame of reference, even huge. Another, entering at a different point (maybe the end of time, say) appears tiny in our frame of reference. They come from the same environment, the same lack of time and space, but are defined by when and where they enter our environment. This applies, to a certain extent, to all the aberrations. They are a compromise, between a thing that never needed, or had, form, shape, size, time . . . and an environment that mandates all those things. In the Far Realm, in the Khaos Outside . . . they don't have any of those things, except perhaps in the pained perceptions of a native of Inside, of Creation, who has somehow made it out there, or gotten a look. Cosmic horror breaks the brain, remember?

Another thread here, is that aboleths have no memory of illithids until they suddenly appear. That's because aboleths, as we know them, have been Inside since the beginning, and Illithids just suddenly show up Inside, fully formed, because they entered at the other end and made their way backward.

Bit of a digression, but each aberration's means and avenue of entry into the Inside would definitely affect their physical manifestation in here. Beholders come in through the place where unreality touches dreams, perhaps, so they dream things into existence. They still have a channel to the Outside. And maybe, in a twisted way, that’s what psionics is. Direct manipulation of reality by the power of mind alone, without needing to follow the rules of 'magic', because the aberrations (most of which are psionic) come from a place where everything was malleable by the mind and perception, and there was no distance between truth and illusion.

Anyway. Back to illithids. They come in at the end of time, or near it. They take advantage of the fact that most things are already dead and gone, that the universe is mostly dark and empty. They build an empire. They aren't destroyed by some nameless thing . . . they always meant to go back as far as they could in time. Because they have a plan. A plan that they themselves are not all aware of. A plan hatched by the thing they call Ilsenine. Perhaps some of the highest uliatharids know. The oldest of the Elder Brains. Perhaps some know that all illithids are part of a greater hive, the tadpole spawn of the Thing that some think is a god, but is far older. Illsenine. Some of the mind flayers themselves believe that aboleths are manifestations of Maanzecorian, a 'lesser' entity but rival of Ilsenine. And maybe they are. Maybe Ilsenine and Maanzecorian are 'brothers' or 'lovers' or facets of the same thing. Maybe Maanzecorian is Piscaethes, maybe Piscaethes is Dagon, or maybe Dagon is just the greatest of the spawn of Maanzecorian in Creation, and the spawn of many of their hideous race look like the tadpoles and the aboleth before they mature or merge with something else. The point is, whatever Ilsenine is, they have a plan. And their spawn will carry it out.

What is that plan? Probably beyond my understanding. I'm mired in time and space and things like that. But We know parts of it. Parts that fit very well with aboleth aims. Aboleths wish to bring the whole world under their dominion. And they were comfortable in the utter dark. As Lords of Madness tells us, illithids wish to blot out the suns and darken all things. They alkso seek to know all things, and medle in polticis so as to learn to control all, in the very end of time. But what if those are just facets of the real plan?

Here's that final aim, as far as a mortal mind can encompass it: to return all things, all Creation, to the void. To make reality as if it had never been, and reclaim existence for non-existence. To make that which has never been, and can never be, the inexorable and true unreality that has always been. To unmake Creation, from the beginning, from the end, from the middle, so that it all unravels, all gods fall, and the Elder Evils reign in the primordial emptiness forever, as they always have, but never will. A million schemes lead toward that end, a million million threats to each world and all worlds. The reason the Blood War almost stopped to let the fiends deal with the illithids (perhaps that is what happened, will happen, never will happen) to destroy their future empire? Because the fiends realized what their true aim was, and stopped them? Even the Devils need Creation to exist so they can continue to rule or enforce law...even the demons need the Worlds so there is something to kill and destroy. Obyriths, on the other hand, well. They are the hands of the Elder Evils, and even if they don't know it, they seek the destruction of all, the return to Khaos, and beyond.

So we know what they want. Sort of. And we've stopped them before. We'll stop them again. So they can never win, because they never have. But we have a problem. Our frame of reference means that once we lose, we can't try again, because our frame of reference is gone. Our existence never existed, so we don't. We lose forever, losing once. Their frame of reference has no rules. They don't ever lose, because their frame of reference already doesn't exist. Outside, nothing is real, there are no rules. They can try over and over again, in every time and place. In the same time and place on separate instances, somehow. Because they are Outside of all that. They only have to win once, and it is all over. It never was. We have to win every time, now and forever, and many times in the same time and place (somehow). They only have to win once, and then they have always won, and there was never a battle. Just Khaos. Just the Far Realm. And every aberration is somehow part of this plan. From beholders to illithids to slaadi, to neogi, each given form by the point in time and space where they entered Reality.

Now that I've hit you with the heavy stuff, lets talk about the timeline illithids follow after they enter Creation. Now we've pretty well established that they did in fact come in at the end of time. They took slaves from what few races were left. They dominated all, and built a vast civilization to support their aims to conquer it all, all of space and time. They had super advanced technology and psionic powers. (Kind of like Daleks and Time lords...I may play with that idea some more later.) The fiends realize what they have planned and destroy their infrastructure. But the illithids expected this, and fled through time and space, dropping colonies everywhere and every when , but not predating the aboleths or interfering with them. They brought some of their slaves with them. Once in their colonies, they conquered where they could, hid and survived where they had to, all with the aim of building their civilization again. And again. And again. In every place and time, as far back as they could, ensuring that in this instance when they reach the end of time, they will have overwhelming forces to face the Powers of the Great Wheel, the powers of the Outer Planes...the dreaded, hated Gods of Creation, and their servitors: angels, devil, tanar'ri . The obyriths and my Fomor serve the Elder Evils. Watch for my Fomor Folio early next year.:)

Somewhere in there they lost control of the gith. They changed the derro and the duergar, tainting them forever. They imparted the Unreality of the Far Realm to the kuo-toa, who somehow gained the ability to believe gods into existence from it. And they made, and spread, so many other aberrations. Maybe even some of the big names, like, for instance, grell. Tsochar. Other things that take minds or bodies, and destroy the very idea of sanity or stability. It's a big plan. And a whole lot of it won't make sense to our very limited perspectives. That's part of the point.

Oh, right. You were wondering why I quoted Highlander at the beginning, and what that had to do with the Ilithids? Well. You may have noticed that all these things seem to be at odds. That they fight each other for dominance in Reality. That they certainly don't seem like friends. Beholders don't ally with anything, much less Illithids. Illithids see all things as lesser, as thralls. So do Aboleths. They see each other that way. Et cetera. Ad nauseam. (Yes, you'll get nauseated. Maybe just from thinking about this.) So they fight. And that's part of the plan too. They fight, they winnow out the weak, the survivors become more accomplished, more dangerous. Perhaps only one of the many strands of plan will actually succeed, or can succeed. Perhaps there can be only one. Only one type of aberration, or even only one Elder Evil, standing over the wreckage at the end, getting the Prize. Whatever that is.

The Mind Flayers intend to be that one. And with as little is actually known about them, and the resources at their disposal, decentralized to protect them from destruction across all space and time...they have a chance. It's really hard to win a multiversal-temporal war when your enemies are insurgents everywhere. Everywhen.

The last thing we need to talk about is the illithid lifecycle. If left unattended, the tadpoles eat each other. One gets bigger, gets out, goes hunting. Becomes a larval flayer. If that thing feeds on a sentient, it becomes a neothelid. Mind flayers hate this...because that's a different plan. They want to be the one to win the prize. They stick to humanoid hosts, mainly, because that's the plan. They put their brains into the Elder Brain when they die so no memory is lost. That's the course they are locked into. But it doesn't mean they have to. We've already seen what happened when an dragon and an elder brain merge. I've shown you what happens when you put illithid larvae into skum, or make illithids into skum. I've shown you what happens when illithid tadpole get into an aboleth's water, or vice versa. But there are so many more things that can ceremorph, and even more nasty aberrations mind flayers can make. And maybe, just maybe, more and different stages a larval flayer can enter depending on what it eats . We'll look at those soon.

Okay. I lied. Second to last thing. The Daelkyr. Manifestations of Xoriat, which is really just a droplet of a single perspective on the Far Realm. They are direct lieutenants of the Elder Evils, and they'll get their own entry soon enough. You didn't think they really were limited to Eberron, did you?

get Spawn of Khaos here: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/413223/Spawn-of-Khaos

And watch for the next cool supplement for mind Flayers: The Illicit Illithiad.