Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 49 - Monster Series - Illithid and Mind Flayers

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

Mind flayers - evil alien beings with octopus heads and the ability to fry your mind from 60 feet away then eat it while you're still breathing.  I know.  Freaky, right?  What about these monsters and their abilities?  How can you use them in a campaign?  Well, wonder no longer.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to episode 49 of the Taking 20 podcast. We're continuing the monster series this week, this time focusing on illithids and mind flayers. Our sponsor this week is Laughter. Laughter can prove to people you're actually sane or completely insane. It just depends on how you use it. I started playing Baldur's Gate 3 this week. It's out on early access, and if you even watch the trailer, you'll learn that mind flayers play a major role in the campaign. Throughout this episode, I will use the terms illithid and mind flayer interchangeably. They'll mean the same thing for this episode. and Mind Flayer interchangeably.

They'll mean the same thing for this episode. Now as a heads up, Wizards of the Coast owns the name Mind Flayers and Illithid, so this is going to be a rare system-specific episode. It's not that you can't find something comparable in other gaming systems. Pathfinder, for example, has the Neothelids, the Sugathi, and the Frenic Scourge. They're similar, but not exactly like Mind Flayers, but a lot of this information would apply to them as well. It'd be very easy to homebrew the concept into those game systems as well as Call of Cthulhu and others. Point being, a lot of this advice can be

used for any type of creature that looks very different from core races, comes from an unknown location, has purposes and goals that are beyond understanding, and uses mind control. So let's get into the heart of it. Mind flayers, illithids, are lawful evil masterminds. They harvest other intelligent races for food, slaves, and reproduction. And by the way, don't think that's hot kind of reproduction. No, no. They're not the green-skinned aliens from Star Trek or the Asari from Mass Effect or Twi'leks from Star Wars. They are humanoid-like, with two arms and two legs, but are monstrous in appearance and aberrant with their heads looking like some sort of octopus and

a lamprey-like mouth in the middle. Illithids are emotionless and believe they are superior to all other races and ancestries. They have foreign minds and inscrutable plans and priorities. In short, they are alien and very different from all the other races. Why they do things, the plans they have, where they're from, and their ultimate goals are completely foreign to us. We know that Illithids are aggressive, but they cannot be prodded or provoked into acting rashly or stupidly. They are psionic, so that means they are able to produce magical effects using only their mind.

They can control other species telepathically. These other controlled creatures, by the way, are called thralls, and illithids will keep them like cattle. More on thralls in a little bit. So not only can they control other creatures, they are telepathic. They have a hive mind and a collective consciousness. Most mind flayers belong to a colony with a massive brain-like being called an elder brain. Now when I say elder brain, that's not some bestowed title. Elder brains are the final stage of the life cycle of an illithid. They are huge brains with tentacles that live in a salty pool in the center of mind flayer colonies. Most illithids, when they die, want to become part of

this elder brain. So their brain will be extracted, brought to the elder brain, and consumed with all of the lessons that this illithid has learned, becoming part of the elder brain's mind. So elder brains actually consist of the consciousness of multiple mind. So elder brains actually consist of the consciousness of multiple mind flayers that it has absorbed over time. For that reason, elder brains are terrifyingly powerful psionics. They, like the rest of the illithid, are physically weak but mentally formidable. The elder brain directs the mind Flayers to accomplish its goals and make any inscrutable plans it has come to fruition. All Mind Flayers within five miles can communicate with the Elder Brain telepathically. Not all Mind Flayers are connected to a colony, though.

Some strike out on their own to form new colonies, or because they've been exiled by the existing colony. These solo Mind Flayers would be even more dependent on their thralls and would likely be more of an ambush predator than anything else. Now what do illithids eat? In short, brains, but they're not zombies. They have to eat brains in order to survive. About one brain per month is what they prefer, but they can go as long as three to four months without consuming a brain. Gradually they'll lose psychic abilities and can even starve to death if they don't eat often enough. Most of the time, they kill their victims by grappling them while they're helpless and forcibly extracting their brain by gnawing through their skull. Anybody else have a headache right now? Brain eating is a euphoric experience

for mind flayers as they absorb the victim's memories and even aspects of their personalities and fears. They eat brains or occasionally harvest them for experiments and purposes that only they understand. As mentioned earlier, most mind flayers live as part of a large collection of mind flayers around an elder brain called a colony. These colonies are not known to welcome outsiders. Mind flayer colonies should be designed to take advantage of mind flayers unique abilities. Illithids can levitate at will. Areas that illithid can enter but maybe their thralls shouldn't be able to could be separated by wide gulfs or pools of dangerous liquid. This serves as additional protection against intrusion by,

oh, I don't know, let's say adventurers. The Elder Brain, by the way, serves as part of the centralized consciousness, so it can communicate simultaneously with every Illithid that's around it within five miles. Illithid are dangerous, and they form colonies, but they formerly had an empire that spanned multiple planets and even planes of existence. Nobody knows where they originally came from. They'll descend from the stars in strange ships called nautiloids and establish colonies on many worlds, many times deep underground to avoid attracting attention. Most sages believe they come from somewhere among the stars. But the thing about it is, Illithid are known for having alarmingly accurate prophecies. This makes some scholars think that they come from

the far future, not just another planet or plane. Now generally, mind flayers want to exert control over as many people and thralls as possible, and in as large of an area as possible. They make excellent big bad evil guys for campaigns, especially lower level campaigns that maybe finish up about level 5 or 6. One of the mid-game reveals could be that the person they thought was the big bad had a mind flayer tadpole in their brain. One good knowledge check and bam, the players now know what they're up against. So mind flayers reproduce through a process known as seromorphosis. What this basically means is they use humanoids, humans, dwarves, orcs, gnomes, elves, githyanki, and other similar races.

They'll implant a larval Mind Flayer, which looks like a little squid-faced tadpole, in the eye or the ear of a bound humanoid. The larva infects the brain and gradually eats the victim's brain away and takes over its nervous system. The victim's flesh and organs are converted into new matter for the larva, and after several days have passed, a new adult illithid is fully born violently into the world, bursting out of its shell. That shell being the humanoid, and of course, most humanoids don't survive this process. But here's the thing. If you read some of the illithid material produced for earlier versions of D&D, mind flayers don't have to use humanoids as victims to make a new mind flayer, if you will. In the various editions of D&D, there are statistics provided when tadpoles are implanted

into dragons, lizardfolk, chewl, and for nightmare fuel, beholders. Beholders that are converted over to become mind flayers become a creature called a mind witness, which acted like, for lack of a better term, a telepathic hub for seven other creatures. So in your homebrew world, what if you want a mind flayer that captured a frost giant, or genie, or a huge flying bird called a Rock

spelled R-O-C. Sounds great. Stat it up. Love to fight it. Nothing about Mind Flayers says it has to stick to medium-sized humanoid victims. Now before you go stick Mind Flayers in your campaign, I do have some words of caution. Mind Flayers are fearsome and potential nightmare opponents. They are one bad set of saving throws by the PCs from a total party wiper. Mind Flayers are fearsome and potential nightmare opponents. They are one bad set of saving throws by the PCs from a Total Party Wiper, Total Party Kill TPK. If you aren't careful, your campaign or adventure ends with combat with one of these creatures. So let's say you want to drop one into your campaign. What tactics will they use? Well, if you want to give the players

a tough fight, remember that mind flayers are brilliant with an intelligence of 19 or so, so they're going to fight intelligently. They will do anything not to be dragged into melee combat. They will instead use their thralls as frontline troops. They'll use their thralls to accomplish one of the following. They will try to overrun the potential threat of the PCs if they think they can simply overwhelm them in sheer numbers. They will watch and learn about the tactics of the PCs for use in future battles. Remember, they may still be connected to the Elder Brain, so if one Mind Flayer learns the PCs' tactics, strengths, and weaknesses, all the Mind Flayers within five miles learn the same. They'll use their thralls to get the PCs to expend their limited use-per-day or per-long-rest abilities

so they aren't as capable when the illithid finally shows itself. Or sometimes illithids will use thralls to buy time for them to escape using their planeshift ability, plan for a counterattack, or call for backup. Now let's talk about thralls. Thralls are all but mindless, doing whatever their alien masters require of them. They no longer have anything substantial left of themselves that makes them unique or gives them any personality. Maybe they remember fragments, like their mothers waiting for them at home, or their son will come and save them because he's a big strong fighter, or maybe that they were trying to get famous. A lot of times you can show PCs that they're thralls by having one of them stand there

and muttering something that was very important to it in its life, but it's not actually doing anything. It's just watching an area saying, my son will save me, my son will save me, my son will save me, over and over and over again. Illithids can use telepathy with any creature within 120 feet, even if they don't share a language. So they can communicate with their thralls within 120 feet at will. Thralls can be used not only as combatants that present challenges to the PCs, but they also can be used as horror elements in your campaign and give the PCs a sense of fear. Imagine the PCs are trying to save one or more people and they find them standing in a fenced area just drooling on themselves and muttering, staring off into space. They try to

shake them out of it and then the thralls don't even see the PCs. Eventually the thralls look at the PCs and soon the other thralls all turn on them and the mind flayer shows up very soon afterwards. So thralls can be various types and sizes. Yes, they can be elves and dwarves and humans and the like, but as we mentioned earlier, they can be other types of creatures as well. Mind flayers live underground, so try pulling in things like ogres and lamia, driders, minotaurs, wanti, and other monstrous opponents as protectors of their masters. Makes them even more fearsome, makes them even more difficult to kill. If they are pulled into combat,

Illithid should use their Mind Blast to devastating effect. This ability is a 60-foot cone, which is a massive area of a battlefield. So the Illithid could use it to pick off players who split from the party. It could use it to stun large numbers of the party so their thralls can kill or capture them. Or if it's feeding time, use the ability to stun

the opponent, grapple with them, and then extract their brains. If you want to learn more about illithids, there's a lot of additional reading that you can go find. Illithiad by Bruce Cordell is a terrifying look in the life and times of the illithid race. There's also a great article by Clifford Horowitz in Dragon Magazine number 313 called Brainpower. The D&D Beyond website has some great information about illithids, and so does Volo's Guide to Monsters, so I highly encourage you to pick those up and give it a read if you're interested. Mind Flayers are wonderfully evil and alien creatures that can really freak your players out. They're unlike any other races on Kryn, Exandria, the Sword Coast, or your homebrew world.

They are both masterminds and puppet masters. They can be solo big bads for lower-level campaigns, or if you need a tougher challenge for your PCs, they can be connected to a colony a few miles into the Underdark, where an Elder Brain sits, collecting information and plotting against the PCs and the evil, evil world above. Shorter episode this week as well. Thank you all so much for listening. As a reminder, our sponsor this week was Laughter. Remember, your PCs can't spell slaughter without laughter. This has been the Taking20 Podcast, episode 49, a brief set of information about Illithid and Mind Flayers, part of the Monster Series. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your

best game.