Racial Description

Lovecraftian Look: An Illithid resembles a Human in basic body structure, but taller and much slenderer. Its skin is some cool color, such as pale green, mauve, or sky blue, and when it is well-fed, its body is coated in a thin film of mucus. Its skin is smooth and completely hairless, with a tall, sloping cranium, two roughly-humanoid eyes, and four long, coiling tendrils concealing an alien mouth evolved to open the skulls of other creatures and feed on their contents.   Alien History: Illithid history is long and frightening, but most of it is of little relevance to any beings besides the Illithid themselves. The history of the Illithid's is a secretly guarded secret that only those of the Elder Brain and the Elder Councils know. All the races of the world remember of the "Mind Flayers" is that they are slaving species from the Underdark, thinking them just another creation of the Great Invasion War.   All for the Elder Brain: Illithids live in vast, subterranean cities known as communities that are full of thralls, often outnumbered ten-to-one or more by their mental slaves. Their culture reveres the Elder Brains, ancient, ageless beings they believe represent the collective personalities and identities of their kind. Illithids offer themselves up to the Elder Brains' mass when they near the end of their lifespans, hoping to be absorbed into the titanic intellect of the Elder Brain. It is a closely guarded secret that the Elder Brains only consume the knowledge of their wards, with everything else, such as personality, being simply discarded and lost with the death of the body. Young Illithid derive their personalities and emotional capacities from contact with strange crystals, containing the thought-impressions of previous Illithid. This is the reason for the infamously cold and pitiless Illithid temperament and personality: Illithids normally do not feel any sort of positive emotion more powerful than a kind of sadistic, spiteful pleasure at the pain and submission of another creature. Thus, because the devices that teach young Illithid cannot imprint on them the full spectrum of emotionality, they grow up to build another set of such flawed devices for the next generation. Illithids who have spent long periods of time among other races of beings, devoid of the company of other Illithid, are often mind-wiped or otherwise mentally scanned when they return to the networked intelligence of their community, to purge the outside influences that may have colored their thoughts and made them more like the surface creatures. Illithids' alien nature makes them particularly resistant to magical forces and effects, and they regard the use of magic as aberrant and disdainful. All of their kind found studying arcane powers are shunned by their peers, and many are exiled from the community. Illithids consume the brain matter of living (or at least recently-living) creatures to sustain themselves with enzymes, hormones, and psychic energy. The brain of a large, intelligent predator like a wolf or bear provides enough sustenance for a full day, but the brain of a sapient humanoid is far tastier and can bolster an Illithid's metabolism for at least a week, depending on the quality of the brain in question. Some rogue Illithids cultivate a special kind of moss that becomes sapient in large quantities, and which provides similar sustenance when eaten.   Illithid Names: Illithids are hermaphroditic and reproduce via a process known as ceremorphosis, which consists of producing "tadpoles" via parthenogenesis, then allowing them to consume the brains of other creatures, eventually mutating them into new Illithids. They also use unique psychic impressions rather than names among themselves, but they do have transliterated Common equivalents to allow non-psionic creatures to address them.