Illithids -Space faring slavers


General Discussion


Are there any rules for bringing Illithids into Starfinder? I've only read a few things on the game so far and haven't seen anything on them. If there aren't I'm thinking of creating my own.
They can make an awesome antagonistic race. They use their ships and weapons to disable and capture not kill, so they can have their live stock and slaves. In the old D&D they were known to inspect and break down magical items, I can see them doing the same for technology. They will use and modify any tech that will work for them and get rid of the rest. I can see them having a hive mind on the ship coordinating all the movements of the ship/armada(s) so they can be more efficient.

What are your thoughts?


I thought they were Hasbro intellectual property at this point. That's why they aren't in Pathfinder either. I could be wrong about that, I'm no legal expert. But if they are, homebrew is definitely the way to go.


ArtimisEntrari81 wrote:

Are there any rules for bringing Illithids into Starfinder? I've only read a few things on the game so far and haven't seen anything on them. If there aren't I'm thinking of creating my own./snip/

What are your thoughts?

Sounds like they would make a great enemy race. We won't see anything done officially, since Mindflayers are WOTC property, but you can get good stats to base them off from 3.5. For general background, there is a fantastic 2nd Ed book, The Ilithiad, with lots of detail that you could use, such as their intolerance for divine magic, elder brains, etc.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

If you're looking for spacefaring, brain-stealing horrors, you may want to check out the article on the Dominion of the Black in Valley of the Brain Collectors.


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Mind flayers are Wizars of the Coast Product Identity under the Open Game License, and are not open content.

Only WotC/Hasbro can use them in conjunction with the OGL, meaning that nobody else can use them in an OGL-based game (like Starfinder).

In current Golarion lore, seugathi and brain collectors both fill a similar niche.

That said... there's nothing stopping you from cracking open your copy of the old D&D 3.5 Monster Manual and using illithid in your home game.

(Need to buy a copy? WotC is now selling the 3.5 Monster Manual PDF on DriveThruRPG.)


As already mentioned, the Dominion of the Black can fill a similar role, as could the Denizens of Leng who tick many of the same boxes for a lovercraftian horror race. From their beastiary entry, "These eerie denizens travel the universe from their strange homeland of Leng, walking uncontested only when they disguise themselves as humans by wearing loose-fitting robes and wrappings about the head and face. Under these disguises, they have horned brows, clawed fingers, mouths full of tentacles, and crooked goatish legs with cloven hooves.

Many scholars have argued over where the otherworldly realm of Leng lies—some believe it can be found among the Outer Planes, while others are convinced it can only be reached via a dimension of dreams. The denizens of Leng can travel to other planes freely, and often do so in strange, black ships, constantly seeking new breeds of slaves or trading rubies for unusual services or magical treasures. At other times, their visits are much more violent, focusing on abducting victims for use as slaves or worse. On Leng, these denizens have long fought a war against that realm's monstrous spiders, a war that sometimes spills over into other worlds. "


Alternatively you can use the Encephalon Gorgers

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/encephalon-go rger-tohc/


Mi-go work too. In Carrion Crown

Spoiler:
they have a sick setup in an underwater cave complex where they've removed the brains of several townsfolk and kept them hooked up to a machine. The PCs can even talk with them via 'microphone'. The townsfolk are quite mad...


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber

Thrint from Larry Niven's works are worth investigating in this vein.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Wasn't illithids as a space faring slaver race a core point of Spelljammer?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Darrell Impey UK wrote:
Wasn't illithids as a space faring slaver race a core point of Spelljammer?

Illithids, some, but the Neogi were the go-to slavers as I recall.


Mind flayers were a big antagonist race in Spelljammer. That setting was updated to 3.5 by the Shadow of the Spider Moon project- you should be able to find it online with a quick search. I don't think they updated much of the fluff, though, just the mechanics, so you'd have to track down some of those old 2E Spelljammer books to read about how they adapted to space.

Lords of Madness is the main source for 3.5 Mind flayer information but if I remember correctly it doesn't touch on space.

They would probably be part of the Dominion of the Black like other people have mentioned if they were available IP for Paizo.


karlprosek wrote:
Lords of Madness is the main source for 3.5 Mind flayer information but if I remember correctly it doesn't touch on space.

NAUTILOID

It is rumored that not all mind flayers live beneath the surface. Some tales speak of ships shaped like the shell of a nautilus that are capable of flying through the spaces between worlds. Most serious scholars discount these tales as pure fantasy, despite those who claim to have seen such ships first-hand. The illithids themselves know that the tales are true. The great ships are remnants of their glorious future, when their empire will span not just worlds but the entire universe (see The Whispering Shadow, page 70-71). The knowledge of how to build these stunning vessels is lost—or, more correctly, hasn’t been discovered yet. Until it is, the remaining ships ply the great gulfs of the night skies cautiously, seeking evidence of lost mind-flayer colonies and hidden githyanki outposts.

--Lords of Madness pg 69

They are time travelers stranded in the past, as they were from the far future.


IIRC, there were different takes on the mindflayer/illithid origins. While the Lords of Madness (3.5) did indeed make them time-travellers from a distant future, other sources in 2e just had them hail from a very distant crystal sphere. (I can't remember if it was the Illithiad's flat world planet, or a broken sphere, or some combination of both, or if it had anything to do with the Astromundi Cluster.)

The darkness/futility of the "distant future" option doesn't sit well with me. Therefore in my home-brew variation on the published settings I chose the distant sphere option (with "sphere" being understood as being a different star system, probably in another galaxy).


Bellona wrote:

IIRC, there were different takes on the mindflayer/illithid origins. While the Lords of Madness (3.5) did indeed make them time-travellers from a distant future, other sources in 2e just had them hail from a very distant crystal sphere. (I can't remember if it was the Illithiad's flat world planet, or a broken sphere, or some combination of both, or if it had anything to do with the Astromundi Cluster.)

The darkness/futility of the "distant future" option doesn't sit well with me. Therefore in my home-brew variation on the published settings I chose the distant sphere option (with "sphere" being understood as being a different star system, probably in another galaxy).

What are PCs if not rogue elements when predicting the future? You could easily have a preemptive counter to their fleet by reverse-engineering their own ships.


Alternatively, the reverse-engineering effort could drive you mad, leading you down a path of fleshwarping, cloning, and technomagery that turned you pre-emptively into the first mind-flayer...

Dang, I am just chipper sunshine today


Back in 1e they probably came from a distant world with lots of worms and weird stuff called the Sunset World (Dragon 150).
Bruce Cordell's Illithiad hinted at weird monstrosities from beyond space and time and the known multiverse that adapted local lifeforms (and also introduced Penumbra, a ringworld the old illithid empire created, except that instead of a torus with living things on the inside, it was a disc with sunshades blocking out the sun and things living on either side of the disc). They could also rewrite reality, if given the chance, by using ether gaps.

Can't remember what SJ did with them, but probably some distant sphere.


I did have a 1st edition monster manual. I don't think it said where the mind flayers originated. The name "Illithid" hadn't been invented then -I think it first appeared in Dragon magazine. I do remember that there was one on a crashed spaceship in the early module ""expedition to the Barrier Peaks".


I noticed there was something that looks like an illithid in te movie Rogue One. In Return of the Jedi, they had some pig like creatures that resembled 1980s versions of D&D orcs. Since then Orcs have been officially "desnouted" and they look less pig like than before! I think the final straw was that silly module called Castle Greyhawk where they had an orc that looked and acted like Porky the Pig, I remember some other characters such as Elfin John, Pat Minotaur, James T. Cleric, the Inedible Bulk and other such creatures.


Fardragon wrote:
I do remember that there was one on a crashed spaceship in the early module ""expedition to the Barrier Peaks".

It also says the creature was captured by the ship, like many of the other creatures on board, so we can't assume they are the creators of the ship or had anything else to do with it.


Quarran are the tentacle-faced aliens in the Star Wars universe. They originate from the same planet as the mon calamari, and are not known for brain eating.

The Babylon 5 universe also has squid faced aliens - the pak'mo'ra - who are scavangers. These where directly inspired by illithid, but only resemble them physically.


Fardragon wrote:

Quarran are the tentacle-faced aliens in the Star Wars universe. They originate from the same planet as the mon calamari, and are not known for brain eating.

The Babylon 5 universe also has squid faced aliens - the pak'mo'ra - who are scavangers. These where directly inspired by illithid, but only resemble them physically.

So there are three sapient species that all developed together on that planet? I thought there was a shark like species that the Mon Calamari were at war with all the time until they basically killed all the adults, took in the kids and gave them an entirely new culture. Which is kind of a messed up solution to the whole baby goblin dilemma.


Torbyne wrote:
Fardragon wrote:

Quarran are the tentacle-faced aliens in the Star Wars universe. They originate from the same planet as the mon calamari, and are not known for brain eating.

The Babylon 5 universe also has squid faced aliens - the pak'mo'ra - who are scavangers. These where directly inspired by illithid, but only resemble them physically.

So there are three sapient species that all developed together on that planet? I thought there was a shark like species that the Mon Calamari were at war with all the time until they basically killed all the adults, took in the kids and gave them an entirely new culture. Which is kind of a messed up solution to the whole baby goblin dilemma.

To my knowledge, the other race you're referring to was the Quarren.


The Sideromancer wrote:
Torbyne wrote:
Fardragon wrote:

Quarran are the tentacle-faced aliens in the Star Wars universe. They originate from the same planet as the mon calamari, and are not known for brain eating.

The Babylon 5 universe also has squid faced aliens - the pak'mo'ra - who are scavangers. These where directly inspired by illithid, but only resemble them physically.

So there are three sapient species that all developed together on that planet? I thought there was a shark like species that the Mon Calamari were at war with all the time until they basically killed all the adults, took in the kids and gave them an entirely new culture. Which is kind of a messed up solution to the whole baby goblin dilemma.
To my knowledge, the other race you're referring to was the Quarren.

Yeah, i had to go do some digging, i was confusing what i read ages ago about the Quarren with the appearance of the Karkarodon who come from a completely different aquatic planet.


I feel it should be noted that while mind flayers are not present in Pathfinder, their horrifying mutant offspring are.


Yeah, I think that is because the suplement that addd neolithids was writen by Paizo.


Fardragon wrote:
Yeah, I think that is because the suplement that addd neolithids was writen by Paizo.

Really? Wow, those guys are everywhere...


Neothelids came about in 2e, before Paizo's time. The truth of the matter is that illithids (like beholders) are an iconic D&D brand monster and under that specific copyright and Paizo is not allowed to do anything with them for PF. Neothelids, like a host of other monsters (like flumphs), aren't considered that important.


"Not important" doesn't exempt something from copywite. Neothithids first appeared in Dragon magazine (yes, for 2nd edition). In 2002 Paizo publishing took over Dragon, so Paizo can make a good case for owning the copywrite to Neolithids.

Flumphs, I believe, appeared first in White Dwarf magazine before they where in the first edition Fiend Folio, so thier copywrite is even more muddy.


Neothelids are open content because WotC published them as open content in the 3.5 SRD. (They may have been in the 3e SRD; I don't know.)


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Phrenic scourges are a good Pathfinder-style equivalent to illithids/mind flayers.

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