Were Illithids inspired by Cthulu?

[G.Cube]

I have a hunch this might be the wrong sub-foum, if this is true, please forgive me.

So, does the Playground think that Illithids could have possibly been inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's famous creature in the short story "The Call of Cthulu."?

[The Glyphstone]

Early D&D drew inspiration from a ton of different sources. I'm quite certain the works of Lovecraft were among them, and I wouldn't be surprised if mind flayers owed some part of their visual appearance to Lovecraft's drawings of Cthulhu.

[Xuldarinar]

Without a doubt.

Just toss in the Half-dragon template and up the size really, you have cthulu basicly.

[Proud Tortoise]

D--> I'm fairly sure Cthulhu was an inspiration. Or perhaps He was tied to them later? Either way, the Illithids are now bound ine%tricably to Cthulhu in the minds of all.

[Manly Man]

In part, they could have been, but the source that Gary Gygax pointed toward was a book cover that had a skull at the base of a tree, whose roots were growing through the eye sockets and under its mouth. There are other creatures, however, that were far more inspired by Lovecraftian works than the illithids, folks like the aboleths being one great example.

[Waker]

Highly likely. The majority of creatures under the aberration type, as well as demons of the Obyrith subtype can owe much of their appearance and nature to Lovecraft's writing. They blend aspects of fish, reptiles, amphibians and arthopods. Not to mention that many of them originate from some unbelievably distant past, beyond reality itself or simply parts unknown.

[Zombulian]

No. Of course not.

[ArqArturo]

Whichever is they origin, there are fluff reasons that make them awesome:


Yet another version came from The Astromundi Cluster, a Spelljammer boxed set produced 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. Such was their might that the Blood War paused as the demons and devils considered a truce to deal with the illithid empire.

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, Zerthimon, who believed she had grown tyrannical and over-aggressive. Civil war erupted, and the race factionalised into the githyanki and the githzerai (and in the Spelljammer campaign setting the Pirates of Gith[24]). This disruption allowed the illithids to retreat to underground strongholds where they still dwell.

[G.Cube]

Whicever is they origin, there are fluff reasons that make them awesome:



Holy pantheon, the awesome, the sheer awesome.

[Slipperychicken]

The description matches almost exactly, so yeah, I'd bet money that they were inspired by The Cthulhu Mythos, directly or otherwise.

[Zaydos]

Wasn't the book cover also a Cthulhu mythos book? I know I heard that somewhere.

But yeah they're Cthulhu inspired, I mean AD&D had stats for Mythos creatures, and if you look at some of the lists Gygax gave of inspiration Lovecraft is on them.

Though they need more than a size increase, you need an obese, super-sized half-dragon illithid for Cthulhu (bloated dragon-toad that he was).

[Zombulian]

Whichever is they origin, there are fluff reasons that make them awesome:



Didn't Lords of Madness say they were from the future/end of the universe/space?

[ArqArturo]

Yes, but I'm going with Spelljammer because it's awesome.