Thoon is Thoon and Thoon is All!!

[Talar]

Hello all, I am currently designing a campaign that will heavily feature mind flayers, specifically those of Thoon. I have always liked these monsters, but have never had a good opportunity to run an adventure using them. So I am here today asking the playground, if you have used these what worked for you? Any advice to give me on how to incorporate them into the game? Any neat tricks out there using them? Any pitfalls I should be wary of? General advice? Thank you in advance.

[ArendK]

I've used them before. They can be used in a variety of ways.

Mostly, they are terrifying mages/psions. Why? Big. Boost. To. Intelligence. Also, for Psions, they're already 8th level Psions I believe just to start the show (EPH I believe is the source book for this). As they are normally presented, they work as the master minds and let their thralls do the work for them.

However, you mentioned Thoon; I've done a variation using the Thoon based mind flayers that made a fun little encounter.

Thoon is supposed to be this nameless, terrifying evil from the beyond. Their search for quintessence can lead them to anything, since there is no real description of what it is or what can have it.

I refluffed mindflayers as being part of a hive-mind esque cult; they are all connected to Thoon and connected to one passionate thought network. Humanoids who fall into these cults are twisted through some rituals and turned into mind flayers, eradicating their former selves, minus some skills they may or may not have had (this accounts for the big burly physical mind flayers and stalker based ones). Their goal can suit whatever campaign you may want to lead it toward (destroying the world, taking it over, etc. etc.).

Personally, I worked it over as a world-conqueror and destroyer; Thoon himself was trapped in an underwater prison on another planet, and the mindflayers themselves were trying to simply release him. The "fluff" of his imprisonment was that the mystical waters that surrounded the prison couldn't be touched by magic and such, and he couldn't physically move as long as the prison was under the water. So the mind flayers were going to use the moon of the PC's planet to cause a dropped tide on the other planet and release Thoon. Of course, the moons movements are going to cause havoc on the home planet of the players.

My party rather enjoyed the campaign, and I snuck in references to "ancient R'yleh" and a few other points. They weren't very well read on that type of literature at the time, so it went over their head.

[Shining Wrath]

You are free to make Thoon whatever you need Thoon to be, including a nice guy who has been totally misunderstood by his Mind Flayer followers.

Consider that the Elder Brains are running a scam on the Mind Flayers; the Mind Flayers think their personalities survive when their brains are dropped into the pool, but actually only the useful information is added to the Elder Brain's store and the rest disappears. Thoon, then, might be a scam of some sort being run by an Elder Brain of sufficiently great power as to fool other Elder Brains.

[Zombulian]

While Thoon is an awesome concept, it's also hard to work with because you have to realize that not even the followers of Thoon understand what Thoon is. "Thoon is Thoon." As the MM where Mindflayers of Thoon are presented said, even under extreme compulsion, the Mind Flayers can't describe what it is they follow, because their brains don't work that way, just as anyone else's brains on the material plane don't work that way.
Thoon is a being, or an ideology, or a place (maybe all 3) from the Far Realms, and thus impossible to describe or understand.

So basically the best advice I could give would be having the Flayers have expansive operations all over the planet where your PC's are, have the Thoon Flayers slaying non-thoon flayers enmasse. Have incredibly complex machinations and organizations all over the world with no clear end game. Confuse your PC's as much as you can without letting them realize that you don't actually know what they're trying to do.

[John Longarrow]

Per NAVREG 9010.7E (REF USC 14.427 2.C(3)) THOON is authorized only to those currently service under authority of DoDI 1295.4 ISO contingency operations. Further limits on THOON Allocations are detailed in DoDI 1280, chapter 6 "OCONUS OPERATIONS".

Once your players are to a point they can understand the above, they will be ready to play.

:mitd: :mitd: :mitd: :mitd: :mitd:

[Shining Wrath]

Per NAVREG 9010.7E (REF USC 14.427 2.C(3)) THOON is authorized only to those currently service under authority of DoDI 1295.4 ISO contingency operations. Further limits on THOON Allocations are detailed in DoDI 1280, chapter 6 "OCONUS OPERATIONS".

Once your players are to a point they can understand the above, they will be ready to play.

:mitd: :mitd: :mitd: :mitd: :mitd:

So Thoon is a Navy SEAL using psionic powers to dominate the world?

In other words, Jesse Ventura?

I knew it all along.

[Talar]

You are free to make Thoon whatever you need Thoon to be, including a nice guy who has been totally misunderstood by his Mind Flayer followers.

Consider that the Elder Brains are running a scam on the Mind Flayers; the Mind Flayers think their personalities survive when their brains are dropped into the pool, but actually only the useful information is added to the Elder Brain's store and the rest disappears. Thoon, then, might be a scam of some sort being run by an Elder Brain of sufficiently great power as to fool other Elder Brains.

While that is an awesome idea, it might be a bit too nuanced for the party. They have a tendency to attack anything that is not a high priest of the lawful good deity.


While Thoon is an awesome concept, it's also hard to work with because you have to realize that not even the followers of Thoon understand what Thoon is. "Thoon is Thoon." As the MM where Mindflayers of Thoon are presented said, even under extreme compulsion, the Mind Flayers can't describe what it is they follow, because their brains don't work that way, just as anyone else's brains on the material plane don't work that way.
Thoon is a being, or an ideology, or a place (maybe all 3) from the Far Realms, and thus impossible to describe or understand.

So basically the best advice I could give would be having the Flayers have expansive operations all over the planet where your PC's are, have the Thoon Flayers slaying non-thoon flayers enmasse. Have incredibly complex machinations and organizations all over the world with no clear end game. Confuse your PC's as much as you can without letting them realize that you don't actually know what they're trying to do.

So just be as confusing as possible with no real clear end game. I am actually looking forward to the enigma that is Thoon since I know it will drive a few of my players up a wall that they cannot get any solid information on Thoon.

Currently I am thinking of having quintessence being found in gems and precious metals, and the infrequent creature for simplicity's sake right now. And I am trying to think of uses for it beyond magic item, and construct creation. Maybe a ritual, but I am unsure of that since I do not know what I would want the ritual to accomplish. Thank you for all of your advice and suggestions so far.

[John Longarrow]

Talar,

I'd run them in a manner ment to confuse and confound the party.
They work by a ridged set of rules that the players don't understand.
They work by rules that are contradictory. They work by rules that are not clear to non-Thoon. They behave in very specific ways even when they don't make sense.

In other words, they follow rules set out by multiple organizations that do not coordinate with each other.

And they do so without questioning WHY they do so.

Think of them as working for the DMV, just not as sadistic.