"Ceremorphosis"

[DeShurland]

I am about to run Out of the Abyss, and I thought it would be good to use one of the Drow priestesses (Asha?) from the start of the adventure and have her turn up later as half-drow / half mind-flayer. I will let them kill the main priestess, but Asha can run away - turn up later on...

My initial thought, is that with all the demon activity, Lolth approves of this transformation and halts it progress from turning her priestess into a full mind flayer...

Does anyone have any advice/stats. My initial thinking is that the party will be lvl 10, there or there abouts.

Thanks

[Mr Adventurer]

Ceremorphosis is your body changing, yes, but crucially it's also your brain being eaten and replaced. A mind flayer isn't you any more. It's an alien brain that's hijacked your body and made it it's own. In fact I think that the process involves the mind flayer tadpole eating the brain first, and then transforming the body afterwards.

So, you'll have to make some changes to this to have a process that makes sense to be able to be halted halfway through.

[FrancisBean]

I am about to run Out of the Abyss, and I thought it would be good to use one of the Drow priestesses (Asha?) from the start of the adventure and have her turn up later as half-drow / half mind-flayer. I will let them kill the main priestess, but Asha can run away - turn up later on...

My initial thought, is that with all the demon activity, Lolth approves of this transformation and halts it progress from turning her priestess into a full mind flayer...

Does anyone have any advice/stats. My initial thinking is that the party will be lvl 10, there or there abouts.

Thanks

Skipping over the stats, this is trending down an interesting path dating back to at least 2nd edition: The Adversary. It was the 2E module Rise of the Overmind which dealt with it in details: a human who concocted a potion (laethen) which could preserve the original host mind through ceremorphosis, resulting in a creature outwardly pure Illithid but inwardly a dire enemy; the mind flayers had a prophecy or some such about how The Adversary would eventually bring about their doom.

You might not want to take it quite so apocalyptic, but if you have an interest in continuing the campaign beyond OotA, it might make an interesting hook. Either way, Lolth might be one of the few entities out there who knows anything about laethen. The end result of the laethen-mediated transformation was physically a mind-flayer, with all the usual abilities, but retaining all original class levels and proficiencies (but no additional hit points). Side note: for success, the young mind flayer had to refrain from consuming any brains, or the aborted illithid mind would return and take over. Just a bit of canon you'd want to keep in mind if you went this route.