afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

[Mr Adventurer]

Well, we certainly know what it is - the legend says that one day a ceremorphosis will go wrong, resulting in a being with the body and powers of an illithid, but the mind and soul of the host body. There's been at least one case of something similar happening, although the circumstances were unique - the ulitharid Redatsuul recklessly overused psionic tattoos and accidentally created a circuit that inverted the mental control in his body and allowed the human host mind to regain control. The Adversary would be a slightly different scenario in that the illithid mind would not exist at all, but the nature of their fear is basically the same - something that can move among them undetected and work to destroy them using their own powers.

Does anyone know the source of this Redatsuul stuff? Because it doesn't make sense to me: Illithid don't have "mental control" of their bodies nor "hosts" once ceremorphosis is complete: the tadpole eats and replaces the brain. The original creature is dead. There might be some memory transfer but not enough to work with to reconstitute the original creature's mind as this Redatsuul thing suggests.

The actual legend of the Adversary involves a unique alchemical potion taken before ceremorphosis, which at least sounds like it could maybe do something like lobotomising the tadpole so that it doesn't eat your brain while leaving its autonomic functions intact so that your body still transforms.