Reversing the Illithid/Gith relationship

[kwanzaabot]

So I'm working out some details for my campaign setting, and I've come to the topic of the Githyanki, Githzerai and Illithids. Traditionally speaking, Illithids are the bad guys, and the Giths are the morally grey former slaves.

However, this has been done to death, so I'm looking to subvert it.

What I'm thinking is that there is a nation called Hausos which exists far to the east of the known world. Not many people believe the land exists, as there's very limited contact between the two continents.

These "Hauslings" as they're known, have four castes within their society, as follows:

* Gith: Commoners. They're a mixture of Githyanki and Githzerai. (the creatures- the below Githyanki/Githzerai are just titles of one's social rank)
* Githyanki: the warrior caste (nothing new here). Like medieval knights, they're the landowning aristocracy who boss around everyone else.
* Githzerai: the mage caste. They're ascetics who spend most of their time meditating, reading spellbooks and the like.
* Illithids: Unlike the Underdark-dwelling brain-eaters of most settings, my Illithids are Hausos's eunuch caste (as transforming into an Illithid basically castrates the host). They're slaves to the Gith, but there's rumors that some brave or stupid Mind Flayer (or several) is planning a revolt.

So... that's my idea so far. You guys were a great help in my Centaur thread, so I was wondering if you could help me flesh this idea out some more? :)

[Yora]

Whout these mutant slaves have the same abilities as regular Ilithids?

because their natural abilities make them very good overlords and it would be difficult to get good reasons why a race should create slaves that can control them.

In soviet Hausos, slaves owns YOU! ^^

[kwanzaabot]

Whout these mutant slaves have the same abilities as regular Ilithids?

because their natural abilities make them very good overlords and it would be difficult to get good reasons why a race should create slaves that can control them.

In soviet Hausos, slaves owns YOU! ^^

That's what i'm struggling with. I suppose I could just hand-wave it, and say that the Illithids are badly bullied by their masters, so they're too intimidated to use their psionic powers.

[AslanCross]

This kind of removes the Elder Brains from the picture, though. I'd like to ask, though---why turn eunuchs into dangerous, brain-eating monsters with innate psionic powers in the first place? It's not so much as to why the Illithids aren't already revolting, but more of why the Gith are giving them powers.

Maybe the Gith could shackle them with psionic dampeners of some kind?

You could also make the Elder Brains the MacGuffins of the Illithids. They figured out a way to fuse their brains into a powerful malign psionic being capable of overthrowing the Gith, and the Elder Brains are currently being kept in top secret facilities.

[Yora]

The ilithids would require handlers, that are even more powerful than them. A roman circus had several of experienced warriors and wild beasts that they would mistread to force them to fight each other.
And usually it went very well, because there were so few of them.

[RelentlessImp]

Make it so that the Elder Brain is a construct of the Gith that keeps the slaves in line and suppresses their psionic abilities. Every Gith town/city/etc has an Elder Brain that keeps the slaves in line.

[Calmar]

I don't get the poinbt of the whole thing. Is it supposed to surprise your players, who assume illithids would be masters, not slaves?

[JeminiZero]

That's what i'm struggling with. I suppose I could just hand-wave it, and say that the Illithids are badly bullied by their masters, so they're too intimidated to use their psionic powers.

IIRC, Mind-Flayers start off life as tadpoles, which are deposited in brine with an Elder Brain or something. The Elder Brain eats the weaker tadpoles, while the stronger/smarter ones manage to get away, and these are used to breed the next generation of mind-flayers.

Consequently, if those in charge intentionally selected the weaker tadpoles instead, that might justify why the mind-flayers aren't near as powerful as in other settings.

The other thing to consider is food: Good Brains aren't exactly the easiest thing to mass-produce. So the slave mind flayers might subsist on a diet of crap animal brains. Long term consumption from childhood might lead to bad side effects, further weakening the species as a whole.

As for mind-flayer rebellion, the link in my sig might interest you.

[Yora]

Or its an earlier state of evolution of the ilithids and the tadpoles didn't have as many centuries of fighting each other for survival.

Oh, I think this will turn into a good one...

So the gith are breeding the tadpoles to use as parasites to create perfect slaves. But the breeders don't notice that the constant very high level of natural selection is slowly changing the tadpoles, so they produce slaves that develop far greater psychic powers than originally planned or ever suspected. And when the gith become aware of it, it's allready too late!!!

[Pika...]

So I'm working out some details for my campaign setting, and I've come to the topic of the Githyanki, Githzerai and Illithids. Traditionally speaking, Illithids are the bad guys, and the Giths are the morally grey former slaves.

However, this has been done to death, so I'm looking to subvert it.

What I'm thinking is that there is a nation called Hausos which exists far to the east of the known world. Not many people believe the land exists, as there's very limited contact between the two continents.

These "Hauslings" as they're known, have four castes within their society, as follows:

* Gith: Commoners. They're a mixture of Githyanki and Githzerai. (the creatures- the below Githyanki/Githzerai are just titles of one's social rank)
* Githyanki: the warrior caste (nothing new here). Like medieval knights, they're the landowning aristocracy who boss around everyone else.
* Githzerai: the mage caste. They're ascetics who spend most of their time meditating, reading spellbooks and the like.
* Illithids: Unlike the Underdark-dwelling brain-eaters of most settings, my Illithids are Hausos's eunuch caste (as transforming into an Illithid basically castrates the host). They're slaves to the Gith, but there's rumors that some brave or stupid Mind Flayer (or several) is planning a revolt.

So... that's my idea so far. You guys were a great help in my Centaur thread, so I was wondering if you could help me flesh this idea out some more? :)

Hmm...

Given their amazing power it seems a little far-fetched to me unless there were only a small number left in existence.


However, you're idea of changing things up from the done-to-death route has inspired me! I am imaging of having it that the githyanki rejoin the Illithids "out of their own free will", hence serving as their shock troops with their queen keeping an eye on the mind flayers she remembers quite well. In my setting the Illithids are currently in stasis after initially having come back in time from their issue in the future and attempting to beat down a Jammer fleet of Elf immigrants to an empty jammer sphere, so players need to "unlock" them. Think the first episode of Stargate Atlantis.

Anyway, then there would be a hell of a war between the githyanki and githzerai. (And in my setting's case, the entire world as these "flying ships" start abducting and such).

[Umael]

Star Control II

If you know what I'm talking about, you'll understand what I'm getting at already.

The story of the Gith already mirror that of the Ur-Quan, and the Dnyarri fits in well with the Illithid.

Given the traditional story of the Gith, you could make becoming an Illithid a fate worse than death, a form of execution. While the convict is transforming into an Illithid (a process that takes a week), the Gith could be doing a special kind of brain surgery to "lobotomize" the Illithid. Possibly there is a kind of brain crystal, that unless a Gith gives the current mental password, the Illithid cannot use its powers without mentally going supernova. A psychic- and genetic-encrypted lock would mean that while becoming an Illithid is a horrible fate, OWNING an Illithid might be a mark of status and distinction.

Of course, the real issue is then the larva of the illithid. Since an illithid only spawns twice in its lifetime, there needs to be a steady supply of them to keep the reproduction process going. Yet at the same time, someone who obtains a mature larva through illegal means is a threat to the security of the Gith. While it takes years for an illithid to mature, during which time it needs a fresh supply of brains, all it takes is one illithid to possibly start a revolution, particularly if the illithid figures out hold to reverse the lobotomy or remove the brain crystals...

[Godskook]

Star Control II

If you know what I'm talking about, you'll understand what I'm getting at already.

The story of the Gith already mirror that of the Ur-Quan, and the Dnyarri fits in well with the Illithid.

Curse you and your ninja ways!

[pres_man]

Here is the history of the Gith and Mind Flayers in my own game.

Spoiler

Show

The Gith were the 1st people to ever develop. As the first, they experimented and helped evolved various other races. Then the Gith found a Chaos embued crystal. This crystal had the power to change the form of things, the power could even been channeled and made to create matter in a form desired. What the Gith didn't realize was the energy couldn't be totally contained and one of the chief psientists ( ) was eventually turned in to the first mindflayer. He escaped and eventually found ways to make more. Thus marked the fall of the Gith, as the Mind flayers turned on them. Both are mostly forgotten, having almost completely destroyed them. The survivors are only mere shadows of their great ancestors.

Now what you could say is that the process that creates a mind flayer has the effect of making them incapable of acting against the Gith. The concept of rebellion is not something most can even conceive. It would be like a worker ant rebelling against its queen. But perhaps this isn't 100% effective. Perhaps a small percent actually can act against the Gith, but most keep this secret, slowly organizing themselves for one day to turn the tables. They hide in plain sight as the Gith believe that the mind flayers are incapable of acting against them.

[Set]

The Mind Flayers *used to be* degenerate squid-headed fishmen, about as dangerous as sahuagin. The Gith enslaved them pretty easily.

But they made a fatal mistake in changing the diet of the brain-eaters, allowing them to first eat sentient prey (which made them smarter) and then, when one of their own people would be executed for treason or something, the most ignominous contemptuous method of execution the Gith could think of was to *feed them to the slaves.*

The unthinkable happened, and one of the slaves was jumpstarted into psionic latency by devouring the brain of a Gith noble who fell out of favor after a failed coup attempt. Worse, the slave proved able to somehow spread it's psionic ability to other slaves (by organize snatch missions on Gith of lower status who would not be missed, and feeding their brains to his smartest fellows), and now a secret society of psionic illithid slaves is readying to strike against the jaded, arrogant and utterly overconfident Gith sophisticates that treat them like dumb brutes, fit only for menial labor and casual abuse...

[Tehnar]

Maybe a natural trait of the gith (and probably most of the monsters on that continent) is that they are completely immune to mind affecting spells and abilities. The mind flayers are seen as the weakest as they have powers that really can't do anything to anyone, and during the natural process of wars and such, they fell to the bottom rung of society.

You could even have a nice plot hook, where there is a cult on the mainland, under the control of escaped ilithid slaves, trying to force a war with their native continent.

[Umael]

Something else to consider/play around with:

The traditional story is that the mind flayers enslaved a humanoid race that was either known as the gith or their greatest leader was named Gith. The leader Gith lead them into revolt against their mind flayer masters, and then the race split, each offshoot blaming the other for betraying the teachings of their leader.

What if after splitting, the two races were trying to combine back into one race? Or maybe even they never were one race, but the races of zerai and yanki?

Where do the mind flayers fit in THIS version of the story?

[kwanzaabot]

Lots of good ideas in this thread, let's see if I can't address a few of them. :)

This kind of removes the Elder Brains from the picture, though. I'd like to ask, though---why turn eunuchs into dangerous, brain-eating monsters with innate psionic powers in the first place? It's not so much as to why the Illithids aren't already revolting, but more of why the Gith are giving them powers.

Well, the idea is that the Gith are already psionic, so it's not so much that they're being given powers, it's that the powers have been there all along. However...

IIRC, Mind-Flayers start off life as tadpoles, which are deposited in brine with an Elder Brain or something. The Elder Brain eats the weaker tadpoles, while the stronger/smarter ones manage to get away, and these are used to breed the next generation of mind-flayers.

Consequently, if those in charge intentionally selected the weaker tadpoles instead, that might justify why the mind-flayers aren't near as powerful as in other settings.

The other thing to consider is food: Good Brains aren't exactly the easiest thing to mass-produce. So the slave mind flayers might subsist on a diet of crap animal brains. Long term consumption from childhood might lead to bad side effects, further weakening the species as a whole.

As for mind-flayer rebellion, the link in my sig might interest you.

This is a pretty good idea. If the weaker tadpoles are being selected, and the slaves are fed animal brains, then, yeah. They'd be pretty much powerless to do anything against their masters.

Maybe a natural trait of the gith (and probably most of the monsters on that continent) is that they are completely immune to mind affecting spells and abilities. The mind flayers are seen as the weakest as they have powers that really can't do anything to anyone, and during the natural process of wars and such, they fell to the bottom rung of society.

You could even have a nice plot hook, where there is a cult on the mainland, under the control of escaped ilithid slaves, trying to force a war with their native continent.

I really like this idea. It makes perfect sense. A naturally psionic race such as the Gith probably wouldn't see psychic slaves as being a big deal. They'd probably have either a natural immunity, or slave-owning Gith would be trained to resist the Illithid's mental powers. Especially if said slaves are so downtrodden because of the above weaker tadpoles and animal brains. ;)

Make it so that the Elder Brain is a construct of the Gith that keeps the slaves in line and suppresses their psionic abilities. Every Gith town/city/etc has an Elder Brain that keeps the slaves in line.

This would be pretty useful, too. Perhaps the most powerful Gith psychics have found some way to transcend their physical bodies, and exist as some sort of incorporeal psionic collective? It's this collective that rules the Gith, and keeps a watchful eye on the slaves.

However, if a slave (perhaps an accidentally powerful tadpole) were to find a way to eat the brains of a sapient creature, then who knows? Maybe they'd be able to escape the gaze of the collective (ie the Elder Brain) and start the rebellion?

I don't get the poinbt of the whole thing. Is it supposed to surprise your players, who assume illithids would be masters, not slaves?

It's mostly for me, actually. I love the whole Gith/Illithid dynamic, but I dislike that any campaign that uses these creatures seems to be expected to have them behave a certain way.
Hell, the first two dragons (the first two lifeforms, technically) in my setting were a Red and a Black dragon, and the Red is good-aligned.

Why stick with the status quo if you don't have to? Why even have a status quo?

[JonestheSpy]

So, are the players supposed to sympathize with a race that needs to eat sapient brains in order to fully develop?

[kwanzaabot]

So, are the players supposed to sympathize with a race that needs to eat sapient brains in order to fully develop?

Hey, the Mind Flayers can't help it. They had an alien tadpole eat their brains and take over their bodies (and they lost their 'nads in the process!), and were subjected to a lifetime of servitude. ;)

I figure they'll still try to eat animal brains where they can. The whole "eating a sapient brain" thing probably happens in the heat of the moment, when a slightly more self-aware Illithid turns on their master, and being that they eat brains, they get so caught up in their bloodlust that they eat their Gith master's brain and run away, probably feeling terrible about the whole experience, but knowing that they can never return to their old life.

[JonestheSpy]

Hey, the Mind Flayers can't help it. They had an alien tadpole eat their brains and take over their bodies (and they lost their 'nads in the process!), and were subjected to a lifetime of servitude. ;)

I figure they'll still try to eat animal brains where they can. The whole "eating a sapient brain" thing probably happens in the heat of the moment, when a slightly more self-aware Illithid turns on their master, and being that they eat brains, they get so caught up in their bloodlust that they eat their Gith master's brain and run away, probably feeling terrible about the whole experience, but knowing that they can never return to their old life.

So we're talking an HP Lovecraft meets Anne Rice thing, eh? Not bad...