 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappie, and when I think of D&D, often the first thing I think about is a band of medieval fantasy adventures traveling the countryside to stake their claim against the world. What I do not normally think about is that there may be terrifying eldritch aliens from far off realms, living just a stone skip away from my home at any given time. When that happens, it's important to know how to react, so this video is going to be going over the once-mighty and still-powerful Elythids, also known as Mindflayers, from their history to their now-story, so that when you end up face to tentacle with their weird-ass faces, then you know what you're getting into. As always, keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, so if you feel that my mind has been taken over by the elder brain, feel free to run your Squidwards however you want. Just real quick, there's a couple of shout-outs that I want to scream out at the top of my lungs. More on the Viking! Sean Ramirez! Christopher Lord! Shortbeard! King Namakawa! Davy Chappie! Wait, Davy Chappie. Doom Boy! Thank you for supporting my Patreon. With your powers combined, I may one day have enough disposable income to finally buy every book in the game. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So, Mindflayers are one of the biggest staple enemies in D&D, so much so that the book that covers them in depth, Volos Guide to Monsters, has them as the special edition variant cover. They're a hive mind of spooky, cthulhu-looking, brain-eaten aliens that'll throw off any medieval theme you expected in D&D and replace it with sci-fi horror set in the 1300s, and yet they still find a place in our hearts. In lore though, Mindflayers were once an ancient civilization of creatures, from the astral plane that were among the smartest models in multiverse. They created grand cities of great technological advancement, and like every story about ancient yet technologically advanced civilizations, the entirety of the Mindflayer society was one day suddenly destroyed in no time at all under completely vague and unknowable circumstances. Stories range about how the illithids flew too close to the sun and destroyed themselves, but much more likely a scenario is that they were usurped by a race that they had previously enslaved, the Gith. See, Mindflayers really liked enslaving and experimenting on other races, but they enjoyed oppressing the Gith race most of all. I'll get to talking all about the Gith in a different video, but the long and short of it is that somehow, the Gith figured out an exploitable weakness within the illithid nation, and used it to completely wipe out 99.9% of illithid germs, as well as every other part of them. Their home in the Astral Sea lost, the illithids were forced to flee to all the other planes, turning Mindflayers into little more than refugees stranded on alien planets. Now, Mindflayers live in underground networks, slowly building up their forces, so that their species can one day return to their former glory, but first they need to survive. For even though their numbers have been dwindled so low, the Gith will never rest until they have all been wiped out completely. The normal life of a Mindflayer now is one of constant warring and anxiety. You know that feeling you get when you set an alarm and just wait for it to go off? That's how Mindflayers feel all of the time. At any moment, Gith could be crashing through their door and hunting down the last of the illithids, but in the interim, Mindflayers have to survive. Their daily regimen consists of finding intelligent humanoids, which is why they park their colonies so close to cities and towns, and bringing those humanoids homes that they can eat their brains and feed on their thoughts. Sometimes, when a humanoid is brought into an illithid layer, their brain is stored instead of eaten immediately so that it can either be studied or, if the brain really isn't that interesting, eaten when the Mindflayers are running out of food. Other times, humanoids brought into the layer aren't simply used as cattle, but are instead enthralled by the Mindflayers by getting pumped up with super psionic energies that'll melt their minds and turn them into little more than mindless zombies. Or, if the Mindflayers are exceptionally good at it, the humanoid will act just like normal, except that it is now under illithid control, meaning that it has the job of luring more humanoids into the home to listen to beats by Dre. Finally, the last thing that could happen to any humanoid caught in the tentacled web of brain trainers is that they could have an illithid tadpole sent crawling into either their ear or their nose, wherein the tadpole will eat up the humanoid's brain until it reaches the stem, at which point it supplements itself as the new brain, and the humanoid is slowly transformed into a new member of the Mindflayer race. It's like they say, once you start getting into tentacles, you never go back. A new Mindflayer will find itself hooked up to a strange new telepathic frequency, one that connects it to each and every other Mindflayer within the colony, and more importantly, connects them with the ultimate master of all flayers, the Elder Brain. The Elder Brain is a big ol' brain that fittingly acts as the brains of this whole operation. It keeps the record of every stray piece of knowledge that any illithid connected to it has, and it holds playful philosophical debates about the nature of the universe with the other Mindflayers, which it always ends up winning because it is a huge disgusting brain, and when Mindflayers die, their brain is brought to the Elder Brain to be absorbed into its big grey consciousness and essentially live forever. The Elder Brain can often be found floating around in a pool of brines somewhere in the middle of a illithid layer, and the entire colony is devoted to keeping it alive since if it dies, so do all the Mindflayers who've died before. Their main method of defense is their powerful psionic energy, which in Fifth Edition works exactly the same as magic, but it is not magic, it's psionics. Mindflayers use this psionic energy to play the mystic class before anyone else is allowed to, and while it does copy magic abilities, it also enables them to communicate with each other, experiment on other species by exposing them to that psionic energy, such as by giving their thralls natural weapons or giving them better physical survival features, and it can help them create magic I mean psionic items like the illithid mind blade, mind lash, mind carapace armor, and the shield of farsight, because you know, putting the word mind in front of something makes it smarter than you. And it's important to differentiate between psionics and magic, because given that Mindflayers are forever inquisitive as to the world, it stands to reason that they would naturally be drawn to magic, especially since their preference towards smarter brains would mean that wizards are in high demand. However, this is not the case. Infuriated that nobody can tell any mechanical difference between psionics and magic, illithid society has completely banned magic, as it makes a Mindflayer potentially able to disconnect from the elder brain and live on its own, which is a level of independence that the elder brain cannot tolerate. Such a Mindflayer must flee the colony immediately, or get stabbed murdered by their former brethren, and that Mindflayer sets out to discover the secrets of immortality on its own. If it succeeds, it will become the lich version of a Mindflayer known as an Alhoun, and it will forever be the enemy of its own race. And Alhouns aren't the only enemy to worry about. In addition to Gith, Alhouns, and Mary Bands of Adventurers, a Mindflayer colony has to worry about infighting whenever a particularly powerful illithid is born. This powerful illithid, known as an illithrid, takes the entire colony to new heights, and while it's a member of the gang, the colony will see a sort of renaissance period, where everything gets better. However, illithrids, despite being connected to the elder brain, aren't beholden to it, and at some point, tensions between the elder brain and the illithrid will reach a point where mutual cooperation will stop being possible, at which point the illithrid will pick up his toys, take an entire half of the colony's population, and go make its own colony, with blackjack and hookers. Once the new colony is set, the illithrid's mind will slowly get bigger and bigger, until it finally reaches the apex of its intelligent existence and becomes an elder brain, all of its own. Granted, things don't always go so well for the Mindflayers, and they need to be prepared for the possibility of defeat. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Mindflayers are incredibly powerful, with so many of their ancient resources depleted, such preparation is often wishful thinking, as Mindflayers who find themselves overwhelmed don't have much else in the way of tricks. But there is a chance that a colony could have an old relic of their past. And what's the most iconic relic that any sci-fi monster should have in their base, when in need of a getaway? A spaceship! The illithrid spaceship, called a Nautiloid, can travel through both space and the space between space, letting them do something that is almost entirely impossible. The Nautilid can not only travel between planes, but it can travel between different worlds of the material plane. Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dragonlance, all of these places are simple coordinates on the map for a Nautiloid vessel, and it ensures that the Gith really have their work cut out for them in their effort to exterminate all the Mindflayers in existence. The only downside to this ship is that the ancient means of constructing this ancient technology have been lost with the rest of the illithrid empire, meaning that the resources are not only finite, but if a ship is destroyed there's no way of rebuilding it. It also means that the more colonies are made, the less likely they are to have a Nautiloid of their own. But if the means of construction are ever rediscovered and returned to the collective consciousness of the illithids, it would be very likely to mark the beginning of a new era of Mindflayer dominance. But that'll not do it. I hope you enjoyed this video, leave a like, comment, what have you. Don't get your brain eaten by a lethal alien, subscribe if you feel the call of the elder brain, and maybe support me on Patreon to fund a brighter future for a brainier tomorrow. But yeah, dev'ya.