Editing Illithid (section)

=Illithid Society=
Illithids function as a hive mind, serving the Elder Brain. Other than maintaining the Elder Brain, the day-to-day duties of the average illithid consist of evil science and making cheeky wood burnings. The purpose of these wood burnings is an inextricable mystery, as they seem to disappear shortly after their completion. They can make Brain Golems out of buds from said queen-like Elder Brain, which are exactly what they sound like and exactly as retarded as you would think. Even the Illithids and the Elder Brain itself know how impractical this can be, and would prefer to use any other type of golem instead. The Illithids live for the fact that after they die, their brains, and thus their minds, will be merged with the Elder Brain after death. This is, of course, complete and utter bullshit, as the Elder Brain just eats their knowledge and discards everything else (although pretty much nobody in-universe aside from the elder brains themselves is aware of this). Elder Brains discourage studying magic too much because Elder Brains can't eat a mind flayer's magical abilities, though they can eat a mind flayer's knowledge of psionics (if it ever took levels in Psion, Erudite, Wilder, or what have you.) Below the Elder Brain on the mind flayer hierarchy are the Brainstealer Dragons (very rare because it's notoriously difficult to restrain a true dragon) and the Ulitharids.

The mind flayers have one deity they pay respects to in Illsensine, who did not create them. Perhaps to make up for the fact that Illsensine is the only Mind Flayer God, Illsensine is a very powerful rank 20 greater deity who omnoms the knowledge of everyone the instant they die. The Mind Flayers don't exactly worship Illsensine per se, they just respect it for its great knowledge, and Illsensine returns the favor by considering Mind Flayers to be the only worthy species in the multiverse. This is not to say that there are no Mind Flayer clerics to Illsensine, because said clerics of Illsensine do indeed exist, but their numbers are rather small relative to say the number of Dwarven clerics of Moradin, however; Mind Flayer communities have an exception to their rule of "don't study magic too much" for the Clerics of Illsensine, and in fact greatly respect these clerics and leave them to their business.

The mind flayers used to have another god called Maanzecorian who was their god of comprehension and secrets, but Tenebrous (actually Orcus, it's a long story) used the Last Word on him, so his head asploded, his demiplane asploded and his followers' heads asploded.

Some illithids spend their time finding ways to put out the sun, because they hate that bright light shit. Unfortunately for them, putting out a 1,392,000+ kilometer ball of ungodly hot hydrogen and helium is nigh on impossible (unless your name is [[Elder Evils#Father Llymic|Father Llymic]].) Most other Illithids think that these illithids are wasting their time when it's common knowledge that all they have to do is wait many, many billions of years for the sun to eventually puff up and die. And it goes without saying putting out the sun would indirectly eliminate their food source as well.

==Creeds==
Illithid communities are governed by a group of representatives called an Elder Concord, while the Elder Brain acts like the president.  These representatives come from the various creeds or factions of illithid culture.  Each creed has different beliefs about the best path towards taking over the universe.  The symbols of each creeds are squares containing six horizontal bars that are either solid or split in two.
* The Creatives devote themselves to advancing illithid society though scientific and psionic research and invention.
* The Awaiters believe in [[Just As Planned|long term planning]] and avoid making rash decisions.
* The Possessors think hording wealth and resources through trade with other races is the best path to power.
* The Tamers work to build up the illithid's military strength so they can dominate the universe through force.
* The Thorough Biters have a philosophy of learning through failure, making them more humble that most other illithids.
* The Nourishers promote the interest of maintaining the community's supply of thralls.
* The Abysmal feel that the best way to dominate other races is through the power of terror.
* The Influencers specialize in collecting intelligence and misleading their enemies through infiltration and spying.
* The Darkeners, the dudes who think they can find a way to extinguish suns.
* The Gatherers want to consolidate the illithid race into larger, more powerful communities instead of many small disparate ones.
* The Arisers say that illithids shouldn't stay in darkness and so they develop ways for them to work in daylight and make plans for conquering the surface.
* The Venerators are the worshipers of the illithid god [[Ilsensine]].

* The Loretakers are a minor creed, but they are important as the source of the Thoon:

Some Loretaker mind flayers (possibly) went to the [[Far Realm]] and apparently encountered something called Thoon. However, the exact nature of Thoon is unknown even to the mind flayers themselves, so whether Thoon is a god, an aberration, a philosophy, or something else entirely is open to interpretation. In any case, the encounter with Thoon changed these particular illithids completely, they're a lot more irrational and unpredictable (NE instead of LE),  make use of a lot of really weird constructs and altered humanoids (and employ a variant of the mind flayer that trades the ability to control minds for ninja powers), and for some fucking insane reason a CR 25 Elder brain came back as a CR 15 entity that's totally batshit insane. Oh, and they also seek to gather [[Psion|quintessence]] for some reason.