Psion

Psionics are primarily distinguished, in most popular gaming systems, by one or more of the following:

• Magical or super/meta human-like abilities including:
• Extrasensory perception – learn secrets long forgotten, to glimpse the immediate future and predict the far future, to find hidden objects, and to know what is normally unknowable. 
• Examples:Clairsentience, scrying, precognitives, retrocognitives, transduction, remote viewing, psychometry, omniscience, intuitiveness, aura reading, dowsing.
• Manifest manipulation – Powers that create objects, creatures, or some form of matter. 
• Examples: Metacreativity, automatic writing, transmutation, apportation, multiplication, heighten senses, mediumship, energy healing.
• Intellect manipulation – Exclusive or near-exclusive association with highly advanced Intelligence quotients, disciplined, and/or willful beings well over the "superhuman intuitive genius" level; 
• can choreograph entire wars with ease, 
• comprehend and alter any science instantaneously, 
• decipher any language, 
• analyze and copy any fighting style, 
• construct complex devices and inventions, 
• compute mathematics at a superhuman level and have an eidetic memory. 
• Amplify brain waves of others to enhance their intelligence, and thinking speed; 
• they can also use their power to boost others power by advancing the power portion of their brain. 
• Examples: Metapsionics, intellpsionic, synapsionic, psionic mimicry, psi-absorption, psi-augmentation, psi-bestowal, psi-negation, psi-sensing
• Physics manipulation – Manipulate energy or tap the power of the mind to produce a desired end; Mind over matter projecting pure force via the mind; 
• Other (non-force) "Energy"-based abilities. 
• Examples: Psychokinesis, hyperkinesis, pyrokinesis, electrokinesis, cryokinesis, hydrokinesis etc., soulites
• Molecular manipulation – Change the physical properties of some creature, thing, or condition. 
• Examples: Psychometabolism, intangibility, healing/regeneration, environmental resistance, shape-shifting/replication, transvection, imperviousness, invisibility, elasticity
• Space/Time manipulation – Move an object or another creature through space and time; 
• by manipulation of the flow of time, Psionics have the power to shift three-dimensional energies into virtually any environment they can conceive (such as a world inside a mirror); 
• They can use portals to transport themselves or others. 
• They can also open gates to pocket dimensions, and even alternate and warp realities. They can also go back in time and alter the timeline. 
• Examples: Psychoportation, astral projection, time travel, bilocation, multi-dimensionals walking, etherialization, stasis suspension
• Thought manipulation – Communicate with others – especially other Psionics, mentally. Powerful psionics can completely alter a person's personality. 
• Not only are they able to pick up on an emotion, if the emotion is strong enough, the psionic himself is able to feel that emotion. A frequent example is pain. 
• Examples: Telepathics, extreme tele-empathy, tele-cybers, pain synthesizers, psionic blast, psychic weapons, mental attacks/defenses, mind control, and projected illusions
• lack of arcane rituals, gestures, components, and other typical features of magic.

History

Psionics were first introduced in Eldritch Wizardry (1976).^[1]

Optional rules for psionics were included in the original Player's Handbook.^[2] Psionic abilities were included in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition Player's Handbook, which presented them as an optional ability available to many monsters and to players who could qualify with lucky rolls. There was no official specific character class that specialized in psionic powers, although an unofficial class, the psionicist, was introduced in Dragon Magazine issue #78.^[3] Much of the rules mechanics for psionic combat were found separately in the Dungeon Masters Guide.

Psionics rules were initially absent in AD&D Second Edition, but were reintroduced with the 128-page expansion The Complete Psionics Handbook.^[4] Game designer Rick Swan referred to this book as "a straightforward presentation of an easily managed and highly playable system that clears up the ambiguities in the 1st Edition game and adds a number of elegant new touches".^[4]

In The Complete Psionics Handbook, the skills of the psionicist are based on wisdom and constitution just as a fighter's abilities derive from strength and a wizard's talents stem from intelligence.^[4] Characters of chaotic alignment were not allowed to become psionicists, with the rationale being that volitale chaotics lack the discipline required to focus their mental energies.^[4] The book assigned psionic powers to six disciplines, which include clairsentience (divination), psychokinesis (animating and controlling existing objects and forces), psychometabolism (body-changing powers), psychoportation (teleportation variants), telepathy (mental communication and psychic attacks), and metapsionics (enhancement of other psychic abilities). Powers are designated as either sciences (major powers) or devotions (minor powers). As a psionicist gains experience and advances in level, he acquires more powers; for instance, a 1st-level psionicist has only one science and three devotions, but gets 10 sciences and 25 devotions if he makes it to 20th level. As a psionicist rises through the ranks, he also gains access to defense modes, which are special telepathic powers, such as Mind Blank and Tower of Iron Will, which are received free of charge and don't count against a psionicist's normal power limits.^[4] Each power has a score rated in terms of a particular attribute. When attempting to use a power, the player makes a Power Check by rolling 1d20 and comparing the result to the Power Score. A roll less than or equal to the Power Score means success. Additionally, each power description includes a specific penalty suffered by the psionicist if a 20 is rolled.^[4] A psionicist has a fixed number of Psionic Strength Points, derived from his wisdom score, to expend on psionic powers. A psionicist simply expends the number of PSPs required by a particular power, then attempts a Power Check. If the check fails and the power doesn't work, he forfeits half the PSP cost but is free to try again later. If he passes the check and the power is successful, the psionicist has the option of expending additional PSPs to maintain the power in subsequent rounds.^[4] Psionicists recover lost PSPs every hour in which no additional PSPs are expended. The less physical exertion, the more PSPs recovered; a walking PC recovers 3 PSPs per hour, and a resting PC recovers twice as many.^[4] The book presents over 150 powers, such as Enhanced Strength, Inflict Pain, Switch Personality, Hear Light, Psychic Surgery, Flesh Armor, Cause Decay, Levitation, ESP, Teleport, and Clairaudience.^[4] Psychic combat has its own chapter, and the book includes updates on psionic monsters (including the thought eater and cerebral parasite), a discussion of society's reaction to psionicists, and a section describing the role of psionics in Ravenloft and other TSR campaign settings.^[4]

Dragon Magazine issue #174 included "Are You Having Bad Thoughts?" an article by Ravenloft designer Bruce Nesmith that details how psionics work in the Demiplane of Dread. The power selection for the psionicist class was later expanded by the card-based Deck of Psionic Might supplement. The Dark Sun campaign setting used psionics as a core part of its setting's rules; in the world of Athas (home to the Dark Sun setting), every character and most monsters possessed some psionic wild talent, and all Dark Sun campaign PCs have at least one psionic talent, as described in The Complete Psionics Handbook.^[5] Several Dark Sun products introduced new psionic powers.

The psionics system was greatly revised in Player's Option: Skills & Powers and the revised Dark Sun Campaign Setting.^[6] Psionic abilities are determined by a character's Wisdom, Constitution, and Intelligence scores.^[6] Any character with sufficiently high scores and some luck will have some psionic talent known as a "wild talent"; any player character in the Dark Sun world will have psionic talent.^[6] Characters have Psionic Strength Points (PSPs) and a Mental Armor Class (MAC); attacking involves expending PSPs, and making an attack roll against the target's MAC.^[6] The system was redevised around a Mental Armor Class (MAC) and a Mental THAC0 (MTHAC0), mimicking the Armor Class (AC) and THAC0 used in normal combat. The harder the power was to use, the lower the MAC was to activate it. Likewise, the harder a mind was to break into, the lower that person's MAC was. Psionicists would have MTHAC0 scores that represent their ability to wield the psionic arts. This was exactly 21 minus the level of the psionicist. Many of the powers were also altered in this revision.

A reviewer for the British magazine Arcane felt that this system was "a much more logical set-up than was previously in use. It's a matter of taste, though, as to whether you think there's any need for spell-like psionic powers when the game already supports such a wide variety of magical styles."^[6]

Psionics were overhauled yet again in the release of the Psionics Handbook (2001) for Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition. The psionicist was renamed to the "psion" and more closely resembled the magic-using sorcerer in terms of combat ability, and a new character class, the psychic warrior, was introduced. Psions were given several new abilities and psionic powers that were intended to complement the new and revised abilities of the magic-using character classes, and psionic items were introduced to give psionic characters an alternative to using magical items.

The psionics system was again revised for the 3.5 edition of the game, in the Expanded Psionics Handbook (2004). This change streamlined the system by eliminating most power "chains", replacing them with the ability to augment powers by spending additional power points, as well as eliminating the psionic combat system that had previously been employed. A key change was changing powers that had previously been keyed to a different ability score for each disciple to a single ability score depending on character class. The book also introduced other races, such as the "Elan", psionic characters who had achieved immortality.^[7] The May 2004 issue of Dragon introduced the "Athasian elan" as a playable character race for the Dark Sun campaign setting.^[8]

The book Complete Psionic (2006) introduced three new standard classes as well as several prestige classes for the psionic character. It also includes a variant psion class called the "erudite" which does not specialize in a specific discipline in the way that psions do (putting it on par with wizard and archivist). It also has the ability to learn an unlimited number of powers but can manifest only a limited few each day. Complete Psionic also introduced a number of minor rules changes and clarifications.

Psion / Psionicist

Psionicists and Psions are dedicated to the usage of psionic power.

A psionicist is much like a wizard, except that his powers derive from his mind rather than external agencies. As psionicists gain experience, they gain access to more attack and defense strategies and to more psionic powers.^[6]

2nd edition

The Psionicist class was introduced in 2nd edition, in which it is the sole official psionic class, in The Complete Psionics Handbook. Psionicists use psionics using 2nd edition's standard psionics system, in which they expend Psionic Strength Points to activate and sustain powers, and activating most powers requires a roll based on an ability score.

3rd and 3.5 editions

In 3rd and 3.5 editions, Psions are mechanically similar to Sorcerers; however, like Wizards, they can (and, unlike wizards, must) specialize in one of the psionic disciplines. In 3rd edition the various disciplines were each linked to a statistic; for instance, clairsentience is linked to Wisdom and psions who specialize in it are known as Seers. This was changed in 3.5 so that all disciplines are linked to the Intelligence statistic. Psion is the favored class of the elan race (found in the Expanded Psionics Handbook). In both 3rd and 3.5 editions, Psions expend power points to activate their psionic powers. In 3.5 edition, psionic powers can be augmented by spending additional power points on them.^[11]

4th edition

In 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, Psions are a Psionic Controller class. Unlike most 4th edition classes, Psions do not have any encounter attack powers, instead, they have a pool of power points, which can be used to augment at-will attack powers. Like encounter powers, power points are recharged by a short rest. A preview was presented in Dragon Magazine #375 in May 2009, and the class is among the classes included in the Player's Handbook 3, which was released on March 16, 2010.

Psionicists and psions in other media

Psionicists are among the classes in Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands PC games. Psions are among the classes in the 2007 PSP game Dungeons & Dragons Tactics.^[12]

Psychic Warrior

Introduced in 3rd edition, psychic warriors are a blend between Fighters and Psions. Like fighters, they gain bonus feats, and like psions, they wield psionic powers, though at a slower rate than either specialized class. Their attack bonus and hit point growth is similarly in the middle. Psychic warrior is the favored class of half-giants (found in the Expanded Psionics Handbook).

Soulknives

Soulknives are warriors who have learned to channel psionic power into "mind blades", or swords composed of psionic energy. Their broad training allows them to take many occupations and be a "jack of all trades." Soulknives are the only psionic characters who cannot manifest powers from their class; the soulknife class grants power points, but not the ability to use them. As a soulknife gains levels, the powers of his mind blade increase, such as the ability to form their mind blade into shapes other than a short sword (a concept further expanded with new feats in Complete Psionic). Soulknife is the favored class of the xeph race (found in the Expanded Psionics Handbook. Soulknife was a prestige class in the original Psionics Handbook, but it was made into a base class when psionics were revised for v3.5.

Wilder

Introduced in 3.5 edition, wilders can use "wild surges", which allow them to augment their psionic powers to a greater extent than normal. Doing so is dangerous and there is a chance every time a wild surge is used that the wilder will suffer from "psychic enervation" causing them to become dazed and lose power points. They are slightly tougher than psions, but gain fewer abilities and slower. Wilder is the favored class of the dromite and maenad races (both found in the Expanded Psionics Handbook).

Other psionic classes

The following classes were introduced in 3.5 editions' Complete Psionic.

ClassDescription

ArdentArdents derive their powers from a focus on primal truths or concepts ("mantles"); different mantles offer different abilities to an Ardent. They possess a smaller selection of powers than the more versatile psion, but enjoy greater martial abilities.

Divine MindThe Divine Mind is a character who chooses to serve a deity using psionic powers; they are thus somewhat similar to Clerics. Like clerics, they may choose mantles a deity represents, similar to domains. They may also exude Attack, Defense, or Perception auras that grant bonuses to nearby allies.^[13]

EruditeRather than learn powers upon level gain like psions, erudites may theoretically use any psionic ability by "copying" another person or a psionically-infused item. In exchange, they may call upon only a limited selection of powers per day. Mechanically, they are thus somewhat similar to unspecialized wizards rather than psions.

LurkLurks are similar to rogues who call upon psionic powers to aid them. They may perceive the weaknesses of enemies and make sneak attacks, as well as use psionic augments to their abilities.

Psionic items[edit]

In 2nd edition, all psionic items are intelligent items with PSP pools and the ability to use psionic powers.

In 3rd edition, psionic items are much closer to magic items. They are generally not intelligent items, and are divided into nine categories: armor, shields, melee weapons, ranged weapons, psionic tattoos, cognizance crystals, power stones, dorjes and universal items. Armor, shields and weapons have enhancement bonuses and abilities like their magical counterparts, cognizance crystals store power points with no other power, dorjes are the psionic equivalent of wands, power stones are the psionic equivalent of scrolls, psionic tattoos are the psionic counterpart of potions and universal items are the psionic counterpart of wondrous items.

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, illithids (commonly known as mind flayers) are monstrous humanoid aberrations with psionic powers. In a typical Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, they live in the moist caverns and cities of the enormous Underdark. Illithids believe themselves to be the dominant species of the multiverse and use other intelligent creatures as thralls, slaves, and chattels. Illithids are well known for making thralls out of other intelligent creatures, as well as feasting on their brains.

Mind flayers were created by Gary Gygax, who has said that one of his inspirations for them was the cover painting of the Titus Crow book The Burrowers Beneath by Brian Lumley.^[2] Tim Kirk's cover art on the book, then in its first printing, depicted only the tentacles of the titular burrowers, the Chthonians.^[3]

Mind flayers first appeared in the official newsletter of TSR Games, The Strategic Review #1, Spring 1975. Here, the mind flayer is described as "a super-intelligent, man-shaped creature with four tentacles by its mouth which it uses to strike its prey." When it hits prey with a tentacle, the tentacle penetrates to the brain and draws it forth, allowing the monster to devour it. A mind flayer's major weapon is given as the Mind Blast, a 5-foot radius wave of "PSI force" which affects each opponent differently based on how intelligent it is; possible effects include permanent insanity, rage, confusion, coma, and death.^[4] They were also included in the Eldritch Wizardry supplement,^[5][6] for the original (white box) Dungeons & Dragons game (1976), wherein they are described as super-intelligent, man-shaped creatures of great (and lawful) evil, with tentacles that penetrate to the brain and draw it forth for food.

Illithids have a humanoid body with an octopus-like head. They have four tentacles around a lamprey-like mouth, and require the brains of sentient creatures as part of their diet. An illithid who snares a living creature in all four of its tentacles can extract and devour its living brain. Their eyes are pale white, and they can see perfectly well in both darkness and light. Their sense of hearing is slightly poorer than a human's; they have difficulty distinguishing between several sounds mixed together, yet they are good at discerning from what direction sounds came from. Their skin is purplish blue to gray-green and covered in mucus, and is very sensitive to sunlight. They loathe sunlight, though it does not actually harm them.

One of their most feared powers is the dreaded Mind Blast, where the illithid emits a cone-shaped psionic shock wave with its mind in order to incapacitate any creature for a short amount of time. Illithids also have other psionic powers, generally telepathic in nature, although their exact effects have varied over editions. Other powers include a defensive psionic shield and powers of psionic domination for controlling the minds of others.

Illithids are hermaphroditic creatures who each spawn a mass of larvae two or three times in their life. The larvae resemble miniature illithid heads or four-tentacled tadpoles. Larvae are left to develop in the pool of the Elder Brain. The ones that survive after 10 years are inserted into the brain of a sapient creature. Hosts are determined in a very specific manner. Hosts generally are humanoid creatures that are between 5 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 2 inches. The most desirable of races for hosts are Humans, Drow, Elves, Githzerai, Githyanki , Grimlocks, Gnolls, Goblinoids, and Orcs. Upon being implanted (through the ear canal), the larva then grows and consumes the host's brain, absorbing the host's physical form entirely and becoming sapient itself, a physically mature (but mentally young) Illithid. This process is called ceremorphosis. Illithids often experiment with non-humanoid hosts, but ceremorphosis involving other creatures usually fails, killing both host and larva. The transformation between the host (almost always a human or similar humanoid, such as an elf or dwarf) takes about a week, unless detected and removed within about thirty minutes of injection into the incapacitated host.

When an Illithid undergoes ceremorphosis, it can occasionally take on some elements of the absorbed host creature's former mind, such as mannerisms. This typically manifests as a minor personality feature, such as a nervous habit or reaction (e.g., nail-biting or tapping one's foot), although the process that determines the type and number of traits so inherited appears to be stochastic. Some adult Illithids have even been known to hum a tune that its host knew in life. Usually, when a mind flayer inherits a trait like this, it keeps it a closely guarded secret, because, were its peers to learn of it, the Illithid in question would most likely be killed. This is due to an Illithid legend of a being called the "Adversary". The legend holds that, eventually, an Illithid larva that undergoes ceremorphosis will take on the host's personality and memory in its entirety. This Adversary would, mind and soul, still be the host, but with all the inherent abilities of an Illithid.

Occasionally, ceremorphosis can partially fail. Sometimes the larva does not contain enough chemicals to complete the process, sometimes there is psionic interference. Whatever the reason, it has happened that ceremorphosis has ended after the internal restructuring, resulting in a human body with an Illithid's brain, personality and digestive tract. These unfortunates must still consume brains, typically by cutting open heads (as they lack the requisite tentacles). These beings are often used as spies, where they easily blend in with their respective host types.

Illithid society also maintains a long-standing taboo related to deviations to or failures of the ceremorphosis process and hunt and destroy such exceptions. Occasionally mind flayer communities are attacked (often by vengeful Githyanki and Githzerai) and their inhabitants must flee. This leaves the larvae unattended. Bereft of exterior nourishment, they begin to consume one another. The survivor will eventually leave the pool in search of food (brains). This unmorphed larvae is known as Neothelids. If the Neothelid consumes an intelligent creature it will awaken to sapience and psionic abilities and grow to immense size, while retaining its memories of savage survival. In Complete Psionic, it was revealed that Illithids have a step between larva and Neothelid called a Larval Flayer, which looks like an overgrown tadpole. The existence of these beasts is a guarded secret among Illithids, and it is considered impolite to speak of them.

Voidmind Creatures: A voidmind creature is an ordinary creature (such as a normal human or human-like creature or animal) whose mind has been nearly devoured by a mind flayer, but enough has been left intact for basic motor function. Further psionic rituals give these near dead creatures a semblance of life. The resulting creatures act as minions and spies for the Illithids.

Illithids often create symbionts, a kind of living item eventually adapted for the Eberron campaign setting. Illithids use these symbionts for themselves and their slaves. These symbionts help their general offensive and defensive capabilities. Known illithid symbionts include the mnemonicus, wriggler, and carapace symbionts.

The origins of the illithids has been described in several conflicting stories offered in various D&D products, in past editions and in the current version of the game, which can be taken as successive retcons.

The 3.5 Edition D&D supplement Lords of Madness provides that the Illithid were a star-faring people who existed at the end of time. Facing annihilation, the Illithid traveled to the past, arriving roughly 2000 years before the present in any given D&D campaign.^[16]

The 2nd Edition book The Illithiad suggests they may be from the Far Realm, an incomprehensible plane completely alien to the known multiverse. There is no mention of time travel in this theory. Instead, they emerged somewhere countless thousands of years ago, beyond the histories of many mortal races, and spread from one world to another, and another, and so on. It is explicitly stated in this book that the illithids appear in some of the most ancient histories of the most ancient races, even those that have no mention of other races.

The 4th Edition preview Wizards Presents Worlds and Monsters supports the claim that mind flayers originate from the Far Realm.

In these two differing versions of the story, much of the variance hinges upon a fictional text called The Sargonne Prophecies. The Illithiad described the Prophecies as misnamed, and that much of it sounds more like ancient myth than prophecy. Lords of Madness takes the name more literally, and states that The Sargonne Prophecies are in fact prophecy—or, perhaps more accurately, a history of the future.

Yet another version came from The Astromundi Cluster, a Spelljammer boxed set produced before The Illithiad. This version holds that the illithids are descended from the outcasts of an ancient human society that ruled the now-shattered world called Astromundi. The outcast humans eventually mutated, deep underground, into the mind flayers. (This boxed set also introduced the entity known as Lugribossk, who was depicted as a god of the Astromundi flayers then, but was later retconned into a proxy of the god Ilsensine.) In the retconned history of the illithids found in either The Illithiad or Lords of Madness, the emergence of illithids in Astromundi becomes a freak occurrence due to the intervention of Ilsensine through its proxy, since the illithids of Astromundi have their own histories as emerging solely upon that world.

However and whenever it occurred, when the illithids arrived in the Material Plane of the far past, they immediately began to build an empire by enslaving many sentient creatures. They were very successful, and soon their worlds-spanning empire became the largest one the multiverse had ever seen. They had the power—in terms of psychic potency and the manpower of countless slaves—to fashion artificial worlds. One such world was this empire's capital, called Penumbra, a diskworld built around a star, which was a thousand years in the making. Such was their might that the Blood War paused as the demons and devils considered a truce to deal with the illithid empire.

Eventually, the primary slave race of the illithids developed resistance to the mental powers of their masters, and revolted. Led by the warrior Gith, the rebellion spread to all the illithids' worlds, and the empire collapsed. The illithid race itself seemed doomed.

Fortunately for the illithids, Gith was betrayed by one of her own generals, Zerthimon, who believed she had grown tyrannical and over-aggressive. Civil war erupted, and the race factionalised into the githyanki and the githzerai (and in the Spelljammer campaign setting the Pirates of Gith).^[29] This disruption allowed the illithids to retreat to underground strongholds where they still dwell.

Dungeon #100 claims the original home of the gith forerunners was a world known as Pharagos. Currently it is described as, "an unremarkable Material-Plane world, a far cry from the hotbed of magical activity and divine intervention that is the Forgotten Realms campaign or the World of Greyhawk." Beneath the Wasting Desert on that world, however, is the petrified corpse of the long-dead patron deity of the ancestors of the gith races. As is recounted in most 1st and 2nd edition sources, the ancestors of the gith forerunners were a human civilization before being modified by countless generations of illithid breeding and profane science.

The background material of the Chainmail game^[30] places the gith forerunners in a subterranean empire called Zarum in Western Oerik, where they dominated many other races from their capital city of Anithor. These gith seem to have been divided into a rigid caste system, their lives ruled by ancient ritual. The ruins of Zarum overflow with sacred spaces and temples, though the names of the ancient gith gods are unknown today. The period of Zarum's height is not entirely clear, but grey elf sages speculate it was approximately 2,000 years before the Demon Wars that ravaged Western Oerik, or 3,000 years before the present.

At some point, the illithids invaded Zarum from a neighboring plane of existence. Though the gith fought fiercely, they were no match for the psionic might of the mind flayers, and soon they were enslaved. The River of Angry Souls is a remnant of one of the terrible battles between the illithids and the soon-to-be enslaved gith. Many were brought to the Outer Planes and elsewhere to serve as illithid slaves. Other cities in Zarum were transformed into work pits where illithid overseers forced their slaves to toil for countless generations.

After Gith's rebellion, she led her people to the Astral Plane. While a few subject races and surviving illithids remained on Oerth, the gith forerunners have departed the world, seemingly for good. If they retain any interest in the ruins of Zarum, it is well concealed. A portion of the ruins of Anithor were eventually colonized by the drow of House Kilsek, who named their new settlement Kalan-G'eld.

Currently, the illithids are in a period of intense study and experimentation, gathering knowledge of all sorts that will enable them to eventually reconquer the universe and hold it for good. They frequently meddle in the politics of other races through subtle psychic manipulation of key figures, not to cause chaos but so as to better understand the dynamics of civilization. They regularly probe the minds of surface dwellers so as to gather intelligence and learn about new advances in magic and technology. They also do a good deal of research themselves, mainly focused on developing new psychic powers.^[16]

Illithids regularly conduct raids on all sentient settlements to acquire new thralls,^[16] because their existing stock of sentient thralls do not breed fast enough to satisfy their food and labor needs. Typically, a group of mind flayers will teleport to the settlement and swiftly incapacitate them with their psychic powers. The captives will then be marched all the way to the illithids' underground settlement by specially trained and conditioned thralls. Great care is taken to cover their tracks.

An illithid city is ruled by a creature called an Elder Brain which lives in a pool of cerebral fluid in the city's center. When an illithid dies its brain is extracted and taken to the pool. Illithids believe that when they die their personality is incorporated into the Elder Brain, but this is not the case. When the brain of an illithid is added to the Elder Brain, the memories, thoughts and experiences are consumed and added to the sum of the whole, but all else is lost. This fact is a closely guarded secret of the Elder Brains, since all illithid aspire to a form of immortality through this merging process. An extremely ancient Elder Brain is called a God-Brain because its psionic powers are almost limitless.

Since the Elder Brain contains the essence of every illithid that died in its community, it functions in part as a vast library of knowledge that a mind flayer can call upon with a simple telepathic call. The Elder Brain in turn can communicate telepathically with anyone in its community, issuing orders and ensuring everyone conforms.

Illithids generally frown upon magic, preferring their natural psionic ability. Psionic potential is an integral part of the illithid identity, and the Elder Brain cannot absorb the magical powers of an illithid mage when it dies. They tolerate a limited study of wizardry, if only to better understand the powers employed by their enemies. However, an illithid who goes too far and neglects his psionic development in favor of wizardry risks becoming an outcast. Denied the possibility of ever merging with the Elder Brain, such outcasts often seek their own immortality through undeath, becoming alhoons.

Illithids typically communicate through psychic means. They project thoughts and feelings to each other in a way non-illithids can scarcely comprehend. When they do feel the need to write, they do so in "qualith." Instead of typical alphabet-based writing, illithids write in qualith by making marks consisting of four broken lines. They use each tentacle to feel the breaks in the lines, making it basically similar to braille. However, qualith is extremely complex, as each line modifies the preceding lines through explaining abstract concepts associated with the above words in ways no human can understand; only by understanding all four lines simultaneously can the meaning be understood properly.

Traditionally illithids revere a perverse deity named Ilsensine. In 2nd edition, they have a second deity named Maanzecorian, who is later killed by Tenebrous (Orcus) in the Planescape adventure module Dead Gods. Although Ilsensine is the illithid patron deity, few mind flayers actively worship it, thinking themselves the most powerful creatures in the universe.^[16]

Illithids seek to rebuild their former empire wherein all other species were their slaves, so they view any sentient creature as worthy only of being their slaves or their food. They are pragmatic, however, and will trade with other races, such as dark elves and gray dwarves, who are too strong to be conquered. They also trade with the Neogi in order to obtain slaves.

Their archenemies are the githyanki and the githzerai, descendants of the rebellious slaves who destroyed their empire millennia ago. Hunting and slaying illithids whenever they can is an integral part of their cultures.

Illithids fear the undead because these creatures, even the sentient ones, are immune to telepathic detection and manipulation, and have no brains to consume. Confronting such mindless creatures can even be traumatizing to some of them.

According to the Lords of Madness history, Illithids are one of the few races respected by the aboleths. This is because the aboleths remember the origin of almost every other race, through their hereditary memory. However, illithids, as far the aboleths can remember, just appeared without preamble, which scares them.

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