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Mind flayers
Spoiler warning: The following content contains unhidden spoilers for Act 3. |
Mind flayers or illithids are a non-playable race of Aberration creatures. The Githyanki word for mind flayer is ghaik. Multiple specific creatures titled Mind Flayer also exist in the game and are, as their names would suggest, all mind flayers.
About Mind Flayers
Mind flayers are psionic aberrations with a humanoid-like figure and a tentacled head that communicate using telepathy. They feast on the brains of intelligent beings and can enthrall other creatures to their will. Every mind flayer is connected to an Elder Brain, a colossal and powerful psionic brain that commands the mind flayers it is linked to.
Mind flayers reproduce by infecting other creatures with a tadpole that consumes its host from the inside, transforming them into another mind flayer in a process called ceremorphosis.
Thousands of years ago, mind flayers were a dominant planar power. Using massive flying vessels called Nautiloids, they traveled to hundreds of worlds, harvesting intelligent humanoids to consume, propagate their race, and use as slave labour. One of their enslaved races, the gith, rose up and destroyed their empire, leaving only small pockets of mind flayers behind.
Involvement
Mind flayers play a major role as antagonists throughout the game, from the prologue into the endgame. Though most are immediately hostile, in some cases a mind flayer can be friendly or downright ingratiating. Whether their pleasantness is genuine or a self-serving veneer on their psionic charms is often unknown.
Mind Flayer characters
- Mind flayer (nautiloid wreck)
- Omeluum
- The Emperor
- In the endgame, it is possible to transform a character completely into a mind flayer:
Mind Flayer enemy variants
- Mind Flayer (prologue): A unique mind flayer in the prologue has a slightly larger health pool than mind flayers encountered later in the game. It also does not gain Tactician. on
- Illithid Arcanist
Combat
Attacks and abilities
Gallery
External links
Mind flayer on the Forgotten Realms Wiki