Waking Mind

The Waking Mind is a unique item found in the Mind Flayer Colony in Act Two.

A humanoid brain - alive and in perfect condition - suspended in cerebrospinal fluid.

Properties

• Miscellaneous Items
• Rarity: Common
•  Weight: 5 kg / 10 lb
• Price: 1 gp

Where to find

Found in the Necrotic Laboratory inside the Mind Flayer Colony after solving the brain mapping puzzle.

Notes

• When placed on the Mind-Archive Interface within the Mind Flayer Colony, the Slack-Skinned Head will speak using this brain:
  HmmMM... fine bones... sharp jaw... some variety of elf? Pretty enough for a flesh-prison - if not the noble githzerai features I was born with.
• Speaking to the head can grant the permanent buff  Githzerai Mind Barrier

Dialogue

When placed on the Mind-Archive Interface within the Mind Flayer Colony, the Slack-Skinned Head will speak using this brain.

• HmmMM... fine bones... sharp jaw... some variety of elf?
• Pretty enough for a flesh-prison - if not the noble githzerai features I was born with.
• I'd guess you're no willing guest of the ghaik either. Perhaps we might aid one another.

---

• History check: *The monk-like githzerai, sibling-race to the warrior githyanki. Their contempt for one another is eclipsed only by their shared hatred of the illithids.*
• Reply: How did you end up in that vault? Githzerai are supposed to be ultimate warriors.
  • Warriors of the mind. Oh, there's some physical prowess involved, but the battlefield on which we truly fight the ghaik is their own.

---

• Reply: [GITHYANKI] Why? This form fits you so much better, cousin.
  • Well, a githyanki skull would be too tight a fit, cousin. Your people shunned psionics, after all - while mine mastered them.

---

• Reply: [GITHYANKI] How did you end up in that vault? Aren't you zerai ultimate warriors?
  • Warriors of the mind, cousin. A discipline unknown to your kind - and the very reason we were attacked.

---

• Reply: You called yourself githzerai. Is that some kind of githyanki?
  • Oh, for a set of hands to slap your face. The yanki lost their way the moment Gith threw down the Ghaik empire.
  • Only we zerai continue the war to end the ghaik forever. Only we fight them on their own battlefield - the mind.

---

• Reply: You're remarkably sane for a pickled brain.
  • A githzerai's mind is not so easily cracked. Our discipline was the very reason we were attacked.

---

• Reply: I'm not interested.
  • Only because I haven't told you how you will benefit.

---

• Reply: I'm listening. What aid are you offering?
• My order taught a psionic technique much-feared by the ghaik. They destroyed us for it, and kept me as a trophy.
• I never broke, but... I've spent all these centuries awake. Aware. So here is my offer:
• Use your tadpole. Erase me - and I will pass my technique onto you.

---

Insight check: *You catch the lie - the monk isn't telling everything.*

• • Reply: If you want my help, then tell me the truth.
    • ...All right. I... the ghaik did not find my monastery. I led them there.
    • They promised me immortality. And they gave it - I have been their rotting trophy for centuries.
    • *As her agitation swells, so does her latent psyonic power. To your tadpole, that guilt and terror are almost... fragrant.*
    • *You realise the illithids locked her away not as a trophy, but as a fine vintage.*
    • Please - touch my mind, and purge it. The moment you do, my knowledge will be yours.

---

• Reply: You want me to kill you. What if I can free you instead?
  • My people dwell in Limbo - a realm of pure, chaotic thought. With my mind gone, perhaps my soul will return there.
  • Or perhaps not. Death, freedom - they are one and the same.

---

• Reply: I'll do it.
• Touch my mind, and purge it - at the very moment you do, I will make my knowledge yours.

---

• Reply: When you say 'erase' your mind - do you by any chance mean 'smash your brain to bits'?
  • ...I do not. The ghaik have been warping flesh for millennia - who knows what damage they can undo.
  • It is my mind they enslave. It is my mind that must die.

---

• Reach out and erase/purge her mind.
  • *The awareness that floods you is nothing like the tadpole. It is tentative, and tingled with the loneliness of aeons.*
  • *It fades beneath your touch, but you feel something left behind. A fragment.*
  • It's only knowledge yet, without comprehension. But when you use it, you will... see...
  • And I... I see...

---

• • • Reach out and consume her mind.
      • Thank you, I - wait.
      • No. NO. PLEASE!

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Choose either Illithid Persuasion option (consume/purge her mind) to receive Githzerai Mind Barrier (Condition).