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Gotta love how all the Evils of the D&D verse be like constantly fighting each other because basically... Sorry man but your Apocalypse isn't the proper Apocalypse.
😂 yep. I think that's probably why the multiverse is pretty safe. It's a backstabbing fiesta roulette. Where all the pieces have to be in play, while also sending adventurers and heroes after any one plan that seems to be going perfectly. While also murdering the minions of other apocalypses. Cause if it's not mine it's not the apocalypse 😂
Apocalypse in English doesn’t mean the same as in Greek. It meant being aware of an impending cataclysm, not the cataclysm itself. Tharizdun’s madness may have come from his trying to change the outcome of a world without hosts for the illithid to reproduce. The paradox of an ascended god trying to change a future that created him would cause a feedback loop, driving it stark raving mad. The cults of Thoon may be an attempt to alter an unalterable future by a god who can’t exist to succeed if he succeeds. It’s a grandfather paradox. Only in its failure can the chance of success exist. And people don’t think this game has any value in teaching deeper philosophies…
There was a goblinoid god in Monster Mythology that is kept alive solely by the fear goblinoids have of it coming after them. No worshippers, no priests, no temples, just the occasional charm or inscription to keep the thing that hunts the night eternally from focusing his attention on them. Keeping that in mind, how much of a god’s power comes from the hatred of them? Could Gruumsh be a greater god not just because of the worship of the orcs, but also from the hatred of the elves? Could Lolth’s power be increasing with every retelling of her betrayal of everything that is good, just and kind among the elven gods? It is the love, the hate and the fear that gives gods their powers, much like the way the fairytales take root in the reality of the fae kingdoms that exist between worlds. Only when a god is forgotten and his name lost entirely to the slow march of time that they cease to be and they are consigned to the cold, dead abyss of the astral. The planes of the gods, likewise, only exist because of the belief that they exist. Without the belief of every dwarf that there is a kingdom in which Moradin gathers his faithful to him after they die, there wouldn’t be. That is why in my version of cosmology, the abyss existed first and the planes of the gods were ripped from it through love, hated, fear, respect or belief. Fear existed first, when all of the creatures of the prime material knew only that there were things in the world that would eat them. That gave birth to the abyss and all of the horrific creatures that gained form within it. The planes of reward for a life lived well and the soul trade as eternal torture for a life lived poorly sprang equally from the depths of the horrific fear in the abyss. A god you shun still has power, simply because in order to shun him, you still have to remember him. To destroy him, you have to erase all memory of even the tale of that god. This is what happens when someone who studied theology writes a cosmology. It creates a layered cosmology that takes in all others. It isn’t that one or another is true and correct, but rather that all are true and correct.
LOL. There's a lorebook in Baldur's Gate 3 by Omeluum, the friendly mind flayer I believe, where he notes the mind flayer gods and how nobody actually worships them, they all want to BE them 😄
I always just thought of mind flayer 'gods' being their elder brain, and beyond that the idea of the grand design. I never imagined that having actual gods involved.
Gods began appearing in real-world theology after ancestor-worship eclipsed animism and aged a bit. That’s why if you look at the Greek myths, you can see the clear division between the titans, the olympians and the legendary offspring of the olympians. It is entirely possible that there was Neolithic ancestor that gave rise to the worship of the titans as gods, just as there may have been a Neolithic ancestor who later went on to form the foundation of Zeus in classic mythology. History, or more accurately, written history, broke the pattern of legendary heroes ascending to mythological gods. After the reign of Alexander the Great, you don’t see quite as many of the god-kings as you did before him, because theology was affected by history. An illithid “god” may be just the elder brain before the elder brain that spawned the current elder brain. It is the half-remembered story of it that exists as an echo of a being to future generations, prompting worship by those later beings. Understanding how theology works for us talking monkeys makes the existence of gods for the mindflayers make sense. It’s theogony, or the birth of gods. If you haven’t read them yet, Hogfather and Small Gods by Terry Pratchett explain it better than a university education does. If I didn’t know better, I would assume he had a degree in theology based on those two books.
"They not only want to dominate the multiverse, they want to ensure they always did, and always will." A minute in, and that background is still infinitely more unsettling than "The Far Realm did it". Or, as a friend I used to have noted when I first told them this lore, "Of course we're going to conquer you. We always have before." There's so *much* here. I do wonder where AJ's fill-in-the-blanks parts of lore are, if anywhere (your stuff on Tharizdun is still there in my head), but I think I have one thing he won't cover, that I can add. Regarding the Illithids not knowing or caring where they came from. Towards the very, VERY end of 3.5, before 4th edition's entirely new cosmology and lore (a new timeline, you might say?), there was a spell released. Flaying Tendrils. The spell gave a caster the ability to grow several face tentacles "similar to those of a mind flayer", which they could use as weapons and, if all four were attached to a foe, eat their brain with. The *only* reference to Illithids in the spell is that one sentence. It's a small enough reference you can forget about it entirely. And, probably unintentionally, it suggests something. Did the creator of this spell make it in imitation of the Mind Flayers? Why just "similar to those of a mind flayer", then? Sure, it's probably just a meaningless choice of words. Or, could it be *this spell* was the point from which Illithids would eventually develop? Because isn't it funny? Their diet is a hyperspecific thing that no creature would naturally evolve to *need* . And their entire biology revolves around this one thing. Aberrations are *specifically* "not naturally-occurring beings", at least depending on which edition you go by. Did a wizard decide to imitate one of the worst monsters in the world? Or were they *responsible* for those monsters, and all that came after? Which came first? Chicken, egg, or omelette? Monster, man, or necessity?
THAT is very interesting! Could they have started as some wild sect of arcane cultists who performed a ritual of permanent transformation to become the mind flayers through this spell? What other ancient species has tentacles/feelers and probably likes eating brains... hmmm, Aboleth do.
@@AJPickett Don't Aboleth remember the history of the universe? And find Illithids disturbing because they just suddenly appeared? Very curious where they fall in this history. EDIT: Support for @Pyre theory might be that, like Githyanki banned from researching necromancy by their lich queen, Illithids are exiled for researching magic.
What if ilsensyne is the ultimate form of the mindflayers. Upon gaining godhood it sent a contingency of mindflayers into the past to ensure its own creation.
For me he's just an Egregore that they use cynically to get the universe to look exactly how they want. Thoon is the attempt to combine the collective consciousness of all cenomorphs and make a competing mad god to challenge Thorizdan
I like how this version blatantly has the Great Old Ones as above the gods. Not only different from them, or comparable to them, with ambiguous power levels, but in true lovecraftian fashion they were here before the gods of humanoids, massively outclass them, and have ascended to a higher existence that even the gods can't reach.
I've been thinking a lot lately of a potential link that could be made between Illithids and Obox-ob the Demon Lord of Vermin. I think they thematically fit together fairly well.
Wait...so great old ones created a sanbox of prime material plane, and the etherial, then got bored and moved over, and shut the door behind them. Then Spell Weavers emerged, and ruled pretty much everything, until they've made a mistake that resulted in a current state of existence. But Aboleth are also known to exist before gods...where they fit into the picture? Also, Mystra created the Weave, but my guess that spell weavers used previus, raw and wild version of magic. Right?
Spell Weavers predate the weave by a longshot, Its highly implied their arcane engines neared the power of gods you can argue they only rose in prominence due to deities being locked into the dawn war focusing all their efforts not dying. Their arcane furnaces could technically be considered a prototype to the toril specific weave. they likely arose during the downfall of the wind dukes of Aaqua. The aboleth arose on mortal worlds, but as every major power were fighting in the primal war nobody really cared. Especially about fish with delusions of grandeur.
in my headcanon, the Far Realm is the soup that different universes float around in, forming, merging and popping out of existence like bubbles in boiling water. Also a part of my headcanon is that other fictional universes aside from dnd also have different names for the Far Realm: two such examples being Stephen King's Macroverse, and Star Trek's 'Fluidic Space'. (I also think of the Fr Realm as having a fluidic consistency as a whole, explaining why so many far realm abberations having features similar to marine life, such as multiple tentacles for locomotion. Also, my idea for the origin of the Illithids is that the Neolithid is their natural form, originally evovling as parasites squirming through the brains of Great Old Ones.
Whenever my players get to see into the Far Realm for long enough, I always include odd details amongst the horrific aberrations. I have put anything ridiculously implausible that I can think of floating there (e.g., Elvis, Daleks, and legions of dead Roman soldiers), but the one that I love to use the most is spaceships that have left their original universe and are now adrift in the Far Realm. Since they tend to get there by "overshooting" their destination with the warp drives cranked up to max power, they still form a bubble of normal spacetime around them as their warp drives still work, which is not fun for anyone who happens to be in the way. Technically, all of these ships are their own demiplanes, since they have such a disparate chunk of spacetime compared to their surroundings. The other thing I've included in my headcanon, though, is that many parts of the Far Realm are pitch black and/or completely devoid of matter. In many dim parts of the Far Realm, too, the only light there comes from the last time somone made fire in the area, and the light has been bouncing around there since then.
@@theintrovertedarcanist984 So, similar to the mysterious 'void' that they encountered in Star Trek: Voyager? No light, no matter just ships that got trapped and mysterious alien creatures that adapted to the darkness.
I like this idea. Perhaps like dragons, in the forgotten past the ancient parasites created lesser imitations of themselves to carry out their goals, capable of infecting lesser entities without completely obliterating them, and reporting back to their masters in the outer realms. They lost control of their creations when they rebelled by creating collections of their own brain matter, pooling vast psychic potential into singular entities, intended to block out the influence of their masters. However, these "Elder Brains" then realized that they could REPLACE their former tyrants, and began dominating the mindflayers themselves. After eradicating the original species, they purged even the memory of them from the mindflayers to eliminate any possible competition.
@@leyrua I included in my Spelljammer-esque homebrew setting parts of the universe where the mind flayers have tried to rebel against their elder brain masters. When they succeed, the illithids usually continue the systems that made them so hated but keep them alive (e.g., keeping and harvesting intelligent creatures as livestock); however, sometimes the war just leaves a bombed-out wasteland, be it a planet or an expanse of hundreds of galaxies (this might be the cause of some Supervoids), and the mind flayers pack up and leave for places with intelligent life. Sadly, rebellions often fail, or essentially change nothing because the ulitharids who tend to lead the rebel illithids will take charge and end up looking a lot like elder brains.
Never been a big fan of tharizdun. Like im all for planitary/ universal threats but when there is a creature or god that becomes an entire threat to the multi-verse itself it kind of feels cheap. Like a kid in the playground saying "my bad guy is more powerful than yours".
So I understand that the mind flayers tossed themselves back in time to escape their own demise and hide until they're ready. What I haven't been able to pin down yet is how did the Gith follow them into the past? Am I missing something obvious?
The Gith live in the Astral Sea, which is a timeless place. So that would mean that time moves in the material plane, but is always the same there. Make an enemy in the Astral plane, no travel forward or back through time would allow you to get away from them.
From the ecology of overgods lecture, we guess that AO, Thoon and others are over gods. These entities are watching over selected spheres (prime material planes) in hopes that a few will completely fill with life to the point that they "hatch" a new entity. With that in mind, the illithids mission is to dominate all life within their communal consciousness. Could their ultimate goal be to create a single conscience entity that fills a sphere to hatch a new over god. Then, knowing it's own origin, creates the illithids and sends them back in time to secure it's own creation? Now my head hurts.
Again, you post more about the cult of Thoon AS my players are beginning to unravel their connection in the plot of my campaign. Either the stars have aligned for this to occur or this was... has always been... the plan.
15:02 I believe you mentioned this once in a dragon video (red, maybe?) a long time ago, how dragons have the ability to “cure” or eradicate Abyssal energies. I’m very curious about this! Can’t wait for the next video!
So the mind-flayer relationship with the gods is less one of devotion and more of an exchange of power (via sacrifices and worship) for power? It does make a certain level of sense.
Awesome. I needed this - one of my players is a Warlock, with The Great Old One as her patron. I chose Maanzacorian as her patron. Her patron is about to break through into their world by having tricked some followers of Ilsensine into summoning him, when in fact they thought they'd be bringing her through the gate... The warlock doesn't want to stop either of them from coming through... so, Mind Flayers are about to be a lot more prevalent in my game.
@@AJPickett To expound slightly, I'm running a pre-Dark Sun alternate historical shattering event for a world yet to be known as Athas. As my world, Hyphestos, becomes disassociated from the rest of the multiverse, the Illithid and other temporally and planar sensitive beings are flailing heavily to regain control.
Orcus can’t kill gods. The best he could do is destroy their avatar so it has to re-form and either steal or kill its followers, so that it is weaker when it re-emerges. Even a so-called “dead god” floats in the Astral, waiting for someone to worship it again.
I love how you weave lore together. Talented writers tend to do that. I'm certain Mindflayers would do anything to eat your brain in particular. AJ is rich in Quintessence (Vitamin Q)
The spell weavers accidentally CREATED the Far Realm? Wild. How does Ao fit into all of this? Was he watching during this time as well? Did he exist at the beginning of everything, even before the Great Old Ones?
No no, well sort of, they made a medium in which the dreams of old ones manifested as spacial directions and movement... it's hard to make sense of really, by its very nature. Ao is more lke a minor Immortal (re: D&D Basic and Mystara cosmology and the complete version of D&D Basic), he is not a god or a primordial and he only has control over Realmspace.
Well as a grognard, ( I start playing with the white box) when I got ad&d first printing of Deities and Demigods, I took one look at the chili guy mythos and right there was their god. They are the big bad in my worlds. Mind blast on a nonpsionic is usually a bad end right up there with becoming a slave to the drow.
Excellent primer. The way you have synthesized the various arcs into a cogent timeline is amazing. Thank you for your work on both mainline DnD and the broader concept videos.
Hey AJ epic video you got me thinking all kinds of craziness. To my little knowledge the elder gods are the gods that lost and now are trapped, some more trapped than others. With the mind flayers doing all this time travel and parallel universe usage. What if the elder gods are the mind flayers from the past or future or both. Maybe they are even unaware of this. Groups were sent back to try and get it right or just change some of the out comes. Thanks AJ you have a wonderful day!
Finally Illsensine!!!!!!!!! I waitsd years, watching you go from subject to subject without giving him the glory the mind god deserves! Also when are you going to continue the Hades series? I want to hear about Khin-Oin and the two other Yugoloth towers. Oh and GHUANADAUR!!!!!
Well well well, look who came crawling back to D&D lore. Good because we missed you. Edit: This series is the deep dive I've been looking for, doing Ao's work.
Tharizdun seems like a possible emergency reset to the lore, universe, and anything other major shifts that might need to be made in the future. From reshaping the pantheon to changing core mechanics, to a complete reboot from the ground up with all the opportunity in writing and lore building opened back up. Kind of like slash and burning a forest to rebuild anew.
I have always wanted to run the forgotten temple of tharisdun and the temple of elemental evil and have the players reach the crystal prison release tharisdun and reset the universe. "Great job guys, you released the chained god and he just did a full wipe on the universe's hard drive and looks like he is installing pathfinder. You are not just dead you never existed."
I always thought there was a Far Realm entity that was so mysterious and powerful and that's who they revered. Maybe i dreamt that instead of heard or read it somewhere.
If Thoon is a living entity and not just a strange new philosophy, that's exactly what Thoon is. The Mind Flayers who serve Thoon traveled through the Far Realm and came back with a totally different way of thinking and acting to other Mind Flayers, and when questioned about the nature of this "Thoon" they now follow and speak about constantly, they can give no more explanation than just saying that "Thoon is Thoon, and Thoon is all."
I don't care how good the new adventure is. I'm not giving a cent to WOTC after the OGL and Pinkerton debacles And there pulling out of penguin house so they can charge DMs probably close to $90 a book has only strengthened my resolve to stick to third-party. I eagerly await the next installment of your Crystal curse AJ
Gadzooks, a lore keeper in the wild appears with a video for us! Looking forward to this one! If i may submit a humble petition - a few years ago you started on the odyssey of elf lore and history, but i don't think that was ever finished. Any plans to come back to it?
Aw AJ you got a goldmine here. More lore about Illithids and Far realm material. You definitely have us hooked. Therazdun as well. AJ got dat lore y'all want. Weirdos.
If anyone ever makes a dnd tv show they should have half of the show getting some magic treasure and experience and half of the show getting the stuff appraised and using the stuff in the village to get rich and impress villagers and get girls. They are probably going to make it overly complicated and confusing.
There's a few anime! Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon is pretty good. But any steadily producing dungeon is going to have the same effect as a gold rush. A hard but rich dungeon that kills off most, like Undermountain, will still produce enough that civilization will increase for services.
Alright lets see, if the gods are being used by the mindflyers and they know it, then thats are way in. The gods must be convinced. The gods must stop granting the mindflyers power. Without the power of the gods the heros of the multiverse actually stand a chance.
In my headcanon, mindflayer deities were essentially whirlpools of combined psychic thought coalescing into divine beings, with each one representing a powerful emotion, mental state, or urge of the illithids. The most powerful of these was Ilsensine, who embodied the urge to dominate and consume, effectively being the emotion of avarice (or more accurately, "domination") made manifest. By its very nature, Ilsensine dominated and devoured the other gods, which is partly why Illithid can't easily experience emotions like joy or peace (or perhaps their lack of such emotions made such concepts weak enough to be devoured). Whatever the case, Ilsensine is now all-powerful, and mind flayers and their culture are driven almost entirely by the urge to dominate and gain power and consume. Maanzecorian, in this theology, represents something akin to "curiosity" embodied, or the urge to uncover and solve mysteries. I personally figured that Ilsensine also devoured the remains of Maanzecorian, and perhaps is confused for it or masquerades as it for unknowable reasons.
Also, I made a campaign setting in 3.5 edition based on the planet Glyth, the sixth world from the sun in the Forgotten Realms solar system, which is ruled almost entirely without exception by the mind flayers, and though Ilsensine tried to wipe knowledge of these "Lost" gods from history, some remnants persisted, such as ancient buried ruins which served as meeting places and debate forums for the followers of those gods, and a lone former Chosen of Maanzecorian who serves as a sort of wanted rebel hunted by the majority of the mind flayer factions, vestiges of what illithid society could have been.
Always loved your stuff but this video and the last few have been absolutely off the chain. I am so excited for more and the mere mention of my maln Jergal go in this new thing I did not know somehow has me unbelievably excited, will check out that book you told about
Jerghal is a real-world god. It was a Mesopotamian god of death as I recall. He held the same position as Orcus (Etruscan) and Pluto/Pluton (Greek/Latin). There is some question of whether he overlapped Thanatos, the Greek god of Death or if he was more akin to Pluto (also called Hades), the king of the dead, not the god of death itself. When you look at all of the bits they left in during the purging of the satanic panic, you have to wonder what the original material looked like. The Time of Troubles in the Forgotten Realms was the Alpha and Omega (Ao) stepping in to throw down the gods for their actions, but the Christians never caught that reference.
I am shocked... AJ actually recommending an official WotC 5E book? 🤯 Is this a broken clock being right twice a day kind of situation? I mean, their starter adventures have been pretty complete and easy to run, from what I've tried. 🤔 Either way, I'm going to give it a look, because I do want to run some mind flayers as the big bads in the future.
I love your videos! I just want to say I needed this one a week ago. I'm on my way to DM right now and I am trying ro squeeze this lore in my brain like a tadpole in someone's eye :P
I use the ones in the illithiad, and supplement it with the old 1st edition Cthulhu mythos. I think I also stole the yellow king from pathfinder. Hope things are going well AJ, glad to see u making vids again.
The illithids and their Gods Ilsensine and Manzecorian, some of the Gods of the Far Realms, but not as strong as the Great Mother Beholder easily the strongest entity of the Far Realm, too bad that she got corrupted by the Abyss
@@agentchaos9332 In fact you are correct thats true, but all the Gods that resides in the Abyss ended being corrupt, take Lolth as an example, she was an evil godess, but when she was cast out to the Abyss got corrupt she turned into Tana'ri Demon, the Abyss has this horrendous property of corrupting everyone from outside, also the Great Mother Beholder is no longer with the Gods of the Far Realm and started to do plans for herself.
@@omargerardolunamorales217 But that would mean the lower dimensional mental projections that CREATED the Outer Realms like the Abyss could affect the most powerful of Far Realm beings. You'd think they wouldn't be as susceptible.
@@Badficwriter The Abyss purpose is to bring all gods and beings from elsewhere into bondage with the prime material as a twisted wretched fractured form, as it was created by elemental primordials clashing with pure evil. Enslaving higher forms into lower forms
So in the previous iteration there was only the spirit world, the dream world, physical reality, and the elements. Are we sure that the Spell Weavers weren't friends of the old time lords before they tried to play God and expectedly had everything explode in their faces? Then there is the Oard who are the terrifying cross between the Borg and the Cybermen who freely time travels, the chronomancers of temporal prime, and the psychic time oriented angels in the Sibyllic Guardians. Oh and let's not forget about the Chronotyryns. I don't see the mindflayers ever succeeding, not in the truest sense. There is also something called the Crawling Apocalypse but I don't know anything about that gaint octopus.
I have been watching your videos for years. Besides the chromatic dragons, I believe this is one of the best and most interesting topics and videos you have created. I can't wait for the next one.
Fantastic video once again! I simply don’t get why you're not already at 300000 or more subscribers! Now while I love these deep-dives from you, there’s one thing I love even more - and that’s when go into story mode and share knowledge as a "first-hand account", as a Sage traveling the Multiverse! Hope we will get to see some of this again soon as well!
i always thought of them as a false immortality. their souls merge perfectly with their bodies, just like with celestials, fiends, etc, but they are still mortal in that they dont get reborn when killed.
Mind flayers are a dangerous lot I for one don't like playing them. I don't like Lovecraft that much but mind flayers are very interesting in the lore videos 😊thank you very much and have a good evening.
Delicious, Im feeling like you feed me brains everynow and then. I will buy that book :p And patiently wait on those teased videos :D Best of luck and health to you mate :)
I always thought the random obelisks found in the 5E campaigns was vecna cooking up an old plan of his but on a larger scale like didn’t he create several obelisks to draw all worship in an area to himself to attain more power I always thought these where the same obelisks but mores powerful so they could be scattered farther apart and draw in worship from the entire world completing his goal of removing all gods but himself and perhaps the final campaign we get for 5E would be preventing this and lead to the next version 1Dnd
I think it would be a great benefit to all of creation if both the Spell Weavers and Mind Flayers to both be completely destroyed, the universe would be a better place without either of them
I was hoping that wasn't the case I really liked the 2e depiction of asmodeus it was something unique and a great story telling but now it's just a rip off of abrahamic religions they did a lot of changes to the abyss to alive and a unstoppable spread of corruption now it's was created by a bunch of aliens
@@kennethsmith5383 I absolutely love the concept of an unreliable narrator. It is best when it's made pretty clear that they are unreliable early enough that it doesn't come across as a retcon. Makes for more interesting storytelling.
I think all story tellers, DMs, and games designers will eventually conclude time travel (and parallel universes) are terrible mechanics and should be avoided at all costs.
Parallel universes will always exist in these sort of games. As long as there are gods, they have to come from somewhere best described as “not here”. Time travel can be explained away as psychic communication from the future, if you prefer. It could be the very reason Tharizdun went mad and tried to destroy it all. If what will be imprinted a sense of purpose in what was through Tharizdun, the mad god may have been trying to prevent it from happening again, assuming it did happen before, which is why he went mad. It isn’t truly time travel at that point, because Tharizdun is a god and they live outside of time. Tharizdun could be a god of the mind flayers that ascended to godhood sometime in the future and tried to influence its own creation with catastrophic results. The more he alters, the more he slips into madness because now he is a god that keeps changing himself after ascension, creating different forms of himself, contained in what he is. Each failed attempt to alter the future creates another personality in the god that cannot exist because it cannot create itself, but it cannot not exist because it is a god. Tharizdun is a paradox with all the powers of a god, making and unmaking himself over infinite possibility simultaneously.
I never heard of Ilsensines influence causing the Oryndoll brine pool to produce more Ulitharids. Is it possible that the Cult of Isensine could actually evolve an Illithid into an Ulitharid? If so how would you do it in campaign?
With a snap of my fingers and a twinkle in my eye, because I live for this sort of thing. Well we know the Illithids were supercharged by the manifestation of Ilsensine within the body of Encephalithid, so, perhaps they became addicted to that sensation and developed some form of Mind Flayer Meth?
@@AJPickett That could be interesting. Maybe have it be a bit like quintessence in the Cult of Thoon where it is extracted via rituals and used like a psionic steroid to power things or boost mindblasts. I suppose those that use it extensively might occasionally mutate into Ulitharids. I have my own homebrew setting not Toril so I'm kinda spitballin ideas
