Alien abduction in the demiplane of dread?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

The concept of alien abduction, if handled correctly, can be the basis of spine-tingling tales of terror. And terror is one of the things the demiplane of dread thrives on, isn't it?

Submitted for your consideration: what are the possibilities of bringing the concept of alien abduction to life in the demiplane of dread? In a society with Renaissance-level technology and scientific ambition, surely there must have been some people who look to the stars and wonder whether there is life Out There. The possibility of life coming from space must be a possibility under consideration, even if it is being ridiculed by mainstream science.

Thanks to fanwork gone before, we already have a decent source of abduction stories: Bluetspur, if it really has been relocated to become the moon of the Core. I've read a smashing dread possibility that the God-Brain is calling psions to Bluetspur by means of psionics, but what if some of his illithid underlings crave a little more brainmeat than this trick from their leader provides them with?
The illithid are hyper-intelligent beings. Couldn't they devise other ways of slipping into the Core, provided the right conditions are in effect? (Yes, shades of CoC, 'they will return when the stars are right'...) Depending on the visual effects accompanying a grandiose effort to steal a single person or a small group of people, the thought of a vessel travelling from beyond the stars might gain popularity with the kind of people who come up with conspiracy theories.

There could even be people who are returned - carefully constructed clones, or Trojan horses; people whose minds have been obliterated, then put back together by the illithid to be their spies in the world below. The more capricious (or careless) illithid could perform hideous experiments on their catches, then send them back, either to weaken the prey through fear, or to hide clandestine activity from their master.

Who sees possibilities in this idea? Imagine a dark, foggy night over any of the Core's greater cities. A small group of people is walking home from a party, one lags behind. There is a sudden noise from above, a bright light which recedes into the fog, and the companion who trailed behind is gone, never to be seen again. And if the distraught partygoers look up, they see the full moon riding high in the midnight sky ...

[cure]

Strictly speaking, Paridon is full of alien abduction and alien replacement in terms of dopplegangers and in consequence it is (or at least should be) thoroughly paranoid.

As to illithids, Bluetspur has a considerable logistics problem, and the more so the more illithids that it has, mainly keeping them all supplied with fresh brains. Additionally, there is no mistway leading out of the domain. And the Godbrain abduction theme is limited to psionicists (which goes a long way towards explaining why there are so few psionicists about). So the illithids need a way of sending a supply of victims through that mistway or alternatively they abduct them with high level transportation psionic powers. Either way, putting together a network in the core to facilitate such would be most helpful. The network would consist of illithids in disguise, illithids literally in human skin, and humans merticulously bent to the will of illithids. There was a beast cult adventure fronting an illithid that did this on a local level in Liffe. What would be very convenient would be augmented access to the mistway in Nova Vaasa. The creation of permanent portals to it is a possibility. Since portals that pierce domain boundaries could be a problem, a chain of portals might be built, say one from Martira Bay to the frontier with Nova Vaasa, one from the frontier with Darkon to one with the frontier with Hazlan, and one from the frontier with Nova Vassa to one at the foot of the mistway.

Far creepier, would be specially designed sites, say custom engineered hilltops in several well stocked domains, where the Godbrain can impose the reality of Bluetspur and the victims can be marched straight into that land. These kidnapping sights might be, for the sake of throwing off investigators, associated with alien invaders. Better, the evidence of illithid involvement gets mixed up with the propaganda of alien invaders, and soon we have speculation about illithids in the moon.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Why not have custom made villages, say, in Richemulot with its abundance of space? Settlers arrive and find a friendly little town with a minimal population, which welcomes new people.

They stay a while, then there's a full moon or what have you, and in the night the reality of the village synchronizes with that of Bluetspur. Next morning, the settlers are gone, but the 'locals' are still there to welcome the next group to move in ...

[The Arcanist]

Just throwing ideas here.

You could deal with the brain shortage issue by having the illithids keep and raise stocks of humans and halflings up there in the moon (perhaps a few elves and dwarves as delicacies). Besides the already present misshapen humanoids (cant remember the name) who hide from the illithid in bluetspur, the mind flayers have "farms" of abducted humans, kept in conditions barely enough to keep them healthy and reproducing.

This humans would most likely be under mind control to avoid problems but still it would take very long to harvest one single brain of adult size. Perhaps they've been subjects of experiments to increase number of offspring and accelerate aging and gestation?

Perhaps a side effect of this experiments if that after a few of this accelerated generations the offspring brains become uneatable or the offspring is born sterile.

So although they still need every now and then new material for experiments and maintaining brain production, cases shouldn't be too much to raise a world wide panic about the misterious lights that banish people.

And now for an extra possibility... what if one of these "humans" were rescued by a brave and lost group of heroes? perhaps without illithid supervision and "special care" the subject would start transforming into an aberration? perhaps one that quickly multiplies from it's victims?

What if it needs a mate instead? perhaps that same group of heroes didnt brought one but three prisoners back from bluetspur, two of them live in the community X and the other in another community Y. After dealing a few weeks/months later with the new monster terrorizing community Y they could realize this was the person they saved, what do they do? Rush to community X?

Community X could already be infested or if small enough overrun and destroyed by then, must they contain and destroy the monsters? Are innocent villagers still alive and locked within their cellars(making these heroes second guess just torching the village)? Must the party chase the pack of monsters to prevent this plague from destroying any more communities? is it only one pack or perhaps it has splitted by now? Perhaps they'll need item Z from bluetspur to draw them all to one place? What then? can they be healed or must they be put to the sword? are they too many for that? Trapping them within a cave or underground ruin could help with that, but how can you ensure they won't break out later? And how do the heroes escape their underground trap among the hordes of monsters?

Well, for now that's it, hope this gave you some good ideas.

[DocBeard]

I always liked the idea of using the Githyanki like 'grays', abducting people, altering them with bizarre technology or mystic manipulation. They're humanoid but different enough to horrify the onlooker.

[alhoon]

As for mind flayers traveling in and out of Bluetspur, remember that they all have planescape and in 3E Ravenloft that means they can visit any domain they have ever visited unless the borders are closed. Which in turn means that one of the party should have been to say, Richemulot and leads 3 of them there.

[Pale]

While I can see the appeal of alien abduction, I suppose I just prefer the broader "abduction/replacement" theme. Illithids are a good "alien" and certainly have plenty of motives to make off with folk in the night, but in Ravenloft, I like the dopplegangers a bit more, or even the sort of "invasion of the body snatchers" you can pull off. D'Honaire and the Brain can get into this as well, what with overwriting peoples' wills. Still, I think cure is correct - Paridon and the dopplegangers are kind of a match made for this.


I like Bluetspur as an idea, but I'd never include it in a Ravenloft game if I could help it. That said, I think some of the notes about their travelling abilities have a lot of use for this theme, and the "farm towns" could really give you some creepy hooks for cross-country travel. I think a big problem with artificially speeding along brain maturation would be that the size might be there, but there's no... experience. No memories or anything that might add "taste" or "weight" to the meal.

It might be interesting to see how a party reacts to stumbling across a mass grave of cloned corpses, each sans brain, where the illithids are cloning and then "downloading" personalities into the "blanks" over and over. Brand new bodies, but old (and invariably tortured over continuous deaths and feedings) spirits being forced into them to provide more sustenance?

[cure]

Good point about planeshifting. Yet it opens interesting possibilities, chiefly for the reason that its not at all precise, depositing one 5d% (5 to 500) miles from one's intended target. Taking Darkon as an example, one could end up scores of miles from a city, in dangerous swamp land or mountains, to say nothing of coastal waters. One could planeshift back to Bluetspur and try again, but it would be hit and miss in the extreme. Far better would be to target a small or even very small domain as devoid as possible of dangerous let alone lethal geography, and with little sunlight. Paridon would be as good a candidate as any. A less competent darklord than Azalin or Strahd would be a good idea too, since one will be stealing the darklord's cattle.

Other well stocked domains that wouldn't be too bad might be Borca and Richemulot.

Of course just popping up somewhere in Paridon is likely to attract attention and doing so without cloaking psiconic powers is sure to absent a fog.

Also there is the matter of the return to Bluetspur. One could find oneself far from home and confronted with hostile creatures not to mention the lightning. And this in particular argues for a less imprecise way of travel back at least.

I suppose that one could planeshift twice: first to the edge of the shadow plane, which would be used to reach a definite location with relative rapidity similar to the shadow walk spell, and second to actually reach that location.

Alternatively, and more interestingly, would be permanent psiconic gates, portals, or conjunction sites.

It all depends on what the illithids want. Top shelf minds are experienced minds and have to be hunted down outside of Bluetspur. Does every illithid participate in small teams that are being sent out on a constant, rotating bases to do this? Or do most illithid subsist on the penned cattle stock with raids either being to replendish dwindling supply or being reserved to a most competent and priviledged few?

[alhoon]

Good point about planeshifting. Yet it opens interesting possibilities, chiefly for the reason that its not at all precise, depositing one 5d% (5 to 500) miles from one's intended target. Taking Darkon as an example, one could end up scores of miles from a city, in dangerous swamp land or mountains, to say nothing of coastal waters.

Actually Planeshift in Ravenloft says it deposits you in a random place within the domain, not withing a large radious of a target. On another note however, Darkon doesn't contain even an inch of sea. The seas are other domains.

As for dangerous swamps... we're talking about a group of mind flayers here.
The "normal" mindflayer, is CR8. The mind flayers that travel around propably have advanced stats (13,12,11,10,9,8 ) or even the elite array and a couple of levels.
On average IMO they would be an encounter CR 13-14. There are few things in a swamp that could just jump on the mind flayers and destroy them.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I think a big problem with artificially speeding along brain maturation would be that the size might be there, but there's no... experience. No memories or anything that might add "taste" or "weight" to the meal.

It might be interesting to see how a party reacts to stumbling across a mass grave of cloned corpses, each sans brain, where the illithids are cloning and then "downloading" personalities into the "blanks" over and over. Brand new bodies, but old (and invariably tortured over continuous deaths and feedings) spirits being forced into them to provide more sustenance?

Why whole bodies? Why not just brains, period? Imagine adventurers in Bluetspur, stumbling across a huge room full of protoplasm vats, in which thousands of developing, disembodied brains are being grown like plants in a hydroponic farm. As each brain "ripens", it's installed in a device like a modified Apparatus, and the memories of a humanoid slave are copied over into it. The brain then becomes conscious, but just long enough to realize its predicament before it's eaten.

The slaves could indeed be tortured by these repeated copyings of their memories. Even worse, evil humans who've been paid off by the illithids might allow them to copy their memories into a brain that's kept in permanent storage, as a master-copy to transfer these downloads from, because slaves' life experiences aren't as "tasty" as those of individuals who've led satisfying lives. In effect, the evil humans would be doing to their memory-duplicates what that guy from The Prestige did to his physical copies.

[cure]

Every core domain map that I have handy shows Darkon's frontiers, and that of other sea fronting domains, enclosing a portion of one or both seas.

You can levitate above a swamp as long as you have psionic power points, but absent a wind you sooner or later have to drop down into it and physically clammer out of it. And in Darkon at least, not a few corporeal and incorporeal undead will be awaiting you, to say nothing of quick sand. Same point with mountains. And in the case of coastal waters, it would be swimming rather than clammering. In every case, better to planeshift back home and try again.

But more to the point, why would illithids want to arrive in an inconvenient corner of Darkon, and most random places in Darkon will be inconvenient, obliging at a minimum a long walk, especially if one wants to get to a particular population centre rather than a random one? Planeshifting back and forth until one gets lucky seems inelegant at the very least.

So a team of illithids would need a member with the teleport psionic power in Darkon and comparable domains. Not so in Paridon where every random location is in the city.

Additionally, disappearances in Paridon are naturally attributable to two other well-known types of monsters, each answering to a darklord, so the individual darklords let alone others are rather unlikely to realise that some outside force is at work.

Compare that to Darkon or Barovia where excellent spy networks in each (the Kargat and the Vistani) and predators largely answering to the respective darklords would make for a relatively quick recognition of something abnormal. And additionally these dark lords have ample knowledge and power to do something about that abnormality.

All of which is not to say that Paridon is the only possible site of illithid predation. Rather it is merely the most likely place for an easily sustainable illithid predation. Certainly adventurers can get 'lucky' and arrive in Barovia at just that moment when the illithid decide to reclaim their old thralls hold up in Immol.

[cure]

I would suggest a variation on the downloading into blanks idea. Why not have the brains 'experience' life through constant dreaming? It would be less quick, but it would respect the principle that you can't have your cake and eat it too. Interestingly, this would create horrors on both sides of the veil of sleep, making for great fun involving the Nightmare Court.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Hey, it can go both ways. Until the isolated brains have memories added, they'd be dreaming constantly. Afterwards, they have recollections from their (probably dreadful) dreams, plus a whole transplanted history to add "spice" for the squid-heads.

Perhaps memory-transfer is what the "alien abduction" idea could be for, if it's desirable to play things close to what they're like in the X-Files. Most alleged alien abductees don't vanish forever, but are released alive with their memories (supposedly) a bit scrambled. Suppose the illithids send squads out with living, blank brains in cannisters -- shades of the Fungi from Yuggoth, there -- to quietly mug unsuspecting yokels for their memories? They ambush somebody, copy their memory onto the blank brain, wipe the poor sap's recall of the event, and then return home to copy those memories onto the latest crop of vat-grown munchies.

They could easily have been getting away with that sort of a stunt for decades, and nobody would've yet caught on, because there are so many other monsters out there to take the blame (to say nothing of the Mists themselves). It'd be a great way to explain why they neither picked Barovia bare when Bluetspur was still connected to it, nor ate their own slaves into extinction when their domain became isolated.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Oooh, I like it. The illithid have some much Cthulhu mythos-ness going for them already, this fits perfectly.