Worldbuilding the Unknowable

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

It recently occured to me that the problem eith Bluestpur, is that it's too inhospitable for humanoid adventurers - even experienced monster-hunters - to be actually playable, and too unknowable for us to have an idea what to do there.
But making it more playable is tricky, because in doing so we risk losing the edge of its cosmic-horror theme. If we know too much about those mindflayers, we risk no longer being so afraid of them.
However, I think this already happened. We already have a tone of lore on mindflayer biology. The best you can do now if you want your players to be shocked by the octopi guys is to keep their involvement as a plot twist for later on. Or use player-character knowledge seperation.

So there are two ways to actually use Bluestpur in your campaign:
1) Get some clue as to what they're up to

VIEW CONTENT:

According to VRGtR - trying to find a cure for the God Brain's dementia. But you don't have to use 5e lore if you don't feel like it. They probably habe more than one scheme going on anyways.

and how this affects other domains. I guess that's what most DMs do.
2) My probably-controversial idea: Play in Bluestpur... As abberrations. Contrary to humans, you are a creature that is built for this envoiroment. Maybe you're a flump. Maybe you're a gnome mindflayer who preserved some of their original personality (This is a thing. Or Pointy Hat lied to me.) and now struggles to maintain your identity inside the hivemind. Maybe you're something beyond even my lore-savvy comprehension.

Both of these ideas take detailing out what we prefer to keep vague. You might not want your players to know these details, but I think even if the players have no idea what's going on, the DM should know, or else the mystery is not real.

So it occured to me to perhaps write a guide to Bluetspur, expanding lore on the domain, shedding light on it while still maintaining a sense of wrongness and incomprehensibility?
Introducing ways to customize your eldritch horrors the same way the VRGs let you customize your undead? Maybe even including some playable abberration species so you can do idea 2?

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

What I need for this (and how you can help):

1) What sources are there for existing mindflayer lore?
2) What are the most important Cosmic Horror stories I should read to get the vibe right, and where can I get them?
3) Any advice on worldbuilding a realm that feels truly and utterly alien even when you do understand it?

[Hell_Born]

The single biggest sources of illithid lore are The Illithiad for AD&D 2nd edition and Lords of Madness for 3rd edition. You may be able to read these on the Internet Archive - the Illithiad especially, since their age means that a lot of BECMI and AD&D material has been shared there.

[alhoon]

2) My probably-controversial idea: Play in Bluestpur... As abberrations.

I love that idea.

That said, I could also see colonies of enthralled stepford-family villages and a couple of small towns in small regions that are protected from the completely inhospitable parts. Villages in caverns like in Capadocia, or in a "blessed" valey that seems normal etc.
With people that seem a bit off. Mind Flayers don't get much sustenance from them and they do provide some tools etc that can be made in the surface.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

I was thinking about a 'VRS Files: Bluetspur*' project. The guy editing it is a (former? It's complicated) member who kinda went mad after being kidnapped into the domain, wrote down his experiences as part of the therapy process, and now, after partially recovering, is gathering reports from fellow survivors (as well as other information sources, from ancient tomes to actual interviews with aberrations) both to make sense of what the heck happened to him and to save other hunters the trouble he'd been through.
This would obviously have to wait until I'm done with my current project, Rainbows in the Mist. But just so I'd know ahead, who's interested?

*I'm debating between this and 'VRS Files: Mindflayers'.
Cause on the one hand, the only former in tge series is 'VRS: Dopplegangers', focused on a monster, so maybe I should stay on theme.
But on the other hand, we already have enough lore about mindflayers as a species. This is about them in Ravenloft, as a society, centered in Bluestpur.

[Speedwagon]

I was thinking about a 'VRS Files: Bluetspur*' project. The guy editing it is a (former? It's complicated) member who kinda went mad after being kidnapped into the domain, wrote down his experiences as part of the therapy process, and now, after partially recovering, is gathering reports from fellow survivors (as well as other information sources, from ancient tomes to actual interviews with aberrations) both to make sense of what the heck happened to him and to save other hunters the trouble he'd been through.
This would obviously have to wait until I'm done with my current project, Rainbows in the Mist. But just so I'd know ahead, who's interested?

*I'm debating between this and 'VRS Files: Mindflayers'.
Cause on the one hand, the only former in tge series is 'VRS: Dopplegangers', focused on a monster, so maybe I should stay on theme.
But on the other hand, we already have enough lore about mindflayers as a species. This is about them in Ravenloft, as a society, centered in Bluestpur.

It's funny you say all of this, as I have a bunch of notes on a "Bluetspur from the perspective of the illithids" gazetteer project that I've been dabbling at on-and-off, inspired as a counterpart to Ian Fordam's "Thaan, Fallen---Bluetspur from the Perspective of the Yar'Thaaladaan (the Yet-Sapient/Still-Sapient)" from QtR 31. I've also been thinking of what terrifies the illithids and why Bluetspur is hell, even for them, and how their society in Ravenloft is significantly different compared to the lore about their society coming from many sources of D&D history (The Illithiad, Lords of Madness, Volo's Guide to Monsters, various Dungeon Magazine & Dragon Magazine articles, third-party sources like Unveiled Mastesr: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers, Baldur's Gate 3, various R/UneartheDArcana posts on Reddit, and more.

Want to collab? It might not be immediately as I've got a lot on my plate IRL right now but by next week (like after Tuesday the 16th---so after the new book releases) I'll have some free time due to time off from work.

[Pizza]

Any chance for some other settlements I Bluestpur, maybe dwarves or duergar to paionic it up have some settlement under the illithids noses maybe build within or around the great machine.

[Speedwagon]

Any chance for some other settlements I Bluestpur, maybe dwarves or duergar to paionic it up have some settlement under the illithids noses maybe build within or around the great machine.

There are settlement like those in "Thaan, Fallen---Bluetspur from the Perspective of the Yar'Thaaladan", an article in QtR 31, if that might be of interest?

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

I was thinking about a 'VRS Files: Bluetspur*' project. The guy editing it is a (former? It's complicated) member who kinda went mad after being kidnapped into the domain, wrote down his experiences as part of the therapy process, and now, after partially recovering, is gathering reports from fellow survivors (as well as other information sources, from ancient tomes to actual interviews with aberrations) both to make sense of what the heck happened to him and to save other hunters the trouble he'd been through.
This would obviously have to wait until I'm done with my current project, Rainbows in the Mist. But just so I'd know ahead, who's interested?

*I'm debating between this and 'VRS Files: Mindflayers'.
Cause on the one hand, the only former in tge series is 'VRS: Dopplegangers', focused on a monster, so maybe I should stay on theme.
But on the other hand, we already have enough lore about mindflayers as a species. This is about them in Ravenloft, as a society, centered in Bluestpur.

It's funny you say all of this, as I have a bunch of notes on a "Bluetspur from the perspective of the illithids" gazetteer project that I've been dabbling at on-and-off, inspired as a counterpart to Ian Fordam's "Thaan, Fallen---Bluetspur from the Perspective of the Yar'Thaaladaan (the Yet-Sapient/Still-Sapient)" from QtR 31. I've also been thinking of what terrifies the illithids and why Bluetspur is hell, even for them, and how their society in Ravenloft is significantly different compared to the lore about their society coming from many sources of D&D history (The Illithiad, Lords of Madness, Volo's Guide to Monsters, various Dungeon Magazine & Dragon Magazine articles, third-party sources like Unveiled Mastesr: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers, Baldur's Gate 3, various R/UneartheDArcana posts on Reddit, and more.

Want to collab? It might not be immediately as I've got a lot on my plate IRL right now but by next week (like after Tuesday the 16th---so after the new book releases) I'll have some free time due to time off from work.

Of course I want to collaborate!

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

My favourite idea from The Illithiad is that mindflayer buildings don't have stairs, cause they can just levitate from floor to floor with their psionics.
I love it because it's such a simply way to demonstrate that this place is not built for us. That what for most humanoids is a far-off dream that can only come true through advanced magic or technology is for so natural for them that they take it for granted. Forget combat against creatures thst can stun you with a thought: your first challenge is the sheer inaccessibility of the structure. Aberrations are scary not just because they're dangerous, but because they're so alien we're just incompatible with them - and this is a super simple way to convey exactly this.

[alhoon]

I agree but the levitation is not endless. I think at least part of the point was that "if you're too tired to use your psionics... woops, you are forced to stay out of your house, LOSER"

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Okay.
So - a question of design philosophy.
Salient abilities (and by this I refer to any optional empowerment of a monster, really) are a major part of how Ravenloft adapts DND mechanics for horror. Right, flavour and story is what makes the monster truly scary, but salient abilities fix an inherent issue with DND horror: The second your players had seen a monster's statblock, they know what it is and what it can or can't do, which automatically makes it a lot less scary.
Mindflayers especially suffer from this problem: They're supposed to be unknowable eldritch horrors, but over time they've grown so popular that pretty much every player knows them. I've seen two different YouTube videos that basically went like 'mindflayers are too well-known and no longer scary! We have to make a new and mysterious eldritch monster to replace them!' (Then preceeded to make what I admit are very cool monsters. But we're here to do mindflayers.)
Salient abilities bring back the mystery, keeping even lore-savvy players in the dark as to what can this individual monster do.

But.

1) What I don't like about salient abilities, is that a lot of times they go too far - either giving a monster abilities that have no thematic or scientific* connection to it and blurring the distinction between it and other monsters, or potentially removing any limitation the monster has on its standard abilities. I'm a great believer in Sanderson's Second Law: Limitations and costs are more interesting than abilities. A monster having limitations forces it work more cleverly around them.

2) While 'There's no such thing as a typical vampire', mindflayers are, by definition, pretty monolithical. They're a hive mind. An artificial one, yes, but still, a big part of their theme is that they aren't unique individuals with their own free will like 'normal' living creatures. That's part of what's terrifying about them: A ton of monsters can turn you into one of their own, but werewolves are still pretty much themselves outside of transformations, and even vampires retain something of their original personality and can sometimes fight over it. Having your brain eaten by a mindflayer tadpole is a complete, permanent loss of self (unless you're a gnome).
Them having unique powers feels antithematic.


So I suggest we think about several things:

1) How do we keep our Salient Abilities thematically cohesive?

2) What limitations are a hard line no option should let you break them?

3) Extrapolation. How do these powers fit into the hive mind society?


*'Science' being that of the magic system's inner logic, not necessarily of real world biology.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Here's an idea:

A hive mind is a society that acts as one body rather than a collection of individuals. But a body has different organs, doesn't it? I think the differences between a blood cell and a skin cell are a lot more essential than, let's say, the differences between a cook and a programmer: A cell's function in the body is its entire existence, while individuals have life outside of their professions.
The dead mindflayers added to the Elder Brain are clearly the brain cells.
What else?
Who are the bones, the blood, the liver, the lungs, the tendons, the tentacles?

What if every mindflayer salient ability is tied to one role in the colony, which is analogous to one organ?
For example, the 'teeth' harvest brains for the rest of the colony, so they have some sort of 'Improved Extract Brain'?
While the 'skin' generates psionic force fields to protect the colony from invaders?
The 'eyes' are obviously related to spying, but as observers only, not assassains. It's hard to directly spy when you're obviously, visibly alien to the people you're spying on, and shapeshifting is already taken by way to many monsters. It makes a lot more sense for mindflayers to use local humanoid agents. Maybe the 'eyes' can access the senses of people they've previously mind-blasted, seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears etc*?
The blood is responsible for disturbuting the body's resources. So maybe 'blood' mindflayers have teleportation, making it easier for them to act as messangers?
The nerves, on the other hand, deliver information between the brain and the body - so maybe 'nerve' mindflayers can maintain telepathic connection with multiple people at once and for extremely long ranges, maintaining the hive mind outside of the Elder Brain's normal range and passing commands and reports?
The tentacles grasp things, so maybe 'tentacle' mindflayers are the ones capturing and controlling thralls, and are able to maintain control on multiple ones for hours?**

Obviously we should double-check and adapt it to mindflayer anatomy where it's different from human one.



*It seems Dominate Monster only lets you command the creature, not read its mind or senses, and detect thoughts only works on creatures you can see withing 30 feet of you, so this is useful. (I'm using 5e stats)
*A cool limitation on that could be that as mindflayers don't have a sense of smell (I think the Illithiad said something like that?), they don't have the neural functions required to interpret it, meaning that a safe way to communicate with someone who had been marked this way is by a code based on perfumes.
**Abridging what seems to be a huge gap between what the lore says (mindflayers keep thralls mindlessly enslaved to them for long periods) and what 5e mechanics say (their power that comes closest to doing that is a psionic version of Dominate Monster, which is strong, but only works for one hour and they can cast it once per day.

[IanFordam]

1) How do we keep our Salient Abilities thematically cohesive?

As far as mind flayers go, I feel that any traditional psionic ability is fair game for a salient ability.

2) What limitations are a hard line no option should let you break them?

Given the breadth and scope of the Ravenloft setting, particularly as part of the larger D&D setting, I don't have any absolute limitations. However, I'm on board with the general idea that advantages are more interesting when paired with disadvantages.

That said, if I'm creating a more powerful mind flayer variant to pose a challenge for higher-level characters, I don't feel it's good design to disadvantage my new variant back down to the level of a standard mind flayer.

3) Extrapolation. How do these powers fit into the hive mind society?

They don't, except when they do. Just as the illithids have experimented with different ceremorphic hosts (e.g. lizard men to create tzakandi) to create new servitor species, perhaps the God-Brain has experimented with the generation of special-purpose illithids. (Much the way our own bodies generate many different kinds of cells.) Need a way to keep those unruly slaves in line? Breed a mind flayer whose mind blast is replaced with a mass suggestion.

Also, there is precedent within D&D as a whole for individual mind flayers to NOT be closely tied to a hive mind, for example, Estriss from the Cloakmaster novels. There's nothing saying that you can't declare your Bluetspurean mind flayers to all be part of a hive mind, but it's worth explicitly declaring such baseline assumptions just to reduce potential confusion for your readers.

Combining the idea of specializing mind flayers with the idea of non-hive mind flayers... perhaps the Elder Brain infrequently, intentionally causes the creation of an illithid with greater independence. (The limitation to this salient ability might well be a psionic kill switch just in case the independent illithid goes rogue.) Just as the Bluetspurean illithid's mind is meant to be unknowable to the human mind, the reverse is likely true. Perhaps a free-willed illithid is useful for infiltrating human society.

Just some thoughts. Take or leave as you like.

[IanFordam]

A hive mind is a society that acts as one body rather than a collection of individuals. But a body has different organs, doesn't it? I think the differences between a blood cell and a skin cell are a lot more essential than, let's say, the differences between a cook and a programmer: A cell's function in the body is its entire existence, while individuals have life outside of their professions.
The dead mindflayers added to the Elder Brain are clearly the brain cells.
What else?
Who are the bones, the blood, the liver, the lungs, the tendons, the tentacles?

Just for the record, I like your organ metaphor better than my cell metaphor.