Race Name: Mind Flayer/Illithid

Ability Scores: +2 Int, +2 Wis

Age: unknown
Alignment: lawful evil
Size: lithe humanoids

Traits:
 Your creature type is aberration rather than humanoid.
 Telepathy: you can communicate telepathically with any creature you can see within 120ft of you. It must be
able to speak a language to hear you. The creature does not necessarily understand you.
 Magic Resistance: you have advantage on saves against spells and other magical effects.
 Mind Blast: once per short or long rest, you can magically emit a 60ft psychic energy cone. Creatures in the cone
must succeed on a DC 15 Int save or take 1d8 psychic damage and be stunned for 1 minute. It can repeat the
save at the end of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. On a success, nothing happens. This damage
increases by 1d8 at 5th level, 10th level, 15th level and 20th level.
 Tentacles: your tentacles can be used to grapple a creature that’s medium or smaller when you make a grapple.
It follows the regular rules for a grapple but leaves your hands free.
 Extract Brain: can only be used on an incapacitated creature you are grappling. Make a melee attack. On a hit,
the target takes 5d10 piercing damage. If this reduces the target to 0HP, it kills it by extracting and devouring its
brain.

History:
Mind flayers, also known as illithids and sometimes referred to as ghaik by the githyanki, were evil and
sadistic aberrations, feared by sentient creatures on many worlds across the multiverse due to their powerful
innate psionic abilities. Dwellers of deep Underdark areas, these alien humanoid-looking beings sought to expand
their dominion over all other creatures, controlling their minds to use them as hopeless slaves and devouring their
brains for sustenance.

Their natural psionic abilities also made mind flayers respected in the eyes of the drow, beholders, duergar, and
other dominant races of the Underdark.

Mind flayers were humanoid in appearance but with an octopus-like, ridged head with four tentacles surrounding a
lamprey-like mouth. They were warm-blooded amphibians, whose blood had a silvery-white colour.

Their hands had long, reddish fingers and lacked the index finger, and their feet were two-toed and webbed. Mind
flayer eyes were extremely sensitive to bright light, and they considered it painful, a characteristic that
some githyanki scholars attributed to the fact that their alien anatomy focused light in a strange way. Their vision
was also more sensitive to the recognition of geometric patterns than that of other humanoids.

Mind flayers that were healthy from brain-rich diets excreted a kind of slimy mucous substance that coated their
mauve skins.

Mind flayers were tyrants, slavers, and planar voyagers. They viewed themselves as masterminds, controlling,
harvesting, and twisting the potential of other creatures to further their evil and far-reaching goals. Although they
cooperated to achieve a goal, they would back away at the first sign that something was not profitable to their self-
serving interests.

Mind flayers were aggressive and elitist and would attempt to mentally dominate any non-slave, non-illithid that
they met. However, despite their aggressiveness, illithids were ultimately a paranoid and fearful race. They were
relentlessly hunted by the gith, so any mind flayer colony's first priority was concealment and survival.
 Emotionally, a mind flayer appeared detached and calm, showing no signs of passion or loss of control. However,
sometimes they showed great bouts of anger, which were difficult to identify as true emotions or mere display. The
mind flayer mind knew only negative emotions, only finding fulfillment in the angry and sadistic act of consuming a
brain. The closest to happiness any mind flayer could know was in its pride and in satisfying its curiosity.

Illithids fed on the brains of sentient creatures (mainly humanoids). This was the only kind of nourishment that could
sustain the mind flayer physiology, which required hormones, enzymes, and psychic energy that only brain tissue
could provide. Feeding was a euphoric experience for a mind flayer, as it absorbed its victim's memories, personality,
and fears. It was also viewed by them as the ultimate form of dominance over another creature.

A mind flayer needed to consume at least one intelligent brain per month in order to remain healthy. Malnourished
mind flayers died after four months of brain deprivation. The psionic energy also left traces of the original prey's
individuality on a mind flayer's sense of culture and aesthetics.

Illithids were all sexless, without male or female biological sex, and once or twice in their life they would lay a clutch
of eggs from which tadpoles hatched. The tadpoles were kept in the elder brain tank, where they were fed brains by
caretakers and engaged in cannibalism for around ten years. The elder brain also fed exclusively on tadpoles.
Tadpoles that survived to maturity were put through the ceremony of ceremorphosis, where each was implanted
into a humanoid victim and devoured its brain, taking its place and merging with the body to transform it into a new
illithid. Only some humanoid species were suitable hosts for illithid tadpoles.

The multiplication of mind flayer colonies happened when a tadpole, quite rarely, through ceremorphosis, created a
more powerful form known as an ulitharid (meaning "noble devourer" in Undercommon), which was biologically
bigger, stronger, and more powerful and cunning than regular mind flayers. They possessed six face tentacles
instead of the regular four. Most notably, however, they were not controlled by the elder brain. The appearance of
an ulitharid caused a burst of growth in both the colony's size and capabilities. Elder brains grudgingly accepted the
appearance of a potential rival, because eventually the ulitharid broke off from the colony. When doing so, it took a
few mind flayers with it and sought to establish a new colony in a distant location from the original. Eventually, the
ulitharid transformed into a new elder brain.

If, for some reason, a mature tadpole did not undergo the process of ceremorphosis, it became a ravenous
predatory creature known as an illithocyte or, if allowed to grow out of control, a neothelid. These creatures were
considered abhorrent by the illithids and were mercilessly hunted.

Individual mind flayers were rarely found alone; rather, they were usually accompanied by two or more slaves
mentally bound to them. Typical enslaved races found among mind flayers included grimlocks, ogres, quaggoths,
and troglodytes. These enslaved species had in common the fact that they were not typically considered edible by
the illithids.

Mind flayers considered arcane magic an abomination. They viewed it as an inferior and corrupt form of psionic
power that should disappear from the universe once the illithids regained control of it. It was speculated that this
hatred was related to the role of magic in the gith rebellion.

Arcane magic was especially sought out by renegade illithids looking for ways to shield themselves from the elder
brain's influence. Although most mind flayer arcanists were wizards, a few were also born with the gift of sorcery.
Because a mind flayer sorcerer was naturally more intelligent than other mind flayers, it was better able to resist
psionics.