Gith’ilid

You see a thin humanoid creature standing with graceful confidence. It looks like a githzerai, or maybe a githyanki, except for its milky white eyes and six braided strands on its chin.

An excerpt from The Illithiad, also known as The Journals of S. Wakeman...

"Rogues exist within every culture, and mind flayer society is not immune from individuals that fly in the face of convention and act in ways that flout illithid sense and sensibility...Spurned by orthodox illithids, alhoons live singly, although the rumor of an alhoon conclave does exist. Alhoons owe allegiance to no one, and they would not hesitate to use living mind flayers as thought- or spell-controlled slaves if the opportunity presented itself."

The alhoons, mind flayer liches as insidious as their living brethren, are a small group with large aspirations and often go to desperate lengths to gather more power. One of their most effective creations are the gith’ilids, creatures originally created from githyanki and githzerai captives twisted by dark energies and darker intellects. These creatures were created to defend the alhoon conclaves that created them by striking out at living mind flayers and decimating their ranks. The gith’ilid is also sometimes used to infiltrate the societies of githyanki and githzerai to kill in secret, for the hatred borne by illithids for those races carries on into undeath.

Gith’ilids are usually dressed in chainmail armor and carry equipment appropriate to their disguise as either githyanki or githzerai. They speak Common, Undercommon, and Gith.

Combat

Though they often carry weapons to help with their gith disguise, gith’ilids usually use their claws when they can, relishing in their abilities. They sometimes scout out opponents before engaging them, but when confronted with a violent encounter they will attack quickly and try to get the upper hand. If seriously threatened, they are never hesitant to leave and fight another day.

Constrict (Ex): A gith’ilid who is grappling with an opponent can wrap its chin tentacles around the creature and squeeze it. With a successful grapple check, the gith’ilid deals 1d6+4 points of bludgeoning damage.

Extraction Immunity (Ex): The hard brain case and caustic enzymes of the gith’ilid render it immune to the extract ability of mind flayers. Any grapple checks made by an illithid to extract the gith’ilid’s brain automatically fail.

Extract (Ex): When grappling an illithid, if the gith’ilid begins its turn with all six tentacles attached and it makes a successful grapple check it simultaneously removes the illithid’s brain and injects its transformative enzyme (see Necroceremorposis below) into the mind flayer. The illithid will die instantly, and the gith’ilid will then attempt to retrieve the metamorphosed larvae from the illithid corpse.

Improved Damage (Ex): Extensive knowledge impressed into a gith’ilid’s mind by its alhoon creators about the vulnerabilities and physiology of githyanki, githzerai, and illithids. Against these creatures, the gith’ilid’s claw attack damage increases to 1d8+4 and its claw attack critical range increases to 19-20.

Improved Grab (Ex): When a gith’ilid hits with a claw attack, it can start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity; no touch attack is required. It may use this ability on medium or smaller creatures. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and can use its constrict or implant ability.

The gith’ilid can attach one of its tentacles to a target, though usually only a mind flayer target, with a successful grapple check. If it has at least one tentacle attached it can attach all the others with a single grapple check. The opponent can escape with a successful grapple check or an Escape Artist check, but the gith’ilid gets a +2 circumstance bonus for every tentacle attached at the beginning of the opponent’s turn.

Psi-Like Abilities (Sp): At will- detect psionics; 3/day- energy push (3d6*; DC 22*), mental disruption (10ft* radius; DC 22*), mind thrust (6d10*; DC 21*), thought shield (6 rounds*, PR 18*). Manifester level 5th. DCs are Charisma-based.

*Includes augmentation for the gith’ilid’s manifester level.

Psionic Block (Su): For every tentacle that a gith’ilid has attached to an opponent at the beginning of their turn, every psionic power that opponent manifests costs 1 power point more. This power point is not used to augment the power, it is effectively wasted trying to push past the mental influence of the gith’ilid, though it counts against the manifester’s power point limit for that power. A victim attempting to use a psi-like ability must make a manifester level check against DC 10 +2 for each tentacle attached.

Skills (Ex): A gith’ilid receive a +6 racial bonus to Disguise when attempting to look like a githyanki or a githzerai. This bonus is not reflected in the skill bonuses above, but they do include the -5 penalty from chainmail armor.

Habitat/SocietyEcology

The alhoons who created the first gith’ilids sought a way to ensure that their creations would continue to hunt illithids with minimal prompting. To this end they designed the creatures to use the tadpole larvae of living mind flayers as their means of reproduction. When the gith’ilid uses its extract ability on an illithid, the larvae in the victim’s body are exposed to enzymes which preserve them somewhat as the gith’ilid then removes the larvae from the corpse. The larvae are then swallowed to be held in a pouch next to the gith’ilid’s stomach while it brings them back to its alhoon master.

Using necromantic rituals, the alhoon will transform the tadpoles so that they can survive without a host brain. The larvae are also altered so that will produce gith’ilids instead of illithids when inserted into a victim, through a twisted version of the illithid process ceremorphosis. The transformation of the victim into a gith’ilid is called necroceremorphosis by the alhoons. By this process the gith’ilid’s strong reproductive drive makes it dependent on both its alhoon master and the slaying of illithids.