Illithid

Long ago, before the present generation of gods, before recorded history, the illithids ruled the multiverse.Well, not all of it. Not quite. It's said, however, that even the fiends paused in their eternal Blood War, so powerful and inexorable the illithid advance seemed.Long ago, before the present generation of gods, before recorded history, the illithids ruled the multiverse.

Well, not all of it. Not quite. It's said, however, that even the fiends paused in their eternal Blood War, so powerful and inexorable the illithid advance seemed.

Called mind flayers and worse things, these tentacled aberrations dominated the Astral Plane and the Prime. It's said they had arrived there from beyond Time itself. They captured a group of humanoids from a prime world (possibly called Oerth, Glyth, or Pharagos) and turned them into slaves, breeding them and performing hideous experiments on them until they believed they had a perfect race of servitors. It is one of the Multiverse's great ironies that their own slaves were their downfall.

Led by a woman called Gith, the slaves rose up and slew the illithids and their pulsing elder brains on every world, destroying the empire so utterly that even now, untold eons later, it has yet to regain its former heights. It's thought that Gith would have ended the illithid threat forever, but on the eve of her victory one of her greatest generals, Zerthimon, claimed she had become a tyrant and led his followers against her in a civil war that even now has yet to end.

So the illithids hid underground, and waited, and plotted. Creatures of genius intellect and matchless psionic powers, they have regrown and rebuilt much of what they have lost. Though they must hide from the Githyanki, they can travel through the planes almost at will. They gather slaves and informants on every plane. Although their enemies are many, including the drow, the duergar, the derro, the Githyanki, and the Githzerai, they know their empire will ultimately reborn. Or perhaps, given the strange timeless nature of the realm from which they came, born for the first time.

The god of the illithids is Ilsensine.