In the new book, Lords of Madness, the Illithid are from the impossibly far future, and have been written so that the downfall of their empire was remembered from before the timeshift, and they are working to ensure that the timeline in which they hold supremacy will come about without all the problems that they had the first time around. They go on to insinuate that they enslaved the gith very shortly after they arrived in this time, and that their hold on those races was lost approximately 3000 years ago.
I am aware that they used this as a suggestion of sorts, but it simply doesn't sit well with me. The Illithid and their origins play a huge part in the history of the githyanki, and especially with all the current examination of the timeline of the Lich-Queens, none of this seems to mesh well. 3000 years would mean that the githyanki and the githzerai are young races, and that they are not really different in any manner but their upbringing and planes of origin...all of which seems (to me, at the least) to really go against the idea of an ancient, far-reaching, struggle. Nevermind the illithids' origins, they may well have arrived from an alternate future through the far realm, but this would be epochs ago, and...
well, I'm ranting, as I'm wont to do, but the point remains...does this revision of the history of the illithid change the gith history as it seems to? This is also unfortunate because it takes the mystery out of the illithid race, and gives them a far-fetched 'history.' I certainly hope WotC never does something like this and gives The Lady an equally impossible explanation...
well, anyway....yeah. that's all for now.
Githyanki/Githzerai history rewritten?
I think the Illithids coming from the future is a really stupid idea, and nearly gagged myself with a brain-eating spoon when I read Lords of Madness. Ignore the ridiculous third edition, "got to come up with a new and sexy idea every ten minutes" crap, and get on with playing D&D. Unveiled Masters by Paradigm Concepts has a MUCH better take on the Illithid (though they have to call it "Illeth") Empire's history than WotC, one which is much closer to the spirit of the original mind flayer concept. The Empire is AAAAAAANCIENT, the Gith are nearly as old, and there's a whole lot o' brain twisting, gene-splicing history in between then and now. On the other hand, take what you can from the current "administration"... an origin for the illithids in the Far Realms (loooong ago) has some possibilities. Think tens if not hundreds of thousands of years ago (or millions if you're a Lovecraftian). Time travel (at least backwards, a Great Race of Yith-type angle might work) is just goofy, in my opinion.
I kinda liked lords of madness. well other than their time scales being a little short sighted. Perhaps there word processor just deletes 2 zeros from every number and they didn't realise it.
An easy fix to this problem would be to make the "unknown enemies" that destroyed the illithid empire the giths' uprising. Then the giths could have been a slave race for untold millennia in the far future and the cataclysm that hurled the illithids back in time could have hurled the giths back too.
This would allow for a much longer rebellion and richer history for the Gith races and their relation to the illithids.
-420
unlike ohers, I liked Lords of Madness' take on the illithid, though i do agree that the scales of time are bogus. I think the Illithid being from the far future just makes them creepyer. The empire of the future will be threatened by the cessation of the entire multiverse (likely at the hands...er tenticles? of the great elder evils, beings from the far realm who could eat the powers for lunch). This means that, if the illithid get their way, the ultimate fate of the multivese is to die while under the domination of the Illithid (scarry thought). Of course, went they went back in time, they set up a new plane-spanning empire for a time (perhaps a LONG time) before Gith's rebellion, and in attempting to dominate the past, started messing with the time stream. This also makes them creepyer by making them a sort of paradox. Might it be possible for the Gith races to wipe out every last mind flayer? If so, can they prevent the future rise of the Illithid? If the Illithid Empire was prevented, the mind flayers would never have bred the Gith races in the first place ... (incidently, the Illithid being from the future can explain how the Gith are said by some to be bred from Human stock)
This would allow for a much longer rebellion and richer history for the Gith races and their relation to the illithids.
The problem with that is it still means the line of githyanki queens still only dates 2000 years in the past, which, remembering that the Lich-Queen has ruled for 1000 years herself, means the others would only ruled seven years each.
We know this about githyanki: a warrior called Gith rebelled against the illithids. Her servant, Vlaakith, became their first queen after Gith left to make a pact with Tiamat's consort Ephelemon. There existed a long and very stable line of monarchs after Vlaakith I, each taking their predecessor's name. The Lich-Queen is Vlaakith CLVII, and she has ruled for a thousand years.
It doesn't work to say only that there was a long history of the gith before Gith's rebellion - there needs to be a long history after the rebellion, too, to account for 157 long-lived queens reigning on a plane where time doesn't pass.
Of course, if they traveled through the timegate seperately, that could explain it - maybe the illithids appeared 2000 years before the present, while the rebellious children of Gith appeared 20,000 years before the present or more...
Of course, if they traveled through the timegate seperately, that could explain it - maybe the illithids appeared 2000 years before the present, while the rebellious children of Gith appeared 20,000 years before the present or more...
Ah but what about a long history during the rebellion. There would certainly be enough time between when the gith's first rebelled for them to split into separate races and establish a long line of monarchies before they ever got even close to taking down the Universe (Multiverse?) spanning empire of the illithids. Many millennia could have past before the illithids finally became desperate enough to scrifice all their Elder Brains.
I also like the idea of hurling the giths back tens of thousands of years before the illithids arrived. That would make a very interesting story.
-420
I'd just ignore it, personally, or change it slightly so that the illithids appear much further in the past than Lords of Madness claims (like, tens of thousands of years further).
It's a cool idea, but it does kind of hose the gith.