What Are The Mind Flayers? | Dungeons & Dragons

so let's start off by talking about the mind flares this has been a d d staple for a long time we've seen them references to them in stranger things as well but the mind flares are like what most insidious enemies in all of d d is that correct they are pretty insidious they are sort of from beyond they don't kind of live in the worlds of d d they are invaders of the worlds of d and they settle into dark places like the under dark and subterranean realms and things like that because they don't really like the sun in fact they're kind of anti-sun they they go out of their way on some worlds to try to put out the sun if they can get away with it and their method of propagation is somewhat off-putting to most other societies because they don't breed in a typical way right they uh there are the tadpoles yes they implant tadpoles in humanoid hosts and those tadpoles over a short period of time transform the humanoids into new mind flares that process is deliciously called ceremorphysis which is a wonderful word yes and when mind flares are not sticking tadpoles in your brain they are sucking your brain out through your skull uh as nourishment and they even have like jars of brains they it's always good to have a stocked pantry it's good advice it's good advice uh and on top of all this they had a very far-reaching empire at one point yes in all of the multiverse yes uh an empire that stretched across the stars and they would you know subjugate other creatures and keep them as thralls and even performed experiments on them in some cases transforming entire societies durgar have suffered under mine flares kuatowa have suffered under mind flares and of course most notoriously the gith races the githyanki and the gitzerai who eventually rose up and revolt and shattered that empire they're all a collective they are genius they they are run by an elder brain on top of everything else multiple elder brains right um every every colony of mind flayers basically centers itself around an elder brain and has sort of a telepathic link to all of the mind flares in that colony and so their individual intelligences are sort of combined and centralized through a hub and that's of course very dangerous when you have so many geniuses conspiring toward one common goal without that elder brain um mind flayers tend to rely on their own genius and that can lead to conflict why did they get wiped out like why did the empire fall hubris [Laughter] i mean they they eventually just um you know got to the point where they picked the wrong fight um you know their their thralls rose up against them and they kind of panicked and didn't know what to do when githyanki are running around with silver swords chopping off your friends heads you just run away generally speaking yeah that's that's a good way to be yeah the githyanki forum and gitzerai together when they were still kind of one people had champions leading the way uh it was a full-scale sort of galactic revolt and the mind players were not accustomed to this kind of reaction they had gotten away with so many bad things over the years they just thought we'll keep we'll we'll keep this under control too and it didn't work out that way what i've always deliciously loved about the mind flares is the cannon kept on growing and growing from the very beginning like yeah first you had this very uh octopoid looking you know uh creature but then like we have some really amazing monsters that come along with them like the intellect devourer is so weird and evocative yeah it's another intellect of ours another kind of aberration it wasn't originally linked to the mind flares as you say it sort of organically grew over time that the mind flayers actually create intellect of hours and use them as pets and spies because the delicious thing about an intellective hour is when it finds a humanoid that it likes it telepathically bombards or psychically bombards that humanoid so that their brain basically turns to mush and then the intellect of our teleports itself into the brain cavity of the humanoid and basically turns it into a walking puppet so you might be an intellect devourer i would never know uh because you're hiding out in todd's skull yeah and basically seeing through todd's eyes and talking through todd's mouth it's all accurate no yeah it's been a seven year con the only way i'd know is if i killed you and then the intellect of hour would then sort of teleport out of your head and be like ah there you go i was right there you are real todd it's kind of another ahead of becna dilemma right like like was i right was i wrong yes i just in in my home game i just had an encounter recently where the characters discovered that their guide was an intellective hour with a meat puppet i love intellective hours i hate encountering them because it is a kind of save or die situation for a relatively low cr creature yes they're very dangerous yet small yeah which makes you happy i know i can relate why why do you think people are so uh obsessed with mind flayers it was kind of one of the goofiest monsters originally and it just kind of spread and spread and spread maybe it was kind of goofy because maybe it looked a little derpy in the art or something yeah yeah in the area i mean they always freaked me out you've got this sort of slimy mucousy tentacle-faced creature who feeds peas feasts on brains they're i've always thought they're kind of scary but i think that they they sort of have a primal quality to them uh and the fact that they're so intelligent and yet so inscrutable you know there's no facial expression with a mind flayer you can't really read what's going on there they're completely alien they're immoral they have no compunctions about feeding on other sentient beings in fact they thrive on it sometimes they hold like dinner parties where they savor you know different flavors of brains it's just they're so antithetical to normal existence and they surround themselves with creepy friends uh elder brains and intellective hours and more they also deprive you of um agency and control you know right yeah there's the loss of agency the law the body horror of all of it and then yeah something that you cannot possibly understand yes yes it's deeply alienating yeah there's that there's that moment where not only first they mind blast you so you're basically stunned and helpless and then there's that creepy moment where they slink up behind you and slap their tentacles on your head so that they can basically suck your brain out that's that that's the true horror because in d d like okay i got hit by a fireball or you know like a dragon breathes a cone of cold on me and i die i get that but like no you're paralyzed for a round you're you're watching your own death yeah and sort of unfold over a period of several seconds there's a lot of the last thing you hear is that horrible slurping noise [Laughter] uh yeah they're they're one of my favorite villains and one of those terrifying and like what's the best way to run them because like uh this is this comes up a lot you know i've talked about this a lot how do you run like villains who are supposed to be arch geniuses well i mean despite their brilliance mind players are actually kind of frail individually so they're not going to be at the front of a fighting force they're going to be lurking in the back or they're going to try to ambush you um when i've used them in the past in in my campaign they've sort of been infiltrating cities and things like that and feeding on you know the kind of dregs that nobody would mind you know disappearing but then they might just come floating out of an alley basically mind blast you and drag you into the alley to suck your brain out um they're secretive and and very sly that way or they operate they try to lure creatures to them using say intellective hours in the bodies of innocence uh so you just sort of follow somebody you don't know their intellectual power but they're basically leading you into the mind flares clutches the uh the nadaloids also also are are very evocative yeah if you want to go more sort of high fantasy with the mind flayers you can basically put them aboard their ships uh the way mine flares travel through wild space and the astral sea is on these ships called nautiloids which kind of they're tentacled and very scary looking vessels but you can basically have a run-in with one of those if you're running a spell jammer campaign and you see a nautiloid that's usually a sign that you want to get out of there as quickly as possible yeah because they also have the times they teleport through space yes so yes if you've seen the balder's gate 3 trailer you've seen what a nautiloid can do and what it looks like and i mean you don't know how many mind flares are aboard that thing for one thing the only thing worse than one mind flayer is ten mind flares yeah it's true and the elder brain itself is uh i mean it sits there amongst a bryan pool and there's tadpoles and but it is if you thought the mind flare was dangerous the elder brain is a complete nightmare it is yes absolutely it's it's big and scary uh what and then and then we have another creature which i love that became associated with mayan flares is the cranium rats oh yeah yeah there they sort of um became very popular in the planescape setting and so cranium rats are basically rats with kind of protruding visible brains and they can in swarms they become more intelligent they basically augment one another's intelligence so one cranium rat is not overly bright but 10 cranium rats can probably beat you at chess pretty easily which i uh it's got like a rats of nim vibe to it and yeah it does yes one day i really want to have like the arch villain be a swarm of cranium rats i have i have done things like that before um it's very sort of guillermo del toro-esque but having a swarm of cranium rats basically pretending to be a humanoid yes walking through alleys with like the the coat over them uh so just sort of shambling around i appreciate a good mimic reference yes yeah yeah that sense of not knowing what you're facing and there's there's quite a bit like that's what all the mindfire horror uh has always been like really exciting to me and if you're playing spell jammer they're a terrifying thing but you know there's dark city can be very close to also like kind of tapping into that mind flayer vibe i felt like yes um and then stranger things kind of like tapped into it because of like the incredible intelligence and the the psychic connection to one of the kids and that stuff uh and the tadpoles of course were very yes they're nasty one thing about the other thing i would be remiss if i didn't mention this gnome squidlings so typically i'm bringing it up again okay yes my flares almost always look like mine flares when they transfer something you know transform something but there is one goofy and everything goes wrong with gnomes uh right if if they turn a gnome there's a chance that gnome will become unknown squidling or a gnome sarah morph yep and then you've got these two very goofy threats yeah so with with the adventure rhyme of the frost maiden we introduced that concept of sometimes ceremorphysis the process that transforms a humanoid into a mind flare does go wrong and it often goes wrong with gnomes for the reason that you've described that there's just something quirky about gnomes they've got some sort of perhaps innate magical misfitism that uh causes the process to go wrong and what happens is you end up with a very short gnome-like mind flayer creature or an almost sort of degenerate kind of mind flayer shriveled small and emaciated and you know they can be just as nasty as regular mind flares but more often than not they retain a large chunk of their gnomish personality which is not common usually once you transform into a mind flare whatever you were there might be like a hint or a vestige of what you were still kind of lodged in that mindflare's psyche but usually it's washed away by the process gnomes however can retain their gnomishness and their their sort of personality quirks after undergoing ceremorphysis and fermented players when they eat brains do they they retain some of that memory so yeah when if they it it is known it was sort of established in a second edition product called the illithiad that mind flares when they consume humanoid brains they get sensations from that it's part of the joy of eating the brain for them is they experience fragmentary memories of the creature that they're eating and in some cases those memories can stick with the mind flare for a long time and it's a it's an interesting form it's not a reliable form of getting information that's why mind flares can also read minds but yeah sometimes they can they can get impressions or knowledge from the creature that they basically feed on and terrified brains are tastier than placid cow brains they taste weird people taste better when they're scared yes that's a good takeaway from this video play d d kids it's good for the soul [Laughter] if you liked this interview and you'd like to see more go ahead and like the video subscribe to the channel and hit that little bell symbol so you're notified anytime a video like this comes out thank you so much for watching

Channel: Dungeons & Dragons

Views: 112,433

Keywords: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, gaming, roleplaying game, ttrpg, forgotten realms, eberron, Wizards of the Coast, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, tabletop, RPG, Todd Kenreck, dnd, Wildemount, Critical Role

Id: v-8Jc58UL-I

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022