Distant Stars

Mind Flayers

The alien, tentacled mind flayers, or "Ilithid", have come to the fields of the known from no place sane - a Far Realm, where madness rules. None can name their final goals in our more sober lands, for the solitary, hostile creatures commune with those outside their coven almost only to capture their thralls; what little we know of them comes from those sneaky few who have entered their subterranean domains and returned to tell the tale. The mind flayers are powerful psychics, with the power to rip a man's mind asunder in pain or enslave him to their mad wills. This alone alone has been the salvation of many brave, but doomed, spies, for such thralldom invariably breaks a man's powers of perception an reasoning, and the mindless husk he becomes is unaware of its fate. Yet due to their scant numbers the ilithid must rely on their many slaves for much of their defense and all of their labor.

The Ilithid claim many cities, deep in Underdarks stretched across the planes, as their own. Their names are alien to our tongues; Ilsensine, Maanzecorian and R'yleh are only a few. Their buildings are cyclopean, monolith-crowned citadels, shaped in elliptic geometries of vast angles. Their every surface is covered over with the faded suggestion of bas-reliefs, fresh, yet only half-heartedly carved, depicting impious and horrible images. What light their is comes from fungi that grow in colors strange to our minds.

A character knows the following with a successful Dungeoneering check:

• DC 25 - One elven city deep in the Underdark, Anithor, is now almost taken by the mind flayers, who have warred for years to get this far. The Anithori fight back fiercely, and draw many forces to defend the place. A new surge from fresh fighting blood may be all that's needed to crush the alien invaders; alternately, a fierce strike to a different ilithid home may draw the invaders away altogether.
• DC 30 - An entire race of creatures - the sallow, skeletal gith - have fallen victim to the ilithids' will. Psychic in their own right, the gith are more independent and fiercer than other thralls and so see much service in war, but only when an ilithid is present to reinforce their slavery. None know for sure where the gith are from, for there was never a time we have seen them free, but their half-faces bear a semblance to the angels of the Astral Sea, which may be a clue.
• DC 35 - The names of the ilithid cities are no accident. Indeed, each is the name of that city's ruling intelligence, a vasty elder brain of far greater power than the mind flayers that serve it. It seems that ilithids spawn from the brains as tadpoles and have no greater goal in death than to have their own grey matter absorbed back into the brain's cephalic folds. As each brain seems psychically linked with its children, a brain's destruction might prove crippling to them.

Shadar-Kai

Though the masters of the Hell-Born Empire have risen above their kin by allying with devils, there are yet humans who fear damnation far more than death. These pale witches have turned away from the pacts of their brethren and abandoned mortal life in service to Wee Jas, the Raven Queen. Trusting their goddess to keep their souls safe long after they've passed on, they in turn cut away the lives of those who would defy death. As a consequence, however, the Shadar-kai have left the mortal world for the cold comfort of the Shadowfell; if they fall, at least they won't have far to go.

A character knows the following with a successful Arcana check:

• DC 20 - Gloomwrought is a city that borders the lands of the living and the dead alike. But it is a stranger place than even that brief description would make it seem, for it is a city without fixed location. Indeed, any who walk for nine days and nights, without rest or sleep and while keeping the city firmly in their minds, will stand before its gates. For all of this trouble, Gloomwrought is probably the safest crossing between the mortal world and the Shadowfell, for the graveyards and battlefields where one can slip through the quicker are typically peopled with the hungry dead.
• DC 25 - The most loyal of the Raven Queen's servants have joined together as a group called the Hands of the Shroud, and travel from the Shadowfell into the mortal world in an effort to enforce the laws of ending that she has dictated, slaying powerful liches or dark warlocks. On more than one occasion, they have joined with the Hounds of Fate, as those who seek to defy destiny and those who seek to cheat death are often one and the same. On the rare occasions that a cell of Hands and a pack of Hounds have similar targets but disimilar goals for them, the groups engage in a vigorous but cordial rivalry to carry out the wishes of their patrons. While these competitions are rarely deadly, injuries do occur, and the groups' honor and reputations are at stake. Lifelong enemies and, more rarely, lifelong friendships between the two sects sometimes result as a consequence.
• DC 30 -

Yuan-ti

Between the age of gods and the age of mortals, the ophidian Yuan-ti ruled. Kin to demons, these serpent-men presided over sun-baked kingdoms of decadence. Never inclined to labor themselves - indeed, the yuan-ti ruling class are said to be nothing more than giant serpents with human heads, or a legion of snakes coiled together and controlled by one mind - their fabled powers of mental domination are said to be a match for even the ilithid's. It is thus that they bound brutish apes and fallen men to service, forcing their slaves to suffer the heat and build coiled tributes to demonic glory.

When the Yuan-ti's kingdoms fell, it was not to the spells of a rival, nor the blades of a slave revolt. Indeed, they simply seemed to collapse in on themselves, their rulers gone, their slavemasters left the field. They retreated into their grand ziggurats, quickly swallowed by nature and time. All that remains of them today are fiercely-guarded pockets of sybaritic luxury, deep in the heart of fetid jungles or buried beneath deep desert sands. They are no threat to the nations of the worlds en masse, but the snakes breed quickly and are happy to cannibalize their own when other food runs scarce, so they can quickly overrun nearby settlements if not held in check.

A character knows the following with a successful Nature check:

• DC 25 -
• DC 30 -
• DC 35 -

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Crowns of the Dawn