Mind Flayers

The Illithid are perhaps the most insidious and terrible of the servants of the Colossi. Terribly intelligent, gripped by a hunger to encompass and consume all other life, they serve the Colossi in exchange for passage through the Void in search of new worlds to bring into their hive minds. Their original forms were entirely alien to Aiaos, but they are stealers of shapes, taking the dominant form of a new world as their own through the process of ceremorphosis.
The tentacles of an illithid are only superficially like those of a cephalopod; they are extrusions of the inner, otherworldly nature of the mind flayer, and move in and out of material existence in a most unnerving way.

Ceremorphosis

Illithids reproduce by introducing other living beings to the brine pools of the Elder Brains, dimensionally distorted areas where the immaterial bodies of the immature illithids can survive. These ‘tadpoles’ enter the mind of an intelligent creature, which they transform into a vessel for their existence within a hostile cosmos.

The Seven

The Illithid servants of the Colossi were commanded by the Seven Irreplaceable Intellects, the greatest of the Elder Brains:

• Auruk-hlah; Strategist
• Aushu-xzun, Commander
• Aulai-tsoo, Admiral
• Auhla-olyh, Logistician
• Ausha-nyugh, Psychologist
• Auhru-iah, Infiltrator
• Ausha-shah, Diplomat

Five of the Seven were destroyed during the Colossus War. The remaining Mind Flayers are spawned by inferior descendents, or by the surviving Intellects, Commander and Logistician. Without the others, these two struggle to adequately manage the Great Purpose.