Illithid

The Illithid, or Mind Flayer, is a humanoid creature with a bulbous head.  It has no nose and the mouth is surrounded by four tentacles that it uses to grasp food and guide it into it's mouth.

The Illithid, as a species, are masters of Psionic Talent with specializations in Telepathy Discipline .  They mentally dominate their victims and feast upon their minds.

Basic Information

Anatomy

In terms of height, weight, and build, mind flayers were roughly comparable to thin humans, but it was at this point that any external comparison to humanoids ended. An illithid's flesh, is soft, supple, moist, and rubbery, resulting in an unmistakable texture easily distinguishable from any other creature by anyone familiar with it. Their skin ranges from mauve to greenish-violet in color. Illithids that are healthy from brain-rich diets excrete a thin film of slimy, glistening mucus that kept in moisture and gave off a faint odor similar to onions, garlic, or even vanilla, although the smell is imperceptible from afar. Their blood has a silvery-white color.

An illithid's bulging, ridged, elongated head is reminiscent of an octopus, with a cluster of four flexible, unsegmented, extendable, purplish-black tentacles surrounding their mouths. The tentacles can range in length from 1 to 2 feet , appearing shorter when an illithid is at rest. They writhe and undulate almost constantly and absent-mindedly while the illithid ponders or is otherwise was not using them, and flexed in anticipation when sentient beings drew close.

Dietary Needs and Habits

The sustenance of mind flayers are the brains of other creatures, mainly those of humanoids. Only brain tissue provides the required combination of the three essential components needed to sustain the mind flayer physiology: hormones, enzymes, and psychic energy. Mind flayers also ate other foods (in addition to requiring water), most of which contained the critical enzymes and hormones they needed, with internal organs being good sources and high on the illithid menu.

While certain essential biochemicals and hormones can only be found in brain matter, illithids ate brains more so for the psychic quotient of sentient gray matter than the physical nutrients.

Additional Information

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

The mind flayer nervous system is unique in that every nerve had a direct connection to the brain, meaning that a mind flayer's entire body was an extension of its brain, granting mind flayers an incredible awareness of their physical condition.

Mind flayer eyes are extremely sensitive to bright light, and they considered it painful, a characteristic that some githyanki scholars attributed to the fact that their alien anatomy focused light in a strange way. In fact, their eyes are more sensitive to infrared heat than to visible light. However, their visual acuity decreased as ambient light increased, as their white sclera became increasingly opaque. In total darkness or under starlight, a mind flayer can see clearly as far out as 480 feet , but under direct sunlight that infravisual range decreased to just 15 feet (4.6 meters).

While it does not actually harm them, illithids absolutely despise sunlight, avoiding it at all costs. They require only the heat created by the geothermic processes of planets to survive. Most mind flayers could not imagine living in the sun without some form of protection. from the desiccating effect it had on their skins to the clouding of their vision, and the mere thought of being immersed in sunlight was as horrifying to them as drowning in blood would be to a human.

Illithid hearing is a little less acute than that of humans due to their lack of exterior ears. Their rigid auditory canals collected sound over a wide surface area, and they were relatively good at discerning the direction of sounds, but they were lacking in overall hearing and the ability to separate and recognize individual components of given sounds. Illithids also lack noses, and in fact had no olfactory capacity whatsoever.