The malefic Outsiders of the astral void beyond the Earth are myriad in the Latter Age, but few are as distinct from the hosts of horrors as the beings known popularly as Mind Flayers. Though they are believed to be long extinct, they still feature promptly in folklore and popular entertainments, attesting to their hold over humankind's collective imagination.
Little is known for certain about these beings. In Denizens of the Beyond by Pseudo-Vespydron, the most widely known work to examine them in detail, Mind Flayers are said to have come from the sphere of Mars, but whether they are natives to that world or from some even more distant home, even Denizens rather credulous author does not say.
Pseudo-Vespydron uncritically accepts the cephalopod-headed humanoid appearance of popular portrayals and the idea that they were obligate consumers of human brains. The later (and comparatively more sober) histories of Malgrunda note no reliable descriptions of their physical form exist and put forward the theory that their purpose in preying upon the Earth was to acquire not foodstuffs but slave minds, derived from the destructive mapping of the brains of still-living captives. Perhaps the only place where she might be criticized in straying from established fact is in the time she devotes to Hseng's baseless assertion that the cephalopod skull is actually the memory of an environmental helmet with attached manipulators.
3 comments:
Sweet Jeff Dee pic! Where’s it from?
It's actually Willingham. From the back cover of the module Descent into the Depths of the Earth.
I always loved the gruesome futility of the lady leaping out with color spray ready to go. What's that going to do to it? Communicate with it? It's not like they use those eyes to see.
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