this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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theory: what if mind flayers are githyanki from the future (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by Darthjaffacake@lemmy.world to c/dnd@lemmy.world
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Been playing through baldurs gate 3 recently as I'm sure many of you have been and started to think that githyanki are really similar to the mind flayers. Both see themselves as somewhat independent but have a greater queen they serve, have a fairly utilitarian society to say the least, possess psionic abilities that are very similar to each other and long to make an inter planary empire. Now many of these similarities can be a poetic story of how they never grew or learnt from the oppression they faced, but I think that this theory adds something great to the story as they both have a mysterious origin that is somewhat explained by this, and adds a reason to why the aboleths who know all the past don't know anything about mind flayers.

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[–] Tarcion@sh.itjust.works 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think that's possible and can certainly be your head canon or what you run at your table.

That said, I believe the connections between the two are entirely due to the githyanki's enslavement by the illithids. Learning the wrong lessons from their oppressors is a sad, but not unbelievable, outcome. The note about aboleths is interesting but I'm not familiar enough with their lore to effectively speculate why they would not know about illithids - perhaps they just didn't come into contact with them until the height of the illithid empire.

This kind of lore stuff is why I stick to homebrew tbh

[–] Darthjaffacake@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I mean it's nice that it can just be whatever is run at a table. It doesn't have to be "official" to be fun.

[–] LopensLeftArm@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

I love this idea personally

[–] LopensLeftArm@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

[–] CounselingTechie@slrpnk.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It could make for an interesting theory. I will be honest, the thing that always stuck out to me about the Illithid is the fact that we have not seen what a natural born one looks like. The race as a whole are the creations from other races through a parasite, just like with the Xenomorph XX121. That makes a lot of question there for what they actually are.

Maybe in the future one of the two Gith races had developed a method to enrich the psionic potential of their race through an astral entity, or something of the far realm. That became the first Illithid.

[–] Darthjaffacake@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

That's an interesting take, I think they look pretty similar even when from different races but it's interesting that there's no default state of being born for them.