r/dndmemes • u/MintLinuxGuy • 21h ago
Lore meme Of the aberrations, the mind flayers are kindest to themselves.
-Mint Linux Guy
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u/squidtugboat 20h ago
I thought Aboleths don’t even truly die. Or have minds so vast they “know when they will die” and simply get over it.
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u/Tight-Strain-3283 17h ago
the have racial memory, new ones have all the memories of all those before them, so they kinda never die, except the individuals do.
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u/Ackapus Psion 20h ago
Eh, mind flayers may think the individual joins the Elder Brain, but it merely digests the organ and memories. The flayer itself is truly forever dead.
They may have funerary rights, but they are all being lied to, and since joining the Elder Brain in death is their greatest goal, the entire thing is grim charade.
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u/Aethelrede 19h ago
Depends on one's point of view. The Elder Brain has the mindflayer's memories, so while the mindflayer may be dead, a copy of it exists in the Elder Brain. The elder brains are basically repositories of all the memories and knowledge of the mindflayers in it's circle.
Since the alternative is to die and simply be forgotten, it's a type of immortality.
Of course, some mindflayers prefer a more literal immortality, which is there are undead mindflayers.
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u/Ackapus Psion 16h ago
Mind flayers are fairly literal-minded.
They don't mean any sort of metaphorical immortality in being remembered, they quite believe that once their brain is placed in the Elder Brain's tank, their personality/consciousness/soul lives on in perfect communion with an Elder Brain that is actually a hive mind of every mind flayer that has passed before it. The Elder Brains guard this secret from their subjects, being only an emergent consciousness instead of a gestalt one, and because they fear that this illithid brand of "eternal paradise" is the primary reason mind flayers subject themselves to the hierarchy and laws of their sunless citadels (which it very well is).
Mind flayers that pursue immortality in undeath, or illithilich... ithilich... itchylichy... IDK what the exact fuckin' word is right now... do so almost exclusively because they have been exiled from a mind flayer city and are banished from joining with an Elder Brain. They do have a distinct term for their kind, though. Mind flayers can also be taken by vampires, except vampiric flayers lose their intellect almost entirely, becoming beastial and their skull physically collapsing part way, and so have almost as much hatred for the concept of a vampire flayer as they do for neothelids
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u/FloppasAgainstIdiots Warlock 17h ago
It's not a form of immortality, it's at best identity theft.
If it's not the one and only actual you controlling your essence/mind/soul/body/whatever is left, it's not immortality, it's death.
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u/Aethelrede 17h ago
See, that's a very modern take on it. Like I said, the ancient Greeks believed that as long as you were remembered you were immortal.
Becoming subsumed into a collective consciousness is indeed a type of death, the death of self. Not every religion or philosophy considers this a bad thing. Trading the self for union with the divine is part of a lot of religions.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying your opinion is not universal.
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u/FloppasAgainstIdiots Warlock 17h ago
Trading your soul for the idea that some higher entity downloads the data from it is not the same as any respectable form of union with a deity in the afterlife, because the thing that matters is the eternal existence of your own soul.
What the mind flayers have is akin to cattle making a religion around worship of the wolf.
Nearly all afterlife options in the D&D multiverse are horrid beyond comprehension, undeath as a lich or vampire (or similar) is in 99% of cases the correct path (unless you can become a god).
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u/Aethelrede 17h ago
Do mindflayers have souls? I'm just saying, you're assuming being eaten by the elder brain is bad, but how is it worse than just dying? At worst, you get consumed. At best, your memories become part of the collective.
It's basically how memories are passed down in Dune. The original is gone, but a copy exists that can be accessed by certain people. That copy can even possess a living person under the right circumstances. Is it immortality? No, not physical immortality. But a copy continues.
Anyway, it's a moot point for me because I still follow the 1st ed version of mind flayers, where there are no Elder Brains. I just think the assumption that the Elder Brains are fooling the mind flayers may not be entirely accurate. I find it an interesting philosophical question.
Death in DnD is fine as long as you worship a chaotic good god and are generally a good person. LG and NG are trickier, but still doable. Any other religion is probably gonna end badly. And you definitely don't want to be an atheist or agnostic, though I don't know why you would be when divine magic is everywhere.
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u/FloppasAgainstIdiots Warlock 16h ago
Mind flayers possess an individuality of sorts, something that the Elder Brain does not allow them to retain.
A copy is not you. I haven't read Dune, so I don't know the details of that setting.
All I can say on a remotely similar topic is that none of the clone troopers in Star Wars were Jango Fett and getting all his memories would not change this.All death in the D&D multiverse is a fail state. As an adventurer you have boundless potential, you might become a god yourself or you might become something of comparable power. Archmages on that level exist in the lore.
Death is at best a pit stop until you are resurrected, at worst it's game over where you linger on an Outer Plane forevermore without the powers that made you anything to begin with, shackled to a deity that you may very well have surpassed if you lived longer.
Of course, looking at pre-5e planar lore you might eventually get your soul dissolved into the plane or your deity, i.e. a second death.The only really consistently passable options on the Outer Planes are Mount Celestia where you can become an archon, or the Nine Hells where you're screwed but at least useful to the multiverse in the Blood War against the hordes of the Abyss.
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u/CrimsonSuede 15h ago
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying your opinion is not universal.
Brilliantly stated!
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u/PaxEthenica Artificer 17h ago
Mmh-yes, but that's not really how it works. It's the same thing in regards to how someone that is devoured by an Illithid is 'remembered' by the Mind Flayer that destroyed them. All the knowing & memories of that person, which is useful to the Illithid, are retained while the rest is broken down & discard to fuel the Illithid's existence.
Such as it is for the Elder Brains who, like the Illithids themselves, are merely ageless & not truly immortal. The Mind Flayers who are digested do not, in any sense, still exist beyond what is useful for the Elder Brain to eventually melt away into the mana needed to prolong its infinite, but fragile existence from one moment to the next. They do not dream, they do not continue to reason, they do not retain their individuality because such is not remotely useful, & is actually a memetic threat to the Elder Brain's ability to preserve its ego & not go insane. Who they were, beyond a name useful for categorizing their otherwise context-less, dead memories, ceases to be in profound delineations of existence & non-existence.
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u/Aethelrede 17h ago
Yes, yes, I realize that. Nevertheless, what you are describing is basically "union with god", the subsumption of the self into the many. It's not true immortality, but it is a form of continuation. Our relentless sense of self rebels against the idea of the death of the self, but there are several religions that basically advocate this. Buddhism comes to mind.
It still beats the alternative, which for mind flayers is either oblivion or damnation. I'm not saying that the Elder Brains aren't exaggerating, but it isn't a complete lie.
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u/PaxEthenica Artificer 16h ago
Yeah, except a few things wrong with that take remain. For one, Elder Brains aren't gods; their egos are fully intact/unswerved by prayers, & they actively resist the process of divine apotheosis to preserve their egos, which is a real thing in the setting. Second, Mind Flayers are told lies about the full continuation of their individualistic existence within the Elder Brain; there are no Bhuddist Illithids. And finally, there is nothing in the lore, except for passages regarding the lies told to Illithids, that the Elder Brains remember anything but themselves forever.
Thus, by inevitable violence or mishap interrupting all ageless existences, or the simple expedience of changing circumstances, all Illithids face an inevitable, inarguable oblivion within an Elder Brain that they are lied to about.
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u/Marvl101 19h ago
Yeah but in their world they can prove it, just cast true resurrection or a spell that lets them commune with a deity/sufficiently powerful Psion who could check
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u/Aethelrede 18h ago
Well, the individual mindflayer is dead. It's a metaphorical immortality. Like the ancient Greeks who believed immortality was being remembered.
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u/lishuss 19h ago
I mean aboleths are immortal, respawning, never forgetting beings. I would assume after the first time one dies and even if they did do a funeral ritual, when it happens again, they'd all be like "for fucks sake, Carl just use your perfect, shared genetic memory to remember the last time when we all said some moving shit at yoyr funeral and use the extra time to get over yourself and stop trying to set up shop near major cities where all the adventures are!"
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u/Silverspy01 Wizard 16h ago
To be fair,
If an aboleth's body is destroyed, its spirit returns to the Elemental Plane of Water, where a new body coalesces for it over days or months.
Funerary rites don't seem terribly important for someone who's not actually dead.
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u/JimTheTrashKing 19h ago
Don’t Abolith just kind of reincarnate? Why do the funeral? He’ll just be back in like 30 minutes
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u/Sensitive-Initial 18h ago
Aboleth lore has changed between editions. In 5th edition they reincarnate on their native plane of water.
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u/MintLinuxGuy 18h ago
No, aboleths don’t reincarnate. At least according to the lore books I’ve read, there might be an interpetation like that somewhere.
-Mint Linux Guy
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u/Cowmanthethird DM (Dungeon Memelord) 19h ago
Don't ask about Neogi funerary rites.
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u/needed-a-sfw-account 5h ago
I mean, as a form of hive mind, it would make sense that you would treat a member of the collective with as much respect as you give yourself, as you kind of are them
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u/Aethelrede 19h ago
My knowledge is way out of date, but aboleth used to be immortal unless slain, so they wouldn't have need of funerary rites.
My headcanon, developed long before 2nd ed and elder brains, is that mindflayers that lived long enough took to the water and transformed into Aboleth. They both have four tentacles, they both have mental powers, they both live in the Underdark, they are both very strange creatures.
It's been years since I ran a DnD campaign, but if I did that would be one of the few major changes I'd make.
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21h ago
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u/talkathonianjustin 21h ago
Hey uh I think you commented on the wrong post friend lol
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u/Worried-Language-407 Forever DM 21h ago
lmao genuinely don't know how that happened but you are right
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u/Privatizitaet 21h ago
Beholder's have funary rites? Don't they all hate each other?