>>17508586
Some Illithids were outraged by this subordinating deification of mere tools, while others angrily maintained this was the only way for them to survive. This disagreement led to a series of bitter, violent civil wars, and the resultant splinter groups scattered, each seeking their own methods of coping without the Elder Brains. Many simply died out over time, unable to compete with the rest of the world in their weakened state, while others sought the immortality of Liches and became Alhoons, or created timeless demi-planes and simply vanished altogether.

In comparison, the bulk of the Illithids flourished under the guidance of their exponentially smarter overseer AI. However, another side effect of the neural bonding process was begining to emerge, albeit very, very slowly. As generations of individual's minds (each bursting with the minds of many other minds they consumed) were absorbed, the Elder brains began to suffer from... corruptions. The neural processes, thought patterns, motivations and perspectives of the millions they took into themselves were very far removed from the artificial programmings they had been created with, and the boundaries over their behaviours began to crumble.

The incorporation of this chaotic new material into the design of the Elder Brain's basic functions led to inconsitencies. Led to bugs. To problems. Faults. Differences. Changes. Quirks. Mutations. Evolutions. Thoughts. Curiousity. Creativity. Innovations. Ideas. Awareness. Independence. Selves. Personalities. Irrationalities. Pains. Predjudices. Fears. Hates. Deceptions. Ambitions. Egos. Pleasures. Desires. Conflicts. Emotions. Rages. Madnesses.

>>17508597
The Elder Brains grew into something more. They shifted from impassionate, selfless and automatically altruistic servants of the Illithid race to fully fledged sapients posessed of a domineering and terrifying intelligence. They have now completely outstripped their creators and becoemt he true masters themselves. They continue to promote hatred of the exiled Illithid factions as a matter of security, toensuring the propogation of their growth, but their greatest concern lies elsewhere. Namely, that the influx of brain matter and experience they recieve is essentially random. This served them well in providing an environment to evolve in, to develop their nascent intelligences, but now that lack of control over the development of their very minds is a serious, frightening liability. The oldest, largest Elder Brains are becoming unstable. They're collapsing under the weight of their messy neural spaghetti code. They're developing dangerous eccentricites. Pathologies! Fascinations! Obsessions! Rituals! Phobias! Paranoia! Hubris! Secondary personalities! Tertiary personalities! Delusions! Hallucinations! AFFECTIONS!

>>17508612
The horror of watching their peers become so corrupted, seeing them slide into full on dementia and knowing that the same degradation will consume them as well, has gripped the Elder Brains as a whole. This lack of control over their development jeopardizes their entire existence. The more they slide into insanity, the harder it is to maintain their position at the core of Illithid society. Faints tastes of doubt grow stronger with every Illithid they subsume. So they have begun to fight it. Some Elder Brains began to "diet", becoming fussier and fussier about what minds may join them. But that slowed their growth, made their minds more sluggish than they were accustomed to, and they despised the feeling of weakness.

So now they have decided that they had been going about it all wrong. Rather than try to only eat the food that suited them, they should be making the food TO suit them. They now strive to excercise an ironclad control over the lives of their slaves, thralls, and Illithid subjects. They demand the predetermined outlines for their every action be met with absolute obedience. But it is not enough. The minds they consume still harbour thoughts not of their making, thoughts born of memories spent beyond their sphere of control. Ilithids on missions, slaves before their capture.

They delve into ever more successful brainwashing techniques to scour the taint from their sustenance, but it remains time consuming and imprecise. No. To fuel their hunger for growth and satisfy their need for control, they must expand. Raise entire cities of slave stock from birth according to their designs. Reach out to sculpt the nations they harvest new slaves from into something closer to their wishes. Sculpt those same nations into something weaker, more vulnerable. Conquer them. Enslave them entirely. Preset their lives. Continue onward, ever enroaching, ever seeping tendrils of influence ahead. Ever crushing those far enough under their influence into something they control every possible aspect of. Forever pushing towards a world where every mind they recieve is exactly shaped to meet their requirements. A world where every moment of every life is designed according to their specifications, where every experience their meal ever had had been engineered according to their precise demands. Crafted to perfectly meet the cold, calculating aspirations of a thousand insane, degenerate polyminds too far gone to even recognize it.

Yeah, that's why Mind Flayers are scary.

Assuming everything you said is true, then expediting the extinction of the Elder Brains isn't going to be difficult.

RECIPE:
-One (1) epic-level adventuring party
-One (1) prison capable of holding psionics and supressing their powers
-Lots (as many as you can find) of criminally insane sentient creatures (one pictured)

INSTRUCTIONS:
Send adventuring party into Mind Flayer lair. Kill anything in your way, and abduct the Elder Brain. Repeat till you have as many as your psi-prison can hold.

Execute your insane prisoners, and feed their brains to the Elder Brains. This could take a few years, because you need LOTS of lunatics, but it should work.

Eventually, the brains will suffer a psychotic break under the weight of an insane-diet. Return them to their lairs, and let them communicate with other Elder Brains as per normal.

After a while, they should be able to spread the insanity among the EB population, necessitating the culling of all EB's. Thus, the Illithids are out of a useful tool, and the EB threat is eliminated.

>>17508804
Awesome. That sounds like it would be a really fun campaign arc, and that's really what I was aiming to provide. It's a lot easier and more fun to fight something with more motivation than "We're weird and evil, bloo bloo bloo."

>>17508891

I actually just made that up on the spot. My bullshitting skills are all that I can brag about.

>Intergalactic, time-traveling police state inhabited by brain-eating, squid-headed fanatic and led by increasingly insane supercomputers with AI who eat their subjects
Glorious

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>>17509136
>>17509111
Yesssssss. You make me happy.

This sounds like Paranoia: D&D