[Nerfnow!!] Classic Fantasy vs Modern Fantasy
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They added a good Illithid that only eats the brain of bad guys. They also brought the idea that the Illithid are slaves to the elder brain and ceremorphosis is more like a mutation of the host rather then an entire new being.
By giving any kind of explanation to the Illithid does them a disservice. They should be a question and horrifying to comprehend. What they did was made them no different mentally than sentient bees or ants.
Yeah, there's a reason why Illithids were classified as Aberration. They, there homeworld and their thinking is completely different to humanoid races.
Did they?
The subtext of Emperor's story is that he's full of shit. He was mind controlling people like crazy including his 'partner', and there's no reason to think he was only eating badguy brains aside from his word.
He starts his interactions with you by lying to you, then lies more to you, then during his reveal he says a bunch of lies (eg, Orpheus will definitely kill you), then refuses to work with Orpheus even though Orpheus will work with you as a mindflayer, etc.. At the end of the story if you trust him and hive him take over the brain it turns out he lied and he enslaves you. And if you don't trust him and ask him to take any personal risk of sacrifice, he immediately leaves and joins up with the hivemind.
The only thing we really know for sure about him is that he was an illithid who got separated from the hive mind in a fluke and then immediately started plotting to get as much power as possible. That's in line with aberrations.
It's open for interpretation how full of shit he was. He is evil human rather then an alien being.
As for the eating bad guy brains, I was talking about the other Illithid. I freaking hate that one. They just had to humanize the Illithid. They are now just poor victims of the elder brains rather then an evil alien race for whom we are food and less then bugs.