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As a GM I often find the need to put in a new angle on various monsters that have been otherwise worn out through overuse. Here's one I thought of this morning (I don't plan to use it since I'm not going to be running D&D for a while). Mind Flayers are usually depicted as running a society based on enthralling other creatures through mind control and using them as a combination of labor force, food source, and breeding bodies. The life of the thralls is dull and horrible. But suppose that the touch of an Illithid tentacle to a brain stimulated vast ecstatic pleasure better than any sensation in life. Instead of mind controlled slaves, the thralls would be tentacle-touch addicts, eager to work for and please their Illithid masters. Illithid infiltration of cities would be like the wokrings of a drug cartel. The Mind Flayers would have armies of eager servants, begging to be recognized and given more contact. As for brain eating, with such a large population serving them, the Illithids can give the dying a day or so of pleasure then consume their brains. As for Cerebromorphosis. the Illithid breeding cycle wherein a larval flayer consumes a brain over the course of a week and takes over their body, that would be the greatest experience of all, one solid week of pure, unending bliss followed by death. The thralls would be vying for the honor and experience of it. This makes the job of adventurers trying to overthrow mind flayers even harder, because they have to contend with willing servants and secret addicts. For added measure one can make the Githyanki and the Githzerai immune to this effect provided they live lives of grim unhappiness.