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The Cardinal
Senior Scribe
Canada
647 Posts |
 Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 00:52:44
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We intend to begin delving into the most unique of races to grace the land beneath Faerun, but as we do so we've already hit a puzzling snag. I recall once mentioned in the scrolls around these halls of a (now dead) Deity of Illithids. I've searched but we have been unable to come up with the name or portfolio, so We send out a general request, does anyone recall the second Illithid God, and specifically how it fell from existence?
Later we will begin to discuss the possible effect the MindFlayers have on their own future as it's rather hazy at best, and confusing at worst. 
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It has to be Certain, the Gods Hate Me. For whatever irrevokable Fate, I have been made the walking Joke. Either that, or Beshaba is overlyfond Of Me.
-Unknown |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4686 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 01:27:13
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quote:
Ilsensine (ill-SEN-seen) The Tentacled Lord, the Great Brain, the God Brain
Greater Illithid God
Symbol: Glowing brain with two tentacles
Home Plane: Cavern of Thought
Alignment: Lawful evil
Portfolio: Mental dominion, magic
Worshipers: Mind flayers, tyrants, psionic creatures, psions, psychic warriors, sorcerers, wizards
Cleric Alignments: LE, LN, NE
Domains: Evil, Knowledge, Law, Magic, Mentalism, Slime, Tyranny
Favoured Weapon: Glowing tentacle [tentacle] (unarmed strike)
Source: http://www.candlekeep.co.uk/index.php?page=lorelibrary§ion=questionfaiths&subsection=ilsensine |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Kajehase
Great Reader
Sweden
2104 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 01:32:23
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| I believe Ilsensine is still alive and well, though. So he's/she's/it's unlikely to be the deity the Cardinal is looking for. |
There is a rumour going around that I have found god. I think is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
Terry Pratchett |
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Crennen FaerieBane
Master of Realmslore
USA
1378 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 01:33:00
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Is that the second deity? I thought that was their one and only deity. And how are Mind Flayers pious? Are the Elder Brains also clerics?
C-Fb |
Still rockin' the Fey'ri style. |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36782 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 01:39:16
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Ilsensine is indeed alive. He was the one that commented to Finder that he was surprised the Realms didn't have a deity of cups and saucers.  |
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31701 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 01:43:45
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Cardinal, I believe you are referring to Maanzecorian.
It's an intermediate LE deity with the portfolios of knowledge and philosophy. On Hallowed Ground and Monster Mythology are the relevant sources.
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4686 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 01:46:58
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| Maanzecorian (Illithid god of secrets), then perhaps as is reported killed. Having a hard time digging up other data. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31701 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 01:52:51
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It is.
And to keep facts in order, it wasn't exactly Orcus who slew Maanzecorian, it was Tenebrous. Tenebrous was an undead shadow, of sorts, created from the spirit of the demon-god Orcus as a side-effect of the demilich Acererak's attempts to merge with the Negative Energy Plane. Whatever remained of Orcus' spirit and sentience slept within his corpse on the Astral Plane until the negative-energy surge awakened and transformed it.
Tenebrous, although powerful, was not a god (as Orcus had been). It was able to slay gods using the Last Word, part of the primal vocabulary that creates, sustains, and will ultimately destroy the multiverse. The Last Word can - and eventually will - unmake anything that was created. Tenebrous found it buried in the wastes of Mithardir, the plane of good that represents sorrow, desolation, and regret (also known as Pelion, the third passion of Arborea). It is too powerful for a non-god to wield, and is destroying Tenebrous even as it uses the Word to destroy others. Tenebrous' only hope was to complete its resurrection, returning to full godhood before the Word completed its work.
For this, Tenebrous needed to find the Wand of Orcus, which had been hidden away by minions of Kiaransalee long before - the drow that hid it subsequently had their memories erased by the Styx, so nobody knows where it is now. That didn't stop Tenebrous from attempting to learn its location through various means, including hunting down various gods of knowledge and divination, grilling them, and then slaying them to preserve its anonymity from those with the power to destroy it.
The adventure Dead Gods listed a number of gods who died - these were all (except one) fairly unimportant gods. I mean, how many campaigns had Maanzecorian as a major part? Some of the gods Tenebrous killed weren't even part of the 2nd edition game, because they had been dropped from 2nd edition Legends & Lore or because Monte Cook made them up just so they could be killed. Bwimb wasn't even really a god, just an unusually powerful ooze paraelemental or possibly a particularly self-important mephit. He was mentioned mostly as a joke. Part of this is that, as I said earlier, Tenebrous was trying to keep himself a secret from the real powers of the multiverse, so he mostly preyed only on obscure deities. Another part is that Monte didn't want to screw up everyone's campaign by declaring Odin officially dead, or whatever. An individual DM might rule an entirely different hit list. James O'Rance wrote a live-action RPG scenario based loosely on Dead Gods in which Tenebrous killed the entire Norse pantheon, in fact.
But Maanzecorian was pretty cool. Created by Carl Sargent for Monster Mythology, Maanzecorian was one of only two illithid deities. Ilsensine is a glowing green disembodied brain, essentially the divine equivalent of an elder brain. Ilsensine has tentacles that extend throughout the planes (sometimes in the form of cranium rats), but thinks very little of non-illithid life. Maanzecorian, on the other hand, was a divine illithid with purple-green skin, tusks, and a hovering silver crown. Maanzecorian was a philosopher and a scholar, interested in non-illithid knowledge as well as information the mind flayers collect. Still evil, still lawful, still arrogant, still convinced that all that is not illithid is thrall, but more open-minded and curious than its master.
But now Maanzecorian is dead, at least officially, and any number of interesting things might come from that. What happens to mortal illithids when they die? If they're not theists or criminal or insane, their brains are taken out of their skulls and merged with the community's Elder Brain. So a whole adventure could be based on proxies of Ilsensine come to the Astral Plane to extract Maanzecorian's fossilized brain from its drifting corpse and bring it back to Ilsensine's caverns to incorporate it into the substance of Ilsensine, as perhaps many illithid deities have in the past. Or maybe they have to do it before Maanzecorian dies all the way, and they go to Maanzecorian's realm in Gehenna where its cooling corpse - and its entire realm - is already starting to fade into the Silvery Void. Anti-illithid groups like githyanki, githzerai, and just about everyone else (except a few races like the neogi and psurlons) might seek to prevent this from happening, or to sabotage it in some other way, tainting Maanzecorian's brain with something that Ilsensine might find disagreeable.
And maybe if Ilsensine does absorb the brain of Maanzecorian it will be changed somehow, become more open-minded and dynamic or simply melancholy, remembering anew what it was like to have a body all those eons ago. Ilsensine might send out minions to find appropriate new bodies for the brain-god to posess.
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warlockco
Master of Realmslore
USA
1695 Posts |
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KnightErrantJR
Great Reader
USA
5402 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 02:09:28
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| Champions of Ruin has information on an organization known as the Unworthy of Ilsensine, so I'm guessing the old brain is still floating around in the Realms cosmology. (And I loved Ilsensine's breif appearance in Finder's Bane . . . who knew Illithid gods would have a sense of humor?) |
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Crennen FaerieBane
Master of Realmslore
USA
1378 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 02:10:38
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Well, Mind Flayers are generally asexual, so is it really a "he?"
C-Fb |
Still rockin' the Fey'ri style. |
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The Cardinal
Senior Scribe
Canada
647 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 02:30:25
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From what we've gathered on Illithids, they are asexual, but they are free to choose however they wish to refer to themselves as. The Illithid of the Kraken Society is a rarity as it thought of itself in the female sense.
*Chuckles* Many thanks Sage, Somehow we knew you would recall the Deity and such. Infact if I recall correctly, we believe it was you that brought this deceased god to our attention ever so long ago. I will have to make an effort to find those books you mentioned. Dead gods never rest easy, and a Wise man once said "That is not Dead which can eternal lie, and with Strange Eons even Death may die."  However, We sometimes wonder, if the Illithids are as communal as they seem, do they have any sense of Self at all? They are ambitious, but where does that ambition become capped, and more-importantly would that in itself be a dogma (as athiestic as Illithids are in general)? A strange breed these Flayers of Minds. |
It has to be Certain, the Gods Hate Me. For whatever irrevokable Fate, I have been made the walking Joke. Either that, or Beshaba is overlyfond Of Me.
-Unknown |
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31701 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 04:35:50
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quote:
Originally posted by The Cardinal
*Chuckles* Many thanks Sage, Somehow we knew you would recall the Deity and such. Infact if I recall correctly, we believe it was you that brought this deceased god to our attention ever so long ago.
That wouldn't surprise me. During your earlier visits here we'd often talk a great deal about planar aspects -- and almost always irritating Big Al along the way .
quote:
I will have to make an effort to find those books you mentioned. Dead gods never rest easy, and a Wise man once said "That is not Dead which can eternal lie, and with Strange Eons even Death may die."
You can try paizo.com or RPGNow.com for the PDFs.
I know nobleknight.com has a copy of Dead Gods currently available as well.
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Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
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Crennen FaerieBane
Master of Realmslore
USA
1378 Posts |
Posted - 09 Dec 2005 : 15:02:16
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Well, they must have some sense of self - as the Alhoons are the prime examples. They forsake their natural birthrights and go into a form of power that is generally looked down upon by their society. Maybe these are the gifted individuals? Or maybe they are just from rebellious hosts.
C-Fb |
Still rockin' the Fey'ri style. |
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Mindthids and Iliflayers
