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Scientific expeditions report that the most exciting thing about the colony, other than the high levels of iron oxide in the water supply, the fact that illithids smell like citrus fruit, and the fact that the illithid population is not allowed even the simplest forms of post-solar-expansion technology, is: allowing your brain to be extracted and consumed (after assuming a physical form defenseless enough) is sort of novel. |
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Scientific expeditions report that the most exciting thing about the colony, other than the high levels of iron oxide in the water supply, other than the fact that illithids smell like citrus fruit, and other than the fact that the illithid population is not allowed even the simplest forms of post-solar-expansion technology, is: allowing your brain to be extracted and consumed (after assuming a physical form defenseless enough) is sort of novel. |
An illithid: slimy, amphibious, hermaphroditic, humanoid. Its head's sort of elongated, with slimy tentacles around a slimy, hagfishlike mouth, two blank white eyes; like the rest of its species/clade, Chelev is more built for dextrous, detail-oriented work than for feats of strength or endurance. Adult illithids have significant psionic power, but Chelev's still learning how to enslave the weak and stuff like that. It tends to dress and behave rambunctiously.
Not too old, really; in fact, it's still on its first life, and as yet has no tweaks, modifications, rewrites, or anything else, instead being an example of the slightly creepy, somewhat random process of tawdry biological evolution. Yeah, creepy.
Yep. Illithids don't have any organs for producing audible speech. (If they make any hissing or slurping or any other sort of interesting noise, it's not necessarily meaningful.) They communicate via broadcast neural patterns; these transmissions are relatively universal for mammalian vertebrates (or their analogues), and, if nothing else, the Puzzlebox will happily translate these signals into something more understandible for anyone within range.
Chelev itself has a thin and reedy "voice", mostly. If adjectives had to be given.
Sure, back in the day, buried in myths and fragmentary archeological records and stuff like that, the ancient, pre-galactic-culture illithids weren't the nicest things around--what with their tendency toward enslaving anyone they came in contact with (and then probably extracting and eating their delicious, juicy brains). But eventually they mellowed out, become modernized, and colonized known space like just about every other imperialistic species, led by the enormous, tentacled, quivering masses of pulsating fatty meat known as the Elder Brains. Trusted advisors, arbiters, and repositories of knowledge, each Elder Brain went off on its own path, slowly widening the sphere of illithid influence.
However, Elder Brains tend to be a stodgy and horribly conservative sort of leader, and their resistance to change allowed the universe to pass mind flayers by. Socially and technologically disadvantaged due to a mandated reliance on strong psionic tendencies inherent in illithid physiology and culture as well as a mandated reluctance toward utilizing the magical levels of technology available, illithids have gone from the nightmarish subterranean conquerors of ancient days to unhybridized, obsolete, relatively pedestrian creatures of no significant power (though they still like to eat brains).
Not too far from the the Mess--within Zip taxi range, if one is brave--is the somewhat boring, somewhat saline set of dank subterranean tunnels of Chelev's home town. Pretty dull, and more than a bit dark in many places. There is little in the way of tourist accomodations here. Visitors are advised that amplified waves of projected neural data may be broadcast in an attempt to wrest operational or even systems-level control of their current corporeal form, if applicable.
Scientific expeditions report that the most exciting thing about the colony, other than the high levels of iron oxide in the water supply, other than the fact that illithids smell like citrus fruit, and other than the fact that the illithid population is not allowed even the simplest forms of post-solar-expansion technology, is: allowing your brain to be extracted and consumed (after assuming a physical form defenseless enough) is sort of novel.
So Elder Brains are too close-minded and defensive to make good species-leaders--put yourself in their fibrous tendrils: when your entire existence relies upon the protection of your followers and their tradition of adding their dead's brains to your own mass to add to your knowledge, power, and ability... would you want to let them start getting genesplices, nanotech improvements, medical technology that forestalls mortality, minivans...? Hell no! Why, then they'd probably become ten times more powerful than you overnight, and then where would you be? Sitting around by your lonesome in a big pool of briny slime, that's what, without a single subject to call your own. So, the obvious answer, one supported by your millenia upon millenia as a braking force on the wheel of illithid progress, is to keep your population dumb, relatively primitive, and totally brainwashed toward accepting your antique, selfish, primitive ideals, but, hey, look, it's worked for countless eons, why change it now? It keeps things so much simpler....
Chelev, at first glance, may seem superficially similar to [High General Mestivac Versentex]?, destroyer of corrupt social orders and governmental systems, crack shot with chemical propulsion projection weapons, and traveller of the spheres with his erstwhile newtoid sidekick [John-Raymond Fildibeck]?, but casual visual inspection reveals enough discrepancies to eliminate any identity confusion.
For one thing, Chelev doesn't tool around the universe in a retrofitted space sub.
Chelev's Elder Brain disapproves of skateboarding, bungee jumping, and other low-tech thrills, but not enough to forbid such activities... just enough to grumble about it in between the telepathic nagging to cut it out and the lectures.
Besides, when your medtech level is so low that adhesive fabric strips and maybe bottles containing goo made from stinky herbs are all you have, there's more than a little risk of permanent injury.
That's why extreme sports are cool!
I suppose some of this information is not exactly in the public domain, but for the most part it probably is; when you can create or know or do anything you want on a whim finding someone's home address or learning about their favorite food isn't much of a challenge. Right?
Mortality is fleeting. At least, in the Puzzlebox. Death doesn't really amount to a whole lot there, on the galactic timescale of things, no matter how many times one might undergo it. It's probably a lot like repainting one's nails, for twenty-first century humans: no matter how cool a color one starts out with, eventually it starts getting chipped, and yo ignore it for a few more days after it starts to degrade, but eventually, eh, screw it, acetone time, then a different color. And of course one has about a dozen bottles of polish to choose from even though one doesn't remember when last a bottle was used up before it dried up or was just thrown away arbitrarily when cleaning house. But it's not that big a deal. It happens. In fact, it's expected, eventually, really, and, now that one thinks on the topic, one realizes that the six-dollar bottles of polish wear away at a rate similar to one-dollar bottles, and, you know, maybe there's something to be learned in that....
I, uh, digress.
In theory Chelev may end up expiring for the first time at some point. This isn't something I'm particularly interested in rushing, at the moment, but you know, a falling grand piano or a pilot light that went out, and, pow. Reinstantiation and maybe brief puzzlement over what the hell just happened. I dunno. Maybe some sort of crazy dishwashing accident.
I suspect that in such a case Chelev's colony's Elder Brain will consider the dead Chelev (poor thing) the "real" Chelev, and any new Chelevs are marked as enemies and exiles. I think that holds together with what I've thrown into place.
Boy, it'll be unhappy for at least five or ten minutes should it ever die that first time. I ain't askin' fer mercy, I'm just sayin', you know?
I think my original point was that I'm aware death may someday be addressed, but I don't want to fabricate drama for its own sake. Chelev's a reasonably lightweight, light-hearted character concept, not some magnet for attracting tragedy for me to wallow in.
So there.
"Tragic dishwashing accident." Hm. Heh. Hmm.
Chelev apparently wasn't allowed to visit the Mess for unspecified reasons, for a while (coinciding somewhat with the 2004 holiday season, maybe --RSFU), but has recently been seen attempting youthful, potentially-injurious stunts on its wheeled platform. High-speed maneuvering for no reason. Weird little flip-tricks. Hopping onto and off of the glowing "sun" in Puzzle Park. Falling on the ground creatively as a result. That sort of thing.
Recently, Chelev's colony's Elder Brain was grumpy about some third party that attempted to do bad things to it from as far away as possibly Puzzle Park and via vastly powerful (and impolite usage of) cosmic powers, and it implied some fourth party prevented this, but overall its has kept its psionic waves to itself on the matter.
(Insiders, if there were any that weren't under the Elder Brain's influence, would suggest that the Elder Brain is all but flagellating in worry because a) it couldn't defend itself b) it had to put up with the ignominy of being rescued by some unidentified transmortal busybody that promptly and overly-conveniently vanished. Who wants to be reminded they're kept obsolete by voluntary, unswerving faith in an archaic philosophy? Not Elder Brains.)