Fling a Light Into the Future: Difference between revisions
→Tabletop Games
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Inverted in a profoundly dark and disturbing way by the [[Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods|Illithid]] [[Brain Food|race]] in ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' ([[Retcon|at least before]] [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|4th Edition]]). The Mind Flayers were - [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|or will be]] - the overlords of the multiverse at the literal end of time, when most if not all the stars have burnt out. But after facing defeat at the hands of a trans-planar rebellion (not that there's much to fight over at this point), the Illithids sacrificed unbelievable numbers of their Elder Brains to create a psionic maelstrom that sent the surviving members of their race into the distant past - that is, shortly before the ''D&D'' setting. This way they can get a head start on forging their empire while avoiding that pesky slave uprising altogether. It also explains their tremendous egos; after all, they ''know'' [[You Can't Fight Fate|their victory is inevitable]].
** Fortunately for the Multiverse at large, they aren't quite as good at this as they think. Every attempt they make to change history makes their predictions less and less accurate. While they have made multiple attempts, trying to correct their mistakes cause them to make more extreme attempts, which leads to more mistakes, which only changes the timeline less in their favor each time. Events like the slave uprisings (involving the Gith, derro, and duegar, to name the most well-known), Orcus killing Maanzecorian (the illithids' god who orchestrated the plan), and the traumatic schism that created the "heretical" Cult of Thoon have all hindered their attempts to restore the favorable timeline they envision.
** One more disturbing note about the Illithids - it's possible for characters to take feats representing having [[Half-Human Hybrid|monstruous non-human ancestors]], like a bit of dragon blood in your family tree or something. If you apply them to the Illithids, it doesn't mean you have an inhuman ancestor, it means that the squid-faced, brain-eating monsters with the parasitic life cycle are your ''descendants''.
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