Page 8 - Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations

For most purposes, there is little difference between an plan for events in the world around them. Some future-born
origin remote in space and one remote in time. An alien and aberrations returned to the past to specifically engineer the

unforgiving world is an alien and unforgiving world. However, events that will make their own world possible—a paradoxical
unlike aberrations out of space, aberrations out of time cannot destiny against which the cosmos itself rebels.

easily return to their original homes. The journey from eon The mind flayers are the most notable example of these

to eon is much more difficult than the journey from planet time-lost aberrations, although only a handful of the illithid
to planet, and only the mightiest and most dreadful magic savants (and likely no living member of any other race) know
can do the trick. There are exceptions—creatures that move of the race’s secret origin. A starfaring race of great power exist-
through the timestream as easily as a human sails from port ing at the very end of time, the mind flayers faced extinction

to port along a well-charted coast—but in general, aberrations with the imminent ending of all things. Through a great and

from distant times are completely severed from their places of terrible spell, the mind flayers dispatched great spelljamming

origin, never to return. fleets from the cold, pitiful remnants of their dying cosmos ABERRATION? CHAPTER 1
back through time, appearing in the ancient skies of younger WHAT IS AN
Antediluvian Aberrations worlds. They arrived in the present era two thousand years
Aberrations hailing from exceedingly ancient times are the ago (although the exact date varies from world to world, since
remnants or survivors of an ancient world, now replaced by their time-traveling magic produced different results as they
the world that seems normal or natural to humans. Some journeyed into different cosmologies). The enslavement of the
predate creation itself, existing as the last vestiges of a previ- gith and the duergar dates back to early years of the illithid
ous creation, an older multiverse in which the rules were very invasion of the present era.
different. While this would imply a span of billions of years in Naturally, sages perusing accounts of mind flayer ships in

our own universe, in the fantastic universe of the D&D game the night sky believe that mind flayers hail from another world,
the creation of the world might be far more recent, a span of never suspecting that the illithid race also comes from another

a few hundred or few thousand years. Creatures of antiquity time. As extratemporal creatures, mind flayers know dark and
deeply resent the arrival of brash new humanoid races and dire things about events to come, including the eventual rise
“creator” deities who erased the ancient predecessor universe of their race and the end of the multiverse. To ensure that they
and replaced it with a less hospitable (to the aberrations, will indeed come to exist at all, they pursue a strange and secret
anyway) world. agenda of manipulating the world of their own past, the world

Aboleths are the best example of a race with this origin. Long humans and their kin must share with them. The mind flayers

ago, they populated an earlier creation filled with creatures know that their plans cannot fail, because they clearly exist;
of similar physiology and temperament, a cold and horrible ultimate victory is inevitable.
world of perpetual darkness. This incredibly ancient world
died, and the world of humans, dragons, and sunlight replaced Otherwhens
it, to the aboleths’ everlasting anger. Since aboleths retain the Finally, some aberrations might come from worlds with alter-
memories of their progenitors in an unbroken line stretching nate histories—planets where evolutionary events, magical
back thousands of years, they still recall the earlier cosmos and cataclysms, or the will of dark deities perverted the world
long for the return of more favorable conditions. from its normal and natural course. On the surface, such a
world would seem to be little different from a planet from
Travelers in Time some far corner of space or a world existing in an alternate
Other aberrations hail from the future instead of the past. Material Plane—but these “otherwhen” worlds are perhaps
Depending on the amount of time involved, they possess strik- even more strange and shocking, because they are so similar
ing insights into “impending” events for those who live in the to the mundane world, and yet horribly, terribly wrong.
younger age, explaining in part their ability to anticipate and In some cases, these otherwhens are not entirely real. They
possess only the potential to be real. As the “real” world grows
more distant, in time or history, from the point of divergence
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that might have given rise to the otherwhen world, the
VARIANT ORIGINS
While this discussion proposes specific origins for each major otherwhen world begins to fade into the nothingness from
aberration race, there is no reason you can’t alter these racial which it came. Powerful and knowledgeable aberration races,
origins for your own campaign. In most cases the origins recognizing the illusory nature of their mirror existence, seek
are so distant (in time or space) that it doesn’t really matter to anchor their mirror-world as the “real” one, thus preserving
much to game play where a particular aberration comes from; themselves by causing the extinction of the real world. It might
they’re here now, and that’s enough. If you prefer mind flayers
to be from distant worlds or alternate Material Planes instead be possible to do this by performing some terrible rite or spell,
of the remote future, feel free to stipulate that origin in your or by searching out all the consequences of the divergence
own game. event in the “real” world and undoing them one by one. Since
their existence itself is at stake, aberrations from a short-lived
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