Githyanki Empire

Lore & Background

Long ago, before many of the worlds known in the present day were born, the illithids ruled a vast empire known to some as Nihilath. The illithid empire held many worlds and even a few planes of existence in their tentacled grip. After a thousand years of engineering, they constructed an artificial world known as Penumbra, a vast disk that circled a sun, the planet's radius something like a hundred million miles. The empire kept slaves. According to Polyhedron #159, many of the slaves had originated on a distant world known as Pharagos, which the illithids had conquered and added to their empire. The article "Exiles from the Vault" from Dragon #298 (2002) mention a subterranean empire called Zarum in Western Oerik, where a race of humanoids dominated many other races from their capital city of Anithor. These humanoids seem to have been divided into a rigid caste system, their lives ruled by ancient ritual. The ruins of Zarum overflow with sacred spaces and temples, though the names of their ancient gods are unknown today. At some point, the illithids invaded Zarum from a neighboring plane of existence. Though the natives fought fiercely, they were no match for the psionic might of the mind flayers, and soon they were enslaved. The River of Angry Souls is a remnant of one of the terrible battles between the illithids and the soon-to-be enslaved Zarumites. Many were brought to the Outer Planes and elsewhere to serve as illithid slaves. Other cities in Zarum were transformed into work pits where illithid overseers forced their slaves to toil for countless generations. For thousands of years these once-human beings, who are remembered today only as the forerunners, were thralls of Nihilath. Some were engineered to become the ancestors of the grimlocks and distributed throughout the worlds of the empire to serve their illithid masters in their subterranean realms. On every world, the slaves were unable to escape their masters' psionic power, and illithid might was unquestioned. It is said that the fiends paused in their eternal Blood War to determine if anything could stop the mind flayers as the empire expanded throughout the Astral Plane and Ethereal Plane and threatened the Outer Planes themselves. It was then that the illithids first encounted the voor. The voor were one of the greatest threats the illithid empire ever faced. An insectoid race utterly immune to psionics, the voor reproduced using spores capable of floating through the airless reaches of outer space indefinitely before finding a place to transform into larvae, using whatever inorganic materials were on hand to create their bodies. The standard slave armies of the illithids were unable to stop the voor invasion, so in desperation a long-vanished illithid Creed constructed tumerogenesis tanks to impart certain physical, spiritual, and psionic enhancements on selected slave-soldiers. After thousands of years of slavery and controlled breeding, the illithid thralls were no longer recognizable as the humans they once were. They were longer of limb, with skin the tawny color of old ivory and slightly pointed ears. After the long war between the illithids and voor ended, the voor all but extinct thanks to the efforts of these new modified battle-thralls, the balance of power in the illithid empire changed.

In Their Own Story

The source does not provide a specific narrative story about the Githyanki Empire beyond the fictional history of their enslavement and transformation. No named characters like Commander Vharkath or specific events like a raid on a mind flayer colony are mentioned in the source.

Reader's Guide

The source does not provide a gameplay guide or campaign advice for the Githyanki Empire. It only covers their publication history, fictional origins, and the borrowing of the name from George R. R. Martin's novel Dying of the Light.

Did You Know?

• Charles Stross originally created the githyanki for a Dungeons & Dragons game with multiple Dungeon Masters "where everyone was creating new monsters to offset" that all of them "had access to the Monster Manual".
• Stross borrowed the name from a fictional race created by George R. R. Martin in his 1977 science fiction novel Dying of the Light.
• George R. R. Martin himself was not aware that the name had been borrowed until a fan and D&D player informed him after a public reading in 1983.
• The master/slave aspect of the githyanki/illithid relationship was inspired by Larry Niven's World of Ptavvs (1966), "while their relationship with red dragons recalls Michael Moorcock's Melnibonéans (1961+)".
• In Martin's novel, the githyanki were called "soulsucks" because of their dangerous psychic powers; they were slaves of another alien race called the hrangans.