Xenthos:

I seem to recall some of the lore where Illith is really unhappy that Kethuru got stronger (after the halving); that would imply that there is at least some level of desire for 'personal' supremacy / dominance over the others.

/me engages you in conjecture.

(Where have you been?)

I feel like I've poorly expressed myself, if you've drawn this conclusion from my statement. 'Personal' supremacy is important, but the /form/ in which she takes is irrelevant. Remember, she was perfectly happy luring all her little crechelings to her, having them form the World's Serpent, which promptly began devouring everything Soulless - ultimately, one can only presume she intended to use that as her new physical shell, controlling it psionically until she could be rejoined with it. The Kigaru Wind is the same thing - Zenos was controlling it through the construct of the Angels, utilizing the two Voices.

Kethuru, likewise, did much the same (Using Viravain), though I suspect his ultimate intention was to break the seals, eat Viravain and be free. His possession has always come across differently to me than the others, but perhaps that's because of the form his possession took.

Ultimately, my suspicion is that the physical manifestation of the Soulless God is nothing, a meager shell projected by the very powerful energy that it is (I want to say 'soul', but that's inaccurate). So Illith doesn't really care if she eats all the Illithoid or if they eat her - so long as she becomes a singular entity with all of her original essence, the method of amalgamation is irrelevant. Ultimately, she is the essence - an interesting implication for what Elders are, then, or what form they take, if that's right. However I suspect this is a unique characteristic of the excoroperditio - as it is nothingness and is eternally nothingness that cannot be filled, the quasi-personality it takes on is fairly distinct, and will always come to the fore, so long as it remains the 'dominant' (ie feeding) energy, and not the subjugated energy (that which is consumed). Perhaps in being consumed, the excoroperditio identity is lost to the consuming excoroperditio identity. An important distinction in this is that immanidivinus cannot consume - see, Morgfyre. Being originally divinus, he cannot consume as completely as a Soulless, thus his victims are ultimately a part of him now.

I must stress, this is entirely my conjecture, and Estarra only sometimes lets me in on the little secrets, and I'm 99.9% sure nothing unknown is revealed here (or, at least, that couldn't be gleaned from information gained by players over the years).

I really wish Celest would start writing books on this stuff. Man, if I was a Celestine, I'd be the biggest, baddest philosopher ever... B)

(Re: Agnlaa, I rather like your character's design - it's an interesting route not often taken by player illithoids (I remember a lot of 'But I have a soooul! Seeee! I write poetry!', way back when), and I think you balance it nicely - from that little glimpse, at least!)

Agnlaa:

Since I originally started this, I've developed Agnlaa's personality and such more thoroughly. A lot my inspiration came from the Spectres in Wraith: the Oblivion (specifically, Dark Reflections: Spectres, for those of you familiar with the line). Essentially, existence as a soulless shard is extraordinarily painful - death, going to the Fates and coming back to life even more so. For Agnlaa, there's an overriding, consuming urge for everything to end and she sees the restoration of Illith as the only way to accomplish this. She works to grow stronger because she believes it will help with said restoration and it keeps her from dying. While she's utterly nihilistic, she's not immediately suicidal because of the knowledge that she'll just get reborn again.

I've never read the series, but is that like the main badguy at the end of Arcanum, who wants to destroy the world to end everyone's pain of living?

daganev:


I've never read the series, but is that like the main badguy at the end of Arcanum, who wants to destroy the world to end everyone's pain of living?

I've never read that, but in Wraith, Spectres are ghosts that serve/feed on Oblivion, which is both a state of non-existence and possibly sentient in some form, but maybe not. Some of them are utterly mindless, some of them are still quite intelligent.

My character has never once pretended to have a soul, much less tried to reinforce it with poetry. Where did this come from :o

Daus:

Where did this come from :o

I, Robot.

Never let me go!

In the Book of Dracnoris, it's implied that having a soul is vital to introspection and the soulless have difficulty understanding hypothetical cases like "What would the world be like if I didn't exist?" and "What would I do if there was nothing left to consume?" This would translate into a character who is not terribly introspective, does not like thinking or talking about their own emotions and becomes confused or even offended by people discussing unpleasant hypotheticals. They'd probably have issues with magical thinking, where they think that talking about something that might happen will cause that to be the case.
There's alot of ways you can go for an illithoid:

1. Fresh-from-the-Prison Cthoglogg loyalist, as Eventru described. Wants to absorb as much essence as possible, unite the fragments of Illith into a single whole and eventually devour the universe. May or may not make distinctions between themselves being devoured by Illith or themselves devouring Illith.

2. Ixthiaxa/"surface" illithoid. Originally alot like the Cthogloggist illithoids, but with more positive exposure to the soulled races. As a result, these illithoid have begun to question whether restoring Illith to life is actually in the best intrests of the illithoid people/the world in general. If they do still think that Illith should be restored, they want themselves to be the one consuming, not the one being consumed. Their big conflict is no longer "Must restore Mother Illith!" but "We must free our people from the Kephrean oppressors!"

3. Reformed Illithoid. According to the History of the Elder Wars A] mortal souls can survive more-or-less intact inside of a Soulless indefinitely and B] Illith ate up thousands of Elder Gods worth of souls and essences. This would suggest (at least to a sufficently odd illithoid) that perhaps the inner worms that the illithoid have are not so different from a normal sharded soul, just stunted and deformed. A reformed illithoid would be trying to improve their inner worm in order to pull the theological version of the Pinocchio story and become a real boy with a real soul.

Enyalida:

Never let me go!

Never gonna give you up.