Emotions.

They each have access to a stable of slaves, attendants, fighters, and followers. They will use these people to harvest the most delicious memories; the most potent emotions.

Of course, the Flayers and the Tsochari hate each other, so they try to 'poison' the other's memory harvest. They send false agents into the other's slave stables to sow dissent, amnesia, and general madness.

Basically, they fight over how they 'have fun'. Alien from general humanity; but still dickish enough to fight over.

Players do the standard path of "Get caught, try to fight to free the slaves" - let them talk to some of the previously 'drained entertainments'. PCs can still fight their way out (Be Adventurers), but they are left wondering "what the hell is this all for, eh?"

IIRC the Tsocharii have no religion, or one specific deity (can't remember) and no others, while the Mind Flayers build their own afterlife in the Elder Brains. So you have atheists versus monotheists right there.

Competing transhuman ideals is another. A Tsochar cell is trying to manipulate the breeding patterns in an isolated community to produce humans/elves/dwarves/whatever with stronger psychic or magical affinities so that they can exploit them later as hosts. The Mind Flayers in a nearby community are trying to breed the opposite, stronger, tougher, dumber slave stock. Naturally each side will want to test their progress against the other.

Tsocharr have developed a nearly undetectable graft (see the section on grafts in LoM) that, when applied to humans, allows them to process sunlight as food and reduces the amount of blood/CON a tsocharr riding inside them needs to survive. But a primary goal of the Mind Flayers is to extinguish or blot out the sun.

Renegades: A Tsochar has gone rogue and become a Warlock, defying the Tsochar religion and leadership. They want hi wiped out before he can spawn and spread his crime. Likewise, a renegade mind Flayer has left his community and begun studying forbidden magics/psionics (flesh manipulation, necromancy, anything that would make an Illithid independent from the community or Elder brain). The two have teamed up to pool their resources. Tsochar with Illithid grafts, or a young tsochar infected with illithid tadpoles.

Really, this whole setup is a perfect excuse for body horror and hallucinatory mindfucks. It's a DM's dream.

In the Lucifer comics, the demons use a drug, a type of snuff, called Pain. Which is distilled from human pain. Now, take a substance like that, and create a parallel to the Opium Wars with the two groups.

Do not forget that they are both assumed to have pacts and dealings with Otherwordly forces beyond Mortal Understanding. Depending on how you run campaigns, treat this as a Cthulu-esque interlude.

For example, academic rivalries between the factions that believe that (abstact concept) is a valid solution to (deep arcane theory), and those that don't.
Time to crack out your perpetual motion machines, hyper-angles, tesseracts, time-loops, and hallucinatory-feedback systems.

Let these brains be the engineers of a dark and troubled art. The 'other' kind of mad science. By mad, I mean the cry yourself to sleep kind of mad.

Idea 2. Other creatures travel to other planes, but both the Flayers and the Tsochari would be interested in deeper space (on a given plane, assuming your campaign has that). Have them fight a cold-war-esque space race, where the rest of the universe doesn't even know other planets exist. . . Real Cloak & Dagger.

>>17785272

This would be amazing in the Planescape campaign setting.

OP here. These are great ideas.
>>17785191
I like the idea about monotheists against atheists. Especially with the way the elder brain is described in LoM.
>>17785272
Mind Flayers busting out impossible machines and tsochar mathematicians making human logic weep. I hadn't considered this for some reason. This is stolen regardless of what I go with.

>>17785523
If you want, that's a great excuse for multi-dimensional spaces interacting uncomfortably for the players.

Think of a cube, with doors in each of the faces. The doors all lead to other cubes, which in turn lead to a single different cube, which lead back to the opposite of the second set, and then back to the first cube. This is a tesseract - a four-dimensional cube. Like you go from A -> B -> C -> D -> A. Now, if you change tesseracts by pressing a button, you have a penteract - a five-dimensional cube. So, how would you navigate a hexeract - a six-dimensional cube? That would be an adequate point of contention that the players would boggle, regardless of the solutions you devise.

To map it out, I found it works best to design each cube, label them, and label where the doors go in each state. For added fun, you could technically have each door lead to a different overlapping location as well (by making them three-state doors instead of two-state), so you'd have some 60 possible destinations from a penteract. It gets a little ridiculous at higher dimensions than that.

On the plus side, it's a great excuse to use ethereal marauders. Then again, what isn't?

Also, would you like a map of a penteract?

>>17785644
Or go with octagonal polyhedrons and 5-D them. This is a surefire way to confuse and frustrate players. Use it carefully.

>>17785655
Well, I thought about a 5-D dodecahedron, but that made my brain hurt.

Maybe if you used a hex grid, and had the only viable doorways travel top to bottom...

>>17785721
HOnestly, imagine a hollow d-12. Door in each face connects to another, which connects to another. Write up a chart of which door goes to which one. and don't be afraid to have ultiple doors go to the same one.

Also, if you've never seen the movie Cube, smack yourself hard and then go watch it.

>>17785523
This path allows you the freedom to bust out a great deal of "a wizard did it" moments, but the secret to making them work is the thematic fluff.

Everyone has seen a kooky Gnome madscientist, and had a good giggle. You don't want that. You want cold-blooded genius, in a 21-Xanatos pileup. You want emotionless condescension. You want frozen hate, coupled with arrogance and dismissal. PCs are less than misquitos to these things. Culturally, there should be no capacity for friendliness, mercy, or bargaining. PCs are property (in a best-case scenario).

Your PCs break into the final sanctum, ready to bring justice to their oppressors? Both foes should be eight steps ahead of them, in a clever-bastard way, fighting behind charmed thralls, firing arrows from being illusory walls, targetting gear and potions if it would help them survive/win. Like Dragons, these guys are meant to be Big League players, not dumb brutes with loot. Of course, when/if they die, it was a simulacrum guided by remote scrying. By the way, let the victors also enjoy a few nightmares (as per the spell) and phantasmal horrors as a "thank you" for their victory, if they have it.

If these Intelligent foes lose a fight with the players, they are smart and vindictive to take the fight to the PCs personally. This means, when Round 2 occurs, the foes have the PCs family, or favored noble, or trusty sidekick held hostage, enthralled into their service, ready to betray the PCs, or what-have-you.
tl;dr, they will stack the odds in their favor, including social engineering (which they do best).

Here's an idea. Thralled bards and politicians start rebuking and discrediting the PCs. Mind-flayer calls up his pocket-duke and has the party's castle condemned & captured for tax dodging.

>>17785740
>don't be afraid to have ultiple doors go to the same one.
That's just sloppy.

I mean, honestly, it's the wasted space that gets me, as well as figuring out where the fuck you mount the eversion button. If you make the cube big enough, it solves the latter problem. Decorating the interior of a dodecahedron isn't so fun for me, though.

Although, mixing it up and making a tiling sponge folded in on itself has potential to have fun, especially if you exploit water mechanics to make a dorf reactor via fluted tracks and cleverly positioned grates.

>>17785740
How about using a D20 tesseract? The thing is, every room in that tesseract ROLLS in a random manner.

That's what Cthulhu uses to roll at the Elder Gods PnP, which happens every time the stars are right.

>>17785644
Honestly, I might have to be careful using this. I have the distinct feeling that if I send my players into even a penteract that they might never see the light of day again.
Still, I would looooove to be able to pull that out. I might have to see how they handle other puzzles first.
My group decided they wanted the game to be run in the Forgotten Realms. I don't think I'll have any problems keeping the big NPCs out and the large world gives my group a lot of material to draw background from so I'm happy enough with their choice.
What do you think of having the adventure take place in and under or around Thay? The Tsochar fascination with spellcasters and the willingness of the Thayens to deal with them to get access to their tech/science and to deal a blow or even wipe out the nearby illithid city would make for good interaction I think.

>>17785782
Treat these guys as a Batman/MacGuyver/Boyscout. Regardless of class, they should have a solution to every problem. They might not all be game winners, but if they aren't, then they are escape plans to live again and strike at The Most Opportune Moment.

Here's the hard part though. This puts the pressure on you to A) Kick the players when they're down, but B) Do so in way that still gives them a fighting chance.

Maybe have the Foes enthrall a trusty sidekick to betray the players badly, but then play up that sidekick resisting that control. Now the players have the choice to A) Fight on standardly, with bad odds, B) Help the NPC help them, or C) Also learn to play smart, and research and plan their strikes (and fortify their friends & allies)

>>17785644
>>17785721
>>17785740

I found an easy way to model seven tesseracts connected with each other. With d6s.
Each die is a tesseract, each face is a room, and each room has one direction that corresponds to a similar face on another die.
Add in 42 rooms of: randomly roving encounters, gravity orientation puzzles, and mindfuck horror, and you have a cure for foreverGM syndrome. Because the players will never let you GM again.

(Fuck you, players. That's what happens when you kill NPCs for no reason besides being able to. You get stuck in the horrorcube until you find your way out.)

>>17785782
>Here's an idea. Thralled bards and politicians start rebuking and discrediting the PCs. Mind-flayer calls up his pocket-duke and has the party's castle condemned & captured for tax dodging.

I'd worry that this turns the party into murderhobos. Maybe have both sides use the party to thwart the other side, using the piece instead of removing it from the board? Something like the tsochar remove the tax payments and doctor the books (through multiple blinds, such as manipulating one thieves guild while ensuring the books are suitably doctored) so the party goes after the mind-flayer pocket-duke, who is in charge of collecting taxes, when he repo's the party's castle? That seems suitably convoluted to me...

>>17785865
Convoluted is the right word.
The difficulty lies in that Both sides are supposed to be experts at shadowy behind-the-scenes manipulation. But that's boring for the players. They don't want things to just 'happen' to them. So, because they are awesome heroes, they notice things. They intercept messengers with mysterious orders, who (by brainwashed programming) suicide/self-destruct after giving most of a clue. The wizard detects a scry attempt on them, and traces it back to a source. Now he can counter-scry. The Paladin senses evil in the manipulated NPCs before they strike, or betray, or do something heinous.

If the players are being murder hobos, then there is not much the GM can do to dissuade that besides making the antagonists somebody that the PCs should care about. Try to focus the sessions not on a combat (Kill that thralled duke), but an open-ended puzzle (How do we Save that duke, and fix his mistakes?). This can be guided by your language and presentation, and most players can follow a hook without going overboard on it. If they are still reluctant to play smarter, offer incentive to not be a murder hobo. (Sure, they can kill the duke, but how will they know where the channelled funds, and missing slaves are? Keep him alive until you find the goods. By the time they rescue and loot the stuff, he's shaken off the mind control.)

tl;dr Give the impression of expert manipulation, but still bring it 'into the open' enough that the players notice it, and moreso, interact with it.

Most players see the game as "A combat comes to me". Instead let letters, and couriers come to them. Let them hear things, and be informed, and worried about what they say. Then let the players look for trouble in their own way. There is where they will find their combats, and small puzzles, and if they solve them all too well, then there is another layer deeper. (Until a good story climax presents itself).

>>17786029
When the players notice these events, play up the fact that the NPCs didn't notice them. Again, impression of subtle manipulations that fools 99% of the people.

But the PCs are just too smart to be fooled. . .

This thread is so fucking fantastic that I now have to use it as reference material for every time I'm going with BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION. If it was longer I would send archive requests.

Instead, I offer my two cents: How about the spacerace idea, but through human nations? The aberrations manipulate a duke or something into turning his subjects into slaves building a fucking spaceship.

Suddently, two dukes are trying to fuck each others shit up att court. A third duke sends the PCs as his spies to find out why two former friends are on the verge of starting a civil war. While travelling to duke A's capitol, the PCs note that most people are gone. The ones who are left say that they were taken away by the duke's forces. At last, the PCs arrive at a huge fucking refugee/slave camp that is a ghetto outside the capital's walls. Amongst the tents and huts there are statures of THINGS that have been erected. Everyone is working their asses off for the dukes mysterious project...

OK, so we've got body-horror, non-standard geometry and pocket spaces, space races, mental warfare and psyops aimed at food supplies. Anyone think of anything else to add?

Have the Tsochari just be the larval state of aboleths.

Two massive slavedriver empires, each with the vision of controlling the Multiverse.

Sadly, the Tsochari are actually the Mindflayers from the past (or rather, the Mindflayers are the Tsochari from the future) and the Mindflayers face a choice between grandfather paradox and extermination.

>>17789573
Don't forget time travel.

Mind flayers being from the future and all.

>>17788460
Fuck it, archive the thing anyway.

>>17789692
I'm using Tsochari in my World of Darkness campaign based on BRPD. I just had the first session last night, and it went swimmingly. It went crazy in a hospital, but they managed to capture it alive.

>>17789855

I keep reading tsochari as tsochan and picturing the most adorable of elder horrors.

>>17789609
No, that's the Aboleths. The Aboleths are the mindflayers who fled to the distant past beyond the current, from the far future when their empire collapsed.

>>17790186
Don't think so. Aboleths and Mindflayers are from opposite ends of the timeline, but I'm pretty sure they're not related.

>>17790315
>>17790186
>>17789855
Why not have Aboleths off to the side in between the two. Primordial masters of old pissed off at the up-and-coming new guys.

They lack the same subtlety, but they could serve as an interesting hook none-the-less.

>someone actually using Tsochari

Goddamn I never thought this would happen

I love these motherfuckers, although Dark Sun Psurlons are a close second to my favorite aberrant species.

Okay, how do I request archiving threads? Because this one clearly deserves it.