08 Nightal 1479
In light of recent events in Ceremorphosis Unit 2, I would like to remind you all not to become complacent about the threat of neothelid emergence.
Newborns and inexperienced apprentices may ask; what is a neothelid?
In these educational documents, I have previously described many variants of abnormal ceremorphosis. I chose not to include neothelids among them, because technically these creatures develop in the absence of ceremorphosis.
The average tadpole spends approximately ten years growing and feeding - or for the unlucky ones, being fed upon - in the Elder Brain's brine pool before it is ready to be implanted into a host for ceremorphosis. However, if the Elder Brain dies or the brine pool is significantly neglected by members of the Nourisher Creed responsible for its maintenance, it is possible for a tadpole to grow too large for implantation. After eleven or twelve years of age, a tadpole can no longer fit into the ear or eye socket of a host. If not terminated at this stage, it will continue to grow larger and consume its smaller siblings until it is the only tadpole left in the pool. Once its source of food is exhausted, the tadpole will undergo physiological changes that allow it to leave the brine pool and travel across dry land for longer periods of time. This stage of neothelid development usually only occurs in colonies which have been abandoned after the death of the Elder Brain, since otherwise the Elder would consume such tadpoles before they grow large enough to leave the pool.
The now-terrestrial tadpole will hunt progressively larger creatures in its quest for sustenance. Once it becomes large enough to consume a sentient creature, the ingestion of its brain tissue will trigger reciprocal sentience in the tadpole, making it a far more intelligent, and thus dangerous, foe. These creatures can live for over a century in this manner, growing larger throughout their entire lives. Neothelids pose a great threat to humanoids and illithids alike, for to them every living being is nothing but a potential source of food. They have been known to attack and destroy illithid colonies hundreds of miles from the defunct colony that originally spawned them.
But why am I choosing this moment to remind you of these basic - albeit frightening - facts?
Though no official Incident Report was filed - likely due to the poor record-keeping practices of Unit 2 - rumors of their self-inflicted misfortune have spread throughout the Nourisher Creed. In brief, members of this unit were experimenting with arcane magic - which has been particularly prevalent of late for some reason, something to do with Mystra? - in attempts to generate aberrant ceremorphs. This sort of experimentation has been reluctantly allowed by the Encephalithid, as long as it stays within clearly circumscribed limits and is used only in service of the colony.
However, the Elder is now reconsidering this policy, after the combination of negligence with improper use of said magic nearly created a neothelid right in the middle of Oryndoll. Due to their focus on experimentation, members of Unit 2 neglected their regular duties and failed to notice that a tadpole delivered to them was larger and more developed than usual. Rather than waste it, they chose to implant it into an ogre that was part of an experimental project to expand ceremorphosis into larger humanoid races - but not before casting some manner of spell on the tadpole to further accelerate its development, likely in a misguided attempt to account for the ogre's larger body size.
Indeed, the tadpole's development was accelerated. Seven days later, what emerged from the ceremorphosis pod was not a newborn illithid, but an abomination. An enormous half-eaten corpse, within whose hollow shell coiled a massively engorged tadpole that was well on its way to becoming a neothelid. This wormlike creature was nearly ten feet in length. Like a mature illithid, it possessed four tentacles surrounding a ring of razor-sharp teeth, which it used to attack multiple members of Ceremorphosis Unit 2, killing a thrall and injuring an illithid employee before eventually being subdued. It is thought that the combination of growth-accelerating magic with a tadpole that was already too advanced for implantation caused a proto-neothelid to form within less than a tenday rather than months or years.
Of course, such situations are highly unlikely to occur in a properly managed ceremorphosis unit. However, let this serve as a cautionary tale to avoid combining magic with ceremorphosis, to never implant any tadpole too large to enter a standard-sized host's head through the eye or the ear, and to promptly incinerate the carcasses of any hosts that have died while the tadpole in their heads remains alive. If this had been done promptly when the ogre died in Unit 2, the subsequent panic and loss of life could have been avoided.
All those involved in the Unit 2 debacle have been terminated from their positions in the Nourisher Creed, and the arcanist found to be leading unapproved experiments was given the choice between exile and death. They chose exile, likely planning to live in some lonely tower and prey on passing adventurers - at least, until they decide to become an undead abomination known as an alhoon; a fate which many illithid mages tend to gravitate toward since they are unable to join the Elder Brain in death.
