Been playing through baldurs gate 3 recently as I’m sure many of you have been and started to think that githyanki are really similar to the mind flayers. Both see themselves as somewhat independent but have a greater queen they serve, have a fairly utilitarian society to say the least, possess psionic abilities that are very similar to each other and long to make an inter planary empire. Now many of these similarities can be a poetic story of how they never grew or learnt from the oppression they faced, but I think that this theory adds something great to the story as they both have a mysterious origin that is somewhat explained by this, and adds a reason to why the aboleths who know all the past don’t know anything about mind flayers.
It could make for an interesting theory. I will be honest, the thing that always stuck out to me about the Illithid is the fact that we have not seen what a natural born one looks like. The race as a whole are the creations from other races through a parasite, just like with the Xenomorph XX121. That makes a lot of question there for what they actually are.
Maybe in the future one of the two Gith races had developed a method to enrich the psionic potential of their race through an astral entity, or something of the far realm. That became the first Illithid.
That’s an interesting take, I think they look pretty similar even when from different races but it’s interesting that there’s no default state of being born for them.