d20 illithid cultural artefacts

After spending a bunch of time thinking about illithid worlds due to Spelljammer, some general thoughts about things they will have lying around beyond the usual, recognisable stuff.

First, the general aesthetic will be:
- upsettingly asymmetrical because they like to hold things with their tentacles and long-fingered hands and like to know which way is the 'front' by feel
- flanged or ridged design with bits sticking out for ease of tentacle holding
- sensory tools for the senses of a mindflayer - emotion (empath), thought (telepathy), telekinesis, dream (which for them is 'channel the far realm'), body-mastery (a slightly taboo hobby of attuning with whatever form your tadpole took over)
- textural approach - etched in qualith text is very common both as instruction on the item, makers marks, dedications and other notes associated with its use or origin
- materials can include mother-of-pearl and other shell-like substances shaped into desired forms and highly precise carvings rendered using telekinetic abilities

d20 illithid cultural artifacts
1. Qualith meditation beads - quadripartite inscriptions spiralling around beads on a string, a relatively common design with a huge variety of writings available. Can be inscribed with koan-type truths, community doctrines, great questions, forget-me-not messages
2. Infinite sagas - a long flexible spiral, typically an embroidered or otherwise textured ribbon, containing stories that run on forever, reflecting the time-skipping nature of mindflayer dominion itself ".. until once more, at the far end of time, our Empire rose again and..."
3. Empathy detector - equivalent to an ear-horn, particularly for illithids who have spent too much time alone and want a little more clarity. Weakens defenses against 'blast' psychic attacks. Usually a hidden necklace as wearing one is a sign of weakness.
4. Emotional broadcaster - usually a very ostentatious head-piece that makes sure that what you feel, everyone else feels too. Wearing one of these is an illithid boss-move, be very sure of your place on the social ladder.
5. Empathy shield - for when others tiresome emotions are just not worth dealing with. Also provides some limited defense against psychic attacks. Usually a discrete brooch or pendant worn hidden as openly displaying you have one of these is seen as rude.
6. Telepathy detector - usually a set of tentacle-rings to facilitate triangulating and figuring out exactly who is talking to who. The stereotypical illithid wiggling its face tentacles actually comes from this.
7. Telepathy broadcaster - equivalent of a telepathic bullhorn, when you want everyone to hear you. Typically not focused, just a volume booster, often shaped as a high-standing collar piece.
8. Telepathy shield - typically a helmet-like headpiece, often made to fit within a helmet. Blocks out psychic traffic, forbidden by most Elder brains in their realm, used in raids on others. By the time you see an illithid wearing one of these, the time for negotiation is long past, they are here to kill everything.
9. Telekinetic focus - usually rings for tentacles or fingers - which you choose is a subtle status indicator; tentacle-rings being a sign of mastery. Usually offer a gain of fine-control. True masters wear them on a chain, demonstrating the posess but do not need to use them.
10. Dream antennae - frequently mistaken for a tattoo or stain, this parasitic quasi-organism is like a very thin slug filled full of a sensory filaments that attune to dreams. A door to perception, it is a useful tool for the trained, a hole through which your mind will fall for the unwary.
11. Dream sharing apparatus - the dead husk of a dream antennae preserved in a vessel. It provides a space into which dreams may spread - unnoticeable if you sleep alone but where multiple dreamers are near it allows dreams blend together. As a tiny channel for dreams, it can pierce planar boundaries where they are thin, or grant things seeking to traverse a toehold.
12. Body mastery manual - a complex book of physical exercises that is also a guide to reverse-engineer the limits of ones own anatomy. Initially unremarkable but for being written in qualith, on understanding the text the insight into the illithid view of their bodies as something like meat-puppets that their true self is piloting is deeply disturbing to most mortals.
13. Vicarious possessor - looks similar to a telepathy shield but is inverted to allow ease of possession of the wearer. Used by mindflayers when they want to ride the bodies of their servants for whatever reason, it reduces the need to concentrate to maintain the link
14. Reality probe (multiverse detector) - looks like a broad dish with long, uneven spined legs - it cannot stand on those legs and is supposed to be carried by hand. Liquids in the dish reflect what different realities branch from this place, by gazing into it at a shallow angle. Illithids in possession of these often build audience chambers around them leading to strange angles and positioning such that the reflections are what they want.
15. Chimes of reality anomaly - looks like a wind chime hung with spherical bells. Rings discordantly when something not of the local reality is present such as time travellers, multiversal duplicates, etc.
16. Time sink - Interlocked shining metallic spirals. Soaks up time anomalies rendering local time travel difficult, sometimes blocking aging, healing and other effects. Effects like haste, slow, gentle repose, time stop, etc fail.
17. Echo Mirror - a more powerful version of the reality probe, this tall mirror fringed with writhing spines allows one reflected to 'time test' actions a little way ahead. Addictive, frowned upon as a crutch for the weak of mind
18. 'Tasting fork' - like a four-pronged tuning fork, used to check the likely taste of a brain among captives being matured for the table. Activated by rapping someone on the head with it and poking the 'handle' in their temple.
19. Psurlon serving ware - for having psurlons to dinner; wide-mouthed vessels and broad handled silverware
20. Skull-chain - for the display of particularly noteworthy meals; after cleaning these decorative chains allow display on a staff or from a belt.

Not specific artefacts but notable among the writings of illithids are false histories and manufactured prophecies. All illithids are aware that they are on a journey from their empire at the dawn of time to their empire at the end of time and many hold that this is not the first time they have made this journey. Many such illithids seek out writings from previous passages, historical records from the future, prophecies that are echoes of future events, seers records and scrying of events yet to come, and so on.

The same illithids often try to outmaneuver rivals by pushing false narratives into their path in the hope that they will seize on these 'false facts' and take actions that the rivals wish. It is regarded as the most elegant victory to defeat a rival by convincing them to act as you wish in such a way. The true challenge being that all illithids know such things happen and so the true contest is in falsifying or proving the provenance of any such writings. Illithid actions that make no sense may well be seeding a trail of false proof for such a document and as their own involvement must be obscured, frequently uninvolved mortals can be found doing these things.