Astral-Touched Tadpole

The Astral-Touched Tadpole is capable of evolving you or another illithid-infected companion into a partial-illithid with more psionically powerful illithid powers. Using it is an objective of  Embrace Your Potential.

Though a thick coating of astral frost prevents this parasite from squirming, you feel an immense psychic weight writhe and roil within. It has languished in the Sea of Dead Gods for countless millennia -- learning, gathering potential. It is something old ready to become new again. It is ready for evolution.

Properties

• Miscellaneous Items
• Rarity: Story Item
•  Weight: 0.2 kg / 0.4 lb
• Price: 1 gp
• 
  UID

  LOOT_MF_Tadpole_Astral_A
  UUID

  4a82e6f2-839f-434e-addf-b07dd1578194

Effect

User transforms into a partial-illithid and is granted the following illithid powers:

•  Concentrated Blast
•  Favourable Beginnings
•  Fly
•  Force Tunnel
•  Psionic Overload
•  Transfuse Health

For any power already unlocked by the character that communes or eats this tadpole, one normal tadpole is refunded back to the unusued tadpoles.

Where to find

Awarded by The Emperor at the beginning of Act Three, after assisting him in defending himself from members of Orpheus' Honour Guard in the Astral Plane

Usage

• The tadpole can be eaten, communed with or destroyed. The last of which is only an option if having avoided consuming tadpoles so far. Eating or communing with the tadpole results in the party member receiving its powers; however, if it is eaten, it cannot be communed with by other members of the party.
• Any character who communes with (or eats) the tadpole irrevocably changes in appearance, gaining prominent black veins over their entire body; the Magic Mirror cannot be used to reverse this change.

Notes

• Communing with this tadpole in the middle of combat causes the game the refuse to grant the powers that the tadpole traditionally gives. However, a party member who communes in combat still gains the Tadpoles necessary to gain the Mind Flayer powers that communing with the tadpole traditionally grants - i.e. a character who has not invested into Mind Flayer abilities at all gains 6 tadpoles, one for each of  Concentrated Blast,  Favourable Beginnings,  Fly,  Force Tunnel,  Psionic Overload,  Transfuse Health. Notably, the party member needs to "work their way through the tech tree" to unlock Fly, unlike when it is traditionally unlocked.