Saltor
Image by Thomas M Baxa, © TSR, Inc.
[The last of the illithdae from Dragon 150, and the one that I think was best served by Lords of Madness. D&D 3.5 gave it its own unique ability, a sonic scream that acts as a lo-fi version of an illithid's mind blast. The Dragon Magazine version comes in multiple HD forms, but I took the Lords of Madness approach, and just used the highest HD version.]
Saltor CR 5 LE Aberration This creature resembles a hairless monkey the size of a goat, with a long canine muzzle surrounded by thin, flexible tentacles. It carries a spear in its hands, tipped with a stone point.
Saltors are illithidae that are fairly close relatives to mind flayers themselves, being the equivalent to an illithid as a monkey is to a human. Unlike true mind flayers, saltors do not have extreme sexual dimorphism—males and females look functionally identical to each other. They do undergo a form of ceremorphosis, however, raising tadpoles in pools and placing them in the partially emptied skulls of humanoids. Saltors use small humanoids as their hosts and do not compete with illithids for corpses.
Saltors typically live and travel in groups. A troop will have a central hub containing its breeding pool, and then bands will split off in order to forage. They are omnivorous with a taste for fungi and meat, and especially prey on small humanoids such as derro or svirfneblin in order to use their corpses to reproduce as well. Saltors prefer to attack from ambush and keep at range, hurling magic missiles and javelins to weaken prey before closing to melee. Their terrible scream acts as both weapon and alarm call, and a lone saltor that screams will likely have a half dozen of its fellows close behind to back it up.
Of the various kinds of illithidae, saltors are among the most likely to be found in a mind flayer colony. Mind flayers see them as just the right combination of useful and disposable, and saltors for their part view illithids as something like demigods. In addition to acting as foot soldiers and laborers, saltors may be found serving mind flayers as experimental subjects, sacrificial victims or emergency rations, all of which the saltors accept as their rightful place.
A saltor stands about three feet tall. Their own technology is at a Stone Age level, and they covet metal weapons and tools. Saltors advance by class level, and often take levels in barbarian or psychic.
