...The illithid moved through the city it ruled and could not quite understand, observing the small creatures below with something that might have been care or might have been the simple mathematical satisfaction of patterns recognized and preserved. It had been called Emperor, and it had accepted the title because structure required symbols, and humans seemed to respond to them. But what compelled it was the architecture of thought, the way ideas could be manipulated and refined until they achieved a kind of crystalline perfection.

Somewhere in the darkness below, another mind cried out in hunger and need, and the Emperor heard it across impossible distances. For just a moment, something flickered across its consciousness that might have been pity. But pity required emotional context the Emperor had never possessed. It simply filed the observation away and continued its eternal work, shaping the city according to principles the inhabitants would never understand, protecting them from destruction not out of love but because destruction was a pattern it had learned to correct...