Possible life cycles of the intellect devourer

Here are some more of my musings on the intellect devourer. In earlier posts I explored some possibilities for life cycles and morphs. These are some more attempts to speculate and maybe reconcile wildly different conceptions.

The brain collectors apparently employ an alchemical process that transforms harvested brains into intellect devourers, ethereal assassins, brain golems and other animate brain monsters. The phrenic scourges employ this process, although it isn’t clear who developed it first.

The phrenic scourges clearly intended the devourers to be slaves, but brain collectors may create them as a method of reproduction if rumors of devourers molting into collectors are to be believed.

Intellect devourers are supposedly sterile due to lack of a reproductive system but, somehow, they seemed to have established self-sustaining populations. As I said in an earlier post, they don’t seem to have a fixed reproductive method. They have been observed reproducing by alchemically preparing harvested brains, spawning larvae in pools, growing devourers on stalks like fruit and, perhaps most disturbingly, using their host bodies to sire humanoid offspring that may molt their brains into new devourers upon reaching adulthood (or become sorcerers with an aberrant bloodline/origin).

Furthermore, there are multiple stages in the life of a devourer. Hound-like forms (the standard devourer), semi-humanoid forms (often called paretiophages), parasitic forms that always wear host bodies (often called mindolons), giant sessile brains, etc. There even seem to be multiple forms of larvae with different functions.

Some free-swimming larvae may mature into devourers, which may further molt into paretiophages.

Some devourers and paretiophages can inject larvae directly into the skulls of live prey, then force them to serve the parent through psychotropics secreted by the larvae or the threat of the larvae eating their brain. These larvae might be able to mature into devourers themselves, or they might just die after their purpose has been served.

The larvae of mindolons can only mature within the brains of already dead hosts, using the corpse as a protective shell for their own flimsy body, otherwise the new devourer would go insane as the two personalities war for control.