Aboleth

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"Readers will notice a thematic resemblance between the aboleths, the Elder Evils, and various creatures or beings found in the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. This is, of course, completely intentional. Of all the major aberration races in the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game, the aboleths best personify the sense of cosmic horror and the ultimate insignificance of humankind expressed in Lovecraft’s writings. In fact, it’s quite easy to treat the aboleths themselves as a Lovecraftian race akin to the elder things featured in “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Dreams in the Witch House.”"

– Lords of Madness

Aboleths are aquatic aberrations with impressive psionic abilities (or magic, depending on edition). Can Dominate, as well as force you to lose the ability to breath air. They created the Skum and Chuul, from enthralled humanoid slaves. Also, their species is older than the world and the gods themselves, and they can back up that claim thanks to their ancestral memory, meaning that they are incapable of forgetting and all their memories are passed down from parent to offspring. They can also absorb the memories of anything they eat. The only thing they don't recall is the genesis of the illithid species (since they're from the distant future) so of course this freaks the aboleths out a little bit since they have no idea where the fuck they came from.

They first appeared in the Dwellers of the Forbidden City adventure module in 1980-81, and then in Monster Manual II a few years later. Dragon Magazine #131 has an Ecology article. The normal aboleth are merely well... normal; we're here for larger and more powerful iterations. With psychic abilities that would put The Emperor and Professor X to shame. Mother Brain ain't got SHIT on the most powerful one. Sadly this article got ignored by everything that came after the Dungeoneers Survival Guide.

Carl Sargent, midway through 2nd edition, tried again: with Night Below. The Savant and Grand Savant overlapped (so supplanted) the Greater and Noble Aboleth from the Dragon article, also introducing the Blood Queen to supplant the Grand Aboleth. Sargent-Aboleth are further handy with Glyph magic. Sargent did "forget" to include the skum but nobody cared because he'd used dominated kuo-toa for that niche.

For 3e Lords of Madness introduced a few new kinds of Aboleths and also contained some great lore on them. An amphibious aboleth is an aboleth that has adapted to be able to live both in and out of water, at the cost of not being as good at swimming. Uobilyths are aboleths don't live in water at all and can fly, and also are never lawful aligned. Stygian aboleths are aboleths that have been mutated as a result of living a long time in Stygia. Most aboleths do not worship gods, but do pay respects to five beings known as the Elder Evils.

If a race with perfect ancestral memory, including every slave eaten was not bad enough, the 5e entry also snuck in a tidbit that thier spirit flees and reforms in the plane of water when slain, making them an even longer-term receptacle of knowledge and schemes.

Gallery

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  I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City
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  1e
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  Saltwater Aboleth, Dungeon #12
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  Greater Aboleth, Dragon #131
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  Noble Aboleth, Dragon #131
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  Ruler Aboleth, Dragon #131
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  Grand Aboleth, Dragon #131
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  2e
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  Aboleth & Friends, Night Below
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  Savant Aboleth, Night Below
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  The Grand Savant, Night Below Reference Card 6
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  The Blood Queen, Night Below Reference Card 5
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  Blood Queen and Grand Savant tokens, Night Below Reference Card 7
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  Shaboath (Aboleth city), Night Below
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  Monstrous Manual (Premium Edition)
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  3e
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  Stygian Aboleth
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  Lords of Madness
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  Dungeon #144
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  4e
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  5e said "Get this man a bite attack"

Further Reading

Books

• Dwellers of the Forbidden City pp. 7, 24
• Monster Manual II (AD&D) p.8
• Monstrous Compendium Volume Two p. 14
• Lords of Madness Book of Aberrations pp. 15-36

Magazines

• Dragon Magazine #131 "Ecology of the Aboleth" pp. 36-39
• Dragon Magazine #222 "Secrets of the Sunless Seas" pp. 90-94
• Dungeon Magazine #12 "Intrigue in the Depths" pp.34-47
• Dungeon Magazine #144 "The Lightless Depths" pp. 29-66
• Polyhedron Magazine #87 "Eye of the Leviathan" pp. 10-19

Pathfinder

Unlike the beholder and illithid, aboleth are OGL content. For this reason, Pathfinder uses them as the main shadowy, manipulative aberration with innate mind control magic. In fact, Pathfinder aboleths are just the most common member of a whole family of psychic fish monsters known collectively as alghollthus (If you look at the gallery below you can see they ran out of design ideas and just started to put red eyes on random aquatic animals). Aboleths have also been renamed Alghollthu Masters in Pathfinder 2e, just in case WotC decides to copyright the name.

The alghollthus are actually a major part of Golarion's history, as they were the ones behind the Age of Darkness, when Golarion was covered by an sun-blocking ash cloud for a long time due to a meteor impact. The ancient algholluths had a massive underwater empire on primordial Golarion, sharing it with numerous enslaved races and the first advanced human civilization, the Azlanti. The fishy abominations nurtured and psychically pulled the humans' strings, advancing them towards higher civilization, stronger magic, and more advanced technology, as the humans served the algholluths' will as slaves. They were also a big fan of fleshwarping, turning many humans into water-breathing gillmen... sorry, Azarketi. (damn copyright)

Eventually, the humans came to the shocking realization that being slaves to these psychic fish sucked and began to wage war against their masters. Despite their best efforts to subvert them from within with mind-slaves, the alghollthus were being soundly crushed in open war, so they decided on a desperate ploy: Summon down a meteor to blow up the Azlant Empire, while the fishy bois waited out the fallout underwater. Brilliant plan... except things did not go as planned. The Azlanti goddess of the moon, Acavna, moved the moon in-front of their summoned meteor to try and block it, sacrificing herself in the process. So now, rather than one big impact in a localized position, the meteor shattered into millions of fiery fragments that rained destruction all over the planet. The sheer amount of searing space debris raining down on Golarion, plus the MASSIVE tidal waves and earthquakes caused by the impacts, utterly destroyed the alghollthus' underwater empire, along with the Azlanti and countless others. Their numbers took a nosedive and the survivors were forced into hibernation, never to regain their former glory again. They still pop up here and there in modern history, but thankfully their empire is long-gone.

Oh, also the meteor was poisonous as the Azlanti goddess of magic sacrificed to herself so that it wasn't anymore. Likely due to being bathed in the blood of two different goddesses and alghollthu magics, the core of the meteor would eventually become the semi-sentient Starstone, a massive gemstone capable of granting full godhood to mortals that it deems worthy. So far, only 3 have succeeded: Iomedae the paladin, Cayden Cailean the drunken hero, and Norgorber the rogue.

Gallery

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  Alghollthu
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  Alghollthu
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  Uldraaghu
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  Vidileth
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  Onthooth
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  Enisysian
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  Uluuthan
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  Plizeazoth
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  Aboleth Engineer
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  Omnipath
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  Vidileth
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  Vidileth
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  Omnipath

GURPS

In GURPS 4e Dungeon Fantasy book Monsters 2 pgs. 14-15, aboleths are called Deep Beyonders. They are not restricted to the water, and can in fact innately levitate in the air just like a beholder!

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