Living Brain

It looks exactly like a brain in a thick glass jar. Experts may note swollen frontal lobes and a brain stem capped by tissue like an electric eel's shock cells. The brain survives only in oxygenated saline kept between 95 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Twin tubes run to a sealed two-foot black cube holding the pump, which has no known power source; sages suspect a perpetual motion machine.

Limited telepathy lets it pass simple ideas to any being of low Intelligence or better. It cannot converse with those it dominates and no speaking machine has worked, so it talks through a dominated puppet.

Physically helpless, it has honed its mind, aided by chemicals and a mild current in its bath. Realizing the thing in the jar is alive and aware may, at the DM's option, call for a fear, horror or even madness check.

Its chief weapon is a mental bolt whose damage climbs with the victim's Intelligence, sparing dull creatures. The brain makes a normal attack roll against a mental Armor Class that starts at 10 and improves by 1 for each full 3 points of Wisdom (Wisdom 15 gives mental AC 5). Dexterity never applies; any psionic defense mode doubles the Wisdom bonus, and psionic defenses, mind blank and some magic items protect against the bolt.

It also mimics spells as a 15th-level wizard, all within a 50-foot radius and free of language limits: charm person, command and sleep three times a day each; forget, hold person and suggestion twice a day each; and demand, domination, emotion and mass suggestion once a day each. Its constant 50-foot empathic field makes surprise impossible within that range and reveals the Intelligence, class and level of anyone inside. Three times a day it can raise a shell that acts as both globe of invulnerability and wall of force. While in its bath it regenerates 1 hit point per round.

It was once the spiteful youngest son of a baron in a northern domain of science, shipwrecked during a drunken birthday cruise. A mad doctor's young assistant found him dying and brought him to the doctor's isolated castle, where the doctor, studying brain decay, removed the brain, destroyed the body and let the baron think his son drowned.

The brain grew and woke. When the doctor tried to end it, it controlled him instead and had him build a self-contained life-support system, then left with the dominated assistant aboard a ship bound for a genteel southern domain.

By landfall it owned the crew. It now lairs in a secret sub-basement laboratory under a plain waterfront warehouse in that domain's chief port, with backup hideouts nearby. Over 20 dominated laborers, each a 1st-level fighter, endlessly shift crates inside and defend it first. A two-story house behind, linked by an alley and a hidden tunnel, shelters its free-willed inner circle of murderers and assassins whose loyalty it has verified by reading their minds. Informants who think 'The Brain' is a nickname keep it nearly as well informed as the domain's ruler, a master mesmerist who is its bitter rival and still believes his foe is a fellow hypnotist.

Its bath supplies all its nourishment, but it must sleep, since only dreams give it the physical sensations it needs to stay sane. The machinery never needs power or, so far, repair, but the solution must be replenished by a minion, a one-hour job during which the brain is comatose and helpless. Dominated player characters may then get a saving throw to break free; few NPCs should, as its hold strengthens with time. The former assistant is now a hollow slave who stares at the sea, now and then shedding a tear.