Some eight to nine thousand years ago (adjust to taste), there existed a giant illithid city, capital of a great illithid empire, built on and between ten thousand asteroids within a crystal sphere. The native sentient races of the sphere's worlds (primarily humans, though with many eladrin, elves, and drow) had long since been taken by the illithids as slaves, and crossbred and magically enhanced for various purposes: foremost among them intelligence, and thereby taste.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, their gluttony was their downfall. The illithids had taken the precaution of making them sterile, capable of reproducing only by means of the ritual magics that had been used to create them; but these magics eventually fell into the hands of the slaves themselves, and this enabled them to amass (in secret, far from the Heavenly City) the forces necessary to overthrow their illithid rulers.
Unfortunately, the
Abh (as the hybrid race had come to call themselves) chose to do this by causing the City's sun to flare violently, destroying all life within the city.
The loss of the largely innocent slaves within was seen as a sorrowful but acceptable loss. Most of the slaves within were to be evacuated beforehand; while this would necessitate tipping their hand to the illithids, the loss of the manufacturing and magical resources of the city (as well as the consequent demoralization of their illithid overlords) was judged sufficient. However, the flare was much,
much stronger than expected: the city was melted,
the refugees (mind-flayer and slave alike) were vaporized, the worlds within were scoured of life, and the crystal sphere itself was shattered. The only survivors were the Abh rear guard, positioned outside the sphere when it gave way.
(Edit 2009-01-08: I need them to be more horrified at the result.)
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