First appearance: Pieces of a King Ep 2: The War Council · watch it on YouTube
The Warmind was the weapon that ate its makers. The desperate peoples of The Underdark built it in the realm of Dämmerung to save themselves from the surface. It was an elder brain assembled, quite literally, from pieces of its makers. Then a black star fell from the sky, the council gave it to the brain, and the war’s saviour became the thing marching everyone toward extinction. It sits at the heart of the hunt for the scattered pieces of The Shadow King, as proof of what even one tiny fragment of him can do.
Story
Pieces of a King Ep 2 — THE WAR COUNCIL
When Nehebka, Grimnar and Muffy arrived from The Dread Fortress, the war in Dämmerung was in its tenth year. Trissavin of the alliance told them how it began. Overworlders raided the homes and temples of the Underdark for treasure. Losing badly, every Underdark people joined one coalition “under one banner” and made something to help them win. The illithids told the coalition “they were making a brain. Something that could think,” one able to out-strategize the surface. Gund, the chief artillerist, admitted the whole camp chipped in, “even the squids.” With the tent cleared, Trissavin confessed the darker truth: “When I say that we all collectively contributed to this Warmind, it is both literal and physical.”
At first it worked spectacularly. With the Warmind’s help, the coalition struck down an angel, “a gargantuan being of light and justice.” Then an illithid of the alliance explained the turn. Years ago a black star fell from the sky, no bigger than a finger bone and “made of perfectly black glass.” Kuo-Toa surrounded it shrieking “change bringer… chaos, chaos.” The council gave it to the still-juvenile elder brain, “and overnight it grew. And overnight, we started to win.” Victory curdled into defeat. In Trissavin’s words, “It stopped regarding us as allies and started to regard us as resources and obstacles.”
By then the Warmind had cast “an umbrella over Dämmerung.” It intercepted messages, made magic wax and wane unnaturally, and for five years had blocked every attempt to leave. Muffy’s way home was useless. The illithid summed it up with a tentacled smile:
“We made it. And now it is unmaking us.”
The Underdark’s peoples fled to the surface in an exodus, and Grim and his red caps ran rescues out of The Blastlands. Somewhere in Dämmerung lay a city with a gate. If the Warmind reached it, “it could spread everywhere.” Nehebka suspected the power it now used belonged to the Shadow King, and wondered aloud what might happen “if one finds a crown within the Warmind.”
Pieces of a King Ep 3 — The Warhead
The alliance laid out its last-ditch answer. The fallen angel turned out to be a Solar, and Gund meant to weaponize its divinity into warheads. One would be carried by hand under the Warmind’s mountain to bury it or blow it away. The Physician, who had helped build the thing, warned what failure meant. The Warmind would march on the Last City and Dämmerung Prime, reach the Planar Gate, and spread across The Void. It already held the minds of “20 millions,” and he vowed that if the city fell, he would make sure it never got theirs, or his.
The Warmind’s army then came out of the south to destroy the Solar’s corpse. It brought basic soldiers, a flare-firing lieutenant, bulky dwarven-looking defenders in heavy plate, and wheeled “bolters,” cannon-creatures with barrels jutting from their mouths. One drone charged Nehebka with the army’s chant, “Surrender to the will of the Warmind.” Its blade passed harmlessly through her sand, and its next swing went so badly that it was said to shut itself down for a Windows update. Then two Titans strode in, and the drones took up a new chant: “The Warmind approaches.”
Pieces of a King Ep 4 - The Warmind
The party followed the tunnels of the 34th Deep Divers to the Warmind’s mountain, but someone had got there first. In its chamber sat a massive illithid-like skull with tentacles spilling out. Around it ran channels of magenta fluid, and Warforged corpses filled the reeking, amniotic air. Glauccous and Taupe, Knights of the Order of Shadow, had already fought their way through and put the brain down. Glauccous was cleaning his sword with his cape. Their mission was to dig out “a piece or a remnant of the uh shadow king stuck in his brain” and put it safely away where it couldn’t harm the people of the Void.
The Warmind was not quite dead. Its eyes were cold and empty, and the only light left came from the remnant in its head, the one thing still keeping it alive. Grimnar sprinted for it while the others held the knights off. A charmed Glauccous cheerfully boosted him up onto the brain and suggested drinks afterwards. Once the remnant was extracted, the Warmind finally died. With it gone, Glauccous noted, travel home through the Planar Gate no longer meant being “shunted through time and space.” A shared vision between Grimnar and Nehebka drove home the lesson. A tiny finger bone had turned an elder brain into all of this, so bigger pieces, or several gathered together, “could be disastrous.”
Personality and Abilities
The Warmind was less a person than a storm of other people’s thoughts. It was a strategist built from pieces of its creators, and it grew “at an exponential rate” once the remnant took hold. It swallowed communication and travel across Dämmerung, made magic unreliable, and brought what the illithid called “the noise, ah, the noise.” It was always hungry for “materials and knowledge.” The alliance’s Nightingales destroyed every body they could find on the battlefields each night so it could not take and reconfigure them.
Its army was its body. Regular Warforged had “elven legs and… human arms” and outranged and outran the alliance. Alongside them marched flare lieutenants, plated defenders, bolter cannons and towering Titans. Grim was not yet convinced it could “put skin on a warforged and have it act like a person,” but he didn’t want to be proven wrong.
Relationships
- The Shadow King: a black-glass finger bone of his, fallen as a star, warped the Warmind and kept it alive to the end.
- The Physician: helped create it, wanted it destroyed, and was quietly curious about the result.
- The Nightingales: destroyed the fallen so their bodies and minds couldn’t feed it.
- Grim: fought it with his red caps, running rescues and commando operations in the Blastlands.
- Grimnar: dashed onto the dying brain to get at the remnant.
- Nehebka: suspected the Shadow King’s hand in it and vowed to take what lay inside.
- Muffy: trapped in Dämmerung by its block on leaving.
Memorable Quotes
- “It stopped regarding us as allies and started to regard us as resources and obstacles.” (Trissavin, Pieces of a King Ep 2 — THE WAR COUNCIL)
- “We made it. And now it is unmaking us.” (an illithid of the alliance, Pieces of a King Ep 2 — THE WAR COUNCIL)
- “Surrender to the will of the Warmind.” (its drones, Pieces of a King Ep 3 — The Warhead)
- “We just didn’t expect it to work that well.” (Trissavin, Pieces of a King Ep 3 — The Warhead)
- “It was a hell of a thing to put down, but goddamn, we did it.” (Glauccous, Pieces of a King Ep 4 - The Warmind)