Hack & Slash posted On the Visual History of the Illithid the other day and pointed out that, in the original Monster Manual, the portrait of the mind flayer was surrounded by an irregular octagon that was completely unique within that tome:
“Although several creatures in the monster manual have borders, most are square. Only two other creatures, the Bugbear and Type V demons have octagonal borders and both of their borders are more regular. Each pane of the mind flayer border is of a different length, no two matching.” Which feels oddly appropriate, given the dimension-rending origins of the mind flayer in many versions of their mythos.
I was struck by the idea that you might be able to take that octagonal border and turn it into an iconic symbol or badge. An Icon of the Flayer. A couple dozen minutes of fiddling around in Photoshop gave me this:
I feel relatively certain it was a deliberate choice for exactly the reason you state, or one so similar as for the differences to be irrelevant.
Even though I like this theory, the sceptic in me is quite sure it is something much more mundane – like more sketches on the same original drawing and this was the only way the border would fit without cutting these up or something…
It looks like the head of some Kirbyesque space cyclops, its single eye segmented like that of a fly and capable of emitting some sort of purple death ray.
It is ironic that one of the few monsters copyrighted by the Wizards of the Coast is also iconic of HP Lovecraft. Another way, in which Lovecraft influenced D&D design is the concept of the Outsiders. Quite brilliant in the unworldly outside nature of the summoned beings, Lovecraft’s descriptions make it possible to side-step realism completely to have Beholders and rivers running upstream without having to invoke realism – this is from another plane, brought forth and held together by powerful magic. Simple elegance. D&D borrows this one step further, when its authors write that one of the themes of the D&D is to battle outsiders, and that is the reason that the Monster Manual had bestiaries of demons, devils, and extra-planar creatures. Where D&D falls short, is that it takes and Alien and Unknowable, and binds it in a set of game stats (Deities and Demi-Gods chief fault), leaving it vulnerable to mediocre play, akin to human players reducing being an Elf to pointy ears and elitist esthetics of the Apollo. The only creature that more or les adequately portrays the Alien and Unknowable (reduced in description for DM’s eyes only, but with a great potential for role-play implementation), is the Cat Lord from MMII.
Love the symbol! Now I just have to come up with the vile cult that uses it as their mark…