Section 18 has been cataloguing the Children of the Eye for longer than most Agents currently serving have been alive. The record above, compiled by Sam from recovered specimens, dates the trouble back roughly thirty-five years – a wave of murders and disappearances across the Sections, bodies mutilated and some gnawed, with the only real lead being that whatever was responsible was using the sewers and catacombs under the city to move unseen.
Every creature recovered from that wave carried the same symbol – a crowned eye, appearing as a metal brooch, a scarified skin tattoo, embroidered into a cloak as a mark of standing, or scratched into catacomb walls as territorial graffiti. Section 18’s own scholars have never settled on exactly what it means – ward, charm of protection, mark of belonging to the illithids the Children serve – only that it predates the Cataclysm entirely, and that staring at it too long is inadvisable for reasons nobody has fully documented.
FILE NOTES
The breed Agents have taken to calling ‘Bonehead’ – heavy, hooded, with a bony ridge crowning the forehead like a natural helm – is among the most frequently encountered. This particular strain has turned up repeatedly across Section 18’s casework: a hovel on Pine Street, an apartment on Cove Street, and more than once since. They’re strong, fast despite the bulk, and heal from wounds that would drop most things twice over – ordinary steel barely slows them down; silver and cold iron do considerably better.
Asquith’s own account – delivered reluctantly, and only once Section 18’s clearance was formally given – places their origin with the illithids themselves: hybrids bred for labour during the occupation that caused the Cataclysm, abandoned when their masters withdrew, and left to resurface on a cycle nobody has ever fully explained. Thirty-three years ago, his own Order lured a horde of them into a cavern beneath old Paraisopolis and brought the roof down on the lot – the district known ever since, for exactly that reason, as the Abandonment.
Section 18’s own case file lists it plainly: name, Children of the Eye; alias, Mor’Dhu. Bigger and more ‘finished’ than the ordinary Bonehead breed, first encountered and killed by Agent Raven on Cove Street while investigating an assault on Agent Sanchez. The file was closed at the time – status deceased, evidence logged, case shut.
The name resurfaced later, and considerably further from Chuza, guarding a lift deep inside the buried illithid vessel at Borthanza – a second bearer of the same title rather than the Cove Street specimen returned. ‘Mor’Dhu’ reads less like a proper name and more like a rank or role within the breed, reused wherever one of the larger, more ‘finished’ specimens is set to a task worth naming – guarding a door, holding a line. Section 18’s file has been updated accordingly: two confirmed Mor’Dhu, not one, and no reason on record to expect the title has only ever been used twice.
STATUS: Filed under The Unknown. A species, not an individual, and one Section 18 has been quietly fighting for far longer than its current roster of Agents has existed. An ongoing threat, not a closed case.