Larian Studios, the developer behind the recently announced Baldur’s Gate 3, has revealed a new slice of fresh hell from the forthcoming roleplaying game, depicting one of the tentacle-faced, brain-eating psionicists from the race of interplanar slavers called Ilithids — more commonly known as mind flayers.

Though scant on details, the image below reveals an illithid psionically floating through the darkened hallway of a nautiloid ship.

Baldur’s Gate 3 concept art of an illithid psionically floating inside the darkened hallway of a nautiloid ship.

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If you caught the Baldur’s Gate 3 announcement teaser during the Google Stadia Connect or anytime thereafter, it should be no surprise that mind flayers will play a central role in the next chapter of the Baldur’s Gate franchise. If you haven’t seen the Baldur’s Gate 3 reveal trailer, you can scroll down the page and watch it right now. And you should. It’s excellently foreboding.We know Baldur's Gate 3 will take place about one hundred years after the events of the Baldur's Gate 2, and that the players will begin their journey outside the famed city before moving inside and being swept up in the adventure.What we don’t know is to what extent the iconic race of mind-slurping aberrations will be featured. For example, there are all sorts of fun, horrifying mutations that can occur in the hive-mind collective. Though the creature in the new image appears to have the familiar four-tentacle anatomy, mind flayer tentacles tend to be shorter, ending at approximately chest level — these are clearly longer. However, the mind flayer in the reveal trailer had similar length tentacles, so it's possible this is just the artistic vision for illithids in Baldur's Gate 3.There are illithid with longer tentacles, called Ulitharid, which can be “born” through some unknown variant during ceremorphosis — the process by which mind flayer's reproduce, implanting a larval tadpole into a victim's cranium usually via the nostril or ear canal where it devours the brain and replaces it, changing the host body into that of a mind flayer. Anyway, on rare occasions, this process spawns an Ulitharid, a stronger, more aggressive version with six tentacles that drape down to the floor. But these tentacles aren’t quite that long, and again, there’s only four of them, so maybe we’re looking at a new subspecies or just a fabulous specimen of the colony.And what about that protruding, webbed frill cresting around its head and shoulders. It could be genetic and indicative of a new subspecies, but more likely it's one of the augmentations mind flayers are known to don called a Survival Mantle — a piece of carapace-like armor worn about the head, neck, and chest that also has the added benefit of allowing them to breathe normally in any atmosphere or lack thereof. We also see the creature wearing some sort of bracer-like armor about the wrists.Then there’s the nautiloid, which is a massive conch-shaped ship that can travel between planes. In mind flayer lore, the colonies of the great empire once spanned the planes, and they conquered and subjugated worlds and races until their slave empire eventually rose up and overthrew their masters. But at the height of the illithid heyday, they were able to use these ships to travel the planes and spread their sweet, psychic indoctrination. The problem? Almost all of these ships were lost, supposedly, along with the capability to make more, again, supposedly.So that leaves us with a once-conquering race of mind-bending, squid-mouthed slavers who have since scattered and gone into hiding as they rekindle the embers of the old empire while stewing in their paranoia-spiked superiority complex.But with confirmation we’ll be seeing nautiloid ships once again — as we saw at the end of the Baldur’s Gate 3 reveal trailer — one can only wonder if the far-reaching empire that isn’t supposed to exist anymore was ever really gone. Baldur’s Gate 3 could set the stage for a full-scale invasion from a hidden, flourishing illithid colony.Baldur’s Gate 3 is still a ways off and currently does not have a release date, though it will come to PC at launch. And speaking of platforms, Larian confirmed it doesn’t want to play the exclusivity game and Baldur's Gate 3 won't be restricted to Google Stadia.In the meantime, you can get your hands on Wizards of the Coast's latest adventure Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus and spend time in the famed city — and the first layer of hell — before Baldur's Gate 3 is released.

Brandin Tyrrel is IGN's Senior Editor. You can find him on Unlocked , or chat over on Twitter at @BrandinTyrrel