Your party, on the trail in an isolated valley, come across a

>>46086611
What do I look like, a GM?

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They're doctors that specialize in brain surgery?

>>46086611
I'm assuming they're some manner of good aligned.
Brain eating: animals less nutritious but will sustain them. Alternatively they summon bind and consume evil beings.
As for recruiting: Either they let the humanoids that recruit with promises of psionic power keep their personalities through the transformation and/or they have some sort of arrangement with local settlements to harvest fresh dead and/or go on periodic crusades to capture evildoers to convert to their cause.

>>46087051
It's safe to say that they would be good brain surgeons. Just...don't let them poke around there too long, or they might get ideas.

>>46086611
Eating the brain of a sentient being is regarded as something akin to communion and is only done to the sick and dying (as a tithe for mind flayer protection.) After the meal the body is cremated and the eater records the memories and thoughts of the deceased to be preserved in the monastery's library.

>>46087550
Thats a pretty cool idea, but wheres the problem? come on, you can't have just a née meet up, sure ht eplayers are cautious of the brain eating tentacle monsters, but once they find out they're all cool then what? some guy up and eats a brain and now its the players job to find out who? meanwhile being paranoid their brains are on the menu?

>>46086611
They eat chocolate instead, like Venom.

>What are their customs?
Devouring every visitor possible and being smug about it.
>How do they treat their brain-eating habit?
Very seriously.
>How do they recruit new novitiates?
By infecting some visitors with horrible brain fucking parasites that morph them.

Eating brains made them clever enough to be friendly to a clearly more powerful party capable of slaughtering them.

>>46088847
...what

>>46090380
Uh, that guy's referring to the symbiotes from Marvel. While chocolate can, in large quantities, satisfy the symbiotes' dietary requirements, in most cases they prefer to just eat people (Toxin being the main exception.)

>>46088759
There are Underdark mind flayer parties climbin' in everybody's windows, snatchin' people up, causing them to hide their kids, hide their wives, and hide their husbands. The monastery is relying on natural death rates to feed themselves, and the raids are stealing their food.