Proteans

Petitioners are the souls of mortals brought to the Outer Planes after death in order to experience their ultimate punishment, reward, or fate. A petitioner retains fragments of its memories from life, and its appearance depends not only upon the shape it held in life but also upon the nature of the Outer Plane to which it has come.

Within the ever-churning expanses of the Maelstrom, The Shapeless strive to maintain their identity. Amidst the unpredictable eddies and vortices of raw chaos, these souls exhibit ever-shifting, ephemeral forms, like reflections on disturbed water. The Maelstrom’s intrinsic unpredictability pulls and reshapes their essence without relent. Yet for those who can navigate and withstand its capricious tides, a potential evolution awaits, drawing them towards the serpentine beauty of the proteans.

Disowned by greater proteans, who find these tiny beings shameful, voidworms nevertheless retain all the characteristics of true proteans, and are frequently found swimming through the Maelstrom in vast schools or serving as spellcasters’ familiars. Debate rages as to whether or not the strange and capricious creatures called voidworms are actually proteans at all. To the wizards and sorcerers who summon them as familiars, the answer seems obvious— these tiny dwellers of the Maelstrom have all the requisite racial traits of proteans, down to their serpentine shapes. Yet the established protean castes find such claims outright insulting, claiming instead that it is such acts of conjuration that call voidworms forth from the raw stuff of Maelstrom, giving them shape and life according to the spellcasters’ expectations, and that these lesser beings are but pale reflections of their formidable kin. Voidworms themselves have little to say on the matter—creatures of the moment, and sparing little thought for the constantly mutable concept of “reality,” voidworms only barely grasp cause and effect, and the past has no more substance or significance for them than a dream. In order to gain a voidworm as a familiar, a spellcaster must be chaotic neutral, be caster level 7th, and have the Improved Familiar feat. Regardless of their actual origins, voidworms maintain a thriving ecology in the chaos of the Maelstrom, forming together into darting, flashing schools that are often hunted for sport by naunets and other predators of chaos. Mortal wizards, however, most commonly encounter voidworms as summoned familiars. These tiny, serpentine creatures are particularly valued by illusionists, evokers, and other magical practitioners who deal with distorting or molding reality, though the familiars’ bizarre logic and miniscule attention spans sometimes make them more trouble than they’re worth. Still, their confusing attack and remarkable hardiness have saved more than one wizard on the battlefield, and their strange thought processes can sometimes offer unique insights in the laboratory. When traveling in more mundane lands, wizards often order voidworm familiars to use their change shape ability to disguise themselves as ordinary pets or animal familiars, though these disguises tend to slip when the voidworm grows curious or playful. A voidworm is only 2 feet long and weighs a mere 2 pounds. No two voidworms are exactly alike in their coloration or markings. Their two feathery wings generally take on brighter colors than the rest of their bodies, and in the case of voidworms conjured as familiars, these “wings” are the same color as their masters’ eyes.

Ourdivars are spontaneously formed when called forth via spells like lesser planar ally. They toil at the behest of their conjurer creators, acting as tools of chaos across the planes. An ourdivar is 12 feet long and weighs 700 pounds.

Azuretzis, which are also known as mockery wyrms, enjoy vexing spellcasting creatures.

A chaos beast’s form changes without any goal or purpose. Though at any particular second a chaos beast may appear to have dozens of limbs, whether claws, tentacles, stingers, and so on, the lightning-quick shifts of its body mean most of these are gone before it has a chance to use them, and its attacks are always treated as claws regardless of the creature’s appearance.

Possessing little in the way of culture, the powerful naunets are the most bestial of the true proteans, representing the lowest recognized caste. Naunets are the shock troops of the protean race, and patrol the borderlands between the Maelstrom and other planes, seeking out lawful incursions and making daring, savage raids into the realms of their enemies. Far more bestial than their kin, naunets are roving marauders in the cause of chaos. Primarily found in the shifting borderlands between the Maelstrom and other planes, naunets are driven half-insane by the stability and stasis of such areas, and frequently rampage through the edges of other planes, tearing up the very fabric of reality itself and returning vast swaths of land to the beautiful, formless potentiality of their home. A naunet is 12 feet long and weighs 900 pounds.

Just as other proteans delight in bringing change to subvert the awful stagnancy of the physical world, pelagastrs are dedicated to inviting chaos and freedom into the dull, stale lives of its inhabitants. Unrestrained by the limits of a physical body, they spy on private spaces and secrets, and hop from host to host to savor the strangeness of the physical world using as many senses as possible.

These cunning proteans seek to subvert the forces of order from within their own systems, whispering information and insinuations where they can do the most damage. Endlessly creative, they adore reforming the landscapes of the Maelstrom to suit their fancies, but enjoy warping the vistas and creatures of other planes even more. Missionaries of chaos and heralds of reality’s eventual unraveling, imenteshes are the proteans most likely to be encountered outside of the Maelstrom. Despite their sometimes loquacious and courtly manner, imenteshes’ entropic agenda is ever at the front of their minds, and this inherent madness is evident in the soft, telepathic susurrus that constantly surrounds them, threatening to warp the minds of the weak-willed. An imentesh is 15 feet long and weighs 1,200 pounds.

Oshageroses exist to destroy or ward away creatures seen as antithetical to true chaos.  An oshageros is 8 feet long and weighs 220 pounds.

The reclusive hegessiks are the wandering clergy of the protean race, itinerant spiritual elders and voices in the supernatural wilderness. Detached from the ever-shifting pseudo-structure of powerful protean cabals, hegessiks serve as intermediaries between them and as agents of the protean lords. Along with keketars, they deal with those gods who dwell within the Maelstrom.  The average hegessik is 14 feet long and weighs 1,400 pounds.

Priest-kings and voices of the Maelstrom itself, keketars rule their fellows in the name of their bizarre god. Though their forms are extremely mutable, keketars can always be recognized thanks to eyes that glow amber or violet and floating crowns of swirling and changing symbols that often appear above their heads. Organized into cabals called choruses, keketars seek only to understand and follow the will of entropy. Their sacred mission is to return all existence to primal chaos.

While the keketars hold vague ideological sway over their kind’s infinite choruses, the izfiitars loom above them, cardinals among the slithering clergy. Aloof and distant even compared to the keketars, izfiitars rarely venture beyond the Maelstrom’s deepest reaches, content to divine the will of the plane’s unknowable dualistic godhead, the Speakers of the Depths.  Bound to a single chorus, izfiitars are and yet are not distinct from the keketars who pay them obeisance, leading many to speculate that they are essentially elevated keketars, chosen for reasons unknown and propelled along a path of apotheosis either by the Maelstrom itself or by one of the so-called protean lords. Yet their position remains paradoxical, befitting the Maelstrom’s rejection of stability and consistency. Not every chorus contains an izfiitar, while some contain multiple, and the size and influence of any given chorus is entirely independent of their presence.  Although smaller in size than keketars, izfiitars have monstrous physical attacks and stupendous magical powers. They wield a more powerful version of lesser proteans’ warpwave, as well as abilities that bend reality and alter probability, focused on the proteans’ desire to return all of reality to the freedom of pure, unbound chaos.

HERALD OF THE SPEAKERS  
Among the izfiitars, those termed Heralds of the Speakers wield greater power and authority than their kin and take a more direct hand in guiding the choruses than the much more distant protean lords. Each Herald of the Speakers is effectively a unique being; they often have additional Hit Dice or levels in a particular class (typically cleric or oracle), the advanced creature simple template, and possibly unique powers granted by their dualistic and inscrutable divine patron. Listed below are three sample unique abilities of Heralds of the Speakers, but these examples are by no means the entirety of the strange powers they might wield.
Planar Transposition (Su): The Herald’s connection to the fabric of the Maelstrom that underlies every other plane of reality provides it a considerable ability to influence its surroundings even while on other planes. As a standard action once every 1d4 rounds, the Herald can suppress one planar trait or add one of the Maelstrom’s planar traits to an area equal to one 10- foot square per Hit Die it has. Alternatively, the Herald can effectively shift the area in a 90-foot radius centered on itself into the Maelstrom, swapping a corresponding region of the Maelstrom onto its current plane and choosing whether to move creatures or leave them in place. Creatures can resist being transported by succeeding at a Will save (DC = 10 + half the Herald’s HD + the Herald’s Charisma modifier).  
Reality Flaunt (Su): The Herald can selectively ignore or redirect a spell or spell-like ability once every 1d4 rounds as an immediate action. The Herald can choose to buck the laws of reality and ignore such an effect by attempting a Wisdom check (DC = the caster level of the spell or spell-like ability). If the Herald exceeds the DC by 10 or more, it can choose to redirect any targeted effect to a new target of its choosing within 60 feet.  
Voice of the Speakers (Su): The Herald of the Speakers has additional spell-like abilities (20 spell levels’ worth of 1st- to 4th-level spells usable at will and 20 spell levels’ worth of 5th- to 8th-level spells usable three times per day). All selected spells must come from the cleric spell list, the Chaos domain, or the Protean subdomain.