Air Kin [Elemental]

A sylph is a lovely woman with translucent dragonfly wings 4 to 5 feet long, either clear or flecked with shimmering color. Her long, shining hair may be a normal human shade or blue, green or purple, and she favors gauzy, flowing robes that show off her wings or hair. Related both to nymphs and to air elementals, sylphs may have begun as a blend of nymph and aerial servant. They speak Common and a lilting tongue of their own, and they are friendly; there is a 20% chance one will befriend a party and help it in return for a favor.

Sylphs never strike with their hands. They fight with magic, casting as 7th-level wizards with a fondness for air spells. Each can turn invisible at will and call up an air elemental once a week. Flight comes from an inborn levitation, and the wings merely push her along, so a sylph with damaged wings can still hover or glide. Anti-magic, however, can bring her down by cancelling that levitation.

They seldom set foot in the lowlands and love to roam, so one is rarely found near home. Their nests vary wildly, from makeshift shelters to elaborate retreats in tall trees or hollowed from mountainsides. They keep few, light belongings, hoarding only gems and magic items as treasure and often swapping wealth for silks, pillows and airy drapes.

Only 1% of sylph homes hold an egg or child. The race is entirely female, and sylphs take humanoid mates, elves by preference, though humans and halflings are sometimes chosen. Three months after conception she sets a pearly egg in a nest made for the purpose and calls an air elemental to guard it. Half a year on, a girl with wing buds hatches; she grows at a human pace, gains her magic at five, and flies fully by ten. Sylphs live as long as 1,000 years and never lose their youthful looks. Every 28 years the entire race gathers to trade, swap news, renew friendships and greet the newest sylphs.

Aloof from ordinary humanoid folk, sylphs mix freely with dryads and nymphs. Flying predators sometimes eat them, but evil humanoid men seeking to capture them for sinister ends are the greater threat.

This air elemental makes its home on the plane of air and in the astral and ethereal planes, and clerics can summon it to the material world. It is normally invisible; on its own plane it looks like a legless figure of glittering blue smoke with hollow eyes, a slit of a mouth, and long hands bearing four fingers each. Unseen, it imposes a -5 penalty on opponents' surprise rolls.

It avoids fights on its native planes. With Strength 23, it seizes and throttles a foe, dealing damage on the hit and every round thereafter until the victim escapes. A character with exceptional Strength has a percentage chance to break loose equal to the percentile score; 18/00 or better slips free easily, as does any creature whose hit points exceed the servant's.

Servants hate being summoned and will attack a cleric not shielded by protection from evil. Otherwise one carries out any task but fighting as fast as it can, though if thwarted it goes mad and returns to slay its summoner. They drift toward violent weather, and a storm has a 5% chance of tearing one in two, their only means of reproducing. They must feed on their home planes' winds at least monthly, suffering 1d8 damage for each day beyond 30 without.