Arcane

The arcane are lanky blue giants with long faces and slender fingers, each finger carrying one more joint than most humanoids have. They usually wear robes, though some go about in a mix of chain and plate patches (AC 3). They speak common and are thought to have a language of their own.

For their size the arcane are frail and unwarlike. They would rather talk or pay their way out of trouble, and when visiting risky places, which includes most human cities, one will hire adventurers as bodyguards. It thinks nothing of deserting them if things turn ugly.

An arcane can become invisible, and up to three times per day it can dimension door, mostly to dodge a fight. It can also use any magical item regardless of normal restrictions, class-limited swords, wands and tomes included. It will draw on these when cornered with no way out, but more often trades them.

A racial telepathy means every arcane instantly knows when one is hurt. They do not take revenge on the attacker, but they turn cold toward him, and doing business with any arcane becomes nearly impossible until he makes amends.

Their origin is a mystery. They appear wherever people know of and want starship gear, and never in backwater worlds that reject space travel or on worlds that travel by stepping between dimensions. Though they ride other races' ships, they are rarely found aboard, and many suspect they have another means of crossing great distances.

Finding one in a civilized area is easy: word passed through taverns, guilds and barracks brings one forward, with a base 10% daily chance of success for anyone actively searching, adjusted for location. They never open permanent shops.

Their trade is magic items, above all starhelms that move ships swiftly through the void. Reliable quality and uniform prices, high as they are, have made them the dealers everyone trusts. They accept gold or swap for other items; a rule of thumb is five times the item's XP value or a more valuable item in trade.

The arcane accept no blame for how their goods are used and will deal with almost anyone, often arming both sides of a conflict knowing it may wipe out every customer in a region. They will not deal with web-eel slavers or with genies, tanar'ri, fiends and other beings from beyond the Prime. No one knows if they make their wares or obtain them from some hidden source.

Customers find them cool, efficient and indifferent. Haggling is a gamble: sometimes an arcane plays along with an amused smirk, sometimes it simply walks away. Threats, insults and blackmail are remembered, and the offender will struggle to buy reliable goods again. An arcane never strikes in anger; it has quieter ways to get even.

Other races find them irritating but indispensable. The gods are silent or evasive on their origin. One tale claims they bartered away their homeworld to an elder god in exchange for the Great Starship, failed to control it, and sent it plunging into a sun that destroyed their world, dooming them to wander as traders. The great ship is still sighted, so the story is probably false, yet the arcane let it spread without comment.

They must eat and breathe like other creatures and cannot survive the void or long without food. Their market is so vast that losing a whole planet and race of buyers to the weapons they sold barely dents it.

They seem sexless, though individuals sometimes take on male or female roles as the moment requires, and no young have ever been seen. What they do with their gold, gems and magic is unknown; one theory ties it to reproduction (the root of many crude jokes), another to making or acquiring still more magic. The arcane say nothing.