Composite Elemental

A tempest is a living thundercloud, small as storms go, in whose churning vapors human or animal faces often appear. Silver veins run through it, carrying the electrical pulses that keep the storm alive. It has no language humans can learn, but it talks with genies, with elementals of air and water, and with their kindred through gentle gusts and spatters of rain. About 10% know a few words of Common, spoken in a soft, hissing voice with an edge of malice.

Fiercely territorial, a tempest treats any intrusion into its sky as a challenge, and it hunts in and near its domain for animals to drain of moisture. Its powers work as if cast by a 9th-level wizard unless noted. Each round it makes two attacks: one with wind and one with lightning.

For its wind attack it may cast a wind wall or a gust of wind, batter a foe with a blast (2-16 points of damage), or spend a full round forming a whirlwind. The funnel is 10 feet wide at the bottom, 30 feet wide at the top, up to 50 feet tall, and must stay joined to the cloud. It covers 100 square feet per round, killing every creature under 2 Hit Dice outright and battering all others for 2d6 points of damage. The tempest can also impose -6 on missile attacks, or slam fliers out of the sky, dealing falling damage to any that fail a save vs. paralyzation.

Once a round it can hurl a lightning bolt at a single target, rolling a die of damage for each of its own Hit Dice, halved by a successful save vs. spells. In every other way the bolt matches the wizard spell: 80 feet long, igniting combustibles, melting metal and shattering barriers. A very hungry or angry tempest may blast apart a whole building to reach those inside. In place of either attack it can send a chilling wind that acts as chill touch, 1d4 damage plus the loss of a Strength point unless the target saves vs. spells.

By concentrating and making no attacks, it can release as much as 20 gallons of rain each round, either spread evenly or focused to fill a pit, wash away a bridge or otherwise harm foes. Wind, gas and water attacks cannot touch a tempest, nor can weapons below +2, and cold or electricity deals it only half damage.

Apparently kin to both elementals and genies, tempests contain all four elements: their lightning is fire, their silver veins are earth, their gusts are air and their rain is water. A spellcaster summoning an elemental, especially of air or water, may draw one by accident; if the summoning is disrupted, the game master may allow a 10%-50% chance of a tempest arriving. Weather summoning carries a non-cumulative 1% chance per casting of attracting one. Some sages believe tempests are injured jann unable to hold human form.

They reproduce as storms do. They have two genders, though male and female fit poorly. When two meet, a short, violent courtship produces a huge storm that can rage for over a week, spinning off hurricanes or tornadoes that ravage the region. When it breaks, the parents depart, and the residue forms 1d4 infant tempests, sometimes called tantrums, which travel together until maturing at one year. Young tempests have 6 Hit Dice and can only make rain and use gust of wind.

Unsurprisingly stormy in temper, tempests hate animal life beyond their thirst for it. Sages suggest their form or some past event explains it, or that the electrical activity of animal brains pains them. They might be related to skriaxits, but no meeting between the two has ever been recorded.

Draining moisture cannot hurt the living, so after a fight a tempest hovers low to drink from the dead and reclaim the rain it dropped. Some trail great human battles as scavengers. A corpse dried this way cannot be returned by raise dead, though resurrection and other spells still work.

A slain tempest showers down silver residue worth 3d6 sp if carefully collected. Beyond its value as metal, it serves as a component for a wand of lightning, weather spells, and other weather or elemental magic items. Genies and elementals attack tempests on sight and the storms return the favor, yet some genies, particularly djinn and marids, train them as guard and attack pets. An angry tempest can devastate a local ecology. Living storms never enter buildings or go underground.

Found only in polar lands and colder temperate regions, this variety lacks the whirlwind and lightning bolt. It instead casts ice storm, usually as hail but sometimes sleet, or drops bitterly cold snow for 9d4+9 cold damage, halved by a save vs. spells. It still makes only two attacks a round, one with a wind power and one with a cold power, and may swap either for an electric jolt that works like shocking grasp, 1d8+9 damage.

This living storm of fire and air, usually found in deserts, rains fire on everything below for 7d10 damage (save vs. breath weapon for half), then fans the blaze, which keeps burning as long as fuel lasts.

Known also as blackstorms or living sandstorms, skriaxits are the terror of many deserts, though luckily they are seldom awake. Ancient gods summoned them millennia ago as spirits of vengeance, fusing earth and air. They speak their own howling, shrieking language, which terrifies most humans, as well as the speech of air elementals. Like giant versions of the dust devils a wizard's spell creates, each whirls desert sand and dust into a 10-foot cone; at rest it looks like a windblown heap of black dust.

Packs are their true horror. Their winds drive them at speed 12 in groups of 1-6, 18 in groups of 7-12, and 24 when 13 or more travel together. Around the pack rages a sandstorm 200 yards in radius that deals each creature caught in it 1 point of damage a round for every skriaxit present, so a dozen blackstorms deal 12 points a round, enough to strip a man to the bone in minutes. Within the storm the pack constantly dispels magic as if cast by a 16th-level wizard, and each skriaxit can lash with razor winds for 2d10 points of damage.

Though first called from the plane of air, they fused with earth long ago and now belong to the material world, so holy word and similar magic cannot banish them to an elemental plane. No known magic controls them, though protections against air elementals do affect them. Each pack follows a Great Skriax, its most evil member, with 24+24 Hit Dice and +4 to attack and damage rolls.

Highly intelligent and deeply evil, skriaxits fear and hate nothing and simply revel in ruin, feeding on the terror and destruction they cause. Once glutted, they sleep 1d3 centuries, untouchable by anything, and wake when hungry. They treat humans, demihumans and humanoids as toys, the way a cruel child torments a fly, and may listen to bargaining for amusement, but people have nothing they want.