Dimensional Warper

A warper stands about 6 feet tall on two long, spindly legs, with a serpentine body, a long lizard tail and tough, leathery skin. Each slender, flexible arm ends in a single hooked claw, and a stout membrane stretches from arms to legs, giving it a 5-foot span, though it cannot fly. Its bald, earless head has big round eyes with cat-slit pupils. A master, the higher rank, wears a ring of tattooed symbols around its head and running down its back.

Warpers would much rather watch than fight. Once one feels it has learned everything it can by observing a party, though, it may attack to study their fighting skills firsthand. It wants knowledge, not corpses.

It strikes with both claws and its whiplike tail. If the fight starts slipping from its control, it begins twisting height, width, depth and time. Three times a day each it can enlarge itself, and haste itself or slow a foe, all as the spells. It can dimension door once per turn and become flat as by duo-dimension at will. A master can also time stop once a week, but never to set up a kill. It uses that power only to escape when its own life is threatened or when the only way to survive would be to slay its subjects.

No warper has ever been found on its home plane by outsiders. The few who have chosen to speak with humans or demihumans say they come to the Prime Material Plane to study its creatures, and only elders old and wise enough may make the trip. Most encountered (85%) are scholars; the rest are masters, the oldest and most learned, honored by all.

Their whole society revolves around knowledge, and they spend their lives watching others unseen. They roam from place to place, holing up in hidden corners of cities, beside roads and trails, or in dungeons where monsters and adventurers come and go. Studying so closely, a warper may know almost any language, and it is eager to follow every conversation it overhears.

Warpers seldom eat what they observe. They object to eating thinking creatures, and mindless animals are too dull to be worth studying. Nobody has ever seen a warper's home or learned how long they live.