Dolphin [Dark Sun]

On the desert world, dolphins are as clever as their cousins elsewhere but look different. Their thick hide is pure silvery white and throws back the sunlight so well that it keeps them cool through the fiercest midday heat; a pod racing and arching through the waves glitters like few other sights, and it is seldom seen. Their snouts are thicker and harder than normal, shaped by generations of fighting sharks, and a ramming blow from one hits hard. Otherwise they have the usual long, muscular body, dorsal fin, strong tail and blowhole. Up close they squeal in high-pitched calls, some too high for humans to hear; at a distance they stay in touch through natural telepathy.

Peaceful at heart, they have grown more warlike than their ancestors through their long struggle with the local sharks. They normally attack only when threatened, yet they will always engage sharks unless outnumbered two to one. A pod fights as one, its leader directing it telepathically, and it will do anything, including dying, to protect its young. They save as 5th-level fighters. Every one is also a psionic wild talent, lacking the training of a true psionicist but using its natural gifts to defend the pod.

Just one dolphin species lives on this world, and much of its culture has been lost over the ages. Horrified by the harm younger races did to their beloved sea, the dolphins withdrew from other thinking beings, whom they blame for the damage. Few are known to remain, and those survivors have sworn to preserve their great oral traditions, passing memories telepathically from parent to child so their ancestors live on in them.

Dolphins hunt and are hunted. Sharks are their chief enemies, but true war is rare; most fighting is chance skirmishes between small patrols. Squidlike squarks and other hunters also prey on them, yet their numbers hold strong.

They mostly refuse to speak with shore-dwelling races, keeping only an unspoken truce: people seldom hunt them, and in return a castaway far out at sea might be carried home by a friendly patrol, if it arrives before the sharks. They are a little more open with the local lizard men, mostly to coordinate defense against sharks, and on rare occasions lizard men have been seen riding a group of dolphins to reach a far shore quickly. The two respect each other, and the lizard men take care not to overuse the favor. A handful of human fishers have befriended dolphins too, though the dolphins speak to them telepathically only in the direst need, and those humans know how fortunate they are.