Eladrin Overview

Eladrins are to the plane of passion what baatezu are to the hells and tanar'ri to the Abyss. Free-spirited and exuberant, they celebrate their own existence in song and revelry, constantly roaming their home plane in search of beauty and adventure. They champion good-hearted people everywhere, but through personal acts of kindness and courage rather than grand campaigns. Above all they believe mortals deserve to choose their own fates without fiendish meddling, so many of the mightier eladrins wander the planes and prime worlds opposing the tanar'ri and baatezu who would dominate them.

The many kinds of eladrin differ widely in power and form, but all share a faerie beauty, swiftness and grace. They fall into two groups: lesser eladrins, who rarely leave their home plane, and greater eladrins, who may be found anywhere the cause of good needs them.

At will, once per round, every eladrin can use detect evil, cure light wounds, phantasmal force, alter self and comprehend languages, and each is partly immune to many forms of attack.

Cold-wrought iron is their weakness. A nonmagical cold iron weapon deals double damage dice to a lesser eladrin, though enchanting the weapon spoils this property. Greater eladrins take no double damage, but a cold iron weapon always harms them normally, even if it lacks the enchantment usually needed; plain cold iron can wound even a greater eladrin that would otherwise require a +3 weapon. Such weapons must be custom-forged at double the usual price. Silver weapons deal full damage only if they are already enchanted enough to hurt the eladrin.

Any eladrin can travel to the upper planes and their heroic neighbors, the neutral planes, and the Astral. Greater eladrins can reach any Inner or Outer Plane, the Ethereal and any prime-material world. Unlike fiends, they need no summons to enter a world they can reach.

On prime worlds, though, they must go veiled. The same cosmic laws that bind fiends to a wizard's commands forbid eladrins to reveal themselves except in the gravest need. A veiled eladrin takes the shape of a local creature, such as a human or demihuman wanderer or bard, and while any mortal might see, it may do nothing its disguise could not. Breaking the veil exiles it to its home plane for 1,001 years, though it is usually granted an hour or less to wrap up unfinished business first.

The heart of the race is the starlit court of the Star Queen, sometimes called the Faerie Queen or the Lady of Stars, likely a minor deity herself, surrounded by the most radiant of her people. The court wanders the plane, existing only wherever night has fallen. It is less a government than the soul of the eladrin people.

Eladrins get along with the elven gods and the gods of the mountain realm but mostly keep to the plane's wild lands. Visiting the mountain realm, they often veil themselves as petitioners or woodland spirits; in elven realms they go undisguised. Rarely, when some vast evil threatens the whole plane, they unite with the celestials serving those gods, but they generally prefer to run their own affairs.