Fainil

Fainil look much like drow but stand a little taller and usually bear some sign of fiendish blood. All have huge bat wings and slightly lengthened fingers and toes. In flight they wear close-fitting clothes; inside their fortresses they prefer elaborate robes and cloaks, often over drow mesh armor, which they skip when flying.

Fainil may be fighters, clerics, thieves or wizards. They have 120-foot infravision and all the drow penalties in sunlight. Their fiendish ancestry gives them a good natural AC and immunity to electricity. Their 50% magic resistance matches the drow's but does not rise with level.

Like other drow they carry swords and hand crossbows loaded with drow sleep poison, and they strike by surprise or ambush, always at night, gliding in silently and shooting spellcasters first. Their few wizards can cast in flight, mostly against enemy wizards and priests, or to shield key warriors when a small unit attacks. Agile in the air, they are clumsy on foot: on the ground they suffer -2 to hit and their AC worsens by 2. Once a day each can use dancing lights, faerie fire and darkness; above 4th level they add one daily use each of detect magic and know alignment.

On a distant world, gray elves drove the drow underground soon after creation. Plotting their return, the drow needed a flying force to match the winged surface race that would surely oppose them, and they bred the fainil from drow and tanar'ri allies. The fainil spearheaded the drow's greatest victories, and when the 50-year war ended and the drow were crushed or driven below, their two mountain fortresses still withstood every assault. They remain there, growing stronger and scheming, and have slowly spread to other worlds, though their society still centers on those strongholds.

Nearly all fainil live in the vast halls of one fortress or the other, and they are rarely met in numbers more than two days' travel away. Life inside is a snarl of intrigue. Unlike drow, males tend to dominate and high ranks are split evenly between the sexes, though almost all clerics are female and powerful families still hold sway. They trade with the drow and other peoples of the deep underworld through intermediaries, dislike being underground, and use their surface access for advantage. Rich and strong, they cannot be dislodged by human or demihuman armies.

Surface races loathe and hunt them, and they in turn would rather conquer and enslave everyone else. Fainil adventurers are usually fleeing a family disgrace or are suspected alykus: rare products of the flawed breeding who lack the fainil lust for destruction and can become wizards up to 16th level. The fortresses kill alykus once found, but a few escape into exile. Fainil live about as long as half-elves, care little for art, almost never joke, train obsessively, trust slowly, and are fiercely loyal to comrades in battle.

Fainil plunder nature and discard whatever no longer serves them. They make little, stealing necessities, art, magic and treasure from 'lesser' races, which means everyone else, and are essentially amoral. Their fiendish heritage lets them live on little food. They endlessly strengthen their fortresses, with slave labor whenever possible.

Aerial ward: a great crystal in each fortress's central keep repels flying non-drow within 200 feet; any flier entering takes 2 hp damage and is hurled back by a gust of wind. Anyone of drow blood passes freely, and a wizard of 6th level or higher in the crystal's chamber can switch it off for as long as an hour. That chamber is also the crypt of the fainil dead, and each 100 interred push the ward one foot farther (no XP or gp value).

Fainil armor: like drow mesh (+1 to +3), it hides the wearer's body heat from infravision, though normal sight still works; two hours in sunlight ends its magic (XP 1,500/2,500/4,000 and 3,000/5,000/8,000 gp for +1/+2/+3).

Flare bolts: dwarves made these heavy crossbow bolts to fight the night fliers. Shot directly, a bolt gains +2 to hit and deals quadruple damage to fainil. Fired skyward, it bursts at the top of its arc to light a 150-foot-diameter circle, within which attacks against fainil gain +3.