Fal

The Fal, properly Falmadaraatha, are huge slugs with soft, pulpy bodies that darken over a lifetime, pale tan in youth and coal black in old age. At the front they have small sensory antennae, bulging eyes, an enormous burrowing mouth full of sharp teeth, and a smaller mouth above it for talking. They speak their own language plus Common and most human, demihuman and humanoid tongues.

To a Fal, violence is the last resort of the incompetent, but it can defend itself with a savage bite for 4d8. On an unmodified 20 it catches the enemy in its mouth and, rather than swallowing, tries to talk the foe into surrendering peacefully. A promise is sacred to a Fal, and anyone who surrenders and then breaks their word is attacked without mercy.

Every Fal is telekinetic and can lift 1,000 pounds. If it acts first, it often hoists an opponent about 30 feet up and keeps it there until it stops struggling. Wounding the Fal snaps its focus, and its captive falls heavily.

Counted among the 'scholars of the void', the Fal are brilliant, honest, hospitable and peaceful. They tunnel into hollow asteroids and small worlds with no sentient life and live alone, although 5% of the time a visitor finds 1d3 sharing one asteroid, happily arguing metaphysics, philosophy and the condition of the cosmos. They welcome polite visitors of any alignment as long as they do not come often (more than once a year counts as often), but they are wary of chaotic evil and lawful good beings, finding both too extreme.

They are among the finest sages anywhere and answer questions for gifts worth over 100 gp, anything from fine wine to a painting or a book. Refusing to limit themselves to one field, they study everything, so an answer may come at once (30%), in 1d10 days (30%), in 1d10 months (30%) or in 1d10 years (10%), but any answerable question will be answered.

A Fal's lair, its tcha, is surprisingly cozy, hung with accurate star charts and maps, lined with towering shelves of books old and new in many languages, and cluttered with trinkets traded for answers. Phosphorescent fungus lights it, and tough greens grown inside make up the Fal's diet; many also keep a well-stocked wine cellar. A Fal lives at least 2,000 years, treating a year like a day, and talks so slowly, believing hasty words bring trouble, that many wrongly think it dim. Fal enjoy talking with philosophical void-folk, buy books and research material from void merchants, distrust the star-roaming clans, and adore tinker gnomes. They honor three gods of knowledge, writing and lore above all others.

Fal society has no romance. Each Fal is hermaphroditic and at some point produces a single 'pupil', which it tutors and then sends away. Nobody has ever seen a pupil, perhaps because a Fal stops taking questions while teaching one.