Grav

Gravs are short, blocky humanoids, dwarf height but broader across the shoulders, with heads small for their bodies. Miners dress in drab gray work clothes with helmets, gloves and tool belts. The Elite are a little slimmer, dress in showy, foppish finery and avoid manual labor; some hide leather armor under their silks, which explains their better Armor Class.

Every grav is three times as massive as a normal creature its size, which enlarges its air envelope and lets it prospect the void for longer.

Peaceful miners, gravs leave others alone unless provoked. Their defense is gravity control: a grav can lighten one target within 60 feet, though a target can be a crate full of many objects, which is how they load gems aboard ship. Weight drops by 25% each round, and after four rounds the target floats. The grav can hold it hovering, let it drift, lower it gently or simply release it. Anything carried beyond 60 feet plunges to the nearest gravity plane, and if the grav's concentration breaks, from a blow for instance, the target falls at once and suffers ordinary falling damage.

Mostly the power is a bluff. First they show off on a lifeless object; if that fails, they hoist the foe into the air and leave it dangling helplessly. They hate silatics, metal-eaters that even the Elite attack on sight.

Grav society is a rigid hierarchy in which the Elite give orders and Miners obey almost without thought. A Miner who questions the system is quietly brought in for questioning and reassigned as a servant to a minor Elite back home, the deepest disgrace a grav can know. If outsiders stir up the workers, the Elite politely ask them to go, and if they persist, remove them without injury.

Elite gravs can be wizards of up to 9th level, and they power the argosy, the standard grav vessel. It looks like a small dwarven citadel with a pockmarked, moonlike stone hull whose craters hide portholes, and one flat side for landing and loading. Nearly all its interior is cargo space, where Miners and Elite alike sleep, and its weapons are purely defensive.

No one knows the name or location of the grav homeworld, which the Elite describe as a patchwork of fiefdoms, each held by an Elite family whose standing depends on its wealth. Some think the secrecy guards against thieves, yet theft is utterly foreign to gravs, and the idea only bewilders them. More likely the Elite simply want outsiders kept away from the system that keeps them on top.