Ildriss [Elemental Grue]

In the material world an ildriss is either invisible as moving air or shows itself as a cloud of fog with wispy tentacles and three dimly glowing red eyes, the shape it wears at home on the plane of air. Most are gray or pale yellow, rarely white, and their pyramid-shaped eyes may be maroon, scarlet or a deep orange. It roams about unseen as a gust, leaving mischief and bad luck in its wake.

Because it can move unseen along the ground or high overhead, foes take -3 on surprise rolls, and it acts first every round. To attack it must take on a misty, half-solid body; it then spins, and the grains of debris swirling in its foggy limbs strike with terrible force, scouring flesh the way a sandstorm does. Its vaporous form gives it AC 2, and since it is less solid on this plane than other grues, only +2 or better weapons can hit it.

No air magic works against it: lightning bolt, wind walk, fog cloud, cone of cold, invisible stalker, call lightning, wall of fog, control winds, stinking cloud, gust of wind, cloudkill and control weather all fail. Bring such an enchantment within 50 feet of an ildriss and it is dispelled, even a permanent one, though magical items are spared.

Ildriss form and drop friendships quickly, living in shifting cliques and flimsy partnerships. Away from home they nearly always work alone, but on their own plane most live in loose, semi-stable tribes. A tribe has never been known to turn traitor on another, though tribes do not necessarily cooperate. They have no known hierarchy; whoever has a goal leads the rest, and they keep allies only while those allies are useful. All of them serve as agents or spies for Sirrhas, the evil archomental of air.

Rumor tells of fog ildriss, a good-hearted heretic offshoot that has abandoned that master. They are said to be even shyer than their kin and show themselves only to the saintly, paladins or priests of strict moral purity; otherwise they are identical to normal ildriss.

Other air creatures regard ildriss as parasites, and many are outcasts on their plane. Like all grues, they use others purely for their own ends. They are extremely cautious hunters that may watch a target invisibly for days before deciding what to do. Their food is cloud and chill wind, plus birds that fly very high and little beings of the air plane.

Only in the midwinter mating season do they hold territories, and then they grow more savage and faithless than ever. These territories are not fixed in place; each ildriss guards a particular pocket of chilly, dry wind as it drifts along. Trespassers in it are often attacked and slain by instinct, but never eaten.