Noviere [Lesser Eladrin]

Novieres look rather like nixies or sea elves, but a little stockier and more human-looking, without obvious gills or webbed fingers. Their skin may be golden, blue or greenish, their hair anything from deep sea-green to pale blond, and their eyes take on the hue of whatever sea surrounds them. They are as comfortable on land as in water. A noviere can also become a golden dolphin formed wholly of glimmering water.

Novieres anger slowly and avoid fights whenever they can, but a slender noviere hides 18/01 Strength and fights well when it must. It favors gear that works both wet and dry, typically a net, a trident +1 or a long-bladed dagger +2. A net can be cast 30 feet underwater, or twice that far on land; a creature it hits must save vs. paralyzation or stay tangled for 1d6 rounds, and attacks against a tangled target gain +4. Novieres generally take care that air-breathers caught in a net do not drown.

In dolphin shape the noviere's body is water held together by magic. It is AC -3, can ram once per round, and draws the surrounding water around itself as a shield. With an unmodified roll of 19 or 20 it may choose to engulf its target, pinning it with Strength 20; neither can attack while the hold lasts. To get loose, the captive needs a successful bend bars/lift gates check, or else magic that forces the noviere away.

Whatever its form, a noviere casts spells as a 5th-level priest. It may also use mirror image, slow, charm person, improved phantasmal force, alter self and continual light at will, one per round. A single time each day it chooses between bestowing water breathing lasting 6 hours and loosing a bolt of water 5 feet wide and 60 feet long that hits everything along its line for 4d6; a successful save vs. spell halves that damage.

Novieres make their home among the emerald waters and isles of the second layer of the plane of passion, celebrating the loveliness of the waters much as bralani celebrate the wastes. Where shieres seem frosty, bralani flighty and coures impossible to hold to a serious thought, a noviere takes visitors at their word and treats them as they treat her, which makes her the easiest eladrin to bargain with.

Next to coures they are the most sociable eladrins. They travel little, preferring to settle by a beloved shoreline or island and stay for years on end. A clan follows a chieftain in loose fashion, and no member is obliged to obey. They mostly keep to themselves and are seldom seen at the grand courts of the plane's first layer.

Occasionally novieres travel to distant planes or worlds to visit sea nymphs or merfolk, or simply to explore an unfamiliar coast and listen to strange surf. More than any other eladrins they care about trade and material goods, and gems and jewelry fascinate them.