Pristatic

From outside, a pristatic is a globe of shifting colors that recalls a prismatic sphere. At its heart floats a small gnomelike humanoid, arms and legs folded, face set in fierce concentration.

Pristatics avoid fighting. An adult innately commands everything the 9th-level wizard spell prismatic sphere can do, but it can call on that power just once a day, for two hours at most, so it will absorb some punishment before resorting to its only defense. Because the colorful globe is always visible, nobody can tell whether its effects are active, and detect magic always shows the area as magical, since the sphere is made of the flame-sea's ambient magic.

Unlike the spell, it can switch on any combination of layers, say orange, indigo and violet with the rest dark, and it chooses whichever will hurt its attacker least. Only near death does it raise every layer.

Spoken to, a pristatic answers whatever it can. It is a sharp observer and remembers the type and heading of every ship that passed in roughly the last month, though it cannot measure time, which makes its reports less useful. It cannot pilot itself and drifts wherever the rainbow currents carry it. It has no society, preferring vast emptiness to company.

Legend says pristatics were born when a wizard tried to merge prismatic sphere with teleport so he could drop a sphere onto a crowd, and his young gnome assistant stumbled, ruined the experiment and vanished. A likelier idea is that they are native to the flame-sea and may hold keys to undiscovered magic.

They feed on the flame-sea's innate magic. Taken inside a crystal shell, a pristatic fades quickly and dies within a day. Healing magic does nothing, but enclosing it in a prismatic sphere cast by a wizard extends its life by 24 hours. A dying pristatic returned to the flame-sea within those 24 hours recovers, taking as long to heal as it spent away.