Psurlon

A psurlon is a humanoid with the soft body of an earthworm. Its legs end in toothed mouths, its arms in black-taloned claws, and its blind, wormlike head opens into a wide maw ringed with toothlike nubs. It perceives the world without eyes. They go about in robes of rich color, unarmored and unarmed. Among themselves they speak by telepathy and by grunts and squeals.

They would rather fight with their minds, but in melee a psurlon claws twice for 3d4 each and bites for 2d8. Its hide is AC 4, and the result of long magical and psionic experiments on its own flesh is that only +1 or better weapons, creatures of 6 HD or more and beings with innate magical powers can really hurt it; other wounds barely register and close at once. Spells of sleep, hold and charm do not affect it, and it has 40% magic resistance.

A typical psurlon's psionics are mostly telepathic. Its sciences are mind link and mass domination, with devotions of ego whip, contact, mind thrust, id insinuation and psionic crush. It also has banishment as a psychoportive science, plus time/space anchor and astral projection, and life draining as a psychometabolic science with devotions of prolong, enhanced strength, control body, flesh armor and mind over body.

Thousands of years ago psurlons were an advanced, deeply psionic race on another world. Seeking ever more knowledge and power, they devised a way to link every mind of their species. The attempt backfired: a psychic recoil tore a vast rift into the Astral Plane, destroyed their homeworld and pulled every survivor through. They have built cities there ever since, with no wish to go back to the Prime Material, and pursue research impossible elsewhere. Now far fewer, they work to strengthen their powers so they can attempt the mind meld once more. They have noticed the desert world because it could withstand the psychic force that wrecked their own, though the race as a whole has no specific plans for it.

Psurlons reach the desert world only when summoned, usually by evil psionicists able to call planar beings, or sought out by wizards and psionicists traveling the Astral. They resent being forced into service and take revenge on summoners. The price for their knowledge is steep and often fatal, and anyone who learns from them and then tries to kill or dismiss them will be hunted down, by those psurlons or others of their kind, until the debt is paid.

They eat living flesh, preferring that of thinking races, above all humans and halflings. They live about 1,500 years and sit at the top of their food chain. The desert world's rocs consider them a delicacy, but no rocs live on the Astral Plane.

These especially gifted psurlons lead small communities, trained from youth as both guardians and rulers. Some roam the Astral as explorers, hunting food, knowledge and creatures to enslave, in parties of 2d4 adepts. Beyond the standard powers they add psionic drain and the science psionic blast to their telepathy, and they gain clairsentience: the science clairvoyance, with spirit sense, danger sense, know location and combat mind as devotions.

These mutants lived through the destruction of their world and absorbed so much psionic energy that they grew huge, nearly immortal and far more powerful. Only a handful remain, dwelling in lonely astral dens, shunned by other psurlons as cursed monsters, though a few rule small communities as harshly as any sorcerer tyrant. Their claws and bite hit much harder than other psurlons', but they rarely need them. They have every adept power, plus the double pain devotion and psychokinesis: telekinesis and disintegrate as sciences, inertial barrier and levitation as devotions.