Rautym

A rautym looks like a small, hairless, eyeless monkey with a freckled back. It never strays far from its companions, not out of fear but because rautym draw strength from one another.

Without eyes they still move easily in the dark, because their hear light and feel sound powers run constantly and cost no PSPs. They scatter faintly glowing stones around their lairs, or carry them when traveling, as psionic beacons for navigation. Magical darkness combined with silence throws them into a panic and sends them fleeing, an easy defeat few enemies think to try.

Rautym wield their psionics with great skill. Facing danger, they use adrenaline control to raise their natural Strength of 15 for extra attack and damage bonuses. They may slip close using shadow form, then strike with aging or simply leap on foes in savage hand-to-hand fighting. Their full kit: the clairsentient devotions hear light, feel sound and danger sense, and from psychometabolism the science shadow form plus the devotions aging, chameleon power and adrenaline control.

Their unique gift is magic dancing. At least two are needed: one dances while another, the focus, casts the resulting spell. A lone dancer must dance five hours for a 1st-level spell. The focus need only have heard of a spell to cast it and can choose it at the last moment; some circles have danced for days, building power to unheard-of levels.

More dancers either shorten the dance (divide five hours by the dancer count) or raise the spell level by one per dancer up to 5th, after which each level needs two dancers, so a 6th-level spell takes 12. Two dancers can give a 2nd-level spell in five hours or a 1st-level one after 2.5 hours; five can give a 5th-level spell in five hours or a 1st-level one in a single hour.

Dancers cannot defend themselves, though breaking the circle breaks the trance, so they prefer to post sentries using chameleon power and danger sense rather than add extra dancers.

Each group follows a traditional focus, usually its elder, who guides it through the dark. Every four rautym have at least one elder among them, and if one dies another is raised up, so a group is never without a focus.

Nobody knows where the rautym came from, but everyone who knows of them agrees that interrupting a dancing circle is an excellent way to get destroyed.