Reave

Reaves are four-armed humanoids as big as a mighty human warrior, the second pair of arms set behind the first rather than below. Their pebbled hide gives natural AC 8, but they favor gaudy plate with flared pauldrons and long mail skirts.

Helms or deep cowls always hide their faces, even from each other, and a reave whose face is seen devotes its life to killing the witness. Beneath, the face is roughly humanoid, with four eyes spread evenly across the front of the head and twisting bony ridges instead of hair.

Every arm is as skilled as a human's best hand. A reave usually wields two weapons, and if both are one-handed it carries two shields in its other hands, improving its AC to 1. Its arm layout rules out archery, so it favors melee. Arms within a band break down as follows: two polearms (30%); a pair of broad swords plus shields (25%); a pair of two-handed swords (15%); a javelin and short sword plus shields (20%); or a pair of maces, flails or morning stars plus shields (10%).

Their great strength adds +2 damage with hand-held weapons. The body's odd symmetry lets a reave fight flanking enemies as easily as those in front and turns rear attacks into flank attacks, and its wide field of vision gives +1 on surprise checks.

Reaves can also fade, slipping into the Astral to ambush or escape, which works only on the top layer of an Outer Plane. The reave spends a round vanishing, stays gone 1d6 rounds while still watching events, then spends a round reappearing anywhere within 100 yards of its exit, or simply never returns. While half-astral during the departing and arriving rounds, only magic or magical weapons can harm it.

For centuries these battle-loving plunderers have roamed the planes. Bands hire out to anyone paying for broken bones, arson or mayhem, and turn brigand between contracts, so they appear wherever enforcers are wanted.

Like fiends and devas, they can will themselves into the Astral and out onto the uppermost layer of whatever plane borders it, making them superb hit-and-run raiders; bold bands have struck the upper planes and vanished before defenders could gather.

Rumor calls them natives of a plane of endless war, which is not quite true. Over a millennium ago, a mighty general marched 100,000 reave soldiers onto that plane from an unknown prime world. Most died in a war of extermination, but survivors bred, and bands have been leaving that limited plane ever since.

Bands follow strict military discipline. The strongest male, the war-leader, commands in battle; the strongest female, the guide, picks employers and contracts, or where to raid next.

Loyalty to the band and a sacred regard for oaths restrain them: a reave never breaks its sworn word, though it hunts for loopholes and betrays freely once unbound. Their elaborate honor code makes them avenge every slight, real or imagined, but someone who knows it can settle matters with a whole band by challenging its champion or war-leader, if the challenge is worded carefully.

Unemployed reaves are the worst, ready to start a war if none is handy; on contract they stay prickly but controlled, so reave bodyguards may sip quietly in a tavern of the great planar city yet prove deadly on a lonely road in the neutral planes.

Pure carnivores, reaves scorn anyone who refuses bloody meat, and their cycle of gorging and then fasting for days or weeks lets bands travel light and fast. On their adopted war plane they serve as mercenary contingents in its armies, but life there is short, and more and more leave to try their luck elsewhere in the Outer Planes.