Reggelid

Reggelids are tall and angular, resembling homely elves with flat faces and six fingers per hand. Even they do not know where they came from, and they care nothing for their past. Magic is their only passion.

No reggelid is below 3rd level, and each is either a life-draining wizard or a fighter/wizard, with Hit Dice rising with level. Their magic is inborn, and they labor all their lives to grow it. In melee they generally use staves, though magical items of all kinds, weapons included, are common among them.

When a reggelid uses a magic item, there is a 75% chance its talent and knowledge get more out of the item than its makers intended, boosting its effect by 25%. A wand of fire's 6d6 fireball, for example, could deal an extra 2d6 (1.5 rounded up).

Only wizards earn their respect, with spellcasters and the innately magical a distant second, and those are the foes they target first. In battle they coordinate spells, one casting an attack while another raises a defense that protects both.

Their settlements amount to a few shallow caves or crude timber shelters. Reggelids ignore comfort and luxury, providing just enough to live and keep studying, and record their lore on stone tablets guarded by young males.

Magical power decides rank. Any band is headed by a life-draining wizard whose level matches or exceeds the band's headcount, and communities of any size are usually ruled by a 15th to 20th level leader. Ten percent of a group are of levels 4-9 (1d6+3), and 30% are fighter/wizards of levels 3-8 (1d6+2) who carry broadswords instead of staves and favor magic items made for warriors.

Like certain other cliff-dwelling races, they keep to the lower cliffs, endlessly searching the swamp for magical relics left by an ancient sorcerer of war.

Some halfling scholars suspect reggelids are leftovers from that sorcerer's strange works or victims of his curse, a guess that seems quite plausible.

Reggelids never quarrel among themselves; each instantly recognizes a more skilled member and defers to it. They pursue magic not for status but for general self-advancement, valuing the means more than the end.

They despise all other races, but none more than the cliff halflings and the living creations they shape, and they devised a spell specifically to fight those halflings and destroy their living tools and weapons.