Rockseer Elf

Rockseers are the rarest elves of all and the tallest, a few approaching eight feet, yet they weigh only 120 to 140 pounds whatever their sex. Their skin is very pale and hairless except for the head, where long silver hair falls as fine and soft as the costliest silk. Every rockseer has pale, nearly ice-blue eyes, and their androgynous looks make it hard for outsiders to tell men from women.

They dress simply in browns and grays that blend with the rock, in garments and cloaks woven from tough fungus fibers so skillfully that they pass for ordinary cloth. Plant extracts make the fabric waterproof and fairly fire resistant. Against this plain dress they wear lavish jewelry of gold and silver, always set with gems.

Rockseers avoid battle whenever they can; they are too few to waste lives. Their mastery of the underground usually lets them slip away unseen, and would-be attackers rarely even glimpse them. Cornered, they are unshakable, and they will die before abandoning their own kind.

They prefer swords, spears and quarterstaves of stone as hard as steel. Half carry only a long sword, a quarter a long sword and dagger, and a quarter a long sword and short sword, with variations by class. Bowstrings are hard to find in the depths, so bows are rare treasures, and they seldom bother with missiles beyond the occasional staff-sling: any distance great enough for shooting is great enough to cast a spell or sink into the rock and vanish.

They gain +1 to hit with long swords, but no bow bonus. Hold, web, charm and sleep spells fail against them 90% of the time, and nothing can turn them to stone. Against Elemental Earth spells they have 50% magic resistance, but they save at -1 against Elemental Air spells. They see 240 feet with infravision. As characters they take -1 to starting Strength, Constitution and Charisma and +1 to Intelligence, Wisdom and Dexterity.

Every rockseer can sink into stone, three times per day in childhood and at will after maturity at 60 to 70 years. From 3rd level they can stone walk, passing through rock as if it were air, for 100 yards once per day, plus 100 yards per additional level. At 9th level a rockseer can bring one man-sized companion along, plus one more for every level beyond 9th, so a 10th-level elf can take two. They always sense the gaps between caves and passages, so they know before they start whether a stone walk will end somewhere safe or leave them entombed. A daily stone shape becomes available at 5th level, and a daily stone tell at 9th.

Working together they are stronger still. Three or more whose levels add up to at least 10 can raise stone walls whenever they please. Five or more whose levels sum to 20 or above can jointly call forth a huge earth elemental, a feat possible once daily, after which none of the participants can join another summoning until the next day. This 20 HD elemental never has fewer than 5 hit points per die, cannot be turned against its summoners, and resists dispelling as if cast at the group's combined level.

Rockseers can be warriors (maximum 11th level), thieves (maximum 13th), wizards (maximum 18th), warrior-thieves or warrior-wizards. They have no priests; believing the elven gods spurned them for cowardice, they have all but forgotten the old divine tales. Single-classed wizards gain bonus spells: acid arrow at 5th level, stony grasp at 9th and acid storm at 15th. A rockseer wizard also adds 1% per level to his resistance versus Elemental Earth magic, imposes a -1 save penalty per five levels (round fractions above one-half up) on non-rockseers targeted by his own Elemental Earth spells, and may treat every priest spell of the Elemental Earth school as a wizard spell of equal level.

At 11th level, wizards learn to make stone dragonets, golem-like familiars carved as slender, perfectly articulated statuettes 12 inches long with another 9 to 12 inches of tail, the best of them with rare gems for eyes. A dragonet has AC -2, 2 HD, 16 hit points and three attacks per round (claw 1d3, claw 1d3, bite 1d4). It enjoys 25% magic resistance (75% versus Elemental Earth magic) and immunity to petrification, illusions, gases, poison, paralysis and spells that act on living bodies. Its master gains a 2-point bonus to Armor Class and cannot be surprised. If each gem eye is worth at least 5,000 gp and the right spells are woven in at creation, the dragonet can blaze forth an eyebite once per day.

Magic items are scarce. Each level gives a non-wizard a 5% chance to own an enchanted weapon. Wizards roll 10% per level for an item suited to them, and what they own is often potent. The mightiest are said to carry wands of steam and vapor that release scalding, blinding acid clouds dealing 6d6 damage in the first round, 4d6 in the second and 2d6 in the third and last.

Rockseers live past 1,400 years, so any group is nearly always commanded by a long-lived veteran: a warrior of 5th level or better, or a warrior-wizard of 4th/4th or better. Groups of 30 or more add at least one warrior of level 6+1d4 and a wizard of level 6+1d6. A clan's central lair may hold up to a hundred elves under a wizard chieftain of level 12+1d6 with 1d3+2 advisors and guards, each either (50%) a warrior of 10th or 11th level or a wizard of 11th to 14th level, never higher than the chieftain.

Rockseers say their own legend plainly: at the mythic battle between the elven creator god and the spider goddess, their ancestors fled in fear and hid deep underground. They know nothing of surface elves or of a thousand years of events above. They know and hate the drow and avoid them, and they shun every other race, svirfneblin included, except the pech, with whom they sometimes become friends.

They feel they have nothing but each other and the wealth of the rock, and they are tightly united. When a chieftain dies, a conclave of the strongest warriors and wizards elects a successor, and a wise leader always consults advisors before giving orders. They have no patience for tyrants or fools. Their lairs are hidden under layers of cunning wards that keep others from guessing such caverns exist at all, and thieves melded into the walls keep watch near every entrance. Some clans dwell in caves reachable only by stone walking, sealed behind hundreds of feet of rock with mere cracks for air.

Unusually for elves, they have little curiosity, a result of deep inherited shame; they think themselves tainted and avoid anyone they imagine would judge them. Once their interest is stirred, though, they can behave surprisingly, as those who stumble on them learn. They are serious and somber, lacking the playful banter of other elves, and strange even by fey standards. Their elvish dialect is understood 50% of the time by high or grey elves and 30% by drow. They know bits of svirfneblin, most speak pech, and a few manage enough of the deep dwarves' speech to deal with derro or duergar for spying purposes.

Toward surface elves they are torn. Each assumes any surface elf would despise them for their forebears' cowardice, and convincing them otherwise is very hard, yet they ache to learn how their long-lost kin live, what they believe and what they find beautiful.

As gem cutters and artisans they have almost no equals; even dwarves and gnomes would hesitate to claim better work. They can nearly smell veins of gems deep in the earth and may spend ten years perfecting one stone. The greatest wizard-artisans grow gems by magic into shapes of almost painful beauty, with fractal patterns of radiant color within. A few such gems can build a helm of brilliance: divide every required gem count by five, and each gem performs its function five times before going dead.

Rockseers live apart from the other powers of the deep underworld and stay out of its endless feuds. They eat fungus, moss and lichen, along with cave lizards, eels and similar creatures. Calm and enigmatic, they remain almost impossible for outsiders to understand.