Ruvoka

Tall and gaunt, ruvoka live on almost every elemental, paraelemental, and quasielemental plane, even brutal places like Lightning and Vacuum. The Positive and Negative Energy planes appear to be the sole exceptions, though perhaps no one has looked hard enough. They can be killed but never age or die naturally. Each belongs to a tribe with its own looks, language, dress, weapons, and customs, and all share a telepathy that lets them talk with any intelligent being.

Among the best-known tribes, Earth hosts the brajeti and zathosi, Fire the kaltori, Air the cthilum, Ash the sartarin, and Steam the ramoka. The brajeti resemble big, tanned, hairless humans in gleaming bronze arms and armor. The zathosi are tall and gray, so deeply wrinkled they look like old men, and wear stony-looking robes and swing massive mauls.

A ruvoka starts life with 3 Hit Dice and keeps growing in power over its immense lifespan; some with 15 or more have been met. Its tough elemental flesh gives a natural AC 6, though most wear armor anyway. For each Hit Die, it has a 5% chance of an elemental weapon that adds 2d4 or 2d6 damage of its element, like the scorching tridents the kaltori forge on the plane of Fire, and a separate 5% per Hit Die of magical armor.

Every ruvoka is also a druid of twice its Hit Dice in level, to a maximum of 20th, free of the class's weapon and armor limits. It draws major access from its element's sphere, or the closest match, and sometimes minor access from a kindred one. The brajeti, who migrated to Earth from the quasiplane of Dust, keep minor elemental air beside major elemental earth, while Ice's vandesh draw major access from water and minor from air. Its own element cannot harm a ruvoka, and it travels through that element with ease: air tribes fly, earth tribes pass through rock as a xorn does, and the rest follow suit.

Despite their tribes, ruvoka are aloof and solitary, and planewalkers usually meet one alone on some unexplained mission. Sometimes it asks outsiders for help. Those who assist can expect a small elemental boon or the ruvoka's aid with a goal of their own, but never an explanation of what the mission was for. Some appear on other planes, including the Prime, where a few attach themselves to places tied to their element for reasons no one has learned.

Rumor holds that ruvoka are not true planar natives but transformed mortals from the Prime, though today's ruvoka include offspring born on their planes. One legend names the first as Tharrek, a warrior and spellcaster from the desert world who blundered into the palace of the efreeti lord Calif Ozrafel. Amused, the calif falsely claimed to have summoned him and demanded a wish of his own: the head of his rival, Vashkemar. Tharrek agreed with flowery praise, meaning to slip away, but curiosity about what the jester would do won out. He crossed the plane of Fire, slipped past Vashkemar's guards and traps, ambushed him at dinner, and after a fight lasting hours, returned days later bearing the head. Astonished, the calif declared that this mortal had done willingly what genies are forced to do, granted him undying life in the realm, and promised that others like him would find homes across all the elemental planes. Ever since, the tale goes, mighty druids from the Prime, many from the desert world, have traveled to the elemental planes to settle there for good.