Shadow Folk

The shadow folk look like lanky, slender apes covered in sleek black or dark brown fur. Their heads are hairy, with flat little noses, pointy ears and cat-like eyes of green or amber, and two fangs show over the lower lip even when the mouth is shut. Long claws tip their fingers and toes. A stretchy membrane joins arm to flank, letting them glide ten feet forward for each foot of height lost, so a drop from a ten-foot ledge carries them 100 feet. Underground they wear little, since their fur keeps them warm and they care nothing for ornament. On rare surface trips they hide inside long, dark hooded robes.

Society splits into counselors, who cannot fight, and warriors, who guard them with quick, quiet skill. Each warrior carries a shadowstaff, a cruelly curved hooked staff that both wounds and pins. Once a victim is impaled, he takes another 1d8 damage every round, attacks at -2 and cannot cast spells, until one combatant dies or the fight ends. Breaking loose is hard: he must do nothing else and pass Dexterity checks at -2 on two rounds in a row.

Their ESP explains their low Armor Class, since they read their enemies' moves before they happen, and no thinking creature within 60 feet can surprise them. Before entering danger, warriors perform the mindweave, an hour of joined hands, chanting and focus that binds their thoughts into one. For the next 1d4+4 hours they move and fight in perfect unison, earning +1 to hit and +1 on every save. Invited outsiders can share the benefit by passing an Intelligence check at -5.

Daylight cripples them. Under overcast skies they act normally but in pain, at -2 to attack; in bright sunshine the penalty is -4. After 2d6 turns of bright sunlight they go temporarily blind, for as many hours as they spent turns outdoors.

They talk in a simple tongue of squeaks and growls, but prefer telepathy, which reaches any creature within 60 feet that shares a language with them, so long as no barrier blocks it: a solid sheet of lead, gold or steel stops it, as do 3 inches of iron or 3 feet of stone. They can also use ESP at will, as the 2nd-level spell, out to 50 yards.

An ancient race, they treat privacy as sacred and work hard to stay a myth among surface folk, settling in catacombs under large cities or in the dungeons and buried streets of ruined ones in desolate lands. A thriving warren once hid beneath a volcano-ringed port of slums and slave markets during a great war, unknown to the evil armies above. Explorers who stumble in are sworn to silence or given memory-erasing potions. Kind and benevolent, they will ally with good people of other races in a crisis, and they have a soft spot for human children and the elderly, sometimes chatting mind to mind with them at their bedsides at night.

Clans are close-knit. Mates have 1d4 young, raised by whatever adults are nearby, and at age ten each youngster is assigned to the warrior or counselor class according to aptitude and interest. Warriors patrol the tunnels; counselors govern, and elect one of their number king to break deadlocks. A settlement is a maze of passages joining caverns, with trapped approaches where a wrong step drops two huge stone slabs to seal intruders in. Warriors probe the captives' minds, and those who refuse their terms are left between the slabs. Homes have stone furniture, woven sleeping mats and three vents: one for fresh air, one to an underground stream, and one to a bottomless shaft or lava flow for waste. Other caverns hold mushroom farms, meeting halls and places of recreation, and the deepest is kept for the Revered Ancient One. They gather no treasure but adore art, covering walls with pictures of their history, and warriors sometimes slip up to the surface to make off with an especially fine painting or sculpture.

Their only natural foe is a savage race of lizard men who raid their warrens to drive them out. They eat mainly mushrooms and other fungi, with insects and worms on the side, keep no animals and do not trade.

When counselors perform their own hour-long mindweave, their combined mental energy takes shape as the Revered Ancient One. At least four counselors are needed; four to ten keep it present for 1-2 hours, eleven or more for 2d4 hours. Outsiders may join but do not count toward these numbers. It has no physical form, genius intelligence and neutral good alignment, and it speaks only mentally, in a soothing, distant, echoing voice. It answers any question its summoners pose with 95% accuracy, though it cannot see the future. For anyone brought to its cavern, it can cast cure serious wounds without limit and teleport without error to any Prime Material location the subject has visited. It dwells in a sacred cave beside the settlement, sealed behind an unending wall of force that it can drop whenever it chooses. That cave is utterly dark even when the spirit is absent, and no magic or other means can lift the darkness.