Shoal Elf [Dragonlance]

Shoal elves have pale blue skin, large eyes of deep blue or dark green, and webbed hands and feet. They grow their silver hair long and braid shells into it, and they like close-fitting clothes in shades of blue and green. Like their deep-water cousins they are equally at home breathing water or air.

Fast and aggressive, shoal elves lack the deep elves' spellcasting but share their shapechanging. Three times per day one can become an otter, taking one round to change. It keeps its own hit points but gains the otter's movement and abilities (one 1d3 attack, AC 5, MV 12, swimming 18). They use that speed to chase down fleeing enemies.

They fight in coordinated teams of up to 20, which focus on the most dangerous opponents first, either killing them or pinning them down. Weapons are spears, tridents and short swords, and they wear a light chain mail made not to hinder them underwater. Many ride hippocampi to war.

Wary and mistrustful, shoal elves look down on other races and cultures and make alliances with outsiders only in dire need. Like the deep elves, they began as elven seafarers who parted from their land kin to live in the sea. Before the split they were partners of the elder high elves and borrowed a simplified form of their guild system. Many guilds exist, but there are no castes and the lines between guilds are loose.

The office of ruler, the Voice of the Sea, always passes to some clan elder of the previous holder's bloodline. They live in clan-based schools with no separate families: every adult helps raise all of the school's young. In a typical school at least 5% are fighters of 4th level or higher and at least 10% are fighters of 2nd or 3rd level. Shoal elves are wanderers, camping in shallows among reefs, kelp forests and wrecked ships.

They keep no formal ties with other peoples, though they trade with surface folk now and then, and sometimes slip ashore at night to raid coastal settlements for tools and supplies. They regard the deep elves as feeble and backward.