Spell Weaver

A spell weaver is humanoid only in the loosest sense, a blend of mammal, reptile and insect features. These potent nonhuman casters hail from a parallel prime world and never make a sound, conversing by telepathy across 10 miles.

Humans who try to touch such a mind pay for it. Anyone attempting ESP or telepathic rapport with one must save vs. spell, adding any Wisdom bonus, or suffer 1d6 days of madness that works like a confusion spell.

Weavers covet magic of every kind, and a group after a unique device strikes like commandos, slipping invisibly past outer sentries, appearing beside the prize, disabling any guards and vanishing with it.

Each one constantly has detect magic and detect invisibility active to 100 feet. Once a day it can plane shift, but only between its home plane and one other, usually to escape after a raid. It knows no fear, though it will sensibly withdraw from a losing fight, and its scattered, decentralized nerves make it resistant to pain and to every psionic attack.

Its fixed repertoire is mostly wizard magic of 6th level or lower, cast at 12th level, plus a few spells unknown to humans. It casts with intricate arm and hand motions alone, no words or components, at normal casting times. Its divided brain lets it work several spells at once, committing one arm per spell level: a 4th-level spell with four arms and a 2nd-level spell with the remaining two, for instance, or a pair of identical spells such as two fireballs.

Instead of memorizing, a weaver has spell points equal to its hit points, one point per spell level, and picks spells as it casts them; one with 43 hp can spend 43 levels' worth each day, repeating any spell it knows. It can also use a magic item while casting by devoting one or two arms to it.

Every weaver carries 1-2 magic items. The first is an ordinary item (roll randomly, never cursed). The second, if present, is what humans call a chromatic disk: a 6-inch disk of some unbreakable material whose glow cycles through every color of the rainbow in seconds. Held in one arm, it adds 10 points to the weaver's spell-point pool, evaporating as its power is spent. Every human attempt to use one has ended in a 10d4 blast across 30 feet, with objects saving vs. crushing blow. Weavers reputedly make disks by draining captured swords, wands and scrolls, ruining their magic for good.

Aloof and alien, spell weavers care little for humanity, but past violence has taught people to fear them. Since contact breeds madness, they occasionally leave cryptic written notes, and rare alliances with humans to obtain magic items are reported.

They are loners except while raiding. They breed by magical fission, one weaver becoming two identical copies, each with half its bulk and power. This seems involuntary and can strike mid-crisis: each encounter has a 1% chance that one splits, taking 1d6+4 rounds during which it does not attack.

Their doings seem confined to the Prime Material Planes. Once a day each can raise a 200-foot planar barrier lasting 10 rounds that blocks all scrying and planar travel into, out of or across it, by any means. It costs no energy but needs one round of focus with no spellcasting, and it cannot be raised in a round when the weaver is surprised.

Weavers often lie invisible and dormant for months in magical temples, castles, portals or dungeons, and turn murderous if discovered. Lairs may be underground, inside giant mutated trees or on floating platforms disguised as clouds. Each holds 1d8 rune-carved pillars of stone or wood 10 feet tall, with stolen magic atop one 10% of the time. A glance brings a mild headache, but studying the runes requires a save vs. petrification each round to avoid 1d10 rounds of confusion, and touching them causes unpredictable effects at the DM's discretion.

Their ecology is unknown, since every researcher has gone mad. Generate each weaver's spells by rolling 1d4 on the accompanying spell table and then using the selection tables; it can cast those spells and no others, and the DM may adjust them freely.