Void Artisan

Void artisans are tall, willowy and humanlike, with red-gold hair; the men are lovely, the women handsome, and the race as a whole androgynous. Each is wrapped in a glory, a cloud of twinkling motes that shift color at random. The glory helps explain their excellent AC and high magic resistance. Every artisan styles itself lavishly with sculpted hair, cosmetics, tattoos, and self-made jewels and garments. This signals neither rank nor wealth; each simply strives to outdo all the others, with flair.

Fighting wastes time better spent creating, so an artisan first sends its helots: golem-like copies of living creatures with the model's normal attacks but none of its special or spell-like powers (AC 2, movement as the model, the model's Hit Dice +2, immune to sleep and charm). Next come its bred shock troops. Only if both fail does the artisan fight in person, with dazzling results.

Its tool is the shakti, a palm-sized beast statuette (panther, phoenix, dragon and so on) resembling a wondrous figurine (an item artisans may have invented). Each is unique to its maker. Normally it hangs on a cord or belt or sits in a pouch. One secret word turns it into an 8-foot mount in the beast's shape, lying prone, which the owner rides and steers mentally (movement 18, AC -2). A second word makes it armor plus a weapon. The armor, of a metal only artisans know and harder than steel, is AC 0 before enchantments, usually bears the beast's head on the chest, and grants a beast-themed attack, perhaps a magical raking from a slash of the arms or a dragon's breath released with wrists together and palms out. The weapon might be a sword, trident, weighted net or anything else, and each strike unleashes some magic, whether harmless sparkle or a paralyzing net. A third word restores the resting form.

A shakti works only for its maker. Rarely an artisan gives a weaker gift-shakti to someone who saves its life or grants it passage; it has one transformation, at most once a day (1d6: 1-2 vehicle, 3-4 armor, 5-6 weapon).

Legend says the artisans taught elves and dwarves their best crafts (both forgot most of it), gave tinker gnomes their passion for invention minus the sense of beauty, and built the first starhelm, then never made a second. Their creed boils down to art for its own sake, any means justified by the result, style in all things, and each artisan for itself.

They are masterful casters of any school except illusion, which they find vulgar since it is not real. Creative magic such as marvelous vestments or the lyre of building is a favorite, but any spell can be art: a cloudkill that leaves victims gasping and pleading beats a quick fireball.

Ages ago, artisans aboard their living ships, the esthetics, sought the perfect artistic expression of war and annihilated their homeworld, ignoring the kin still on it. Survivors roam between spheres for inspiration. The esthetics were grown by artisan wizards around that cataclysm; whether more can be made is unknown. Each carries a single artisan, with helots and shock troops doing the menial work.

Rumor claims void merchants obey artisans unquestioningly, that mind reavers do too (they deny it hotly), even that artisans created whole races, humans included. Web-eel slavers call them liars. Artisans despise the clockwork swarms of the void as 'bad art,' calling them 'springheads.'

Esthetics give artisans and crews shelter, defense, food and entertainment, so they need nothing else. If any survivor still knows the weapons that killed their world, that secret is priceless and terrifying, especially in web-eel slaver hands. An artisan might accept a commission at astronomical cost; passage aboard a ship is about the only thing mortals offer that tempts one, though flattery helps.