Vorthani

Vorthani descend from humans and still have a human's height, but they are much leaner and longer-limbed, with rough yellow skin, glittering black eyes that instantly mark them as alien, and pointed ears notched along the back edge. Their baroque gear is heaped with beads, feathers, gems and precious metal, and they speak only their own tongue.

Each has a class and level that set its Hit Dice (hit points rolled normally), THAC0, spells and AC: knights are AC 0, illusionists and mages AC 10, and fighters or fighter/mages 6-1d6 (AC 5 to 0). Only the fighting classes and knights can gain extra attacks per round. Mages, illusionists and fighter/mages know every spell for their level, chosen randomly but weighted toward offense.

Knights are evil champions of the vorthani lich-queen with all of a paladin's abilities turned to darkness, so they detect good instead of evil and command undead instead of turning it.

Their weapons are near-sacred. Half of all fighters, fighter/mages and knights reaching 5th level get a two-handed sword +1; a fighter of 7th or higher has a 60% chance of a long sword +2. Knights at 7th level and beyond always bear a silver sword: +3, two-handed, with a 5% chance per hit in the Astral Plane of severing a foe's silver cord, though mind barred targets are immune. A lair's supreme leader carries a +5 silver sword with all the powers of a vorpal blade, and its effect reaches even the mind barred. No outsider may keep a silver sword; a lost special one draws powerful raids to reclaim it, and failure means death at the queen's hands.

All can plane shift at will, almost always just between the Astral and Prime Material.

Sages say they began as human slaves and cattle of the mind reavers, secretly building strength for centuries until a woman of power named Vorath rallied them. After a long, savage struggle they won, taking the name vorthani, "children of Vorath." They have warred with their zerathi kin ever since.

They advance like humans but never past 11th level, and few beyond 9th. At 9th the lich-queen tests each one with weeks of survival on a lower plane, and failure means death. Any who reach 12th are pulled from the Astral at once into her presence, where she devours their life force.

Other astral travelers avoid their ornate castles, knowing how they treat strangers. Each is ruled by a supreme leader, a fighter/mage of either 11th/9th or 10th/8th level with power of life and death and 2d4 random magic items besides its weapons, backed by 20 to 80 fanatical 9th-level knights as shock troops and up to 1,000 lesser vorthani.

On the Prime Material they dig underground bases for raids, aimed mostly at mind reavers but often simply for the joy of killing. On that plane they have a pact with certain red dragons, who serve as mounts and companions: a raiding party typically rides two dragons, four to six riders apiece. The dragons defend their riders but will not die for them, fleeing if the fight turns; what the vorthani give in return is unknown.

A bond between officers and troops lets a few terse words relay complex orders.

Their biology matches a human's, but the barren Astral reshaped their culture into specialized castes in place of ordinary farmers and tradesmen. Growers raise fungi and sunless plants in vast artificial halls and water-gardens; builders are lesser magic-users who made architecture an art; gatherers use inborn power to harvest the plane's psychic and astral energies.

Predators by temperament, perhaps a legacy of slavery, they bully the weak, yet they never fight one another; the split with the zerathi is the nearest thing to civil war their people have known, and that unwritten law is never broken.