Yak-Man

These broad-shouldered, ogre-sized humanoids have the horned heads of glum yaks and permanently sour faces. Both sexes are shaggy, the females slimmer but hard for outsiders to distinguish; all wear long robes, sometimes turbans, and carry staves. Their own name for themselves means 'the lucky chosen.'

Any yak-man can use any magic item, class-restricted or not, though items that boost abilities it lacks do nothing while those granting new powers work. They love staves: each encounter has a 10% chance that one of them wields a magical rod or staff, and it will not hesitate to use it.

Leaders have normal Hit Dice but priest powers of 1st to 10th level, with all spheres but plant and summoning. At 9th level they become high priests, gaining wizard spells at their priest level (starting with 5th-level spells) and usually a seat as the emperor's advisors.

Once a day, if none already serves it, each can call a dao as a slave until released or until two sunrises pass. Shrewdly, they never demand wishes. The emperor uses dao as thugs, messengers and spies, and the resentful genies vent their rage on yak-men's enemies. Dao are forbidden to harm yak-men, even when summoned by a foe, though such dao keep their loyalties and may work against yak-men indirectly, such as by sharing secrets.

Their most feared power resembles magic jar. It takes a touch and two full turns, so the victim is usually restrained, and the target saves vs. spell at -4, cumulative with other modifiers. Only humans, demihumans and humanoids (elves, dwarves, orcs, giants) are vulnerable, not genies, monsters, mind reavers or animals. It gains the host's body and memories but none of its magical, spell-like or psionic gifts, while the host's mind sleeps within the yak-man's. Neither detect magic nor genie-callers reveal it; a true-seeing wise woman senses wrongness but knows the cause only if she has faced yak-men before. Dispel it as magic jar. The yak-man may return to its body at will from any distance; if either body dies, both die, so it flees a threatened host.

Mountaintop cities hold several thousand yak-men and five or six times as many slaves, who serve as currency. The dao haul gray, greasy stone from their home plane for walls as strong as any human fortress. Valley outposts of 11-20 yak-men with 10 dao and 10-40 slave warriors rule whole valleys, taking lowlanders as tribute and handing rebels' land to more pliant slaves.

Their fanatical theocracy serves the Faceless God, whose yak-shaped, blank-faced statues loom over temples on the highest crags. Daily slave sacrifices by fire, burial alive, drowning or a fall from the cliffs keep it pleased and remind every slave that disobedience means death tomorrow. Legend says the god tricked and beat the lord of elemental earth in his own realm, binding the dao to serve its followers, never harming them, for 'a thousand years and a year,' with centuries yet to run.

Lately they eye the lowlands. Lone scouts, usually criminals seeking pardon, size up foes, deal with evil humans and win forgiveness by returning with slaves or treasure. Groups of one to four, each perhaps with a dao (a noble one if a leader is present, 10% chance), kidnap mortals and wear them while one guards the bodies, infiltrating ruling households through servants and slaves. For sport, one may send its host on a rampage, then depart and leave the dazed victim to pay.

Yak-men hunger for dark knowledge and destroy what they cannot use at once. Weaned young go to communal nurseries, never reclaimed; loyalty is owed only to god and race. Outsiders rightly fear them as bogeymen. Some whisper that dao lords secretly help the Faceless God subdue other genie rulers.