Zin

In their true shape zin are pale blue or green snakes whose backs bear a blue-green mosaic pattern unique to each one. The pattern hides them in moving water but not when they rest on the bottom. Usually, though, they go about dressed as traveling bards.

With 60-foot infravision and the power to take human or demihuman shape whenever they like, zin are rarely seen as snakes. Each fights and casts as a 5th-level bard using one of the trickster, storyteller or barber kits, and knows four wizard spells (three 1st-level, one 2nd), usually enchantment/charm or illusion; ventriloquism and hideous laughter are old favorites. They love magical items.

A single zin has a fine bardic voice, but a band playing together within 10 feet of one another makes truly supernatural music. Such a band can cast one spell per round from a shared repertoire set by its size (per the band table), with larger groups also knowing every spell of the smaller ones. Its caster level is triple the band's head count, and each zin present imposes -1 on saves against the music.

In snake form a zin bites for 1-6, and the victim must save vs. poison or sink into a catatonic sleep for 24 hours. Sleepers usually wake stripped naked, and if the band is feeling spiteful, dumped near some nasty monster's lair.

Bands live on fish in air-filled caves under rivers and lakes. Bored, they visit a nearby travelers' camp asking shelter for the night, then test their hosts with crude jokes and pranks. Hosts who stay calm earn a short concert of every spell the band knows, used for maximum comedy (by zin standards). If the hosts truly honor the code of hospitality, the band rewards them with an evening of song and merriment, wishes them luck and long life at dawn, and leaves them in peace.

Hosts who break that trust by attacking a zin see the band flee into the night, only to return for a concert every night of the journey. On the last visit, at the DM's option, they lay the evil eye on their former hosts, with no saving throw.

Zin care for music, dancing and fun, often at someone else's expense, and little else, though they take swift offense at anyone fouling their home waters. Rogues prize zin hide: sandals made from it add 10% to climbing walls and moving silently. Wearing them openly earns the hatred of nearly every zin met afterward (-10 reactions), and some may decide the rogue's own skin would make good footwear.