Thursday, May 8, 2014

Xorn


Xorns are awesome.  (Not that Xorn.  That Xorn sucks.)  And they're pretty much a blank slate.  Based on the description in the Bestiary, you can play a xorn as an intelligent ant lion, the Plane of Earth version of the Tasmanian Devil, a gemstone-addicted drug addict, a druid of the earth, or a very unconventional bard (#rockmusic, amitire?).  And, as with the otyugh, PCs who make assumptions about xorn intelligence based on their alien appearance (they’re not even bilaterally symmetrical!) might be in for a shock when one of the earth creatures pipes up in perfect Common…

Agate Gnasher the Xorn tends bar in the Lower Fells district of Smelterholm, a coke cigar never far from his triangular lips.  He’s also the legal front for a xorn smuggling operation—earth glide being incredibly useful in a city 3,000 feet under the surface.  It was all going smoothly until Gnasher started cutting corners.  When one too many earth mephit body parts start winding up in the Sediment of the Day, nosy adventurers get involved.

After running across a nest cacodaemons, a xorn has become addicted to soul gems.  It avidly hunts new sources of the creatures, and over time exposure has granted it the fiendish template.  It might ally with adventurers to take down a more powerful daemon (provided it is allowed to claim the lion’s share of the soul gems), but will turn violent if anything threatens its cacodaemon supply.

The best ioun stones are not mined, but sung out of the earth by xorn bards.  They do not take kindly to strangers, especially fleshy ones, but they may relent if adventurers can help them against more powerful threats—carnivorous crystals and tainted earth elementals in particular.

Pathfinder Bestiary 284

Agate Gnasher recalls the cosmopolitan xorn of the Downer comic series.

Also, how much must other earth element creatures hate xorns?  When you can glide through stone like water and are rapaciously hungry for gems, that has to piss off the neighbors.  I bet shaitans think they're worse than goblins...

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