Marai

Marai are lesser rakshasas who have a little something extra up their sleeves—specifically rainbow-colored, energy bolt-hurling serpent limbs.  Secretive students of esoteric magicks, they are likely to be spell-trap setters and hit-and-run ambushers, doing everything they can to keep from fighting face to face.  In fact, when met in straight-up combat, a marai might just flee after a single flurry of energy bolts—prey that can fight back aren’t any fun for the duplicitous rakshasa, and it would be a shame to squander this incarnation on mortal foes destined to die anyway…

A maker of clockwork constructs has gone missing.  A marai has captured him, forcing him to craft animate clockwork limbs that the marai can wear.  Unfortunately his exploits have kept him too long away from the court of his rakshasa master, who comes looking for the marai at the exact same moment as the clockwork maker’s rescuers.

Adventurers fighting serpentfolk discover the snake-men have an unusual ally—a particularly serpentine marai who has been living among them, claiming to be a serpentfolk sorcerer blessed in the egg with magical might.  (While initially suspicious, the snake-men have since been convinced by the marai’s spell-spitting limbs and knowledge of Undercommon.)  The rakshasa Viper actually seeks to enter and study the demiplane that the serpentfolk guard—he is fascinated with extradimensional spaces, and the traps in his quarters include a portable hole and two giant bags of devouring.

The Sunrise Seat is a carving-bedecked temple so large it is practically a ziggurat, with new rooms being discovered all the time.  (The temple fell into disuse during an orc invasion, then mudslides covered one quarter of the complex.)  The marai Sudeep Ranj spends every night in the temple, creeping in and out under a cloak of invisibility in order to study the secrets the loremasters and mystic theurges have unearthed that day.  But the temple has also attracted the attention of an asura, a stealthy adhukait named Katari and Zoonha, who wants to see it resealed.  Now the god-mocking rakshasa and the god-loathing asura set traps and ambushes to drive the other out, with the poor bewildered scholars caught in the middle.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 228

Advanced marai viper colors: mauve, puce, coral, taupe—y’know, I’m going to need some Pantone color chips for this…