Drifter

Appearance and culture

A drifter's body is somewhat tear or pear shaped, wide in the front and narrowing into a sharp tip at the back of the creature. The front of the body is dominated by a single massive usually amber eye recessed under an overhanging protective brow that it uses to thoughtfully peer at things around it.

Drifters are very long lived and their age usually shows very well on their chitin plates that cover the front and top part of their body. A number of old scratch and groove marks are often cut into their shell in a mix with old growth ridges. These layers of overlapping chitin are usually slate-grey and dark umber in colour but spell weavers have told tales of drifters in many other colours as well. Their internal organs are held inside this protective shell. At the bottom side of their bodies the drifters have a multitude of ribbon-like membranes that undulate silently as they drift across the valley.

Drifters are quite poor at manipulating objects as they lack proper hands and fingers. Instead they use their four grasping tentacles that hang under their main body to grasp onto things. Mostly they use these tentacles to grab onto food that they then lift into their mouth located on the underside of their floating body. They also assist this with their natural telekinetic powers, and with enough effort and practice they have also learned to wield weapons and objects.

They prefer communicating through their latent telekinetic powers and bio-luminescent tentacles that they can control at will. Very few non-drifters though understand this weird way of communication. Their mouth is capable of producing speech but they consider communicating like this to be more primitive and reserved for lesser creatures.

Spell weavers tell that drifters originate from their home dimension and many of them arrived with the spell weavers in the past, but it also seems that more of them have found their way to Aegic at later dates as well. They also note that in their home dimension drifters did not use any tools, clothing or gear and they seem to have adapted this from the other intelligent creatures in the valley.

Drifters tend to be very amoral towards non-telepathic creatures and view them more as primitive creatures or complex tools to use and discard when not needed anymore. They often have big trouble integrating into communities and societies due to their very unusual looks that make people fear and shun them and how the drifters view most people. They mostly prefer solitary life of drifting across the valley learning new things and exploring magical things.

As they age their inborn psionic abilities develop and they can unleash these psionic abilities from their central eye.