"For you to have traversed the bloody gap on your own, without the aid of my kin, that is a feat to impress a king. To freeze time precisely at the moment required, even many Githzerai cannot do it. But, this only tells me that you desperately want to see me, not what you wish to desperately see me for..."

-The Far-Sought Sage, Raineer the Hermit

Githzerai Culture

The Monks Beyond Worlds

In their ancient past, the Gith were a united people, their oldest origins shrouded in mystery. All that is known is that, at some point, they became dominated by the Mind Flayers, who put them into permanent bondage. The early Gith peoples were used both as stock for creating new Mindflayers, and as a hardy and capable slave workforce. For many centuries, these Gith helped to propel the Mind Flayer empire to become the premier super power of the Underdark. However, as the Mind Flayers committed their forces to costly wars against Aboleth, Drow, and Duergar, the Gith grew in number, eventually serving to fulfill every non-military role in the empire of the Illithids. They became too reliant on the Gith, and a group of revolutionaries organized the workers to kill the few Illithids that guarded their fortresses, enabling themselves to sabotage the entire backbone of their empire. Some remained, attempting to hold their new Mind Flayer fortresses, though these fighters would eventually succumb to siege. Most however ran, using Mind Flayer gateways to travel to the Astral Sea. There, they began to collect onto motes of floating matter, commonly called 'islands' in the Astral Sea. They built minor holds on these motes, and began to hold out against Mind Flayer retaliation. They were divided however on what to do next. There were those who believed they should retreat further, moving into a place where even the Mind Flayers would be discouraged from following them. These Gith believed that the time plane of Limbo would be just such a place; it was known that Limbo was difficult to escape from once entered, and they believed that the Mind Flayers would not risk their own lives in mass by following them there. The other Gith however, a slightly larger faction, believed that offense was the best defense. They should martial their forces, and utilize the technology they had taken from the Mind Flayers to build Astral Ships of their own. A conflict arose, and eventually the group split in twain. The Githzerai, or in the Gith language, those who step back, became the faction to leave the Astral Sea, and forever emigrate to the plane of Limbo. The Githyanki, or in the Gith language, those who strike forth, became the faction to build up their Astral Fortresses into massive "Sky Citadels", and developed the Illithid technology to be useable by regular Gith minds. The Githzerai on the contrary, once in the plane of Limbo, cultivated their powers of the mind. They marshaled all of their discipline to regulate their thoughts and behaviors, and collected into semi-organized monasteries scattered across Limbo. They honed their telepathic abilities, and this in concert with their time spent in Limbo allowed them to have control over the actual shape and content of Limbo itself. They assembled ruined chapels, reversing them in time, or found cleared land, and moved it forward in time till a structure appeared. Eventually, their understanding of time, space, and the whole of reality fundamentally changed, and the Githzerai became non-linear beings. To them, time had no preference to either flowing forward or backwards, nor did space have any preference to up-down, left or right. They no longer even viewed themselves as individuals in the normal sense, rather instead viewing themselves as four-dimensional wholes stretched over time. It was also true that in their new home, they were not alone. Limbo was the divine plane of time, and inhabited by Reckion and his Clockwork Court. Reckion was magnanimous, and had no issue allowing the Githzerai to build their monasteries, so long as they promised not to defy the Pantheon. Therefore, those souls wandering Limbo were often divided, many going to live at the Clockwork Court, but many still coming to meditate with the Githzerai, and some more still drifting between the two camps. For the Githzerai's part, they took all of this in stride; they could deal with these others, even if they didn't love them as their own. Eventually, in a violent and hateful act of sorcery and evil magic, some Mind Flayers broke through into Limbo, and sent forth into the cascading wilderness a blasted artifact, a spawning stone. From these stones spewed forth the Slaadi, a terrible mutant race of aberrations which they Mind Flayers either created, or merely discovered. Whatever their origin, once in Limbo, they made it their home too, and became hell bent on conquering all of Limbo, and then from there, the multiverse. Since then, the Githzerai have waged an endless war against the creatures, constantly beating them back, only for more waves to appear. The original spawning stone has been lost to time, and should it ever be found, it would not be the end of it; many more have been created since then, scattered across the more remote and corrupted parts of Limbo. The Githzerai seek to bring a final peace to their realm, so that their meditations can eventually lead to achieving enlightenment. So long as the void-blasted Slaadi remain, such feats are impossible.

      The Githzerai are very different than other peoples in Adra; indeed, they are hardly apart of Adra in any crucial sense; they have been known to be so ponderous, stubborn, and slow, as to threaten to bend light around them, and yet, they often come off to others as humble and mysterious. In truth, all of these traits descend from just how alien the Githzerai are from not only their void-kin, but even more so all the races and cultures in Adra-proper. Their stubbornness flows from their inability for interlocutors to convince them using concepts they find important or valuable. Their ponderous and slow nature comes from the fact that time in their world flows differently, and so they think at a different speed as a result. Indeed, even their humility is false, in a way: the types of things which many non-Githzerai value, glory, money, luxury, all completely seem worthless to most Githzerai. As such, they often demure in the face of such offerings, and this can look like humility or generosity to those ignorant of their culture. Rather, to most Githzerai, what values most in life is study, contemplation, relaxation, and fellowship. Githzerai, rejecting the hierarchical and mechanical modes of their cousins, live in large interconnected groups, wherein what one defines as their 'family' may be extremely complicated, and in no way traditional. Githzerai are a mostly peaceful people, and abhor violence for violence's sake. However, they are willing and able to defend their communes, using their potent psychic powers to do so. In particular, the Githzerai, usually pursuing a calm and slow-to-judge approach with others, prosecute their war against the Slaadi with extreme prejudice. Many Githzerai, spending less time in quiet contemplation, become dedicated "Hunters", experts at traversing the vast expanses of Limbo, and hunting down Slaadi back to their lairs; for these hunters, the ultimate honor was discovering and destroying a spawning stone, and those who did so would often become somewhat famous across the communes. The Githzerai live in non-uniform and non-hierarchical communes, dozens of which are spread across the multifaceted domains of Limbo. The communes form loose-political bonds with one another, and news spreads from one to another slowly by word of mouth. Generally, the communes are large enough to protect themselves from the largest of Slaadi raiding parties, while small enough so that every member of the commune can know every other. Perhaps the most strange part of their culture is due to their relationship with Limbo itself. Due to the warbles and dilations in time throughout the plane, the Githzerai do not experience time in a strictly linear fashion. Instead, one may experience their childhood as coming after their adult years, and may not experience a certain day in order, but rather discover it later on. Furthermore, often individuals move in opposing directions, with relation to the flow of time, so that two people can be friends, but know each other with asymmetrical degrees of infamy: one may meet a friend, with their friend knowing everything about them, and eventually, once they know their friend very well, their friend will know nothing of them instead. This means that those not accustomed to the Githzerai or Limbo tend to find living among the Commune to be virtually impossible, and possibly maddening. Similarly, Githzerai find living outside of Limbo to be confusing and unsettling; the ever-driving movement of time can trigger existential crises, and the symmetry of their relationships to be boring and ever-too-predictable, and therefore seemingly surface deep.

      The Githzerai people are most highly concentrated in the Plane of Limbo, and are rarely seen outside of their homeland. The most predominate race of the Githzerai, is unsurprisingly, Githzerai, and other races are vanishingly rare. The most popular god among the Githzerai is Reckion, though their relationship with his pantheon is often somewhat more pithy and casual, due to their proximity, than other followers of the pantheon in Adra. Furthermore, there are many among the Githzerai who follow Aereidia. The Githzerai tend to be calm, deliberative, and friendly. They also tend to be ponderous, stubborn, and ungrounded. The Githzerai speak Gith, their original language which they brought with them from their homeland, and have spoken ever since.

If you choose the Githzerai Culture, you gain the following:

~Either a +1 to your Intelligence score or a +1 to your Wisdom score~

~A -1 to your Dexterity score~

~As a known language, Gith~

~A Sub-Discipline in every knowledge skill on checks relating to Githzerai Culture~

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