Known by many names—the harbingers of Chaos, the children of the Cerulean Void, and the Lords of the Maelstrom—the enigmatic, serpentine proteans stand among the most feared and least understood of all the natives of the planes. Capable of amazing acts of creation and equally brutal destruction, the proteans view the universe as a place of unbounded creativity.
Although proteans lack the bloodthirsty malice of fiends or any sort of rigid hierarchy or unifying rulers, many view them as a capricious threat to every other plane, a devouring tide of disorder lurking beyond the shifting boundaries of the Maelstrom borderlands. Yet their true nature, viewed through all its shifting facets, is much more complicated.
For all the Maelstrom’s transient, unstable nature, one might suspect that the plane’s history would remain poorly recorded, or not at all except for the chronicles of visitors with their own limited perspectives. Yet while the history of the Maelstrom and its chaotic denizens is recorded in exceeding detail by the historians and scholars of Axis, and to an equal but decidedly more biased extent by their counterparts in Heaven and Hell, the proteans also possess a surprisingly deep knowledge of their own history. Of course, obtaining this knowledge remains a difficult thing—one can travel into the depths of the Maelstrom itself, hoping to petition one of the plane’s keketar cabals, or even one of the unique protean lords, for a glimpse into their past, but only at exceeding risk. Barring such travails, members of the imentesh caste encountered outside of the Maelstrom often willingly provide any information asked of them. But every word that drops from their forked tongues seeks to manipulate listeners to further the agenda of their race or chorus. The history of reality that follows may or may not be truth, but to the proteans, it is fact enough.
Before the current structure of the Outer Planes existed, there was only the Maelstrom, eternal and untainted by the cancer of stability. Predating the other planes by an unfathomable period, it possibly existed then as it does now, as a vast, trackless ocean of raw, chaotic probability stretching between realities.
The proteans maintain their status as the first natives of a pristine Maelstrom, a place of pure, ultimate freedom prior to the formation (or arrival) of the other planes.
For the most part, the other outsiders respect this claim without comment. Yet diverging from this history, other legends suggest that while the proteans were indeed the first native race to emerge from the Maelstrom, they either didn’t exist as distinct creatures, or only emerged after something happened. Prior to that unknown event, the Maelstrom’s chaos simply refused to support any life beyond a single generation emerging from its substance and then fading back from whence it came. Possibly following the formation of the Material Plane by unknown creators, or the fractious divide between strange entities of positive and negative energy, the proteans emerged as a distinct race like the cells and antibodies of a living creature’s immune system, formed in response to an infection or irritation.
Regardless of their original nature, the proteans were indeed the first natives of the Outer Sphere. Yet they did not rule there alone for long, for as they explored their new realm, the very act of exploration put strains upon reality.
In places, the very fabric of the Outer Sphere tore open, revealing strange dark rifts into infinity. It is unclear if what dwelt within these rifts existed before it was exposed to the Outer Sphere, but certainly once the connection was made, these rifts became one of the proteans’ greatest obsessions. For there was life within these rifts as well.
These rifts opened into the Abyss, and what dwelt within would be known as the qlippoth. A renegade, heretical faction of keketar proteans, comprising the Chorus of Razored Discord and the Chorus of Malignant Symmetry, became obsessed with the Abyss.
They launched countless expeditions into this new realm, and in so doing came into violent conflict with the qlippoth. It remains unknown if the qlippoth would have noticed the Outer Sphere in time, but certainly the acts of these keketars hastened that event, and soon their war against the qlippoth extended out of the Abyss and into the Maelstrom itself, and their influence spread far and wide through the Great Beyond before they were forced back into the dark, hideous depths of the Abyss. Yet the qlippoth had done their damage—they left their mark throughout reality, and in a strange and ironic way, this war may have been responsible for the formation of the rest of reality.
The proteans hold that it was while they were distracted by this Abyssal war that other nascent planes took root in the Cerulean Void. While the proteans fought against the qlippoth, they had not the time to effectively destabilize them in order to draw them back into the Maelstrom’s embrace. The exact order of the new planes’ formation remains uncertain, and the proteans rarely care to discuss this aspect of history, considering it their race’s greatest shame and failure.
The proteans claim that Axis emerged soon after the Abyss opened its vaults, appearing like a poisoned splinter into the Maelstrom from some other reality altogether, reaching out and creating something far beyond the nature of the Abyss—not just instituting stability but forcing order and boundaries upon the Maelstrom. Possessed of an incessant desire to pacify, define, and organize, the axiomite natives of Axis came into immediate and ongoing conflict with proteans. The first major response by the proteans was, as the keketar describe it, “to vomit out the caustic refuse of the Abyss to drown the usurpers of reality.”
Since then, the history between the planes has been one of mutual attempted genocide on a virtually constant basis, expanding to include other parties as the planes evolved.
According to various imentesh historians, after the wayward planes and their neighboring interlopers had coalesced into their earliest states, the gods appeared from “somewhere else” with an apparently equal level of confusion between the proteans and the deities as to one another’s nature. Already preoccupied on multiple fronts, the proteans interacted with the deities much as they still do—warily and on a case-by-case basis. For instance, they accept Nethys as a kindred soul, harbor no specific feelings against Sarenrae, and would happily skewer Asmodeus’s corpse upon Pharasma’s spire if they could. The situation currently exists at a trembling balance point, with the proteans largely hoping to put off any conflict with the gods—if conflict is even truly needed or desired—until after they deal with the Abyss and the denizens of the lawful planes.
Protean society (such as it exists) largely revolves around the three major protean castes: the naunets, imenteshes, and keketars. Beyond those three gross divisions, most other differences fall by the wayside.
To most observers the proteans lack any form of sexual dimorphism, and in fact they seem to lack any obvious gender altogether. Given the fluid nature of protean anatomy, the chaotic outsiders possess one, neither, or most often both genders at once, and this anatomical fluidity comes to bear when two (or more) of their kind couple for procreation or simply for the pleasure of the act. Most proteans (at least the members of the naunet and imentesh castes) tend to form not by mundane birth, but by spontaneous formation from the raw stuff of the Maelstrom, and while the details remain highly debated, the proteans appear more than willing to transform mortal souls into proteans just as other outsiders do in their own ways.
In line with the shifting, never stable nature of the deep Maelstrom, protean language has long been a nightmare for planar linguists, as it changes and shifts radically by comparison to any other known tongue. Thankfully, mortal lives are short enough in the grand scheme of things that while such change is readily apparent over the span of years, a speaker can still manage to understand the tongue in most cases even after a decade or more. Still, the shifts occur at an uneven pace, seemingly at random, and so all but the most obsessive scholars usually bet on a given protean having knowledge of a more stable tongue, or simply relying on magical translation.
Their spoken—or at least hissed—tongue aside, written Protean is another nightmare altogether, especially since scholars remain at odds as to whether it actually exists. While a keketar’s swirling illusory crown is composed of dozens or even hundreds of symbols, those symbols lack any consistency beyond a general theme and a few symbols unique to that individual. Some scholars feel the crowns themselves indicate a written tongue, except if true, its lexicon’s size would stagger the mind. Beyond the keketars, possible examples of protean text exist deep within the shifting depths in purported protean monuments and other constructions.
One such location, the Ouroboros Valley, appears as a drifting ring of mountains, untethered to conventional topography, centered on an oddly liquid monument. The object constantly shifts between a series of nested rings, three or more pillars, and more bizarre solids. During each shift, the monument turns translucent and any light passing through its form projects a scattered field of bizarre text in shadow upon the ground along with the dark silhouettes of various proteans.
Yet just as with the protean spoken tongue, most scholars simply default to magical translation of any so-called protean texts, and even then, different attempts sometimes yield different results with subtle shifts in meaning.
Many protean names possess a twofold structure, including both a name peculiar to their hissed, maddeningly complex language, and a title or descriptor. The latter portion often translates easily by use of magic, while the former often fails to translate in any way and so remains as a portion of a given protean’s name so far as non-proteans concern themselves. There are times, however, when the entirety of a protean’s name translates, with little discernable difference between the original structure of the name and that of any other protean. Such proteans as Song of Gentle Poison and Sibilant Cry of the Storm often carry their names as descriptors of their actions and, when relevant, even the general ideology of any chorus they serve.
The most bestial of the proteans might on the surface seem to have no conception of culture or even rational thought. Of course, most encounters with them occur in the Maelstrom borderlands and elsewhere during their frequent, massed incursions into the other planes of the Outer Sphere. During such instances within the borderlands, naunets typically attack on sight, not out of bloodlust, but because large groups of their kind prowl the borderlands, either already prepared for violence as they make their way to infiltrate another plane, or on guard against the invading armies of Heaven, Hell, and Axis.
In each case, naunets are already primed for a savagery visited upon them virtually every day by their enemies, and travelers should expect a similar response to that received by an archon, devil, or axiomite. Outside the borderlands, the response is similar, but often more extreme as the structured, defined reality of the planes outside of the Maelstrom (even chaotic planes like Elysium or the Abyss) infuriates the naunet to a maddening degree, or even causes them physical pain.
Given such, it would be best to say that outside of the deep Maelstrom, naunets assume monolithic, destructive aspects. When in their native environment and away from the objects of their hatred, they behave rather differently.
Left to their own devices, separated from imenteshes and keketars, groups of naunets cavort within the Maelstrom’s depths like pods of dolphins, darting after one another among the plane’s transient, ever-changing features, and hunting the plane’s other natives or even unique creatures springing forth from the raw potential itself.
Of course, while far from being artisans of the Maelstrom’s metastable reality like their imentesh cousins, naunets possess a strange gift of creativity when it comes to shaping the raw chaos of the Maelstrom. In fact, larger groups of naunets often compete with one another in fashioning more and more elaborate changes to the landscape by the complexity and duration of their movements, frequently sabotaging one another to add yet another element of chaos to their pursuits.
Beyond their whimsical and predatory activities, naunets enjoy decorating themselves with luminous patterns and symbols, painted on with pigments and minerals they collect, or even drawn from the raw stuff of the Cerulean Void. Of course, these painted designs rapidly fade, evaporate, or burn away like a pale alcohol flame when taken from their native mutable reality, and so few observers witness the naunets in their artistic glory, allowing their raging, barbaric reputations as destructive engines of chaos to remain the dominant view.
Although all naunets are known for their strength, ferocity, and unpredictability, a few stand out as noteworthy exemplars of their kind.
Nevriss the Fire-Gilded: Immediately coming to mind as a paragon of his kind’s exploits beyond the Maelstrom, this massive naunet wears upon his head a helmet fashioned from the skull of Garilax of Malbolge. Formerly in service to Moloch, this cornugon commander was slaughtered along with his army barely a hundred miles into the Maelstrom, disoriented and sickened by a roiling storm of chaos drawn from the plane by its naunet defenders.
According to the accounts of the few diabolic survivors, corroborated by the words of an imentesh skald, the devil choked to death on his own dismembered right hand, removed and plunged down his throat by the naunet Nevriss. Nevriss subsequently consumed the body except for the head, which he carried back to the deep Maelstrom to have decorated like a trophy by the imenteshes and keketars of his chorus. As it now exists, ornately carved and decorated with inlaid silver filigree, some portion of the devil’s original essence remains, reacting at times with the metal to create a burning halo around its killer’s body.
H’sshineth the Devouring Cacophony: As a member of the Chorus of the Boiling Spiral, the naunet H’sshineth seeks to cleanse the malignant taint of the Abyss from the face of reality, no matter the cost. Over several thousand years—at least according to the proteans of his chorus—he personally slaughtered over a score of vrocks and three times that many babaus before vanishing into the depths of the Abyss in pursuit of greater prey. Most assume that he died at some point following his suicidal descent, far from the Maelstrom and the rest of his chorus—but perhaps not. Reports occasionally surface of lesser demonic warlords and the envoys and ambassadors of their greater masters found dead, with their dismembered bodies formed into the shape of a trio of sigils carved into the scales of H’sshineth’s torso, positioned above the symbol of the Boiling Spiral written in blood.
The deceitful destroyers, the artisans of chaos, the painters, singers, heralds, and skalds of instability, imentesh proteans present a confusing face to the outside world.
Generally seen as less immediately hostile, and even loquacious by comparison to the naunets that often accompany them during forays into the borderlands, they possess a capacity for subtlety matched only by their fanatical, quasi-religious devotion to bringing about the dissolution of reality beyond the borders of the Maelstrom.
Like polar opposites of their naunet cousins, imenteshes prefer to spread their gospel of chaos by words and subtle manipulation rather than destruction. If confusion and discord can be spread among the legions of Hell by fostering conflict between its archdevils, if insinuations of unholy zeal and the slander of genocide can be whispered about the archons within the courts of Heaven, and if deific infighting threatens to shake the foundations of Axis itself without a drop of blood spilt by the hands of the protean race—so be it. Chaos comprises all possibilities, and imenteshes eagerly seek them out and exploit them as a counterpart to naunets’ raw destructive force.
Imenteshes continually indulge their immense curiosities. A single imentesh wandering the Maelstrom borderlands might spend days or weeks observing a town or even a lone individual, learning their habits, their language, anything that strikes its whimsical interest, down to the color of an azata’s hair in sunlight at a particular hour of the day or the scent of bile on the breath of a dretch. Of course, all that imenteshes learn aids them in infiltrating other planes when they so desire.
Imenteshes often accompany bands of naunets, providing their brethren with greater magical support on the field of battle. More often, though, the destructive naunets act as bodyguards to imenteshes, guarding them until they reach a particular plane or portal they feel called toward. At that point imenteshes veil themselves as natives of that other realm and go about their goals, be it learning information for future exploitation or active subterfuge. Then again, outside of the lawful planes, they might neglect any disguise at all and use that apparent openness as a tool to gain an audience for their words.
Within the Maelstrom, imenteshes occupy themselves with the alteration of their native environment. Like an artist provided with an infinite, mutable canvas and never-ending inspiration, singular imenteshes occupy themselves by shifting portions of the Cerulean Void to their liking, rearranging the landscape and even creating radically different terrain altogether. And as with most proteans, the more of them that gather together, the more profound such changes become, with the terrain-warping artwork of imenteshes putting the naunets’ middling attempts to shame.
In line with their artistic, creative flair, imenteshes often create objects both mundane and magical, freely distributing them to one another and to the naunets marching or swimming toward the conflicted borderlands. Similar to their cousins’ penchant for self-decoration, imenteshes often carve the scales around their eye ridges with intricate patterns, and—if they possess them at any given moment—they decorate any frill, horn, or spike with bands of conjured and crafted metal. Imenteshes also frequently wrap strips of cloth around their midsections and tails, penned with ink or bleached designs, usually pertaining to their current pursuits and any chorus that holds their loyalty at the time.
The most influential members among the imentesh caste are rarely recognized. Acting to further the reach and influence of chaos upon the planes, they find it best to keep their identities secret from those they would twist and manipulate.
Sibilant Cry in the Storm: This rail-thin imentesh often appears unhealthy or starving, wrapped in tasseled lengths of crimson cloth tinged in gold. Yet despite his jaundiced state, he carries himself with an air of quiet strength and resolve not unlike that of an ascetic monk finding wisdom in self-exile—and, on some level, he is just that. Rather than wander among the planes touching the Maelstrom, Sibilant Cry in the Storm resides within Golarion’s Worldwound, straddling the spaces between the Material Plane and the Abyss itself, and indeed he has suffered from his separation from the Maelstrom.
Perpetually cloaked beneath a veil, alternately masking himself as a simple human peasant, a paladin of Mendev, or one of the innumerable varieties of demons inhabiting the region, Sibilant Cry in the Storm keenly watches each of these factions. Risking his life so far from the Cerulean Void and bereft of much of his power to warp the land in such a static environment, he has managed to help keep the Worldwound from changing its state to any great degree—a creature of chaos paradoxically championing equilibrium.
Potentially involved in the Mendevian discovery of nexavar, or its use in the construction of the Wardstones holding back the demonic tide, his intentions are hardly benevolent, as he plays the fiends against one another, weakening them just enough to avoid butchering the human crusaders completely, while at other times acting to reverse the bloody tide against the human defenders.
Muse to the Wayward: Decorated with wrappings of white and green cloth and wearing a glittering emerald gem of true seeing embedded in the scales of his forehead like a mystical third eye, Muse to the Wayward openly explores the borderlands of Elysium without bothering with a disguise.
Often approaching other travelers to speak with them at length, he has spent years with the wandering lillend natives who respect—if not entirely trust—him, enjoying his fantastical abilities as a craftsman and his seemingly endless supply of stories from across the planes. While the lillends may or may not be aware of it, he remains closely shadowed at all times by minions of more than one azata lord, and the question remains if Muse to the Wayward’s interests lie with the lillends, or against them.
Keketars function as a ruling caste among their kindred, and unlike naunets and imenteshes, keketars do not form directly from mortal souls, though controversy exists over whether they might form spontaneously from the Maelstrom itself on rare occasions. More evidence suggests that each keketar was elevated to its position, taking up its new form and new responsibilities like a cleric answering the call of a patron deity.
Keketars possess the greatest physical range among the protean castes, and though they frequently alter in size, color, and virtually every other minor trait about their bodies, two distinct features mark them as a caste: their eyes and their crowns. Keketar eyes always glow a striking shade of amber or violet (depending on their lineage), and floating above their heads like crowns rest swirling clouds of ever-changing symbols. Beyond their crowns, however—with each individual bearing a unique, stylistic element—keketars might adopt the painted decorations of naunets, the colored banner cloth of imenteshs, sheathes of liquid metal forged from the Maelstrom itself, or absolutely nothing but their own scales. Their manner of dress and decoration varies by individual, with some similarity seen among special gatherings of their kind.
Devoid of any notion of regular organization, the keketar sub-species operates within an innumerable number of sect-like cabals known as choruses, each comprised of anywhere from one to a score of their kind. Within each chorus, its members possess a unique, shared vision of the Maelstrom’s will and a proper way to enact it. While keketars of each cabal collectively divine this particular vision, they attract naunets and imenteshes eager to carry out their goals.
Still, keketars themselves don’t simply act like priestkings far from the bloody front of their own crusades. When not actively congregating to refine their vision of the Maelstrom’s will, they often wander the Maelstrom, its borderlands, and even far beyond into the other planes if doing so furthers their aims.
Among the devotees of chaos, several keketars rise above their peers as true fanatics of the Maelstrom’s unfathomable power.
Chorus of the Ravenous Moon and Open Grave: While many keketar cabals remain nameless and poorly understood in their goals, the Chorus of the Ravenous Moon and Open Grave long ago lost any chance of remaining incognito. Simply put, the group of nine keketars seeks to tear apart Pharasma’s Spire, releasing the occupants of the Graveyard of Souls for the demigod Groetus to feast upon, and in so doing bring down ruin upon the Perfect City of Axis and destroy the fragile balance that exists in the current order of planes.
Understandably, the chorus faces active opposition from most lawful and good gods, and pointedly from Pharasma herself (though this makes no obvious impact in her relations with the protean race as a whole, or apparently her relationship with the unique protean Ssila’meshnik).
Curiously, the number of keketars in this group never changes, always remaining set at nine despite the rare death of any given member, with a new keketar emerging to fill the gap in each instance, “inspired by the whisper and kiss of the Maelstrom.”
Mek’m’liis, the First of Mute Seers: A member of the Chorus of Serene Radiance, unlike all other keketars, Mek’m’liis bears no crown, stripped of it by a powerful mortal wizard centuries ago who sought to bind him into magical servitude. While successful, the terms of the binding did nothing to prevent his chorus’s retaliation. Following their obliteration of the mage’s demiplanar home, the focus containing Mek’m’liis’s stolen crown vanished without a trace.
Shorn of his mark of station, Mek’m’liis’s binding—like a spreading curse—affected his fellow keketars and their followers, permanently turning their eyes a piercing yellow, devoid of pupils, making them appear blind and providing Mek’m’liis his title. The keketar now searches for any means of reversing the curse, frequently striking temporary deals with wanderers into the borderlands and, through imentesh proxies, individuals on other planes, offering respite from protean attacks and protection from the Maelstrom’s flux.
Trembling Whisper in the Aftermath: A member of the Chorus of Corrosive Silence, this keketar has a constantly changing patina of interlaced lines of scar tissue lacing his body, shifting with a fluidity to match his crown. Like many of his kind, he rarely leaves the deep Maelstrom, and for centuries has occupied himself with the manipulation and construction of a massive, living storm, and the huge crystalline, snowflake-like object at its center. Coaxed by the keketar, fragments of the storm lash into the borderlands, dissolving non-native life en masse, yet otherwise nurturing the landscape. It all seems random, except for a number of disturbing instances where individual cyclones broke off and targeted specific celestials, fiends, and even mortal planewalkers. Survivors were plagued by horrific nightmares afterward, wherein the scarred keketar whispered with an alternating tone of adoration and malevolence, coaxing them into the Maelstrom. Within a year each succumbed, vanishing or committing suicide.
Among the drifting realms of the Maelstrom, the Cloister stands out as an enigma. Just one of the innumerable imperfections amid the realm of chaos, it is a site frequented by proteans who ever work to discorporate the motes of lawful reality that infiltrate their home. The Cloister appears as a glistening, iridescent sphere, like a great soap bubble in the deep Maelstrom. Planar scholars have long suspected it to be the domain of a dead or dying god, sealed except for two specific keketar cabals, the Chorus of the Dying Light and the Chorus of the Twice-Fallen.
For 3,000 years, no petitioners have flocked to the domain, nor have any deific servitors left it to carry out their patron’s will. For all intents and purposes, the realm appears abandoned, its creator dead, dying, or catatonic. But as with its surrounding plane, nothing is quite so straightforward—the realm’s borders have remained completely stable, something that should not occur unless a deity remains to actively sustain its substance distinct from the roiling change of the surrounding Maelstrom.
If anyone knows the realm’s secrets, it would be the members of the two distinct protean choruses that periodically visit the realm, though never at the same time as one another. These proteans apparently have ready access to the otherwise-sealed borders, approaching the luminous boundary and briefly making ritualistic gestures of respect and deference—such sentiments seeming bizarre, given that the proteans rarely behave as such toward the divine.
If the proteans possess any common unifying feature, it would be their racial religion. While the whimsical but good-aligned azatas worship many gods or none at all, and the fiends of the Abyss worship their many own demon lords, the children of the Maelstrom worship something at once both more abstract and immediately tangible. Simply stated, the proteans worship the Maelstrom itself, treating the Cerulean Void as a living entity, with themselves as its children and the agents of its will and self-expression.
Of course, as beings of manifest chaos, proteans find the very idea of religious dogma somewhere between nonsensical and abhorrent. Proteans devote their existences to exploring the infinite wonder of the Maelstrom’s will, and certain general themes permeate their actions within the Maelstrom and beyond.
First, the proteans despise imposed order and stability. On some level, every chorus expresses this feeling in the philosophy handed down to those proteans that follow it, and this shapes their actions and outlooks toward the other planes and non-natives of the Maelstrom.
Second, the proteans respect the act of creation, especially when a given creator expresses pleasure in its actions rather than their creations being rote or forced labor. Of course, creators live for the act of creation, not necessarily the created object itself, and eventually such things must be destroyed.
Finally, the proteans express their faith not through prayers or ritual, nor by any form of organized worship, but through actions that promote and exemplify their racial creed, with everything ultimately acting to please the entities at the mysterious heart of their beliefs.
Of all the mysteries of the Cerulean Void, the nature and identity of the proteans’ dualistic creator gods, the so-called Speakers of the Depths, remains its greatest. The keketars seem unable to fully describe them to non-proteans, and they spend much of their lives in mystical communion with the entities, but full understanding of their true nature seems locked into the moments when they act as direct channels to their influence. Their difficulty is even further compounded by a divisive language barrier. For instance, magical translation of their descriptions often blurs and mixes the singular and plural in describing the Speakers, as well as fluidly mixing the genders, though the latter point might simply be an artifact of protean physiology bleeding over into their racial language.
The two major descriptions come from various keketars and also from numerous devils, archons, and axiomites who bore witness to apparent manifestations of the proteans’ gods on the field of battle. The protean version speaks of perfect, twin serpents, merging in and out of one another’s bodies, mixing physical form as much as spiritual identity, creating the world around them while simultaneously devouring it and one another. Without being possessed and filled with the presence of their makers, the proteans fail to elaborate upon their nature, falling into language that implies that the Cerulean Void itself might be a third manifestation of their otherwise twofold symmetry.
On the other hand, the description of the proteans’ enemies is both more direct and terrible. Azragei the Forked, a cornugon servitor of Dispater, described how a circle of keketar proteans, “their crowns intertwined and set afire, summoned the Maelstrom into a solid form. They conjured a living, hungry thing from the depths, with a thousand eyes and a hundred heads. It was rage made real.”
A sword archon loyal in service to Ragathiel in turn described the following: “The proteans called out and the Maelstrom shuddered as if something terrible, coiled beneath the foundations of the world, had stirred from its fitful slumber to answer their plea.”
A final description, catalogued in the libraries of Axis, makes references to the devouring maw of a golden serpent, and pseudopods formed of the Cerulean Void itself laying waste to a legion of inevitables. Unable to define that which resists definition on an intrinsic level, few avenues of research exist to further illuminate the proteans’ gods except for the omens and prophecies spoken by the protean lords, the only beings with a greater connection and understanding than even the keketars.
Standing apart from the rest of their race, the unique protean lords transcend the division of their lesser kindred in both form and absolute might. The protean lords hearken back to an age vastly older than the current era of the cosmos, some previous iteration of the multiverse, or possibly from the reality-branching depths of a Maelstrom deeper and vaster than mortal sages suspect. While the various choruses squabble or collude among themselves, each pursuing its own unique interpretations of the Maelstrom’s will, the protean lords possess their own agendas and take no action either to support or hinder such activities.
Although some claim to possess deep insights into the will of their racial deities, the lords never attempt to supplant the ways of keketar choruses or others in active service to the Speakers. Few know the true forms of these beings, if indeed they possess actual shapes, as most shift and change wildly, though many retain specific themes in their endless changing. These unique proteans focus their efforts toward watching the gods—curious of their capacity for creation and destruction—and ensuring the ultimate failure of the forces of law. Beings of fantastic powers, rivaled only by the Speakers themselves and akin to the demon lords and empyreal lords of other realms, protean lords endlessly reshape and destroy vast realms within the Maelstrom, occasionally—and seemingly at random—turning their eyes toward prizes outside of the swirling chaos. Leading legions of their lesser brethren forward, these mighty and unique beings inspire overwhelming and destructive rampages, driving protean hordes to assault the very gates of Heaven, Hell, and beyond.
Born from the eternal flux of the Maelstrom or beings that have simply always been, the lords of the proteans embody the potential of all things, the changeability inherent in creation, and the temporal and ultimately finite being of all that is or ever will be. Several of the best known of these godlike beings are noted here, though others, such as the blathering Mother of Tongues, the formless Lord of Entropy, the vine-eyed Watcher in the Wheel, and the dreaded Lord of the Insane, are known to other races in fearful rumors and the raving of madmen.
Ssila’meshnik: Perhaps the most recognized of the unique proteans, the so-called Colorless Lord, Ssila’meshnik, manifests as an albino keketar, sometimes with a nested, intertwined trio of crowns similar to that caste’s hallmark feature. The Colorless Lord appears infrequently within Pharasma’s Court for the arbitration of specific cases, seemingly without any rationale, though each soul often seems tied to events that ultimately impact the Maelstrom—such impact typically remaining opaque until decades or centuries later, however. Of course, when he appears, the protean lord simply steps into existence, often to the disturbed surprise of Pharasma’s divine servitors, since without the goddess of fate’s express permission, this would normally be impossible. Still, Ssila’meshnik displays a courteous, respectful manner during his appearances, though without any sense of humbleness that one might expect in the presence of a greater deity.
Il’surrish the Wanderer: This insubstantial protean lord lacks a physical form of his own, drifting through the Cerulean Void as a current of partially coalescent light, flickering between regions of the plane without any apparent rhyme or reason, and occasionally vanishing into the depths altogether for years or decades at a time. When needed, the Wanderer fashions temporary corporeal bodies from the raw stuff of the Maelstrom and even occasionally possesses the body of an intruding non-native such as a devil, archon, or demon—though curiously, never another protean. The affected, possessed, and created bodies alike all glow with a fierce and internal cerulean light, as if filled by the condensed substance of the Maelstrom itself. Those that survive the experience describe their possession in a similar fashion to that of a keketar experiencing the first, shallow layers of communion with the Speakers of the Depths. Some sages note a similarity between Il’surrish and the Abyssal entity known as the Risen, but without its malevolent, parasitic nature.
Narriseminek the Crownless, The Maker of Kings: The often-described Intercessor of the Speakers manifests simply as a naunet or imentesh, always matching the caste of an individual protean it visits, and always presenting a circular scar or burn upon the brow or top of its head as if mutilated by the placement of a burning circlet or crown.
He arrives unbidden, but in his wake a new keketar takes up its mantle. When manifesting to a group of keketars, Narriseminek likewise appears as one of their caste, although lacking any manner of keketar crown, and in all cases his presence heralds an imminent escalation and shift in a given chorus’s philosophy. The Maker of Kings never provides the keketar with their new focus, but instead seems drawn to such events when they occur, ensuring that the chorus receives its newfound vision without interruption.
Where proteans go, chaos follows. At the edge of the Maelstrom, where the plane of pure chaos endlessly erodes the firmament of static reality, natural laws need little encouragement to give way. The snaking runes and endless flux of proteans hastens such degradations, expanding the shores of their anarchic realm with barely any effort by these ever-changing interlopers. In realms where the source of chaos is less present, though, these harbingers of chaos must carry with them the tools of dissolution. Such pure disorder takes two forms: the mad rites of keketars and pools of primal chaos known to many as entropy pools or anarchic fonts. Both weaken the reality of the lands around them, affecting whole regions with occurrences symptomizing the breakdown of conventional reality. These bizarre incidents are widely known as entropy fluxes.
Choruses of keketars are well known for their ability to summon strangeness from the depths of the Maelstrom, aspects of protean lords and weirder things. Most knowledge of these eerie rituals comes from reports occurring at the edges of other planes, where they hasten the diffusion of those realms back into the swirling chaos. In places distant from the Maelstrom, these rites can cause entropic fluxes and, over time, the creation of portals to that chaotic realm. Although keketars might have innumerable mad reasons for calling upon one of their monstrous demigods, the reality-altering effects of many of these beings aid in the erosion of planar foundations, hastening the dissolution of such realms back into the Maelstrom. Some protean lords summoned in this manner leave their mark upon the regions in which they are summoned, rending the fabric of reality and causing entropy fluxes to afflict the area. In cases where a location already suffers from planar instability, a protean lord’s passage might even open dangerous portals or cause rifts that fall away into the chaos of the Maelstrom.
Proteans also manage to transport with them little understood pools of glowing golden energy said to be semi-physical manifestations of fundamental chaos. Conjured away from the Maelstrom through magics known to the proteans alone, these anarchic fonts sooth their masters and allow for the use of powerful magics.
The presence of these pools in a region is easily noticed, though, as they cause entropy fluxes that spread in intensity and frequency the longer they exist. The chaotic power that suffuses each anarchic font seems to be directly proportional to its size, though non-proteans have little understanding of the powers these puddles of chaos possess. While some might exist upon a plane for a century, spawning little more than rumors of strange occurrences, others might begin tearing holes in reality within weeks of their summoning, their effects seeming to lie within the powers of the proteans nearby and the fundamental fortitude of the surrounding reality—a concept few non-proteans can hope to gauge.
In general, entropic fluxes are tears or mistakes in reality, noticeable alterations in physics and sanity that allow impossibilities to occur. These effects can take any form, but over time grow more severe. At their worst they manifest as portals to the Maelstrom, which widen into rifts until an entire area falls away into that lawless realm or the source of the chaos is removed. The process is akin to poking holes in a piece of fabric: at first no sign of damage is noticeable, but over time larger holes begin to form, soon becoming tears requiring great effort to repair. As these fluxes worsen, a region gradually takes on the chaos-aligned and highly morphic plane traits until it becomes nothing more than an island of the Maelstrom itself.
The following table presents several sample minor entropic fluxes that the PCs might notice. GMs might include these whenever the PCs are traveling in areas of frequent protean activity—the noticeable effects of these chaotic beings’ attempts to unmake reality. While rarely dangerous, over time—sometimes measured in months, sometimes in centuries—these annoyances can erode away the underlying structure of a plane or region. A character who observes any entropic event and makes a DC 30 Knowledge (the planes) check recognizes the manifestation of chaos as a sign that the area is unstable and in danger of collapsing, but that such a collapse is likely still quite far off. GMs seeking ideas for more entropy fluxes might find several useful suggestions on the cursed item drawbacks chart on page 273 of the DMG.
For GMs running this volume’s adventure, “The End of Eternity,” entropic fluxes make for a great way to show the PCs that the demiplane of Kakishon that they’ve found themselves trapped within is unstable. You can have entropic fluxes manifest whenever you want—it’s possible to roll up an entropic flux on the wandering monster table presented in this volume’s bestiary on page 77, for example. Yet you can also have an entropic flux manifest during a combat, staging the flux to either aid or hinder the PCs as you see fit in order to adjust the difficulty of the battle on a moment’s notice.
d10 Entropy Flux
A tree, rock, or large shrubbery suddenly changes colors, then becomes transparent and incorporeal for 1d4 rounds before vanishing—this object could be one a PC is climbing on or using for cover at the time.
The air in a 15-foot-cube around a PC turns into a fluid or semi-fluid substance—soapy water, wine, contact poison, a Huge gelatinous cube, etc. Those in the area can hold their breaths as per the suffocation rules on page 304 of the DMG and might be able swim through the liquid as normal.
Thunderous pulsing, blaring klaxons, and the cries of inside-out animals fill an area up to a mile in diameter. All creatures within the area must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be deafened until 10 minutes after leaving the area or the noises cease. Those who succeed still take a –10 penalty on all Listen checks. Verbal communication is impossible and all sonic and language-dependant spells and effects fail within the noisy area.
Fire suddenly erupts from something that should not burn (such as a pool of water, a crystal, or a chunk of ice); one PC determined randomly must make a DC 15 Reflex save to avoid taking 2d6 fire damage from the sudden burst. When the fire burns out, the object is unharmed.
A friendly animal or favorite item gains a low intelligence score and a quirky character trait. It retains the ability to converse with the PCs for 1d6 × 10 minutes.
The world loses all color for 10 minutes in a 200-foot radius area. During this time creatures take a –4 penalty to all Spot checks.
A huge shark, giant squid, or some other aquatic creature falls from the sky, taking 20d6 falling damage (and doing the same to what it falls upon if a creature fails a DC 15 Reflex save); if the damage doesn’t kill it, it begins suffocating but still frantically attacks anything in reach.
There is a burst of blue light and every fluid within 100 feet instantly freezes. Water, alchemical items, potions, and similar goods solidify, remaining frozen and unusable for 1 hour. Frozen items can be thawed out over a torch or fire at a rate of 1 liter or 1 potion every minute.
Two of the PCs’ minds switch for 1 minute. The GM chooses two players to switch character sheets for the duration of this effect.
Motes of dust waft up out of the ground and coalesce into a monster—roll on the wandering monster table on page 77 to determine what creature. The monster is enraged and attacks the PCs at once—it has DR 10/adamantine and a +4 bonus to its natural armor (increasing its CR by +1). When the monster is slain, its body crumbles apart to reveal 2d6 random gems.