Here's something I posted on the WotC forums, and I'm wondering what you guys will think of it.
Overview: The Thox are an insectile race from an alternate Material Realm. The Thox busy themselves on an eternal quest for knowledge, asking almost anyone it meets something...anything about whatever they think the person they just met may know. The profits of last month for an Inn, maybe the most popular potion in a magic store. They've gone to mountain hermits and bartered fairly just so they could be told what type of rocks on the mountains are heavier, which are more likely to fall, and which chip easier. There are many people who can attest to Thox perfectly memorizing entire years worth of ledgers for fun, for example.
What is good to know is that when they are done asking questions and aren't distracted by the prospect of more questions being answered, they are loyal, compassionate, and honest. While there are differences in personality, and a few Neutral and even Evil Thox have been mentioned by others of their race, they are predominantly Lawful Good. Something that's helpful to them as much as to other races, as it helps those to whom they aim their questions deal with their strange appearance. Thox communicate via telepathy, and have some accomplished psions among them. They usually only temper their psionic powers for the purpose of communication, such as allowing two Thox to hold a conversation over hundreds of miles.
Physical Characteristics: A Thox is an insectile abberation with a main body that is approximately 6 feet in diameter, and 4 chitinous legs that are about 4 feet long each. Although they have sharp jaws on their front under their eyes, these are solely for offensive or defensive purposes, their mouths are located on the underside of their main body. They are predatorial and will eat small animals such as squirrells, birds, or raccoons. Although they have long been civilized enough to not have to forage for food, each Thox is more then capable of hunting enough to survive on should this be required. It has four eyes which look almost disturbingly expressionless. Having evolved the ability to express emotions instanteously through telepathy, they really didn't see the need to evolve the ability to make gestures with their eyes.
Finally, two tri-digited arms depend from their sides. These are dextrous enough to use all kinds of tools.
Culture: The Thox live together in large colonies, usually in secluded areas such as underground caverns or mountains. Of course, a Patriarch of a colony would give it's left arm (it'd probably grow back over a few weeks anyway) to be able to move it's brethren into a ruin, where they could carefully glean knowledge about the past inhabitants by examining it. They live as a huge extended family, taking care of younger Thox until they are old enough to leave on their own if they wish. Most prefer to stay within the colony all their lives, and those who do leave almost always choose to keep in contact with their original colony.
Communication between colonies is done via large crystals of Thox make that amplify the mind-link ability enough to have a conversation with someone from many miles away. These crystals are, however, exceedingly large and grown in the colonies. Each colony would have only a dozen, at most. I'd guess that they would look like crystal formations of about 14 feet in height, with siguls that describe where the crystal's "twin" is, (more on that later). These crystals can only be used to speak to a Thox (or possibly another Psionic species, they haven't really tried that) that is on another crystal. Crystals are grown in pairs between colonies. One crystal will be connected to the crystal of another colony, and will only facilitate communication between it's twin crystal. Thus, colonies try to have at least one crystal for each colony.
They have an odd religion, wherein rather then worshipping any diety, they instead worship the idea of knowledge. Their unstoppable thirst for any knowledge at all is driven by the central dogma of their culture. That nirvana will be achieved when the Thox as a race learn all there is to know about everything.
The population of Thox that now live in Oerth are the descendants of an exploration team of Thox that were sent from an alternate Prime Material Plane to...explore, of course. The team, in their inborn obsession with knowledge, decided to stay there until they had learned all they could. This has become a generational mission spanning tens of thousands of years. In the main colonies, there is a planar gate which is used to communicate with their original world and update them on their progress. It is NOT going to be used for an invasion.
Role-playing: A typical Thox will have a strangely hyperactive personality. It's incredibly intelligent, even putting a Mind Flayer to shame, but it's tendency to quickly run from person to person pumping them for information, coupled with it's subsequent tendency to get distracted by another font of knowledge can cause it to seem more childlike then it really is. When a Thox is actually focused on the situation (And they can become focused on things that don't actually involve learning things) they're very professional and can display an insectile singlemindedness, and even display a surprising amount of emotional empathy or depth. Otherwise, curiousity is the name of the game.
Name Examples: Uristos, Xyruihm, Kyt'nasch.
Preferred Class: Archivist, easily.
Stats: Stats:
Type: Aberration (psionic)
Size: Medium.
Base speed: 40 ft. (8 squares), climb 20 ft.
Ability score adjustments: Int +8, Dex +2, Str -2.
Naturally Psionic: A Thox gains two bonus power points at first level.
Tough Hide: A Thox has +2 natural armor.
Speechless (Ex): A Thox cannot communicate verbally. However, it can communicate telepathically
Telepathy (Su): A Thox can speak telepathically to any creature that has a language and is within 30' +5'/HD of the Thox
Favored Class: Archivist
Level Adjustment: +3
Racial Ability: A Thox gets a +3 bonus to any knowledge checks provided that they use knowledge skills that they have at least 5 ranks in.
Alignment: Usually Lawful Good
Language: An urban Thox will understand Common and any other regional language. They speak via telepathy.
Hope you like it. Comments are always welcome.
Overview: The Thox are an insectile race from an alternate Material Realm. The Thox busy themselves on an eternal quest for knowledge, asking almost anyone it meets something...anything about whatever they think the person they just met may know. The profits of last month for an Inn, maybe the most popular potion in a magic store. They've gone to mountain hermits and bartered fairly just so they could be told what type of rocks on the mountains are heavier, which are more likely to fall, and which chip easier. There are many people who can attest to Thox perfectly memorizing entire years worth of ledgers for fun, for example.
What is good to know is that when they are done asking questions and aren't distracted by the prospect of more questions being answered, they are loyal, compassionate, and honest. While there are differences in personality, and a few Neutral and even Evil Thox have been mentioned by others of their race, they are predominantly Lawful Good. Something that's helpful to them as much as to other races, as it helps those to whom they aim their questions deal with their strange appearance. Thox communicate via telepathy, and have some accomplished psions among them. They usually only temper their psionic powers for the purpose of communication, such as allowing two Thox to hold a conversation over hundreds of miles.
Physical Characteristics: A Thox is an insectile abberation with a main body that is approximately 6 feet in diameter, and 4 chitinous legs that are about 4 feet long each. Although they have sharp jaws on their front under their eyes, these are solely for offensive or defensive purposes, their mouths are located on the underside of their main body. They are predatorial and will eat small animals such as squirrells, birds, or raccoons. Although they have long been civilized enough to not have to forage for food, each Thox is more then capable of hunting enough to survive on should this be required. It has four eyes which look almost disturbingly expressionless. Having evolved the ability to express emotions instanteously through telepathy, they really didn't see the need to evolve the ability to make gestures with their eyes.
Finally, two tri-digited arms depend from their sides. These are dextrous enough to use all kinds of tools.
Culture: The Thox live together in large colonies, usually in secluded areas such as underground caverns or mountains. Of course, a Patriarch of a colony would give it's left arm (it'd probably grow back over a few weeks anyway) to be able to move it's brethren into a ruin, where they could carefully glean knowledge about the past inhabitants by examining it. They live as a huge extended family, taking care of younger Thox until they are old enough to leave on their own if they wish. Most prefer to stay within the colony all their lives, and those who do leave almost always choose to keep in contact with their original colony.
Communication between colonies is done via large crystals of Thox make that amplify the mind-link ability enough to have a conversation with someone from many miles away. These crystals are, however, exceedingly large and grown in the colonies. Each colony would have only a dozen, at most. I'd guess that they would look like crystal formations of about 14 feet in height, with siguls that describe where the crystal's "twin" is, (more on that later). These crystals can only be used to speak to a Thox (or possibly another Psionic species, they haven't really tried that) that is on another crystal. Crystals are grown in pairs between colonies. One crystal will be connected to the crystal of another colony, and will only facilitate communication between it's twin crystal. Thus, colonies try to have at least one crystal for each colony.
They have an odd religion, wherein rather then worshipping any diety, they instead worship the idea of knowledge. Their unstoppable thirst for any knowledge at all is driven by the central dogma of their culture. That nirvana will be achieved when the Thox as a race learn all there is to know about everything.
The population of Thox that now live in Oerth are the descendants of an exploration team of Thox that were sent from an alternate Prime Material Plane to...explore, of course. The team, in their inborn obsession with knowledge, decided to stay there until they had learned all they could. This has become a generational mission spanning tens of thousands of years. In the main colonies, there is a planar gate which is used to communicate with their original world and update them on their progress. It is NOT going to be used for an invasion.
Role-playing: A typical Thox will have a strangely hyperactive personality. It's incredibly intelligent, even putting a Mind Flayer to shame, but it's tendency to quickly run from person to person pumping them for information, coupled with it's subsequent tendency to get distracted by another font of knowledge can cause it to seem more childlike then it really is. When a Thox is actually focused on the situation (And they can become focused on things that don't actually involve learning things) they're very professional and can display an insectile singlemindedness, and even display a surprising amount of emotional empathy or depth. Otherwise, curiousity is the name of the game.
Name Examples: Uristos, Xyruihm, Kyt'nasch.
Preferred Class: Archivist, easily.
Stats: Stats:
Type: Aberration (psionic)
Size: Medium.
Base speed: 40 ft. (8 squares), climb 20 ft.
Ability score adjustments: Int +8, Dex +2, Str -2.
Naturally Psionic: A Thox gains two bonus power points at first level.
Tough Hide: A Thox has +2 natural armor.
Speechless (Ex): A Thox cannot communicate verbally. However, it can communicate telepathically
Telepathy (Su): A Thox can speak telepathically to any creature that has a language and is within 30' +5'/HD of the Thox
Favored Class: Archivist
Level Adjustment: +3
Racial Ability: A Thox gets a +3 bonus to any knowledge checks provided that they use knowledge skills that they have at least 5 ranks in.
Alignment: Usually Lawful Good
Language: An urban Thox will understand Common and any other regional language. They speak via telepathy.
Hope you like it. Comments are always welcome.
