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Fax Celestis
2010-09-28, 04:55 PM
So I find myself in the unique opportunity to refluff the elan race (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicRaces.htm#elans), as the fluff text is not OGL material.

However, the original "Home Lobotomy Kit" fluff and the kalashtar "Psychic Scorpion In My Brain" fluff both are uninspiring. I've already gotten some amazing new fluff basis for other races (tucker's kobolds as the base race and Aztec lizardfolk, for two), so I want something equally inspiring for the new elan race.

For reference, the (unfinished) racial statistics are here (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=D20r:Elan). These features are malleable, so if there is some OMG-Lolwut-I-Has-To-Use-This™ fluff that comes forward, I'll change the stats to match.

Fax Celestis
2010-09-28, 06:15 PM
Thus far, gotten a lot of feedback that's amounted to "exposed to excessive amounts of psionics in the womb". While I like it, I am not sure that's the best fluff I could be using.

Benly
2010-09-28, 06:27 PM
Elan are Far Realm changelings, pure and simple - not D&D "rubberface" changelings, but folklore "baby stolen and replaced" changelings. They are a race of aberrations that covertly consume and take on the form and mentality of infants in the cradle. They grow up looking perfectly human, and even think they're perfectly human - but they're something else on the inside, and they can never quite connect to other people properly. Some of them never realize they're not just talented humans until the Call, but most of them figure out sooner or later that something's different.

Eventually, almost all of them hear the Call, and few of them can resist it: the power of the Far Realm intelligence that seeded them in our world, replacing their will with its own. Once they succumb to the Call, an elan may be outwardly the same as he ever was but is wholly the pawn of an alien horror. A very few, though, either never hear the Call or are strong enough to resist it. These are elan PCs. Barring disaster, they will live forever, but knowing what's coming, do they really want to?

Jjeinn-tae
2010-09-28, 06:28 PM
They are mutants, through some random thought that they managed to have before their brain was formed; they rewrote their genetic makeup and form.

Maybe a better one, but it might not work, it could have to do with astrology of some sort, perhaps being born at the right place and the right time is all it takes (as in, under a certain star or constellation).

That's all I've got right now, might come up with something else later though.


Edit: Ok, the ninja was a far better idea.

Flickerdart
2010-09-28, 06:36 PM
Elans are the product of a union between a psion and their psicrystal. :smalltongue:

Esser-Z
2010-09-28, 06:37 PM
Elans are humans who were born before they were conceived. They are causal anomalies.

Fax Celestis
2010-09-28, 06:44 PM
Elan are Far Realm changelings, pure and simple - not D&D "rubberface" changelings, but folklore "baby stolen and replaced" changelings. They are a race of aberrations that covertly consume and take on the form and mentality of infants in the cradle. They grow up looking perfectly human, and even think they're perfectly human - but they're something else on the inside, and they can never quite connect to other people properly. Some of them never realize they're not just talented humans until the Call, but most of them figure out sooner or later that something's different.

Eventually, almost all of them hear the Call, and few of them can resist it: the power of the Far Realm intelligence that seeded them in our world, replacing their will with its own. Once they succumb to the Call, an elan may be outwardly the same as he ever was but is wholly the pawn of an alien horror. A very few, though, either never hear the Call or are strong enough to resist it. These are elan PCs. Barring disaster, they will live forever, but knowing what's coming, do they really want to?

I sort of like this idea: elans are just larval aboleths/neothelids.

Zore
2010-09-28, 06:46 PM
Elan are humans symbiotically bonded to extraplanar creatures that latch onto them when they are near areas of great turmoil. They become out of sync with reality, reflected in their Cha penalty, and stop aging as they are constantly renewed by their symbiote which also provides them with psionic power.

Project_Mayhem
2010-09-28, 06:46 PM
I was gonna post my own, but Benly's kicks ass

UglyPanda
2010-09-28, 06:50 PM
Elans are the end result of someone being impregnated during a dream, within the astral plane, or during an extended psychic contact. The woman gives birth as normal after nine months, but due to the circumstances surrounding the conception, the child is not totally real. The child only partially exists on the material plane and a part of it continually resides within the astral plane or an equivalent dream dimension.

Knaight
2010-09-28, 06:58 PM
The fae blood runs deep through some travelers. Gypsy caravans lit with faerie lights frequent some coasts. They are all immortal, and the same caravans coat some coasts for generations, while a rare few take a land route. Occasionally however, there is an upset. Caravans grow too large, a skirmish breaks out for some small patch of coastline or some insignificant road, and entire caravans are annihilated. The Gypsy fae have a word for those few left without caravan. That word is Elan.

Benly's is much better than this though. I might revise it if better ideas occur.

mabriss lethe
2010-09-28, 07:03 PM
The Elan predate the gods, and for that matter, the planes as they are currently known. Before the Elan and the Gods warred, the world was a much different place. (Reference descriptions of Carcosa in Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow: Black stars shining in the sky, the moon rising *in front* of the city of carcosa, etc.) They were led by their yellow robed king.

The tactics they used in their war were horrific. There's a reason why the elves stopped sleeping and the rest of the mortal races have nightmares.

After the Elan's defeat, the world, and the fundamental rules of reality, changed when the gods imposed their will upon creation. The the power that the elan once wielded was snuffed out and hidden away. But they still manage to cling to immortality and the vestiges of their former power.

They have a special hatred for elves, whom they see as the spawn of traitors (the elven progenitors were once allies to the Elan, but betrayed them in exchange for godhood and a place to rival the Elan's in the new order.)

Benly
2010-09-28, 07:04 PM
I sort of like this idea: elans are just larval aboleths/neothelids.

I was thinking more sleeper agents for whichever aberrant big bads you've got lying around (aboleth are good ones): they're physically indistinguishable from humans, their psychic powers and resistance make it hard to pry out their secrets magically, they're raised fully inculturated as humans, and in general are sort of the ideal anti-human spy, saboteur and double agent.

As a bonus, aboleth and illithids both have creepy memory-eating deals going on, so an agent who's outlived his usefulness (presumably because he's been discovered or someone noticed he was immortal) can be recalled and consumed for an extremely thorough debriefing.

Coidzor
2010-09-28, 07:09 PM
A tribe of psionic humans looked where they shouldn't have looked and ended up getting blasted through the planes the hard way, which unmade and then remade them as aberrations?

Maybe with a bit of Dr. Manhattan added in, where they actually had to rebuild themselves and their alien mindset is passed down to all who share their bloodline?

OzymandiasVolt
2010-09-28, 07:21 PM
A group of humans were sitting around one day when they realized "Hey, you know what? Humans are AWESOME." and spontaneously gained psionic powers.

dohoho

SurlySeraph
2010-09-28, 07:27 PM
Elan are Far Realm changelings, pure and simple - not D&D "rubberface" changelings, but folklore "baby stolen and replaced" changelings. They are a race of aberrations that covertly consume and take on the form and mentality of infants in the cradle. They grow up looking perfectly human, and even think they're perfectly human - but they're something else on the inside, and they can never quite connect to other people properly. Some of them never realize they're not just talented humans until the Call, but most of them figure out sooner or later that something's different.

Eventually, almost all of them hear the Call, and few of them can resist it: the power of the Far Realm intelligence that seeded them in our world, replacing their will with its own. Once they succumb to the Call, an elan may be outwardly the same as he ever was but is wholly the pawn of an alien horror. A very few, though, either never hear the Call or are strong enough to resist it. These are elan PCs. Barring disaster, they will live forever, but knowing what's coming, do they really want to?

This. But there are a number of ways for Elans to figure out what's wrong with them before the Call. The worst? The worst is when the baby they replaced comes back.

Coidzor
2010-09-28, 07:51 PM
So, what, a warped and maddened human mind in some kind of pseudo-natural creature shell or some other kinda farspawn?

TheThan
2010-09-28, 07:58 PM
Here’s an idea I was going to use for planswalker game that I’ve abandoned work on.
(warning sorta a long read)

Elans are time travelers, refugees from a distant time, a time where the far realms are invading in force. Being psychic in nature, the psykers of the far realms considered them their greatest threat, so they were the first to be attacked. The Elan race was slaughtered, their home plane was destroyed (or at least rendered uninhabitable).

Fortunately for the Elans, refugee ships escaped through the ten great planar portals. Ten mighty psykers, the mightiest, stayed behind sacrificing themselves to seal the portals behind the escaping ships. The Elan refugees evaded their pursuers for some time. Building small colonies on other planes. They gave fair warning to all the peoples they met, to prepare for the far relms. Many balked at them, but many also prepared for war. They allied with the Githyanki, and the Githzerai, convincing the two to put aside their differences least they both perish. They helped to rally enormous armies, called upon mundane, celestial and demonic forces alike to aid them in repelling the invasion. Never before had the multi-verse seen such a collaboration of its denizens.

But eventually the Yugoloth caught up to them and the horrors of the far relms were too much for even the valiant defenders. Elan, human, Gith, angel, demon and all matter of other species fell before the might of the far relms. No one could stand up to them and plane after plane fell to their advance.

But the Elans had one final trump card to play. They modified their planeships (ships that can planeshift) to teleport them not through space, but through time. In a flash the remainder of the Elan race was gone, whisked backwards in time. Each ship was to go to a different plane, their orders were to prepare the multi-verse for the invasion.

Most of the ships were damaged beyond repair in the ensuing temporal shift. But most of them made it to their destination. Now stranded both in the past, and without their ships to traverse the planes, the Elan took to their life in stride. They trained many races to harness their minds and develop psychic powers. They taught many races, including the thri-kreen, Maenads and a myriad of other races, including humans.

But the Yugoloth and others are drawn to psychic power. Will such and upwelling of psychic power cause the aberrations of the far realms to attack all the sooner? Before the multi-verse is ready for them?

Starbuck_II
2010-09-28, 08:05 PM
The Elans always were or rather always will be. It is a fundamental principal of the law of reality. Elans created the Aboleths. Then the stole the memories from the aboleths so there is no record of their actions. It was not on purpose.
It wasn't meant to be. It was just supposed to transfer the data of an Elan to another as the race had less and less Fitness and fertility over the eons.

Elans are shamed of their act, but care too much for the children to let them go. Since then they have perfected the ritual but have decided to limit it to humans.
Yes, the god that Aboleths believe created them was one of the Elan, the original Elans back when the world was new.

Coidzor
2010-09-28, 08:08 PM
I think you're confusing Yugoloths with something else here, since Yugoloths are just a form of NE fiend. (Daemons, was it? devils, demons, demodands, daemons, and was there a 5th variety?)

Orzel
2010-09-28, 08:44 PM
Elans are psionic human molded by the Masters of the Far Realms before birth. They are sent to human, elven, and other mortal lands to prepare them for combat with the Far Realms. Elans are specially designed to make sure the abberations lose. They all know the plan that was implanted at conception. Elans are to bring forth the defeat of the Far Realms' rulers. Because the defeat of the Far Realms is just what the Far Realms need to conquer the others.

Tael
2010-09-28, 09:13 PM
Elans? I dunno.

Except really. Nobody knows. They mysteriously started appearing ~1000 years ago, and if any Elans know why they changed into what they are now, they aren't telling anybody. The change comes suddenly, and doesn't discriminate as far as researchers can tell, transforming a person overnight.

(this assumes that Elans are humans/very humanish race that become Elans after birth, sort of like how one of the 3.5 sources had Elans being created.)

Maybe this idea isn't best for Elans, but I'd like to see a race with really mysterious origins.

TheThan
2010-09-28, 09:46 PM
I think you're confusing Yugoloths with something else here, since Yugoloths are just a form of NE fiend. (Daemons, was it? devils, demons, demodands, daemons, and was there a 5th variety?)

... why was I thinking Yugloths are from the far realms...

But that's an easy rewrite anyway, and a bit more interesting than just your basic evil for evil's sake fiend. if it doesn't fit then just insert an appropriate race.

Aran Banks
2010-09-28, 11:14 PM
There should be one major distinguishing flaw for every Elan, no matter who he or she is. Black blood when cut in a certain area, a small eye in a place no one would ever care to look (they'd normally be ANYWHERE, but if you're dressed like a human and someone can still see the eye, you're obviously not built for infiltration work... someone's definitely going to notice you... so the PC races will have it in a discreet location), a moving birthmark, a radically different body temperature, no visible veins for a quarter to half of the body, etc.

Zaq
2010-09-28, 11:15 PM
Sometimes, a man or woman realizes they're going to die, and they aren't happy about that.

Sometimes, that man or woman has the raw power to reshape parts of reality to their will. We call these people many names, among them "wizard" and "psion."

Sometimes, this power can be used to stave off death, for a time or for eternity. A person might become a lich, or an unbodied, or some kind of nameless horror... anything to keep themselves from being forced into the world beyond death.

Sometimes this process, whichever one is chosen, works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes... the process has byproducts.

Sometimes these byproducts are harmless; bits of arcane goo or stray ectoplasm that need to be cleaned up. Sometimes they form maddening terrors that require parties of adventurers to put them down, but are rarely talked about thereafter.

Sometimes, though, they stick around long enough to matter.

The First Elan was such a byproduct. Sources differ as to whether the First was a man or a woman; whether they were alone, or many; whether they still walk the earth or whether they met their fate from a source other than the grinding churn of Time. Regardless, they were a byproduct. A powerful psion, fearing death, managed to rip their mind and soul from their body. What happened to that mind and soul, none can say... but what happened to their body is another story. The empty shell, still shaped by the imprint of world-bending psionic power, didn't simply fade away. No one is 100% sure if the force that allowed that body to walk away was simply the residual psionic power of the death-fearing one, or if the empty body that had never been properly killed just provided an inviting home for something less fathomable... but the body persisted, and thrived, as something unnatural, something aberrant. The body seemed as forgotten by time as it was by its original owner... perhaps the ceaseless hands of time simply chose to follow the owner of the soul, rather than the body itself. Regardless, that body still walked, and talked, and eventually bred into what is now the Elan race, every bit as unnatural as their progenitor.