#caligni

(art by GeorgieGanarf on DeviantArt)

In a lot of ways True Neutral gets the short end of the stick as far as alignments go. Between divine casters not having access to the cool alignment-based debuff spells to the allied outisiders you summon being ambivalent to people assuming that you simply have no principles at all, rather than recognizing your nuanced approach… It can sometimes feel like there’s nothing good associated with the characterization choice.

But with today’s entry, that need not be the case, as I present to you the envoy of balance, mystics that embody the balance of approaches, picking what they believe to be the best option for the situation even if it is alarming or disruptive.

Make no mistake though, despite the focus on alignment, this prestige class is not limited to divine casters, far from it. Indeed, any spellcaster might partake of this power set as they study the secrets of the liminal space between moral extremes.

The requirements to become an envoy of balance are neutrality in alignment, third-tier casting, knowledge of the planes and magic, and either improved summoning, counterspelling, or versatility in channeling energy. Additionally, if they are a divine caster, their deity, should they have one, must be neutral as well, and grant the option of both healing or harming with channeled energy.

Naturally, these mages continue to learn magic as part of their training as envoys. Furthermore, when they bring their spells to bear against aligned outsiders, they have an easier time penetrating their spell resistance.

Envoys also learn a handful of endowments to bolster their magic and arms, which they can pick from.

One option lets them counterspell aligned spells by expending spells (or spell slots capable of casting spells) or the opposite alignment, albeit requiring more powerful magic unless they master improved counterspelling. Additionally, if they expend even greater magic, they can do so reflexively instead of setting up to do so before the foe casts.

Another endowment allows them to do so perfectly without fear of failure.

One endowment infuses the summons of the envoy with balancing energy that allows them to ignore the protections against summoned creatures normally provided by the protection from alignment spells.

Those that were clerics before becoming envoys allows them to continue improving their channeling, as well as use versatile channeling without a loss of potency. Additionally, they can spontaneously cast both healing and harming spells.

Some even learn to channel both energies at once, healing or harming both undead and the living with a single invocation.

Many envoys benefit from their minds being warded, becoming inscruitable to others.

Moving on from endowments, these agents of balance channel balancing energy into their weapons, allowing them to pierce the protections of all alignments. They can even temporarily gift this ability to another if they themselves are not combatants or find an ally that could use it better.

Their balancing powers eventually become great enough that magic that specifically affects creatures based on alignment wash over them as if they shared the same alignment as the spell itself, becoming unaffected by divine words and holy smiting and so on, though they don’t benefit from those that bolster based on alignment.

Even if they cannot truly resist an incoming spell, these mages can occasionally use their power over balance to make sure both they and the enemy caster are affected equally.

As the ultimate arbitrators of balance among mortals, true masters of this path can attempt to slay non-neutral foes outright with a touch, and then use the stolen life energy to bring back someone else whose morality opposed the touched foe, while said foe disintegrates to ash.

Naturally this prestige class works very well with clerics seeking to make the most out of being neutral in alignment, but any spellcaster of full or mid-range can make the most out of it. The ability to better pierce the defenses of various outsiders means they can be quite effective at evening the odds against those that appear in your campaign. Whether you’re playing a cleric or not, I’d recommend a summoning build.

Becoming an envoy of balance goes beyond simply believing in a nuanced approach to beliefs and actions, the individual has to believe that going too far in one direction or another can be dangerous and harmful. Which is admittedly a strange way to view the world, viewing too much kindness as being as dangerous as too much cruelty. Perhaps they explain it as being too permissive allowing evil to flourish? Regardless, it’s important to wrap your head around the mindset as part of playing the character.

To many outsiders, the idea of an adaros focusing on balance may seem strange as wild as they are. However, among their shamans and other mages, there is value to be found in the balance of wild exuberance and more calm waters.

Named for her love of telling stories, Saga the caligni took to the profession of bard with passion, but in her travels she saw how big the world was beyond the shadowy enclaves of the dark folk. So when she learned there was a way to strike a balance between the wonder of the light and the safety of the darkness, she took it.

On the left, the Caligni, specifically the creepers and dancers. Caligni are humans who were driven underground, then spent millennia being warped by the dark demigods they begged for help. They're gaunt, pale, and sneaky, surviving in the shadows. These are your basic ones. They're dexterous thieves and messengers, and the magic ones can leave you dazed and clumsy. Stronger ones get better at sneaking or darkness magic, but it's another case of "humans with a twist."

“Eccentric Jester” © London Workman, accessed at their ArtStation here

[This is one of many iterations of my “goth clown” persona, tailored to a low level game and with more emphasis on the clown. I created her for a freeform game run by @abominationimperatrix​, which we haven’t gone back to yet. I do hope to. The Harley Quinn influence is very much intentional.]

Mad Maddy Maddison CR 3 CG Humanoid (dark folk) Clad in mismatched and brightly colored jester’s motley, this tiny woman is thin, muscular and pretty. At first glance she might appear to be wearing stage makeup, but her gray skin and black lips are their natural color.

Mad Maddy Maddison has had a very complicated and strange life already in her nineteen years, and is excited to see what happens next. She was born to a clan of dark folk living in the Darklands beneath the Brazen Peaks, and the caligni callers selected for her to be a dancer, one of the dark folk who act as intermediaries between settlements. Unfortunately, that meant that her wanderlust started at a very early age, and she managed to get separated from her family. She was found and given a home, but unfortunately it was by Mater Cachinnarum, the Mother of Sneers. This wicked bogeywoman pops up in nightmares throughout eastern Garund, and tried to raise Maddy to do the same. Even though Maddy was raised by Cachinnarum for a solid decade, she held true to her overall sense of kindness and good humor, and escaped by the grace of Cayden Cailean, who has a soft spot for all orphans and runaways.

Maddy made it to the bustling city of Katapesh where she currently works at the Night Circus, an entertainment troupe in the Night Markets. At the Circus, she is a talented juggler, percussionist, clown and occasional pickpocket. Her favored instruments are the zills. Maddy has a fascination with death and the undead, having been surrounded by ghouls and skeletons in Mater Cachinnarum’s care, and she is learning how to affect them with her magical music. She’s also working on making friends, something she’s never had a lot of. Her closest friend is a flumph named Taktii, who has given dire warnings about monsters in space. Maddy currently finds this concept more intriguing than scary.

Maddy stands a whole two and a half feet tall and carries a club as long as she is tall. She has a caffeine addiction, and rarely goes a day without several cups of coffee.

(art by BryanFRosadoArt on DeviantArt)

When Earthfall came and Azlant fell, the survivors of that devastation fled in a diaspora that reached not just other human societies, but underwater, underground, and even the plane of shadow.

The act of doing so left these humans in strange places, and often at the mercy of powerful beings. All of which caused these humans to change and adapt. Respectively, these humans became the azarketi (gillmen), the morlocks and munavri, as well as fetchlings and today’s subject, the caligni.

Like fetchlings, the caligni, originally named for the settlement of Calignos in the Mindspin Mountains, are marked by the Plane of Shadow, but in a much different way. Indeed, the Azlanti humans that would become Caligni were contacted by a group of shadowy demigods known as the Forsaken, who offer succor in the Plane of Shadow while Earthfall passed in return for worship, and used powerful artifacts called the Cradles of Night to transform them into the Caligni, also known as Dark Folk. Devoid of all color and fearing the light, they were very much creatures of shadow, but the more this relationship went on, the clearer it became how much the Forsaken had twisted them. Many consistent mutations began to appear which quickly separated the dark folk as a whole into several castes. Some were born shrunken and squat, others without eyes but possessing incredibly keen senses, and so on.

This of course was the plan all along, for the Forsaken wished to use the worship of the Caligni to help them escape the Plane of Shadow. However, an unknown calamity devastated the Forsaken, forcing them to abandon those plans and retreat deeper into darkness.

But they did not abandon the Caligni entirely, their messengers, the owbs, soon appeared afterwards to act as the mouthpieces of the Forsaken, though only a rare few actually establish divine contact with those demideities, and none actually fulfill their role as go-between, granting divine power to the worshipful dark folk, proving just as treacherous as their masters. However, the owbs did continue where the Forsaken left off, ruling a broken people that were utterly dependent upon them.

However, while most Dark Folk are twisted in body and mind, there are a rare few that are born looking almost entirely human. These are the caligni we are talking about today. These genetic throwbacks are a cause for great celebration among their kind, but they are also in great danger from day one as one of the dark stalker or owb masters might decide that they are a threat to the clan, leading many to die young. Those that do survive into adulthood are not shackled in mind or body by the influence of the owb or the Forsaken the way their kinsfolk are, and may yet be the best bet for the caligni people to one day return to being a free people.

Most that do realize the danger they are in from the power structure of their society, and therefore leave, often becoming adventurers or mercenaries and plying their natural abilities in the dark to get by, perhaps to come back and free their clans, or maybe just to be free of that society.

These “pure” caligni typically stand at about 6 ft tall and resemble humans with pale, ashen skin that darkens near the extremities. Most tend to wear dark hodge-podge rags to cover their whole bodies, but they don’t have the same aversion to being unclothed as other dark folk, and typically have the cleanliness to actually wash their clothing and themselves. As such, their fashion senses can actually be quite varied, picking up from the societies they interact with.

As a people that typically abandon their kin in order to survive, caligni don’t have a society of their own for the most part. Those that dare to remain may hold the same or even greater power as dark stalkers, which only puts them in danger. Those that leave likely remain insular, but pick up cultural norms from their adopted societies, though their aversion to light and appearance means they may feel estranged there as well. Perhaps the place where caligni find the most acceptance is among fellow misfits, ranging from adventuring parties to outcast drow to planar scion communes and the like.

Caligni are agile and tough, but growing up in an insular and stagnant society blunts their curiosity and makes them less inquisitive.

As creatures of true darkness, these dark folk go beyond mere night vision to be able to see perfectly in darkness, even that created by powerful magic.

That night-sight, however, makes them vulnerable to bright light, though they are not fully blinded by it.

Like their kin, caligni explode in a blaze of light upon death. However, unlike their other kin, they are not totally obliterated, leaving behind a shriveled and shrunken body that can be used for resurrection.

Sadly there has been no significant expansion to the caligni ancestry, but I think there’s some interesting potential there.

With the dex and con bonuses, not to mention their ability to see perfectly in all darkness, caligni make excellent rogues, ninjas and slayers, as well as more tanky combat classes and builds such as barbarian, fighter, and swashbuckler. Any build or archetype that attacks from stealth is a good option here, really. What’s more, their con bonus would make being a kineticist a neat option, particularly if you void as your element as a chaokineticist. Additionally, shadow-themed builds and archetypes are very thematic for them as well. Their penalty to intelligence weakens them as certain casters and skilled builds, but not enough to be a major problem.

Image © Paizo Publishing, accessed at Archives of Nethys here

[The “dark folk” -> “caligni” is another retcon that Paizo made towards the tail end of PF1e in order to distance themselves from the OGL. I don’t dislike it, unlike the “arboreals”; it makes sense to me that they would have an endonym. Still, I’m using the dark folk category for the purposes of keeping this new one, from Bestiary 3, in line with the previous dark folk I’ve made. Edit: As was pointed out in the comments, there is a version of this monster in PF1e already, called the dark champion. This version is the same CR, but incorporates more of the abilities of the 2e version.]

Dark Folk, Dark Vanguard CR 5 LE Humanoid (dark folk) This humanoid figure is clad in bands of dark metallic armor, some of which seem to be growing into its skin. It has no eyes, only hollow pits, but seems to sense you effortlessly. It carries a massive two-handed sword.

The dark folk consider variances in births to be omens of great importance, and the dark callers watch especially for those caligni born without eyes. These are taken from their parents at an early age and raised as dark vanguards; trained to use echolocation with their ears and delicate wires of metal implanted alongside armor plating. The dark vanguards are the elite warriors of the caligni, and serve their callers unquestioningly.

A dark vanguard is an obvious combatant by dark folk standards. They are capable of being stealthy, but prefer a forward assault, if only to let less physically strong combatants the opportunity to set up positions. They are trained in martial weapons and teamwork feats, and can temporarily grant their allies teamwork feats as well. They can weave a mantle of shadows around their blades in order to temporarily blind opponents, who are then easy meat for the sneak attacks of dark creepers or stalkers. When slain, they explode, the jagged metal in their bodies being repurposed from defense to offense for one last spiteful strike.