a.       Yeah, these guys….they are the biggest assholes on the Middle PLanes.  This is in part because they are each individually so powerful, so while their race is tiny those who reach maturity are absolutely terrifying (an adult gets 20 levels in both Wizard and Shadowcaster).  Luckily for everybody, very few actually reach adulthood, and the vast majority of them are only CR 4.  These egotistical psychopathic creatures are famous for their ability to shapeshift, and can assimilate almost all creatures perfectly.  To do this, they must absorb the biological material of several members of a race in question, so most young Malaugrym will go on a killing spree against the more common species in the multiverse as a rite of adulthood.  For reasons that nobody really wants to answer, this doesn’t apply to humans, who they can shape into automatically.  They will often seek out and consume more obscure races in order to expand their shapeshifting prowess.  They have a unique ability to have up to two “Alternative Forms” which basically operate at their own personal PCs.  This alternate form gains levels separately from the Malgurim and if it dies the true form of the Malgurm emerges.  The only limitation is that there alternative forms always has amber eyes.  As a race they don’t have any long term goal beyond keeping the race alive, most of them are hyper individualistic who each have the same single goal.  Take over the entire multiverse.  Deep in the heart of every one of these slim is the singular driving goal, become the absolute master of the entire material plane, and from there the entire multiverse. Why they all have this is unknown, but as a rule they don’t question it, they just all go into the business of trying to…take over the world.  Of course each one wants to be the absolute ruler, so while they might occasionally ally, all of them know that when the time comes, they will battle of the trophy of the world.  THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!   The only limitation on their internal fighting is that they do want to allow the species to reproduce, and so will leave each other alone during mating season, and not target the children of their own species.  Should something present an actual threat to the whole species however, all of the Malaugrym will come together and unite to defend their homeland and can work together surprisingly well when their back (or rather weird creepy orb things) are against the wall.  This has happened twice in recorded history, first when they successfully drove off an army of Daemons who hoped to use their realm as a launching point for future wars, and one time were able to repel Satianals forces from wiping them all out entirely.  But the moment the threat is gone, they turn on each other immediately.

b.      There are Rumors of 6 Lords among them known as the “Shadowmasters” who reign supreme even among the mature ones, which is saying something, but these six all seem to have mutually imprisoned each other on the Plane of Shadow, so the race is pretty effectively leaderless.  For the rest of the race, life is a struggle to stay alive and eat enough people to eventually become fully grown, where they go from kinda shit to some of the most powerful creatures in the multiverse. Luckily, the current number of Malaugrym who are fully mature and thus have access to all of the class levels that come with it number only a little over a dozen, and none of them have anything more than a loose alliance with each other.  So while they could team up and likely assassinate some Demon Lords or destroy some of the Nine’s Avatars, they lack both unity as well as the other advantages that comes with being a Cosmic Being, specifically they cannot grant spells, create aspects, or manifest Avatars.  They are basically just your standard Malaugrym who happen to have 40 character levels, a few meat suits, and an emergency alternate form.  

c.       Powerful Malaugrym when slain will return as a powerful ravaging beast (CR 16), utterly mindless only trying to destroy everything in the area.  Should they be successful, it will hibernate for a decade at which point it will return to their previous personality, albeit without any of their previous alternate forms and they have to work to remake those from the start.  They also need to re eat all of the non-human species to gain their ability to shapeshift, which is troubling.

d.      They have no allies and hate everybody, though it seems to basically hate everybody equally.      

a.       God fuck these guys, the most pretentious blokes on the planes.  The Medusas of the mind here are most commonly found on the Ethereal Plane, mostly raiding the Material, and have a nice simple goal…to eliminate the Material Plane.  Yeah, like I said, fuck these guys.  Their most noticeable trait other than the hunchbacks is that their masks have beneath them some sort of horrific insanity that will tear your mind apart on the inside and trust me you don’t want to deal with that.  What’s weird about them is that for Thousands of years people thought that Daanvi was utterly uninhabited by natives, for 12,000 years the Etherguants seemingly vanished for reasons unknown, only to emerge again about 530 years ago, after which they started to spread into the Etheral Plane dramatically while taking back Daanvi.  The vast majority of their activity is made up of scouting parties, small band of Etherguants exploring key points of the Material Plane, gathering information, questioning locals (few survive) and often taking some prisoners before retreating back into their world.  Occasionally they will just straight up raid a village or small towns kidnapping as many people as they can to take back to their home for some unknown purpose. About thirty years ago however, they started to launch full invasions of certain parts of the Material Plane, with the full intent it seems of total eradication of all life.  They focus primarily upon beings capable of any form of belief and those who have been captured have said quite openly they hope to starve the Outer Planes to death.  The Ethergaunts seem to randomly hate the Rule of Three, the Unity of Rings, and Center of All, for reasons that nobody knows, but it appears they have made the destruction of that a personal priority. They are divided into 5 categories, Red, Blue, White, Grey, and Black, though as they don’t seem to attach special significant to colors why this division?  Fuck you that’s why.  Reds are the scientist, scout, and warrior Caste, Blues are engineers and builders, Whites are diplomates, Bureaucrats, and scholars, Greys are spies and Philosophers, and Blacks are the commanders.

b.      In regards to relationships, among the other Alien races, they fight the most with the phaerimm, as both seem to have similar powers of mind control and don’t really work together well.  The Phaerimm were particular horrified to find that they could be mind controlled by the Ethergaunts, though it is difficult and that goes both way, and are willing to ally even with the Sharn to prevent this fate. Their other great foe are the Malaugrym, who aren’t in the mood to tolerate more rivals, and so strive (mostly behind the scenes) to create alliances to oppose their incursions.  What they would have thought of the Slarecian is unknown, but their creations at one point hunted down and killed a Black Ethergaunts, so it must not be good.  Despite these threats though, the Ethergaunts have largely been successful in their invasion without too much difficulty except for three instances.  Firstly, there was a time when their invasion coincided with a Blood War battled and an entire army of Ethergaunts were wiped out, though they inflicted tremendous damage to both sides in the process.  The Second was a when a Trio of Dragons turned their full attention to driving back an invasion.  The Third was then they accidently ran across a hoard of Darkspawn and fought a 18 year war with the creatures before eventually retreating, as the sheer numbers of those Blighted creatures brings fear even to the Black etherguants.  The Etherguant invasion makes them many enemies, though they seem to fear Dragons and the Blight, and have found themselves bogged down due to the Damned making an effort to weaken their war effort.  For reasons unknown they hate mind flayers and make a priority to destroy them first, which is a war that most people can get behind.  Finally for reasons that are really unknown, the Kaorti HATE  them, which is weird because the Kaorti don’t hate anything.  Yet they have been found launching raids against the Ethergaunts and trying their darndest to defeat their armies.  

c.       Ethergaunts are famous for being obsessively rational, however what they call rational…isn’t.  Their behavior from an outside perspective seems erratic, arbitrary, and entirely self-destructive (such as not extending their protection from magic to Divine).  Anyone who talks to them (a tricky task, as they can only talk through a mind slave) will hear them justify all of their actions as simply the most rational course of action but they will hardly bother to explain WTF that actually means, since your inferior brain simply can’t understand their rationality.  It’s like the worse of the Enlightenment meets Cthulhu.  For example, they love randomly building ziggeraunts and pyramids for no reasons all over the lands they control, because that is “rational”. They also have a hatred of Gods, who they believe are not rational.

d.      SECRET DM KNOWLEDGE:  The Etherguants motive is not in fact the elimination of Mortals, that is simply a means to an end.  It isn’t even the destruction of the Gods, though that is certainly part of their plan. No, their goal is much more sinister, the eradication of Conceptual reality itself.  They believe that the world is defined by straight forward conflicts between two forces (Hegel anyone?) and the Universe is torn between the forces of Objective and Subjective reality.  However that battle cannot truly happen as Conceptual reality constantly interferes with said challenge by imposing its existence upon the world. Thus before the final battle between Objective and Subjective can begin, they must destroy the irrational Conceptual reality, where the world might change by people’s belief in it.  Then the final battle may commence to start the process of remaking the universe, which will of course end with the most rational side winning.  The Etherguants believe that this is Subjective reality, which is clearly the most rational because Pyramids lemon face BALOOON muffin.a.        To this end they are trying not to wipe out mortals necessarily, but instead to destroy the worshipers of Gods and thus weaken them, and try to brainwash the other mortals so that they are incapable of any form of belief.  They are planning to set up indoctrination camps for this purpose.  The reason why their invasions haven’t been seen in large parts of the Material Plane is that their home plane keeps being attacked by the forces of the Deities, and should the Gods ever get their act together and unify the Etherguants would be wiped out in an instant.  However their unity, extreme power, home team advantage, and of course their secret masters have allowed them to keep the gods at bay, though it means only a small number of their forces can actually attack the Material Plane, mostly via the Ethereal Plane.  They are secreted allied with the servants of both the Titans, and the Pridmordials (in particular the Yozi/Neverborn), who would gladly see the God’s knocked down a peg. b.      The Etherguants are led by a secret “Council of 5”, a band of 5 super powered creatures who command the whole race. Each one is being of epic power and can create Avatars and Aspects.  These 5 in turn serve a being known as “Reason” who is not a god, but more like an inspiration.  Cults of this entity have occasionally sprung up around the Material Plane known as the “Cult of Reason”.  

Kythri: Xorinite (Knowledge)

a.       Finally something that doesn’t desire to kill us. The Xorinates aren’t a hostile race, in fact they prefer to keep world stability and simply wish to trade, and serve as one of the greatest trade powers across the planes.  Problem is…they are assholes.  The Xorinates are consummate businessmen, creatures of goods and services who can be found all over the planes and from whom you can aquire….anything.  Problem is, they are still bastards, just not bastards who are trying to kill you.  No, Xorinates are infamous for their utterly horrible prices, while they tend to buy things at market value, they sell stuff for at least double its market worth, sometimes even triple, and that’s if you’re.  They are immune to haggling and whats worse tend to situate themselves in remote locations where you cannot buy from anybody else.  Often in remote and strange locals you might find them, where you can’t really argue over the price because they are literally the only thing selling. Their obscene prices are somewhat mitigated by the fact that Xorinite  do not cheat or provide shoddy goods, and will always keep their end of the bargain, but these bizarre creatures also seem to want to squeeze every possible coin out of you as possible.  Despite their vast wealth and resources, aren’t as influential as one might imagine, their primary business seems to be for adventurers who can’t sell to anyone else due to location, or people desperately in need of something.  It is said that they use to trade money for knowledge, until somebody known as “the Avatar” inadvertently convinced them that true knowledge is found in gold, which they have pursued relentlessly.

b.      Attacking these strange creatures can be…tricky. While they are fairly skilled combatants, and they do drop a great deal of money and money, the great hoards one might expect won’t be forthcoming, as they usually teleport back home to pick up money and cash before finishing transactions.   Should the rest find out about your actions, they will hire adventurers to come after you, and might come along themselves if they feel the need.  

c.       Every so often individuals have been known to attack random adventurers who have information they feel that they will misuse. What information this might be and how they might misuse it is anyone’s guess, but they aren’t particularly prone to explaining, tending to just show up and attack with a vast bombardment of magic. This is rare however.

d.      They don’t really have much relationship with any other beings in the worlds, they try to gain money and will do so with anybody. They can be found in most battlefields selling weapons at extreme marked up prices, they are an infamous price gougers of the Blood War in particular.  

e.       Xorinte are ruled by a council known as the Undrian Council, which is dedicated to trying to gather as much information about the world as possible, once they fully understand the world…they might do…something.  

These creatures are among the most feared in all of the planes, though they are rarely seen by Primes.   Their own domain is nothing more than an endless battlefield of death and destruction, but what makes them scary are their unbelievably huge forces which can be found invading other planes.  Now a giant insectoid army of evolving monsters coming in an endless hoard isn’t exactly…pleasant to consider charging at you, but you know, better than a demon hoard right?  I mean sure they strip mine everything they approach and use their victims to make more, but you know that’s fine right?  Here is the problem, they don’t eat people.  They eat ideas.   Or more specifically, they eat Planes built upon ideas and so while they aren’t a direct threat to the Material Plane, the Hive Fleets are seen as one of the greatest threats in the world to Planes, as the massive Tyranid armies can cause havoc on almost all planes in their never ending quest for resources.  These creatures are infamous for their unique form of reproduction, any time they attack a plane, they can tear bits of the plane itself  off and add it   to these massive “Flesh Vaults” that they carry with the fleets, which they use to create new Tyranids.  Depending on the type of creature they consume, a new type of Tyranid is created, and they can be specialized dramatically.  These creatures are commanded by some sort of Hive Mind, though as far as anyone can tell, it isn’t centralized in any singular location but is rather a larger collective mind (similar to Many of One).  

       So can they actually win?   Nobody actually knows, they are tearing up whole planets worth of various planes but…the planes are infinite so what does that mean.  Well it is doubtful that they could destroy an actual plane but they certainly damage it, and as Planar cartographers are always pointing out, some infinite planes are smaller than others.  So while it is unlikely the Hive could completely destroy a plane, they could reduce it to a much smaller infinite plane (this is the part where mortals normally hit somebody).  However some fear that should they eat enough, the plane itself will completely collapse and have to be remade, which will drastically effect the Outer Planes dramatically.  

   On the Material Plane Tyranids are mostly unknown except when Shavarath is far away , but the occasionally scouting fleet will emerge on the Material Plane to raid for more basic resources.  These hoards will ravage the entire region of the material plane, strip mine all the resources they can grab, and return home. As they cannot use Material Plane resources to reproduce unlike ideas, Tyranids try to avoid the material plane, all losses there are permanent.  However when Shavarath is in alignment, they sometimes come in en mass and try to take over the Material Plane, nobody knows why this is as it doesn’t really benefit them in the long run.  Even weirder though, Tyranids have been known to be randomly nice, Hive Fleets have been known to wander across the Material plane not destroying but repairing the world around them to be livable and improved, creating so called “Eden Worlds”, marvelous realms of extremely alien but beneficial forms of life (ok there is the odd mana monster that eats people, but those are just hungry). These Eden worlds often are a massive source of magical resources, food, and just general usefulness.  Tyranids have even been known to land on the Material Plane and help the locals farm or rebuild their cities, sometimes even creating entirely new cities for mortals to live in.  They never explain their logic or reasoning, they just start working then leave.  In one instance a great ancient city was severely damaged by an earthquake, only for a Hive fleet to emerge and the Tyranids to rebuild the city to its original specifications.  They also have been known to randomly attack major threats to mortals as a whole, such as undead armies or the Blight.  In fact on no less than 8 occasions Demon/Devil/Daemon incursions into the Material Plane were halted by the Tyranids, and once they attempted (and failed) to turn back the Burning Legion.  Nobody knows why they do this, only that the “Eden Fleets” will almost never engage in combat on mortals until they return home, while raiding fleets will almost never rebuild the world until they return home, each flee evidently having a specific task.  

    Currently the Hives are mostly focused on trying to consume the Outlands, because the Divine Realms are too scary, and the Middle Planes are difficult to invade as they are always moving.  The major battle fronts right now they are focused on Bytopia, Arcadia, The Outlands, the Fernia, Gehenna, Abbadon, and somewhat inexplicitly the Blood Rift.   They avoid Arboria however, as that plane has a tendency to eat them, and Avalon seems to confuse their Hive Mind.  Where ever these incursions occur, they strip the entire plane bare, eating all of the natives of Pettioners, and then start taking the plane apart.  The remains of the plane are taken back home to “The Flesh Vats” massive vates of flesh that are fed by ideas and as these planar chucks are put there, new Tryanids emerge.  So invasions pay for themselves and almost every infinite plane has an infestation of these guys somewhere.   Again, nobody is quite sure if what they are doing can work, chucks of planes the size of planets have been destroyed and eaten by these bastards but again…the planes are infinite.  As a rule, natives do not like this and work to get rid of them as quickly as possible, in fact Modrons, Rilmani, Proteans, and Inevitables are so quick to destroy them that most Tryanids don’t even bother, but the good and evil planes are especially at risk.

       The Lower Planes are so distracted by their own affairs that directing their armies at hoards of Tryanids simply doesn’t seem feasible, and they can go for quite a long time before somebody notices them and kills them.  The upper planes however really can’t handle this, they are over stretched and over taxed as it is, and diverting already desperately needed forces to deal with these planar incursions just isn’t in the cards.  They mostly try to divert them off of their plane or destroy their Hive Fleets before they start reproducing, but if they get a hold then they usually try to get good deities handle this, which of course further puts them in debt to the Divine Realms and makes Eblis sad. (Eblis BTW destroyed an entire Hive Fleet by himself when they approached his realm).  Other Upper Planes have had…inventive solutions to the problem.  Bytopia regularly hires Yugoloth armies to handle them, with the hope that both sides destroy each other.  This is a pretty good solution but it means that random adventurers wandering through Bytopia always have to be on guard against a random force of Yugoloths or Tryanids running around.  Arcadia employs Armies of Fairies to keep the hoards at bay, while the Blessed Islands have taken to letting Demonic/Devil incursions unto their territory with the hope of destroying these enemies and each other.  Elysium have taken to creating massive “trap Portals” to teleport the entire Hive Fleet to a different plane, ideally Abbabon (Screw you Devils). Aborea just randomly eats them, and Heaven’s massive oceans normally handle things (though small bands can still be found in the Upper Planes. All of the Upper Planes occasionally employ adventurers to clear out bands that they can’t be bothered with, due to their constantly understaffed fight against evil taking up most of their priorities.  The Lower Planes meanwhile normally just let them eat until they can divert the forces, and then wipe them out in a massive battle that makes any other battle short of the Blood War itself seem like nothing in contrast.  Finally the Tyranids have thoroughly invaded the Realms of both the Jinn and the Elementals, who are fighting massive wars with these fuckers, often unheard of as mortals cannot easily gain access to these planes.  

      As their numbers are absolutely overwhelming, they can keep going for a long time, though even they are somewhat over stretched at the moment.  The Tyranids have only been defeated fully once when they ran right into a Darkspawn hoard, thought that is more of a tie than anything else.  The Darkspawn were eventually wiped out, but due to the Blights unique properties, the Tryanids found that they could use the Darkspawn as a form of reproduction and instead had to retreat empty handed.  It is likely that their invasion of the Blood Rift is going to end equally badly, as impressive as the Hive Fleets are, against the endless conflict of the Blood War they are simply being destroyed.  In fact, their own plane has been counter invaded by armies of Demons and Devils, both of whom were trying to wipe out the Tryanids but have instead become trapped into a fighting each other.  The Tryanids are playing with fire however, as should both sides see them as a true threat, they might unite against them and…well ask the Angels how well that went.  

     The Plane itself is rather simple, the Surface is a massive three way battlefield while the underground is the massive nests of the Tyranids as they work hard to breed more of themselves.  Three Armies (Angels, Demons, Devils) counter attacked the Tyranid forces at the same time and managed to successfully drive them from the surface of their own infinite plane, only to find themselves in conflict with each other.  The Plane is now a major battle for the Blood War, with the Angels pinned down in the middle protecting the Portal to the Radiant Throne, all the while trying to hold off the forces of the Demons and Devils while pitting the two sides against each other. Every so often all three sides will launch attacks on the Swarm, but they inevitably fall to infighting before they can maximize that effect.  The Swarm for their part finds the endless war annoying, but mostly ignore it, when a new Hive Fleet Emerges, it breaks out of the ground dramatically scattering all the combatants while it departs for a new home.