22. Ethergaunts - D&D 3.5
As I’m sure has been made abundantly clear, I am a big fan of any creature that has an unexpected interaction with other lore pieces of the game, but in particular with the different planes. We’ve seen aberrations that interact with Hell, the Abyss, the Feywild, the Astral Sea, and of course the Far Realm. Another plane that is touched by aberrations quite a bit actually is the Ethereal Plane, which has interactions from Filchers and Nilshai, the latter of which could not make this list due to it not appearing in the books that were ruled (and admittedly I don’t know enough about them to know if they’d have made the list if they had qualified by the rules). But an aberration far more intelligent and complex than the filchers can be found in the ethergaunts, which are far deadlier than they seem.
The ethergaunts are essentially terrifying as villains in the same way that Cybermen, zombies, reavers, and werewolves are terrifying. Because they were once human, with all of both the familiar and alien traits that comes from such a harsh disconnect from this truth. The ethergaunts were an advanced species of humanoids that abandoned the Material Plane some fifty thousand years ago in order to expand in a new and uninhabited world in the form of the empty Ethereal Plane. Since their arrival, the ethergaunts have might great strides in technology and philosophy in ways that became vastly distinct from their first world counterparts. These advances are mysterious to those of our world and the inherent purposes of them are very poorly understand, with an emphasis on alien architecture, bizarre bodily changes that have suited them better to their own world, and a philosophy and culture that has de-emphasized emotion but seemingly elevated even the lowest stations of individuals. These changes put them in a bizarre and foreign position to most of our world. To them however, the advancements that they have acquired have excelled them far beyond the civilization of the Material Plane. They deem the civilization that has come to ‘acquire’ the Material Plane, at least in the areas they once inhabited, as pests that hold little actual dominion there. They see themselves as beyond the morals of all Material peoples, and only seek to eliminate all those who have taken over their ancestral homelands.
There are a number of interesting facets to ether gaunt identity. One is the series of stations that they occupy, with even the lowest among them in power, the reds, being revered as scientists and explorers for the greater community, which is certainly far more elite than most cultures one might see. I like this idea of actually seeing some sort of marked change for the BETTER from a quote-on-quote evil society because it allows for the raising the question of whether they might actually have some of the right idea on things (the answer of course being probably, since in the real world lots of cultures have at least one idea that is socially progressive and their aren’t WHOLE races that exist to just be evil). White ethergaunts form the governmental portion of their society and the blacks rule over even them. The interaction level of the ethergaunts even when it does happen is extremely alien as they only have a language interpretable by one another and so they will instead dominate creatures to serve as proxy to speak their will. Which yeah, like lots of powerful aberrations they can dominate people. In addition to this, an ether gaunt can jump from Ethereal to Material Plane on a whim, a stupefying gaze which hits mental scores directly, and some pretty deadly spell-casting that advances through the different forms. They also have complete spell immunity to any spell of a certain level or lower depending on their ranking, and this is a neat device to see them have a distinct separation from the Material Plane’s laws. Now in the past I’ve said I don’t think a Big Bad should completely negate one character’s usefulness, AKA be entirely immune to magic, but the ether gaunt does this in an interesting way where it is only immune to spells of certain levels or lower which throws in a nice obstacle for players to deal with without entirely flipping them off for the character they chose to play. And layers should have spells that can deal with them at the times they would encounter them. Even the lowest of them is a CR 8 (which is not a push over) and is immune to 2nd level spells or lower, which players should have 3rd level spells at the point where they have a major battle with something of this CR.
I do have some qualms with the ethergaunts ethos. The whole idea of progression to ethergaunts society is centered in the elimination of emotion for a greater focus on rationality. As I’ve said before, whenever you have villains who don’t really have emotions my brain turns off. I find the idea of having no emotions for motivation or drive entirely uninspiring and leaving little room for interesting role-play potential. Fortunately, ethergaunts are, like in previous cases, not completely immune to emotion, however hard they might try to be so. In fact, the Embri we’ve spoken about before have a lot in common societally with the ethergaunts, with both having a focus in this and also being based in a rigid caste system, though the Embri lose the connection to humanity that ethergaunts have. The ethergaunts are also irreligious, absent of the devotion that the Embri have to the malebranche. The history of the ethergaunts dates them as having similar origins to that of Serpentfolk, Aboleth, and other ancient beings that are mostly lost to time, and so their legacy is long and they have yet to relinquish their claim on it.
