Phaerimm

(from 3rd Edition Monsters of Faerûn - 2001):

Phaerimms are evil magicians who would gladly erase all other beings from existence, except that they would consequently lack for g serviceable slaves capable of being tortured for sport.

Phaerimms resemble 10-to-12-foot-tall windsocks underneath an ovoid head. ’ The head disk contains a huge toothed W maw and is surrounded by four clawed arms. Beneath their top disk, their long, sinuous bodies taper down to a lethal stinger. They are powerful magicians, gaining levels as sorcerers over lives that span centuries. Many elder phaerimms are 15th- to 20th-level sorcerers; some have even pursued advanced magical study, much like that of human archmages. Younger phaerimms’ magical abilities are not so well developed.

If phaerimms were less evil, they would be more alien and difficult to understand, but their overwhelming drive toward inflicting pain makes them somewhat predictable. They communicate with one another by varying the wind speed around their bodies. They communicate with others using telepathy. They understand Common and several other languages.

Combat: Phaerimms can be dangerous physical combatants, but they view purely physical combat as a sign of weakness. Using their stinger or weapons to defend themselves is a sign that their magical abilities are not sufficient. Consequently, phaerimms only make physical attacks as a last resort, even at low levels when they lack powerful magic. Low-level phaerimms stoop to using masterwork swords, preferring falchions.

As spellcasters, phaerimms favor charm, command, and illusion effects over direct damage spells, but they are not shy about letting loose a fireball if necessary. Powerful elder phaerimms will often have charmed or otherwise enthralled beings fighting for them. In fact, phaerimms sometimes pick fights simply to watch their enemies being forced to hack apart their own friends. Phaerimms also enjoy summoning outsiders, but are generally too proud to use lowlevel summoning spells to call up common animals and other minor creatures.

Poison (Ex): Stinger, Fortitude save (DC 15); initial effect paralysis for 2d4 rounds and being levitated a few feet off the ground, hanging helpless; secondary damage paralysis for 1d3 hours.

Spell Resistance (Ex): For every three levels phaerimms gain as sorcerers, their spell resistance increases by +1.

Full Vision (Ex): Phaerimms are naturally capable of detecting magic, and seeing invisible, astral, and incorporeal creatures and objects, all out to a range of 120 feet.

Immunities (Ex): Phaerimms are immune to polymorph and petrification effects.

Fly (Su): A phaerimm can fly as the spell, as a free action, at a speed of 30 feet. A phaerimm that is unable to fly (for example, because it is caught in an antimagic field) falls. Phaerimm Magic (Sp): Phaerimms cast their sorcerer spells as if they were spell-like abilities, requiring neither verbal, somatic, nor material components.

In The Realms:

Millennia ago, the phaerimms plotted to destroy all life in Faerûn. They succeeded in toppling the mighty Netherese empire and devastating the area now known as the Anauroch Desert, but were foiled by the intervention of the elder sharns. The sharns imprisoned most of the phaerimms in a magical field beneath Anauroch. Only a few phaerimms escaped this imprisonment. Some of these escapees live in Myth Drannor, squandering their power on internal political squabbles. Others have conquered the beholder city of Ooltul and are attempting to break through the sharns’ barrier to free their fellows.

(from Netheril: Empire of Magic - 1996):

Phaerimm are powerful magic-using beings that move by natural levitation. They resemble upright cones, the widest part uppermost, and the point ending in a barbed stinger-tail. They are intelligent, inimical, and highly dangerous.

Combat: Phaerimm have 160-foot infravision, and can see into the astral and ethereal planes for 90 feet. Their normal vision functions as a constant detect magic.

Phaerimm have natural magic resistance: 44% against all magic except petrification and polymorph attacks, to which they m 77% resistant. Any magical attack on them blocked by their resistance will be absorbed by phaerimm as healing or reflected back 100% at the source. This is a defensive reflex and does not take the place of a phaerimm’s actions in the round it occurs. Absorption changes damage from the spell into replacement hit points; spells that do no damage yield 1 hit point per spell level (excess points can be carried for 12 rounds as healing energy, and used to offset later damage). Reflection means the source receives the magical effect, although a source subjected to multiple reflections of the same spell can be affected at most once (that is, a wizard catching two phaerimm in a fireball takes, at most, the damage of one fireball if both reflect). No upper limit to the number of magical attacks a given phaerimm can absorb or reflect in one round has been found.

Phaerimm command more magic than most human mages. For every 50 years of life, a phaerimm increases one level as a wizard — most of this long-lived race are the equivalents of 22nd- to 27th-level mages. Phaerimm experiment with, research, and memorize spells much as human wizards do; a spell of each level can become an innate spell-like ability. The spell, which cannot be changed once chosen, is retained in their brain structure and is regained every day without study.

Most phaerimm have devised some unique spells of their own. AU phaerimm spells are cast by silent act of will — most phaerimm magical study is time spent altering captured human spells into will-force magical energy manipulations.

In addition to a spell attack (and any reflected magics) in a round, a phaerimm can make up to six physical attacks, if targets are within reach. Its powerful jaws, located in the open top of its cone, bite for 3d4 damage. The rim of the cone contains four evenly-spaced, fully-retractable arms. These arms look startlingly human, but the hands have three central fingers and two outside, opposed thumbs. The arms can punch for 1d4 damage, wield weapons of up to polearm size for normal weapon damage, or grasp opponents to hold them for automatically-striking bites. Each round, roll 1d20 each for the phaerimm and the grasped victim. The higher total prevails: either the grasp holds for the round, or the victim breaks free.

A phaerimm also has a powerful tail that can smite for 2d4 points of damage; if a tail attack roll hits on a roll of 16 or more, its sting impales the victim: the victim takes the usual 2d4 damage, plus 1d6 more as the hollow bone stinger stabs deeply, injecting a milky fluid and an egg. The victim must save vs. poison three times: to see if the victim is paralyzed; to determine if the victim levitates (rising above any “floor” surface and hangin a few feet off the ground, powerless to move except by grasping or pushing against solid objects within reach for 2d4 turns); and to see if the phaerimm egg injected into the victim is fertile. A nonfertile egg dissolves harmlessly.

A fertile egg begins to grow in 1d6 days, eating the victim internally for a loss of 1 hit point per day thereafter, until death occurs or a cure disease spell kills the phaerimm larva. During this time, the victim’s attack, Armor Class, and ability scores are all penalized by 4 due to debilitating, gnawing pain. An egg or larva can be cut out of the victim, who must survive a system shock roll. This process inflcts 2d4 points of damage.

Habitat/Society: The phaerimm like to live near others of their own kind (for mutual protection and the social satisfaction of vying with each other in devious plans). However, they usually prefer usually prefer to operate alone or surround themselves with magically-controlled slave creatures to carry out their bidding.

Ecology: Phaerimm eat all reptiles and mammals, keeping them as slaves until their turn as dinner. They especially hate tomb tappers, who seem immune to pbaerimm mind-controlling magics.

In Faerûn, the mightiest magic of the sharn presently limits phaerimm to under Anauroch, but they work through agents to affect the world beyond the desert, using certain Bedine tribesmen and some Red Wizards who came to Anauroch long ago to try to establish a base or recover the fabled magic of the Lost Kingdoms. They have also subverted a few Zhentarim, but are being very careful not to reveal themselves to the Brotherhood — yet.

(from Drizzt Do'Urden's Guide to the Underdark - 1996):

The Buried Realms: 

The Buried Realms encompass a vast portion of the northern Underdark that lies beneath the sands and ice of Anauroch. Ancient tunnels crisscross this region, connecting with the mines of Tethyamar, the valley of Aerithae’s Rest, caverns along the River of Gems, the lower reaches of a nameless city in the Chill Sands northeast of Ascore claimed by the female blue wyrm Iymrith, the Lowroad of the Fardrimm, the deepest halls of Ammarindar, the fiercely defended caverns of Evereska and the Graycloak Hills, and various isolated surface caves in the Stonelands.

Home to beholders, illithids, laertis, thaalud, and other races, the Buried Realms are ruled by the phaerimm, an ancient race of fell beings whose mastery of the Art is rivaled only by the most powerful human wizards and elven High Mages. Partly responsible for the destruction of Netheril and wholly at fault for the lifedrain spells that transformed the wide, verdant valley of the Netherese into a wasteland, the phaerimm call their caverns the Phaerlin, a term only known to a handful of surface dwellers. The phaerimm rule through mind-controlling spells that hold even the illithids in thrall. They influence all creatures beneath Anauroch in a subtle but pervasive rule. Other races who enter the Buried Realms are known to have fallen under the charms and suggestions of the phaerimm within minutes. While the phaerimm are haughty and always scheme among themselves, they never betray their kin to the detriment of the race and keep a screen of mind-controlled slaves, including beholders, dwarves, giants, goblin-kin, humans, mind flayers, and svirfneblin between them and foolish explorers who come for the treasures of the Netherese.

The phaerimm are kept in check by the spells of the sharn, whose magic both halted the advance of the lifedrain spells and somehow confined the phaerimm within the area that they had already devastated, which is the area now known as the Buried Realms. Like caged beasts, the phaerimm want to escape their Underdark prison. They work tirelessly to overcome the spells of the sharn, using magically influenced agents to reach beyond their prison. These agents seek out and bring back whatever magic they can seize, and spread rumors of rich treasure to attract surface dwellers to the Phaerlin.

A handful of their phaerimm dwell outside the confines of the sharn prison, individually powerful but too few in number to work openly in the Realms Above. Most of these "free" phaerimm dwell amid the ruins of Myth Drannor, approximately forty all told, seeking to increase their mastery of the Art and plunder the ancient elven magic. These phaerimm work closely with their kin trapped inside the Buried Realms through mind-controlled intermediaries, channeling new spells, new magical artifacts, and new slaves to the tunnels of the Phaerlin. Reports of individual phaerimm elsewhere in the Realms Below are rare, but not unheard of. The most credible rumor suggests one exiled phaerimm dwells in the caverns of Deep Shanatar masquerading as a lich and is either allied with or a member of the Twisted Rune.

Mines of Tethyamar:

The Mines of Tethyamar are the wondrous caverns bored by generations of dwarves who once inhabited the Desertsmouth Mountains. Ruled by the Iron House of Tethyamar, the Stout Folk sent rafts of riches down the River Tesh to the Moonsea and beyond. Tethyamar fell within dwarven memory, overrun by fiends and hordes of arcs and ogres. Some rumors claim that Tethyamar's last king, Ghellin, and his followers may have recently reclaimed a small part of the mines from the hordes of arcs and ogres who have long dwelt within.

The lower reaches of the Mines of Tethyamar connect with the upper Underdark and extend south through the heart of the Desertsmouth Mountains, all the way to Ooltul and beyond. Tethyamar’s deepest passages house all sorts of monstrous denizens, including solitary beholders, fomorian giant clans, troglodyte tribes, grimlock hordes, arc and ogre kingdoms led by baatezu, slithermorphs, steel shadows, storopers, and bands of thaalud, all of whom engage in ongoing and continuous wars over the remaining ores and gems.

Xun’Qoroth:

Before the phaerimm rose to power throughout the Buried Realms, the beholder nation of Xun’Qoroth stretched beneath the surface realm of Anauria, southernmost of the three Netherese survivor states along the western edge of the Desertsmouth Mountains. The tunnels and caverns of Xun'Qoroth incorporated half a dozen separate cities, including Aixlintar, Ginsunlix, Ooltul, Ointaroth,

Viksanmaq, and Xunqaq, all but one of which — Ooftuf — fell within the confines of the phaerimm spell prison.

Xun'Qoroth has not fallen, but its eye tyrant denizens do not realize that their independence is now a sham, as their minds are controlled by the phaerimm. The beholders of Xun'Ooroth employ death tyrants as well as orc, hobgoblin, and xorn slaves as they mine for wealth and scheme to expand their realm south and up to the surface world. Xun'Qoroth is loosely “ruled” by Rilathdool, ап elder orb who dwells in Xunqaq. By Rilathdool's decree and the subtle phaerimm influence, the beholders of Xun'Qoroth attack on sight any beholders from Ooltul or outside the phaerimm influence . . . unless the phaerimm wish otherwise.