Pirates of Gith are another branch of the race that evolved into the githyanki and githzerai. Their divergence occurred at a similar point to the majority of their related species. Unlike the githyanki, who are their closest evolutionary cousins, the pirates of Gith chose not to flee into the Astral Plane. Rather, they fled to arcane space, intent on wiping out the remains of the illithid space fleets. A regimented race, the pirates of Gith are of course best known for their piracy, looting other vessels and killing all those aboard.
Gith Pirates are fairly similar in build to the githyanki, being tall and emaciated. Their skin tones vary from a pale, grubby grey to an unhealthy jaundiced yellow, with fierce red eyes and hair that, while usually brown, can also be black or read in colour. Their teeth are sharp and pointed and often filed in order to emphasise this feature. They favour decorative armour, scimitars and cutlasses, and brightly-coloured garb such as that worn by buccaneers. Their costumes are usually remarkably tasteless, easily offending the eyesight of aesthetically sensitive folk.
Pirates of Gith speak their own language, and some may speak Githyanki as well. While they dislike the idea of learning other languages, they have found it convenient to learn Common, if only because it enables them to order crews of enemy ships to disarm their weapons, strike their colours and prepare to be slaughtered.
Combat: Pirates of Gith fight with a variety of weapons and armour, although heavy armour is a rarity since they are a spacefaring, ship-using race. They prefer swords to most other weapons, and scimitars and cutlasses most of all, preferring to move fast and use a keen-edged weapon. They favour enchantments that improve their weapons combat and feats that improve their chances of inflicting more grievous wounds. Prestige among a crew is determined by who caused the messiest and most painful deaths. All pirates of Gith have darkvision, effective to a range of 60 feet.
Spell-like Abilities (Sp): Pirates of Gith of level 8 or above are able to use the following spell-like effects once per day: detect thoughts and plane shift. Crews of Gith pirates traditionally save their plane shift abilities for a trick they have learned to perform in concert; if a crew of pirates of Gith all manifest those powers at the same time, they are able to shunt their ship into the Astral Plane. The circumstances under which this particular ability can be performed, however, are limited by the constraints of the ship in their possession. Their ship must be one of the elven living ships, such as a man o' war, or a craft of githyanki or gith pirate manufacture. Needless to say, most elven fleets offer a sizeable bounty for the heads of pirates of Gith.
PIRATE of GITH SOCIETY
Pirates of Gith are a pragmatic race that only considers a battle won if the entire enemy force has been destroyed. They have been known to attempt to commit genocide if another group try to settle too close to their territories, and are probably the most xenophobic of the gith races. While their greatest hatred is reserved for illithids, they hate all other gith races, including the githyanki, who they feel forsook Gith when they allowed Vlaakith CLVII to take the throne.
In a crew of Gith pirates, the highest-level fighter/cleric is likely to be the leader. Wizards are more common than sorcerer, since their knowledge of magic was largely taken from stolen spellbooks and tomes of magical theory.
Their society is extremely hierarchical, and although they tend not to fight too much amongst themselves, they punish their criminals (those who disobey superior officers) in a brutal and severe fashion; anyone who angers the captain ends up at the captain's table; usually as the first course. Pirates of Gith are a carnivorous race, and are not above cannibalism.
PIRATE of GITH CHARACTERS
There are few pirates of Gith who seek the adventuring life. Those who do are renegades, seeking to escape their stifling society in an attempt to find some personal space and identity. Such renegades are usually hunted across Wildspace, not only by most intelligent races but also the pirates of Gith too. They may vary in alignment, and may even be less xenophobic than their fellows, but many of them tend to be aggressive and a little savage too.
Like githyanki, the favoured class of the pirates of Gith is fighter, although they do not have any knightly orders since they owe no allegiance to the githyanki's lich-queen. Another significant difference is that clerics are allowed and indeed encouraged by their society. Quite who the pirates worship is unknown, although some sages suspect that they worship Gith. Others disagree, having found no trace of her in the planes, and explain the clerical spells away by claiming that Tiamat, in the guise of their ancestral leader, grants them their divine magic. They may in fact follow a variety of deities; all of them are lawful evil in alignment, and some of them are in fact deities of other races. The Gith pirates claim, however, that such gods were originally their own deities, worshipped in aberrant and unorthodox ways by lesser races. Such heresy, they claim, is another attempt on the part of the humans and other species to bastardise their culture - giving them another convenient excuse to launch another genocidal war.
A Gith pirate's effective character level is +1.
In the Spheres Pirates of Gith are a xenophobic spacefaring race, and as such rarely settle on the larger planetoids unless they are able to wipe out all competitors there first. The best way to make a pirate of Gith angry is to make him feel paranoid, and the best way to do that is to exist within fifteen thousand miles of him. Many crews spend their entire lives aboard ships, if their captain decides (as he often might) to suspend all planet leave indefinitely. They have started to create their own ships, although many others favour ships stolen from the Elven Imperial Navy -- which, they claim, were designed and built by them originally.
The pirates are reluctant to venture into the Phlogiston, since the Flow inhibits their ability to plane shift. As such, they are almost always encountered within crystal spheres. Sages suggest two reasons, however, for their proliferation throughout the spheres. Firstly, it is not inconceivable to imagine that they shunt their craft into the Astral Plane, and from there move into other worlds. Secondly, just because they do not wish to venture into the Flow does not necessarily mean that they never do. They might retreat into the Phlogiston in order to evade elmarin, or may be required to do so if no elven ships are at their disposal and they wish to find new territories. Other bands of Gith's pirates may feel confident enough to venture out into the Flow if they have conquered entire crystal spheres and are merely travelling between them, although most of the time travel through the Astral is quicker.
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Pirate of Gith, © 1990 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
d20™ System, Conversion of Pirate of Gith ©2002,
Phil Smith
Original Source: Monstrous Compendium #7