Salt quasielemental
Pathfinder |
The dominant kind of the Quasielemental Plane of Salt, salt quasielementals rule the plane with a briny claw, rarely seen by planar travelers but always watching those that pass through their kingdoms. Standing as the ultimate representative of dessication, they loathe fluids of any sort and those that bear them, content (unlike many of their kin) to keep to their own lands and let the watery keep theirs. As a result, unless one travels upon Salt, one is likely never to meet a true salt quasielemental (whatever natives of Saltside Water may claim).
Culture
Salt quasielementals are a solitary and secretive people, rarely meeting with their own kind and holding an almost paternalistic separation above the other native peoples of Salt. Each quasielemental claims a region of Salt for their own, a miniature kingdom within which they claim total dominion and seek to ensure the well-being of all other natives within, watching outsiders and local dangers alike cautiously and furtively, quick to strike out at any that would threaten them or their domain. They bear a natural suspicion for the "waterlogged" — their term for any being requiring fluids to survive — and watch well for any signs of a danger to their kingdom, but are far more willing than the other negative quasielementals to entertain dealings with those not of salt.
As for locals, salt quasielementals get along well with mephits. They seem to view mephits them most protectively of all, at times even treating them almost as children. The local undead are looked ill upon, coming from waterlogged mortals as they do and so still believed to hold a sort of taint as a result, but salt quasielementals do not bother to set themselves against them as they rarely act against their fellow natives of the plane. Most other beings are seen on more or less even terms, though quasielementals still tend to hold themselves somewhat above them, seeing themselves as the true inheritors of Salt. The lone exception is that of the facets, whose deigns to take over the Elemental Plane of Water are seen as an overreach and whose natural affinity with fluids is seen as dangerously contrary to the ways of Salt. Thankfully, facets tend largely to keep themselves to the Saline Sea, though the wars along the border of the region between quasielementals and facets are renown throughout the plane. Unfortunately, their territory and its proximity to the plane of Water, coupled with the fact that facets are much nearer to the usual conception of elemental beings as humanoid masses of some element, has led many to view facets as salt quasielementals, leading many to hold unfair ill opinions of salt quasielementals and the other natives of the plane.
Appearance
As with most elemental beings, salt quasielementals can take on a wide variety of forms. However, most eschew humanoid form as too reminiscent of the waterlogged, instead shaping themselves in quadripedal, vaguely reptilian forms, resembling a lizard encrusted in a thick layer of rime. Whatever their form, salt quasielementals most often appear as a pure, slightly translucent white. However, depending on the region of Salt from which they come, some may take on other hues.
References
- The Inner Planes, pp.118-121
- Planescape Monstrous Compendium III, pgs.11-12,80
