Crysmal

Crysmal

Cullitox; Chrysmal

DESCRIPTION: Crysmals or cullitox are peculiar beings, resembling strange scorpions built entirely out of glowing crystals. Crysmals are psionically endowed and much more intelligent than their behaviour and appearance might suggest. They lack any distinctive internal organs and are more closely related to regular elementals than to galeb duhr or to mephits.

PREFERRED HABITAT: Crysmals dwell within deep caverns in the Plane of Earth.

PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: There’s no crysmal society to speak of, but these creatures have a strong parental instincts. Crysmals reproduce by budding, sprouting multiple tiny versions of themselves from any point of their bodies. Even pieces of dead crysmals can still manage to produce new shardlings if submerged in the mineral dust (this lead certain tribes of shad to believe that crysmals are never truly dead until even one speck remains). Newborn shardlings form a strong bond with the first creature they touch—normally their mother, but sometimes with an another creature (it is even possible for them to become familiars). Mothers carry their young on their backs and feed them pulverised gems from their own gullets. After a few years crysmal shardlings grow up and abandon their progenitor entirely. In fact, sometimes a crysmal can eat its own offspring if it lingers around it for too long.

Crysmals are hated by most Earthen creatures from dao to weirds, to even stewards of Elemental Evil for their hunger for gems, but ruvoka of zathosi tribe are strangely protective of them, and even use larger specimens as mounts. Curiously, mineral quasi-elementals treat crysmals as one of their own, allow them safe passage through their domains and even protect them from pursuing enemies. Perhaps it’s because they view cullitox as just another kind of a gem to covet? Finally, shad ignore crysmals. We have bigger things to worry about than gems.

ECOLOGY: Like so many other creatures in the plane, crysmals consume minerals or, rather, gems and digest them through a strange psionic process of telekinetically crushing stones in their gullets. However, crysmals as they are now are extensively studied mostly because of their nature as treasure-eaters. Not all rock can become food for cullitox, but (contrary to popular belief) a bulk of their diet are useless crystals of quartz. Crysmals need to eat very often for a creature of stone—after one week without sustenance they become weakened by hunger. Their bodies become brittle, as they consume themselves from the inside. They would rather eat their own kind than starve.

Some of my colleagues classify crysmals as self-propagating crystalline lifeforms. Plainly speaking, they are crystals that became able to not just grow, but to react to external stimuli, move and eventually think as other kinds of living beings (even if in their own alien manner). Whether this evolution occurred naturally or from some cutter’s intervention is dark.

COMBAT: Crysmals hate losing parts of themselves (this is why they are very reluctant to launch crystal darts, despite being able to do so). They use their teleportation powers to move between caverns without digging or phasing through rock.

VARIANTS: Small crysmals can be bound as familiars by wizards who know the right ritual. These immature crysmals are called shardlings, and they are kept small by the summoning magic satiating their hunger, meaning they no longer need to eat gems to survive.

Sources

FULL STATISTICS FOR: [ AD&D 2e | D&D 3e | D&D 5e; CR3 ] [ PF1e | PF2e; CR3 ]

CANONICAL SOURCES: Secrets of the Lamp [2e] (elemental, earth kin, chrysmal); Expanded Psionics Handbook [3e] p194 (crysmal); Bestiary 2 [PF1e] (crysmal); Rage of Elements [2e] p103 (cullitox)

SOURCE: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: For some reason, the alignment of these creatures has fluctuated as wildly as the spelling over the various editions. The 1e crysmals started neutral evil, became neutral in Al-Qadim, then became lawful in 3e.