Weird, True — Water

[ Bestiary | Elemental-Kin | Weirds ]
[ True Weirds ] [ Air | Earth | Fire | Metal | Water | Wood ] [ Lesser Weirds ]

Weird, True — Water

Oracular weird

DESCRIPTION: What came first, the wave or the water? No cutter, it’s not the start of a joke—the elemental weirds are no laughing matter, despite their strange-sounding name. The true weirds are paragons of their species, in whom the inherent energy of the elemental plane reaches higher potential. These intelligent elementals can assume a humanoid form, speak all the languages of the Primes, and most importantly for the aforementioned mortals, the so-called oracular weirds can foretell the future.

Water true weirds typically take fluid forms of ever-moving transparent liquid, where their upper half is a female humanoid, and their lower half is a snake. Weirds themselves don’t seem to have a concept of gender. Their eyes gleam like moonlight reflecting on a lake, and their voices lap and drip, into lucid speech that carries clearly to a chosen listener while remaining a murmur to others. They have the clean scent of rain and salt water. When they prophesy, ripples on their surface resolve into mirrored glyphs and scenes that refract across the pool.

Like others, water weirds loosely align themselves with the forces of Elemental Good. However, they true weirds have somewhat unusual perception of reality, which is best reflected by their foresight ability. These creatures think in terms of wet and dry seasons of flood and drought, and they only foretell (or perhaps, only consider important) especially grand and impactful events—catastrophic floods or great naval victories. They say water retains a memory of everything it ever touches, and chant goes the true water weird is able to dip into the collective memory of the waters to pull forth secrets they should not be able to know. Each time a creature touches water, bathes, swims, looks at their reflection, or drinks, that’s an event the water weird can see reflected in her pool. They can also speak with the spirits of the drowned dead. Pirates, who are superstitious berks at the best of times, are particularly fearful of water weirds, seeing them as terrible omens.

PREFERRED HABITAT: Each true weird is intrinsically tied to an elemental pool, and they are unable to venture more than a few steps from it. Fortunately for the weird, they really don’t want to. The pool of the water weird is a mirror-like pool of pure water, perhaps in a cavern, or a forest clearing, or a fountain. While the elemental pool is usually still, the weird can stir it up into an elemental vortex at will. The weirds guard or seal the portal, repel incursions—in either direction—and oppose any plane-breaching magic.

PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: Elemental weirds are essentially guardians of the Elemental Planes. They try to prevent foreign elements contaminating their home too much, fearing that it may cause the imbalance among the Inner Planes. Obsessed with cleansing and purification, water weirds will refuse to speak with visitors who are not sufficiently purified in their presence.

Weirds move in mysterious ways

—Planewalker saying

ECOLOGY: Water true weirds have a deep understanding of the fluid nature and changeability of all things. They know that structures, people and organisations are transient, and only the waters endure. Cause and effect are just pools of water stirred in opposite directions. Once things are mixed, they cannot become unmixed so easily.

COMBAT: True weirds prefer not to fight in the first place, if they can avoid it. If conflict is inescapable however, they are able to summon elementals through the weird pool to assist them. Weirds are also able to gain control of any elemental in their sight, no matter the type of element. During combat, a true weird typically retreats to the centre of its pool, using its divination magics to foretell the ebb and flow of the battle and change plans accordingly. Powers like contact other plane, detect thoughts, foresight, greater scrying, legend lore, locate object, true seeing, and vision are all options a weird can draw upon.

A warning to planewalkers going up against a weird. If a berk enters a weird’s pool without their permission, they risk being transformed into an elemental themselves! Finally, a water true weird has the option of retreating back to the Plane of Water through the vortex at the centre of its pool. This is a one-way trip, however, shutting the vortex down. It’s thought the weird then merges back with their home plane to share what it has learned—so this is very much an option of last resort.

VARIANTS: Immature members of this species are called lesser water weirds, and they have a very different outlook on life. It seems as they mature, the weird becomes much more serious, and if anything, more out of touch with reality.

Sources

Full Statistics For: [ D&D 3e ]

Canonical Sources: Dragon Magazine #347 p66-69 (the ecology of the elemental weird); Monster Manual II [3e] p90-93 (elemental weird)

Source: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: These creatures are based on the elemental weirds from D&D 3e. They were called “true weirds” briefly in the text there, while the ambushing weird of 2e was renamed the “lesser weird”, and also changed from CE to N alignment. However, since in other editions and in fandom as a whole elemental weirds are associated with a sneaky elemental rather than with a prophetic lady, we chose to swap some terms around.