[ Outsiders > Celestials > Uthras ]
[ Anana | Gufna | Nakta | Ziwa ] [ Matarta ]
Gufna
Vine uthra
Challenge Rating: 14
DESCRIPTION: At first glance, a cutter would be forgiven for not realising that these things are sentient at all. A gufna appears to be a colossal treelike-vine that is so enormous that it links both layers of Bytopia together. However, gufnas are very much able to think and feel. A canny blood will notice shapes on the vine’s stem that look too much like faces to be a coincidence. Gufnas are also adorned with huge spikes like bramble thorns, giant leaves sturdy enough to support an entire building and large fruits that pulsate, seemingly containing something moving inside them.
HABITAT/SOCIETY: Gufnas are living planar pathways, creating their own unique habitat, microenvironment and cloud-forest layer. Their roots extend deep beneath the ground on both layers of Bytopia. Adventuresome explorers who’ve followed them underground report they lead to mysterious wormholes, where unstable temporary gates exist, transiently leading to different Inner and Outer Planes. No one (save for uthras themselves) has ever seen the full length of a gufna, and only very few cutters are allowed to climb upon them. When a contingent of naktas and ananas travels to act against evil, or to establish alliances with forces of good, the gufnas are happy to provide them with convenient and almost instantaneous transportation to almost anywhere they need to go.
COMBAT: Should something threaten the vine, it can respond with erupting spikes, lashing stems, detonating blasts of explosive fruit, and can even bending space around itself to translocate the foe away from the battlefield.
ECOLOGY: In the Matarta, the gufnas support the entire realm. They entangle shkinas, and suspend them mid-air. The few petitioners who choose to stay in the realm, also build their homes in the branches and leaves of gufnas. Chant goes that vine uthras nurture the entire realm in some strange way. They certainly provide nourishing berries to forage, fresh water that pools in bowl-shaped leaves, and protection from predators.
Source: Margarita. Mythwatch: The gufnas are homebrew, but are based on the celestial entities from the ancient Gnostic religion Mandaeism. Influences from Abrahamic religions and mysticism aren’t unheard of in D&D and Pathfinder (archons, qlippoths, peri, divs and devas, azatas—basically the entire spectrum of Near Eastern religions is already canonically present), but my version references living religions much more, so if you are Mandaean or know more about this religion than me and have any kind of opinion, please do share it...
