Editing Gith (section)

==Literary Background==
The actual creation of the githyanki owes, apparently, to no less than George R. R. Martin himself, in his very first novel, "Dying of the Light".  (It should come as no shocker that the book is pretty fucking grimdark: it's set in the final days of a dying world where almost every single character dies.  Yes, it seems GRRM never met any characters he didn't like killing off before the end of his books...)  Anyway, a guy named Charles "Charlie" Stross, a British author who was into space opera and Lovecraftian horror (considerably later, better-known for his excellent ''Laundry Files'' series), borrowed the name of the race from GRRM's book, and no shit, he retooled it for his own homebrew AD&D campaign.  He submitted it to the ancient White Dwarf magazine as part of their "Fiend Factory" articles for new monsters, and it was selected among other monsters for inclusion in the brand new Fiend Folio.  In fact, the githyanki was even selected to be the monster depicted on the cover.

These origins give seem to give some perspective to why gith-folk are consistently one of the better-loved "quirk" races in D&D, both among neckbeards (who love the weird blend of literature, homebrew, and back-porting that made them an official part of the game) and even the newbies (who seem to like having something that breaks a lot of generic fantasy molds, like elves and orcs, which may get overused).  Even when fans of D&D hate psionics, it's really not hard at all to simply switch out psionics with magic and keep the rest mostly intact.