Editing Gith (section)

==2nd Edition==
This was the edition when the gith ''really'' took off, as this was when [[TSR]] started fully exploring the [[plane]]s and thusly crafted the [[Great Wheel]].

===Basic "Core" Stuff===
They appear first in the Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix (these extras were printed with hole-punched pages so you could add them to a fuckhuge binder with all your Monstrous Compendium stuff in one place), and they get a bit of a concise facelift that reprints a very slightly expands on the previous material.  Everything was reprinted in the later Monster Manual (since TSR realized that loose-leaf sheets could get run through a copying machine, and gamers never needed the internet to pirate intellectual property).

The term "[[githyanki]]" is noted in 2nd edition to specifically mean "sons of Gith", and it is noted here that while the githyanki gladly fuck with other races and beings, they do not quarrel among themselves.  It also lists a number of special groups or castes among them who perform specific tasks: g'lathk (farmers who tend artificial chambers used to grow fungi, plants that don't need sunlight, and aquatic plants in water-gardens); mlar (the mages who use their magic for construction instead of combat); hr'a'cknir (craftsmen who harness astral psychic energy to perform unspecified jobs).  Because the [[cavalier]] didn't really make the cut to 2nd edition, githyanki "knights" were [[paladin]]s that used evil-version abilities (''detect good'', ''command undead'', etc.).

The [[githzerai]] got similar details.  Their capital city was called [[Shra'kt'lor]] here, and the entry provides us with the Legend of [[Zerthimon]].  After Gith defeated the mind flayers, Zerthimon opposed her on the grounds that she was a mean, evil bitch.  That went about as well as you could expect, leading to actual fighting between those who remained loyal to Gith, and those who felt she was an evil bitch. Zerthimon died, but his faction got away. The githzerai believe that Zerthimon is a divine figure now, and when he comes back like Jesus he's going to gather up the "zerths" (their term for fighter/mages) and lead his people to paradise. Apparently, the wizard-king is not happy with this legend or the religious fervor it creates, since it challenges his authority, but he hasn't been able to get rid of it.

Another tidbit in this early material for githzerai is that while the githyanki are generally militaristic and aggressive, the githzerai prefer to keep to themselves.  They do, however, get a nice party together called a "rrakkma", which spends 3 months scouring the planes for [[illithid]]s to kill; githzerai consider it an honor to participate in these little excursions.

They are noted for having [[Prime Material]] strongholds, but no mention of adamantine walls (and seriously, who wouldn't massacre these guys for that much delicious building material), though it does mention that the stronghold's presence destroys the landscape for miles around, possibly due to the extra-planar nature of the building material, or just mages fucking shit up to keep out trespassers. They aren't trying to deliberate mess shit up, though; the strongholds are, apparently, simply to give them a place to stage raids on any githyanki they find on the Prime Material.

Oh, and 2nd edition also notes here that neither gith-folk give a shit about the [[Blood War]]; they got illithids and each other to fuck up, no time for messing about with an eternal war involving a bunch of bloodthirsty, lying-ass fiends.

===Athasian Gith (Dark Sun)===
Later on in the [[Dark Sun]] setting, they added a strangely-familiar race called the gith, who were mostly savages with more psionics than magic, and no artificial limit on their levels (i.e. nothing killing them for getting a certain level).  The adventure Black Spine gives us the gory details.  The githyanki were on Athas thousands of years ago to create a fortress, Yathazor, which would act as a base of operations for their usual raiding and such.  They had an advantage, because their plane shift ability was pretty scot-free transport in and out of a generally impregnable area; they even set up a magic barrier that took planar-style keys to get in an out of, making their little stronghold pretty impregnable.

Until, apparently, a githzerai force infiltrated the area, and set off a "psionic devastator" which mind-fucked the githyanki into barbaric idiocy... who became the ancestors of the Athasian gith.  (The adventure even offers speculation that this event could have been a trigger for the development of psionics on Athas overall.)

4th edition offers an alternative take on the subject, saying that the gith are degenerate descendants of a race that visited Athas in a [[Spelljammer|"vast silvery craft"]], only to be stranded by the Gray, whereupon a negative reaction to Athas' unique magical field warped them into savages, though some tribes possess a primitive mythology which centers on trying to rebuild their ancestral craft so they can leave this world.

In all editions, Athasian gith are bitter enemies of the [[tarek]]s.

Whilst official products have largely focused on Athasian gith as monsters, they have actually received player character conversions! Fans converted them to 2nd edition in the Complete Book of Athasian Humanoids, and to 3e in Terrors of Athas - but beyond that, [[Paizo]] also gave them a PC writeup in their first Dark Sun bestiary article in [[Dungeon Magazine]] #110!

The fanmade stats look like this:
::Ability Score Minimum/Maximum: Strength 5/20, Dexterity 8/20, Constitution 5/20, Intelligence 5/20, Wisdom 5/, Charisma /18
::Ability Score Adjustments: +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution, -2 Charisma (but increase Cha by +2 when interacting with other gith)
::Racial Class/Level Limits: [[Fighter]] 16, [[Gladiator]] 14, [[Defiler (Dark Sun)|Defiler]] 12, [[Wizard|Preserver]] 10, [[Cleric]] 12, [[THief]] 12, [[Psion]]icist Unlimited
:::Racial Thieving Skill Adjustments: -5% Open Locks, +5% Hide in Shadows, +10% Detect Noise, -15% Climb Walls, -10% Bribe Officials, +10% Dig Tunnel, +5% Escape Bonds
::Natural Armor Class: 8
::Movement: 10
::Advantages:
:::A gith can "Spring", leaping 20 feet. If a gith Springs into the first round of combat, it gains a +2 attack roll bonus in that round.
:::Gith can attack twice per round with their claws if uinarmed, doing 1d4 damage.
:::Infravision 60 feet
:::Can detect slopes and other changes in terrain when traveling underground
:::Gain Jumping as a bonus proficiency, and higher levels in Jumping c an increase the distance of Springing.
:::+1 attack roll and +1 damage bonus when wielding spears.
::Disadvantages:
:::Gith despise "traitors" who are cooperating with non-gith, and [[Gue'vasa|will single them out as top priority unless more obvious threats are present]], such as a [[half-giant]] or a [[b'rohg]].
:::Gith have a vulnerable nerve cluster on their back. If a called shot successfully hits them on their back, a gith must pass a Save vs. Paralyzation or be Stunned for 1d4 rounds.

::Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Dexterity, -2 Intelligence, -2 Charisma
::Size: Medium
::Base Land Speed: 30 feet
::+10 racial bonus to Jump checks.
::+4 racial bonus to Hide and Move Silently checks.
::+2 natural armor bonus.
::Natural Weaponry: 2 Claw attacks that do 1d4 damage.
::Low-Light Vision
::[[Favored Class]]: [[Rogue]]
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +1

Paizo's 3e version, in comparison, looks like this:
::Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Strength, +2 Wisdom, -2 Intelligence
::Size: Medium
::Type: Humanoid
::Base Land Speed: 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Naturally Psionic: 2 bonus psi power points at 1st level.
::Psi-Like Abilities: Athasian gith gain the following psi-like abilities at the indicated levels. Manifester level equal to 1/2 Hit Dice (minimum 1st), save DCs are Charisma based.
:::1st Level: Matter Agittion 3/day, Control Flames 3/day
:::3rd Level: Biofeedback 3/day
:::6th level: Control Body 3/day
:::9th Level: Psychofeedback 3/day, Telekinetic Thrust 1/day
::Leaper: Athasian gith gain a +10 racial bonus on Jump checks.
::Natural Weapons: 2 Claw attacks that do 1d4 + Strength modifier Slashing damage.
::[[Favored Class]]: [[Barbarian]]
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +2

===Pirates of Gith (Spelljammer)===
The [[Spelljammer]] setting gives us one final offshoot of the Gith-folk, the Pirates of Gith.  Nothing too fancy here: they're just githyanki that headed for arcane space instead of the [[Astral Plane]].  Unfortunately for other space-sailors in the setting, the Pirates of Gith are pretty brutal: they actually have [[cleric]]s, and all of them can get to level 11 without worrying about some undead bitch destroying them.  The way they're described is that they seem a bit more brutal and/or savage than their githyanki cousins, but they know how to fly ships with helms, and their innate magic abilities allow them to do some weird stuff: they can shift elven-crafted spelljamming ships into the Astral Plane.  Yes, the whole ship, passengers, and cargo, all at once.  They can't fly their ships through the phlogiston with their abilities, though, and they can only plane-hop an elven ship of 50 tons or less.  Oh, also, these fuckers are carnivores, and even cannibals as needed, so they're like the Reavers from Firefly only intelligent (have fun introducing your players to that little tidbit).

===A Guide To The Astral Plane (Planescape)===
[[Planescape]] came along and really got down to the brass tacks with a concise history of the Gith-folk.  A book in the setting called "A Glimpse Through the Mists" tells that in really ancient times (as in before most Prime Material Plane worlds had been created), the [[illithid]]s had an empire that covered many Prime worlds (and, given what was mentioned in Spelljammer, most of the crystalline spheres of arcane space) and even had spread into the planes themselves; the illithids were such a threat that it is even the [[devil]]s and [[demon]]s of the [[Blood War]] stopped a moment to take a hard look at the tentacled assholes. The humans they had enslaved were twisted after an uncounted time into different beings, who had begun to develop psionic powers and martial strength. That's when Gith, the paragon of her kind, rose up a rebellion double-quick and after the fighting was done, there was no more illithid empire to threaten anything on the planes or the Prime Material.

Unfortunately, Gith decided that this meant it was her and her people's time to forge an empire built on conquest. [[Zerthimon]], who had his own following that felt otherwise, challenged her plans and leadership, calling Gith out for being as evil as the bastards that had enslaved them. The civil war killed Zerthimon, saw the githzerai flee to Limbo, and managed to shatter Gith's plans for conquest due to her losses.  She withdrew the githyanki ("the children of Gith") to the Astral Plane and set up shop. Eventually, one of her advisers, named Vlaakith, said that they needed allies. They tried and failed to get the [[slaad]]i to turn on the githzerai, and then Vlaakith suggested meeting with [[Tiamat]]. Supposedly, the only people who know what happened or was said at the meeting are Gith, Tiamat, and one of Tiamat's consorts, the red wyrm Ephelomon.  What is known is that Gith never came back: Ephelomon went to the Astral, informed Vlaakith that she was now Gith's successor, and told the githyanki that they had [[Chromatic Dragon|red dragon]]s ready to help them fuck shit up.

This sourcebook gives a huge amount of additional detail after the creation legend.  There are notes that allude to a very slight reptilian physiology (tying back to the Athasian gith); additional catch-words in their language; more details on their professions; and stats and background for [[Vlaakith CLVII]], the [[Lich]]-Queen herself.  This book basically established much of the lore that got reused in 3rd Edition, and if you want a good look at the githyanki as a society and whatnot, this is the place to do it.

This was also the edition of ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'', and its githzerai party member, Dak'kon the Pariah, is a vitally-important milestone in the history of that race's development, for reasons listed on that page.