Rockseer Elf

Also known for their prodigious chins

Rockseer Elves are a strange and obscure sub-branch of the elf family tree in Dungeons & Dragons. A peaceful and shy people, the rockseers pursue a life of seclusion in the Underdark, using their affinity for earth elementalism - which gives them the innate ability to walk through stone as if it were air - to hide from all of the other races of the Underdark, from the hated drow and duergar to even the harmless svirfneblin. The rockseers' mythology teaches that they descend from elves who were such cowards that they fled during the great war between Corellon and Lolth, fleeing into the depths of the earth to hide rather than fight. Because of this, they believe that Corellon has forsaken them, and they have become consumed by guilt and the need to repent for this shame. In actuality, Corellon and the surface elves have basically forgotten they ever existed, and would forgive them in a heartbeat if they only had the courage to reveal themselves.

As A People

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Rockseer elves are the tallest of their kin, standing almost eight feet in height, with pale skin, long and silky-textured silver hair, and icy blue eyes - in stark contrast to the dark hues of the drow. They are notedly androgynous; males and females can be quite hard to tell apart. They wear clothing fashioned from special fungus, but their powers allow them to craft stunningly beautiful jewelry. Being quite few in numbers even by elven standards, the rockseers are a cautious people who prize avoidance of danger - which is a sensible belief when you live in such a dangerous place. They evade would-be assailants, and if forced to fight, specialize in luring them into deadly traps over standing their ground and fighting. They hold themselves neutral to the endless parade of conquest, betrayal and bloodshed of the Underdark races, pursuing a simple lifestyle of mining, crafting, and cultivating fungus or cavern beasts for food.

Society

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Rockseers believe that all they have is themselves and the riches of the earth. They are powerfully cohesive socially. Chieftains are generally elected by a conclave of the most powerful warriors and wizards on the death of the previous leader. A wise Rockseer leader does not give orders without consulting his or her advisors. Rockseers do not tolerate tyrannical leadership, nor do they suffer fools.

The lairs of Rockseers are supremely well disguised and warded. Multiple spells are always cunningly placed to prevent other creatures even suspecting the existence of such a network of caverns and passages, let alone entering them. Spies (usually thieves melding into stone) are always placed to watch out over areas close to the entry points of caverns. Some Rockseers live in caverns accessible only by stone walking or similar magic, where hundreds of feet of solid rock separate them from the outside world, with only small fissures to provide air.

Rockseers are highly unusual among elves in that they have little curiosity. Few among them have any desire to learn the ways of other folk. This is largely the legacy of a long historical sense of shame at their mythic history; they consider themselves tainted and instinctively avoid those who they think would condemn them. Once awakened, however, their curiosity can lead them to act in uncharacteristic ways, as those who stumble upon them will soon discover.

Rockseers are gem cutters and craftsmen almost without equal; even gnomes and dwarves would hesitate to claim they could better Rockseer work. They can almost scent gemlodes deep in the Underdark and think nothing of spending ten years crafting and sculpting a single gem. The truly great Rockseer wizard-artisans are able to sculpt a gem with magic into forms of almost painfully exquisite beauty, generating fractal patterns of brilliant color and radiance within the heart of the gem as it grows. A handful of such perfectly crafted gems can be used to create a helm of brilliance (divide all gem numbers required by five, and each gem can fulfil its function five times before becoming nomagical).

Rockseers are strange, alien, and fey people even by the standards of elvenkind. They are a serious people with little of the light-hearted, frolicking, bantering ways of most elves. They speak their own dialect of elvish, which high or grey elves can understand 50% of the time and drow 30% of the time. They also know fragments of svirfneblin, and most can speak pech. A few have a smattering of underdark-dwarven and can communicate with derro or duergar (not that they would wish to do so, but it is useful for intelligence-gathering). Above all, they are totally isolated. They know nothing of what has transpired above ground for thousands of years. Their attitudes to surface elves are very ambivalent. All Rockseers feel a deep sense of shame for the deeds of their far-distant ancestors and assume that any surface elf they meet would automatically despise them; it will be very difficult for a visitor to convince them otherwise. On the other hand, they long to know what their brethren lost for so many lifetimes do, how they live, what they believe in, what they consider beautiful.

Powers

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Rockseers eschew fighting whenever possible. They are too cowardly too few in number to risk pointless deaths. Their underground special skills are so great that they can generally escape combat when they wish to; they are rarely even seen by potential aggressors. If forced to fight, Rockseers are unflinching. They always fight to the death to defend others of their own kind. They rarely possess bows (suitable bowstrings are difficult to come by in the Underdark) and prize such items, but they employ swords, spears, and stone quarterstaves which are hard as any steel.

The special attacks and defenses of these elves are formidable. They gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls with long swords (but not with bows). They are 90% resistant to sleep, charm, hold, and web spells and wholly immune to petrification. They have 50% magic resistance against all Elemental Earth spells but suffer a -1 penalty on saving throws against Elemental Air spells.

Rockseers are armed with long swords (50%), long sword and dagger (25%), or long sword and short sword (25%). Weapon possession is also variable depending on class type. Missile weapons, save for the rarely employed staff-sling or bow, are not favored by Rockseers. If they have enough distance to use missile attacks, they have enough distance to use spells or simply to meld into stone and escape.

Every Rockseer has the ability to meld into stone from childhood. This talent is usable thrice per day until the Rockseer reaches maturity (at the age of 60 to 70 years), after which time it is usable at will. Rockseers who are of 3rd or higher level can stone walk (walking through stone as if through air) for a total distance of 100 yards once per day; this distance increases by 100 yards for each additional level gained. A Rockseer of 9th level can take one additional human-sized creature with him or her on such a stone walk; this number increases at the rate of one passenger per level beyond 9th (thus at 10th level the Rockseer could take two companions). Rockseers intuitively sense distances between passages and caverns separated by walls, so that they always know whether a stone walk can take them to a safe place or whether they might be trapped in solid stone at the end of the walk. Rockseers of 5th and higher levels can stone shape once per day, and those of 9th or higher level can employ stone tell once per day.

Rockseers also have communal powers. A group of three or more Rockseers with a total of 10 or more experience levels can create a wall of stone at will, and a group of five or more with a total of 20 or more experience levels can conjure a huge earth elemental once per day (that is, any Rockseer who participates in such a conjuration cannot do so again until the next day). This elemental has 20 HD and at least 5 hp per die, and it cannot be turned back against its summoners. Spell effects are considered to be at the aggregate experience level of the Rockseer group for the purposes of dispelling the elemental.

Rockseer can be warriors, wizards, thieves, warrior-thieves, or warrior-wizards. There is no priest class (the elves believe themselves to be shunned by the elven Powers for their cowardice, and tales of the Powers are all but forgotten by these people. As warriors, they can attain 11th experience level maximum. As thieves, they can attain 13th level maximum. As wizards, Rockseers can attain 18th level maximum.

Rockseer wizards (single-classed only) gain special bonus spells as they gain experience levels. At 5th level, they can memorize Melf’s acid arrow as an additional spell. At 9th level, Maximilian’s stony grasp* is the bonus spell. At 15th level, a Rockseer wizard gains a bonus acid storm* spell (these latter two spells are found in the Tome of Magic book). Rockseer wizards also add 1% per level to their magic resistance against Elemental Earth spells, and if they cast such spells at others not of their own kind, the target incurs a saving throw penalty of -1 per five levels of the Rockseer (round fractions above one-half upwards). Rockseer wizards can cast all priest Elemental Earth spells as if wizard spells of the same level.

Rockseer wizards of 11th and higher level know the secrets of creating magical “familiars” (more correctly, golem-like constructs) called stone dragonets. These incredibly intricate slender stone statuettes are 12 inches long plus an additional 9 inches to 12 inches of tail; they move as if perfectly articulated, and the finest of them have gems of extraordinary kind as eyes. A stone dragonet has AC -2. HD 2, hp 16, and attacks three times per round for 1d3/1d3/1d4 (claw/claw/bite). It has 25% general magic resistance, 75% resistance to Elemental Earth spells, and complete immunity to petrification (obviously), illusions, gaseous attacks, poison, paralyzation, and spells which affect corporeal bodies generally. A wizard with such a familiar gains a -2 bonus to his or her own Armor Class and cannot be surprised. If the gem-eyes of the statuette are each of value not less than 5,000 gp, the eyes of the dragonet can cast a brilliant eyebite glare once per day if the correct spells are cast during the creation of the familiar.

Rockseer elves have 240-foot infravision. They do not, as a rule, possess many magical items. Nonwizards have but a 5% chance per level of owning a magical weapon. Wizards have a 10% chance er level of owning a magical item of appropriate kind, but these are often powerful indeed. The greatest wizards are reputed to possess special wands of steam and vapor which create acrid clouds of burning, blinding acid (6d6 points of damage the first round, 4d6 the second, and 2d6 the third and final).

On account of their longevity (they have a natural lifespan of over 1,400 years), groups of Rockseers are almost always led by an experienced veteran, a warrior or warrior-wizard of at least 5th (or 4th/4th) level. A sizable group (30 or more) will have at least one warrior of 7th to 10th level (6+1d4) and also a wizard of 7th to 12th level (6+1d6). In the central lair of a Rockseer clan, where up to a hundred may be gathered together, the clan chieftain is usually a wizard of surpassing skill (level 12+1d6) and has 1d3+2 advisers/bodyguards who are either (50%) warriors of 10th to 11th level or wizards of 11th to 14th level (but not of higher level than the chieftain).

Rockseer elves have a -1 penalty to their initial Strength, Constitution, and Charisma scores, but they gain +1 bonuses to Wisdom, Intelligence, and Dexterity.

Publication History

Rockseer Elves debuted in Carl Lynwood Sargent's Underdark adventure campaign for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition, Night Below. As part of the campaign's many questlines, the party has the opportunity to bring the Rockseers back to the surface and reconcile them with the elves of the surface. Their monster lore from that adventure was then reprinted in the third Monstrous Compendium Annual. Unlike urdunnir, rockseer elves never appeared in any subsequent editions.

Dwarf Connections

It's interesting to note that rockseers are weirdly dwarfy for elves. Aside from the whole "living underground and working with gems and metal" thing, by their fluff, rockseers are basically the elfin counterpart of not only the gray dwarves (the non-evil versions of duergars) by being non-evil Underdark elves, in contrast to the drow, but also of the urdunnir (the earth elemental dwarves), for obvious reasons.

Rockseer PCs?

Technically, there's no official word on rockseer elf PCs... but, their monster lore contains enough notes to cobble together the basic idea.

Ability Score Range: Presumably as per Elf.

Ability Score Modifiers: -1 Strength, -1 Constitution, -1 Charisma, +1 Dexterity, +1 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom

Class & Level Limits: Fighter 11, Thief 13, Wizard 18, Fighter/Thief, Fighter/Mage

Infravision 240 feet

Presumably they have the standard elfin abilities; charm/sleep immunity, ghoul immunity, detect secret doors, etc.

Meld Into Stone at-will.

At 3rd level, Stone Walk 100 yards per day, +100 yards for each level above 3rd. Rockseers intuitively sense distances between passages and caverns separated by walls, so that they always know whether a stone walk can take them to a safe place or whether they might be trapped in solid stone at the end of the walk.

At 9th level, can take 1 other human-sized passenger when stone walking, +1 extra passenger per level above 9th.

At 5th level, can cast Stone Shape 1/day.

At 9th level, can cast Stone Tell 1/day.

Communal Casting: A group of at least three rockseers who a collective level of 10+ can cast Wall of Stone at will. A group of at least 5 rockseers with a collective level of 20+ can conjure a Huge-sized Earth Elemental 1/day, which has 20HD, at least 5 HP per HD, cannot be turned against its summoners, and treats their collective level as the spell level for resisting dispel effects.

A single-classed Rockseer Wizard gains bonus spells: Melf's Acid Arrow at 5th level, Maximilian's Stony Grasp at 9th level, and Acid Storm at 15th level.

Rockseer wizards have Magic Resistance (1% per level) against Elemental Earth spells, and when casting Elemental Earth spells on non-rockseers, the target incurs a saving throw penalty of -1 per five levels of the Rockseer (round fractions above one-half upwards).

Rockseer wizards can learn all cleric spells categorized as belonging to the School of Elemental Earth as if they were wizard spells of the same level.

Rockseer wizards of 11th level or higher can create Stone Dragonet familiars - see above for details.