Githyanki

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The Githyanki's backstory is basically same as the Ur-Quan from Star Control

The Githyanki (also known as the Gith, or "them damn Yankis") are a Chaotic Evil race in the Dungeons and Dragons setting, and look like either emaciated, jaundiced elves or some horrible cross of elf and goblin, depending on the edition. The Githyanki are classic 1st edition monsters; as denizens of the original Fiend Folio, they first appeared in the pages of Dragon Magazine -- in fact, they showed up back in issue number 12, back in 1979.

The githyanki are the twisted, estranged kin of the githzerai, divided from their cousins by a philosophical breach that occurred centuries ago. To recap, the original Gith-kin were humanoids (and/or humans) who were enslaved and mutated by the Mind Flayer empire for untold generations, until two figures rose up and led their people in a massive slave uprising; Zerthimon the mystic, and Gith the warrior-woman. At the brink of total illithid annihilation, Gith began planning to "truly" free her people by... well, basically enslaving every other race and making the Gith-kin as bad as the illithids had been. Zerthimon objected to this, an act called the Pronouncement of Two Skies, and thus the illithid's former slaves were divided into "The Opposers of Gith" (Gitzerai) and "The Children of Gith" (Githyanki), with the former bogging off to Limbo (or the Elemental Chaos) and the latter disappearing into the Astral.

Gith herself disappeared after a trip to Baator to secure an alliance with the dragon-goddess Tiamat, but one of her greatest warriors, Vlaakith, took her place as Warrior-Queen of the Githyanki and kept her people on the path that Gith had said. More than one person has wondered if Vlaakith didn't betray Gith in some way, earning the pact with red dragons by, say, feeding Gith to Tiamat, but the githyanki won't hear of it.

In fact, githyanki don't like to hear a lot of ugly things about their race, mostly because they're all true. The first and foremost is that they're a bunch of hypocrites, who are so obsessed with "being free" that they have become convinced their manifest destiny is to conquer & enslave every other race in the multiverse. Secondly, they get really snippy if one notes that their practice of raiding Astral communities, taking a certain amount of the goods and then leaving in a form of "sustainable pillaging" is essentially a master-slave relation dressed up in piracy clothing. And, finally, don't call them out on how they preach total freedom for themselves, but in reality they've become nothing but a race of warrior-slaves for their "divine" god-queen.

Oh, yes. See, Vlaakith was so beloved by the first githyanki that they made her daughter their ruler, and her daughter, and her daughter, and so on, an unbroken line of god-queens that lasted until Vlaakith CLVII (that's Vlaakith the 157th, if you don't know your Latin numerals). She never had a daughter, but she turned herself into a lich, so it's all good; now she can reign forever as an immortal, undying tyrant.

If you need more proof that the githyanki have turned themselves into slaves and never even realized it; one of the drawbacks of being a lich (or at least a githyanki lich, depending on edition) is that Vlaakith CLVII needs to eat souls on a regular basis to sustain herself. More importantly, she's terrified of being ousted from power by a stronger githyanki even though they've been worshipping her and adoring her for generations. So, she solves both problems by making it a simple cultural practice that when a githyanki gets powerful enough, they are granted the "honor" of having her eat their souls. And the githyanki are so mindlessly loyal to her that they actually do consider this an honor!

Aside from their practice of flying around on red dragons, githyanki are most known for two things in terms of combat ability.

Firstly, githyanki are big believers in the concept of multiclassing, with a long tradition of fighter/wizard combatants. Indeed, the idea of the warrior-mage is so iconic, and so associable with the githyanki, that their culture's name for it - the Gish - has been adopted as a general term in greater /tg/ culture. Well, the alternative was the githzerai term "Zerth", but that wasn't as catchy.

Secondly, their most iconic weapon; baroque greatswords forged of a strange, silvery metal native to their extraplanar environment. Known simply as Silver Swords, or, at most, Githyanki Silver Swords, these weapons are uniquely suited to fighting people who are using astral projection, as they can cut the "astral thread" of these people which is, generally, instant death (ironically, less lethal in 1e, when it just booted you back to the material). The other bonuses of the Silver Swords varies from edition to edition; in 1e, they were sentient +3 weapons that weren't very smart, but did have nebulous other magical powers. In 2e, they lost their sentience, but there was also a "Greater" version that was a +5 weapon and a Vorpal Sword in addition to its astral cord-cutting and it could cut the threads of people under the Mind Bar power. In 3e, they were initially downgraded to +1 weapons that could potentially nullify a victim's psionic abilities for 1d4 rounds, but in the Psionics Handbook, the classic +3 astral cord-cutters and +5 vorpal versions returned. 4e gave them no special equipment based properties, and 5e made them into just +3 weapons. Needless to say, githyanki are extremely protective of these swords and will go to almost any length to retrieve them.

Needless to say, being that they are huge dicks and pretty much all willing slaves to their evil god-queen, githyanki aren't traditionally considered suitable for PCs, unlike their Githzerai cousins, who were actually in the first wave of Planescape PCs, alongside the Tiefling and the Bariaur. They do, however, have PC writeups in the Expanded Psionics Handbook for 3.5 and in the Monster Manual for 4e.

In D&D and 5e, the githyanki have a particular interest in the material plane; not just because it's where they go to hunt illithids, but because nothing ages on the Astral Plane, so they need to lay their eggs (yeah, they do that) and rear their children on the prime so they can reach maturity.

They were also the subject of a pair of epic, edition-spanning campaigns collectively known as the Scales of War; a 3.5 one that featured in Dragon Magazine #309 and Dungeon Magazine #100, and a 4e sequel in Dungeon Magazine #168. The adventures were called "The Lich-Queen's Beloved" and "The Tyranny of Souls" respectively.

These adventures introduced the Duthka'giths; half-red dragon githyanki bred at Vlaakith's creation, and the source of considerable consternation from many other githyanki despite the eons of loyal partnership between the two races.