Protean
Proteans are serpentine outsiders of pure chaos native to the Maelstrom.
Durgastrs
As embodiments of chaos, most proteans remain in the comforting unpredictability of the Maelstrom, where they happily create and destroy at their ever-changing whims. Durgastrs in particular are explorers—often inadvertently. They delight in examining alternate realities, particularly planes that present imperfect reflections of each other, such as how the Shadow Plane and Ethereal Plane mirror aspects of the Material Plane. Where they find inspiring inconsistencies, durgastrs endeavor to overlay and fuse the strange realities into a multifaceted whole, often disrupting living creatures, cityscapes, and even whole ecosystems in the process.
Riftis
Riftis arise from entropic energies released in the Maelstrom or by planar travel, such as the plane shift spell or faulty interplanar portals. They usually exist only briefly and form groups, most often with other riftis born at the same time. Drift engines are shielded against releasing energies that birth riftis, but a defective or damaged engine can cause a starship passing between the Drift and the Material Plane to become home to cackling, cavorting riftis.
A rifti’s “normal” body is like a four-armed serpent. However, riftis shift form without control. The chaotic little creatures revel in this novelty, enhancing changes with illusions, strange noises, and token spell effects to make their surroundings more surreal. A typical rifti's body pops like a bubble after mere days.
Equally unstable is a rifti’s personality. A rifti that meets other creatures might do anything, changing its mind from moment to moment. It's possible to reason with a rifti, but any agreements rarely last long.
Xiritixes
Xiritixes are rare proteans created by a large section of the Maelstrom being pulled into the Drift, though some scholars believe they were once another species of proteans that mutated in the planar shift. These mercurial, serpentine beings view the rest of the multiverse as boring and stagnant; they seek to remedy this “problem” by inflicting the same planar-mixing chaos that birthed them on whomever they come across. Xiritixes usually maintain a facet of their original forms (such as a sinuous tail or colorful scales) when they change shape, making them easy to spot even in disguise.
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