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Eighty-two years ago, common sidereants appeared simultaneously throughout most of the known spheres, generally appearing in open space and encountering spelljamming vessels that transported them to populated worlds. (No more than 15 appeared in any single crystal sphere, so their appearances went unnoticed by the general populations of most spheres.) The few scholars who have taken to studying these unusual creatures have conjectured about their origin, but no conclusive evidence has been uncovered. The sidereants themselves appear to be unaware of where they came from, and the Arcane, as usual, have not been forthcoming with information they may have.
Standing between 3 and 4 feet tall, a sidereant resembles the seven-armed starfish native to many earth and water bodies, although it walks upright on two of those arms, and it has a generally humanoid face on its topmost appendage. Its other four appendages function roughly like humanoid arms; at the end of each are four 5"-long tentacles that can be manipulated to wield most common weapons or to hold a shield. The sidereant's outer skin is a sandstone-like layer that looks like grey humanoid skin but is very rough to the touch. Typically, sidereants wear large, hooded cloaks, capes, and other clothing to help them look more humanoid, and from a distance of 10 yards or more, a sidereant may be mistaken for a large dwarf or stout halfling.
Sidereants speak their own language, a strange combination of whistles and purrings that cannot be easily emulated by humans. They can also learn other tongues; most common sidereants will know the Common vernacular of their sphere as well as one or two racial dialects.
Although small, sidereants make formidable opponents not least because they have four appendages with which to attack. Often, a sidereant will hold a shield in one of the appendages (and thus reduce its Armor Class), and it will wield a variety of weapons in the other appendages. Common sidereant weapons include the club, dagger, flail, hand axe, javelin, spear, scimitar, short sword, and whip. They are typically adept at using ropes and nets to capture opponents.
A sidereant is immune to damage from nonmagical fire. Moreover, it takes only half damage from magical fire attacks (including breath weapons), or only 1/4 damage if it makes its saving throw. Common sidereants gain a +2 Armor Class bonus when in combat against Large or greater-sized opponents.
A sidereant regenerates damage at a rate of 2 h.p. per round beginning four rounds after it first takes damage. Amputated appendages (including its head) will grow back after six hours of relative inactivity.
Sidereants do not digest food, and they are thus immune to damage from poisons that are ingested. Moreover, they cannot benefit or suffer from the effects of potions that must be ingested. Because they do not breathe, sidereants are immune to gaseous attacks or benefits (e.g., incense of meditation) as well. They have no special immunity to contact poisons other than their saving throw.
Sidereants themselves have no formal society. In each of the spheres where they appeared and survived, they adopted the prevailing culture of the sphere, and they have typically fit in well with all the various races of the universe. Common sidereants do not generally go out of their way to locate other sidereants, but a triant (an advanced form of sidereant described below) appears to be aware of the whereabouts of other sidereants within its crystal sphere. Whether that awareness extends beyond the triant's sphere has not been determined.
A spelljamming captain is often eager to accept a sidereant as a passenger on his or her vessel in exchange for the sidereant's enhancing the spelljamming power of the ship. For every two hours that the sidereant spends on the ship's hull facing a large fire body, the ship gains a +1 to its SR to a maximum of +3. A sidereant may spend no more than 10 consecutive hours channeling energy in this fashion; after doing so for any length of time, the sidereant will be unable to do so again for 10 hours. (This spelljamming enhancement ability does not function in the Phlogiston.) A ship with a sidereant on its hull can leave Clusterspace without difficulty.
No one is sure exactly what motivates the sidereants. A small number of them have set up trading posts on various worlds throughout the spheres. They are honest business-folk, although they are somewhat brusque. While not motivated by greed, they frequently accumulate wealth in cultures where wealth is associated with power. They are always eager to hear of sidereants in other spheres, and they will typically reward such news if they believe it is genuine.
Sidereants thrive on solar energy, so they are generally only found in crystal spheres where there is a large fire body. On rare occasions a sidereant may be encountered in a sphere without a large fire body; in such a cases, the sidereant must have been transported there from another sphere; it did not appear there 82 years ago, and it is probably looking for a way out of the sphere.
A common sidereant must be able to bask in the energy from a large fire body for at least one hour every ten days or it becomes inert, that is, paralyzed and nonconscious. It remains alive (unless something else kills it), and it can be revived by allowing it to receive energy from a large fire body for a full hour. If an inert sidereant is taken to the Elemental Plane of Fire, it revives immediately. However, any denizen of that plane who recognizes the sidereant for what it is (10% chance per hit die of the elemental creature) will attempt to destroy the sidereant as well as whomever brought the sidereant to the plane.
Sidereants do not appear to be gendered; they reproduce by fusion. Sidereants who have been in close contact with each other for a period of 25 years may elect to join together to form a dyan. Once undertaken, this process takes approximately three hours. When it is completed, the two common sidereants have become a single dyan, a taller version of the common sidereant. Dyans generally possess the same abilities as common sidereants except that they may cast priest spells as a 1st-level cleric. They gain their spells from Sidereal, the Star-Mother, although the few dyans encountered have been reluctant to provide details on their deity. Dyans must receive energy from a large fire body for at least one hour every 9 days to avoid becoming inert.
Similarly, after a 25-year association, two dyans may choose to join together to form a triant. A triant is slightly taller than the dyans that formed it, it is able to regenerate 3 h.p. per round beginning four rounds after it takes damage, and it has a low, innate magic resistance. It takes 1/4 or no damage from magical fire. It is also able to cast priest spells; it begins as a 2nd-level cleric and may progress in levels to as high as the number of common sidereants and twice the number of dyans present in the triant's crystal sphere. (The triant is reduced in ability to a 2nd-level cleric if it enters the Phlogiston; it may regain its levels of experience once it enters a new crystal sphere.) Triants must receive energy from a large fire body for at least two hours every 9 days to avoid becoming inert. Currently, only three triants are known to exist, and no two of those are in the same sphere. Scholars suspect that the fusion of two triants could create a larger, more powerful sidereant, which they refer to as a "tetrant."
A dyan or a triant may, at will, recoordinate its body so that different appendages serve as its legs, arms, or head. When it changes its head, its facial features disappear from the appendage where they had been, and reappear on the new appendage. The creature can make no other actions during the round that it changes its appendages, although it can defend itself. It can also move its facial features to the reverse side of its head appendage, essentially turning around without moving its body. This ability suggests an unusual mutability in the creature's physical structure, but scholars are undecided as to whether this is a magical, psionic, or physiological ability. Common sidereants do not have this mutating ability.
Dyans and triants often use magical weapons in combat. In addition to its spell use, a dyan can cast Detect Lie once per day, and, twice per day, a triant can cast Detect Lie or Know Alignment. Dyans and triants do not receive the +2 Armor Class bonus that common sidereants receive when fighting Large or greater-sized opponents.
A common sidereant will obey the commands of a dyan without question. Similarly, a dyan will obey the commands of a triant without question.
Sidereants have no natural enemies per se. However, they are hunted by the Insectare, presumably because some sidereants appeared in the Insectare's home sphere, and the Insectare are afraid the sidereants may be aware of the home sphere's location.
Most of the Neogi consider sidereants to be pests, and they refer to them as "star-vermin" in their own language. The Arcane have remained noncommittal regarding the sidereants, and generally the blue-skinned traders avoid or ignore the sidereants, who, presumably, have nothing the Arcane value for trade.
The Reigar as a whole lost interest in the sidereants 81 years ago, but a few of their kind are among the small, interspheral group of scholars that have been studying the sidereants. These reigar are hoping to see the creation of a tetrant. Oddly, several illithids are also among those studying the sidereants. While these mindflayers have been generally cooperative, human scholars suspect that the illithids know more about the origin of the sidereants than they've revealed.
The Known Spheres and the Flow surrounding them are but one of myriad discrete areas of the Prime Material Plane. Other Flows exist around other spheres at distances so great that travel between groups of spheres is too dangerous to attempt. One of these Flows was the immediate origin of the sidereants.
While appearing to be individual creatures, the sidereants are parts of a single entity, one they refer to as Sidereal. The Arcane, however, refer to it more appropriately as an astrophage. Over the course of 700 years, the sidereants fuse together in pairs, each pair becoming larger and more powerful than its components, until finally the astrophage is complete, a melding of all the sidereants. The astrophage is immense, approximately 2,000 miles in height; it exists solely to consume large fire bodies. It can consume a typical sun-sized fire body in a matter of days, draining the body of all its energy. More often than not, the fire body is the primary of the sphere, and its destruction leads to the dissolution of planetary orbits and, consequently, the destruction of the sphere itself. After the astrophage has consumed all fire bodies within a sphere, it explodes into its component sidereants, each of which is instantaneously gated to a random crystal sphere in a different Flow group. (The crystal sphere will contain at least one large fire body.) Once in the new Flow group, the process begins again.
Although they are unwilling to reveal this information to others, the Arcane believe the astrophage is a unique, elemental entity of the universe, that it exists to keep the prime material plane from expanding too rapidly by periodically removing crystal spheres. They also believe that eventually the astrophage will cease to be a threat, as many common sidereants are killed before they can become dyans, and the resulting astrophage will be smaller than the previous one. The Arcane expect that after 25 to 30 more lifetimes, the astrophage will be weakened enough that it can no longer consume fire bodies, and it will take up residence in whichever crystal sphere it finds itself.
From past experience, the Arcane know that the sphere in which a tetrant is formed is the sphere in which the final astrophage will be formed, as all other sidereants will begin to migrate toward that sphere. (The tetrant is able to communicate telepathically with all sidereants in the Flow group and summon them to its sphere.)
None of the Arcane are sure how the Illithid know as much as they do about the sidereants, but they appear to be as well informed as the Arcane. Some Illithid mages believe they can prevent the destruction of a sphere following the astrophage's consuming its primary fire body, and they are eager to test their theory by facilitating the development of a tetrant in a sphere they're intent on conquering. Most mindflayers aware of this experiment criticize it for taking too long to accomplish a task they could do more quickly through more direct methods.
The sidereants do not have knowledge of their origin. By the time they reach their fourth, fifth, and sixth stages (tetrant, heptant, and hextant), they gain an awareness that they are part of a greater whole and they feel more of an urgency to gather the component sidereants together. The size of a small asteroid, a hextant often employs hirelings to take care of its quotidian business and to hire mercenaries to seek out sidereants who are for one reason or another unable to come to the hextant's crystal sphere. By the time two hextants reach the seventh stage (astrant), it is unusual that there are any common sidereants or dyans that have not already fused to reach higher levels. There will be only one astrant, and lesser sidereants may fuse with the astrant (after living on it for 25 years), making it grow gradually larger. Astrants are neutral in alignment, as they have become less concerned with interacting with the cultures of the sphere and more concerned with fulfilling their destinies.
On a single occasion, a common sidereant was witnessed fusing with a humanoid (an elf). The resulting dyan did not have the ability to recoordinate its appendages, but it had all other dyan abilities. It also possessed some of the elf's immunities. When the dyan became a triant, these elf qualities were no longer observed; the triant showed all normal triant abilities. As this interracial fusion has been observed only once, the Arcane continue to believe the astrophage will diminish over lifetimes.
