Society

Githzerai are an inherently urban people.  While bauriar are hunter-gatherers and khaasta are wandering raiders, merchants, and brigands, githzerai have always lived in cities, whether they be in the Outlands, Sigil, Shra'kt'lor, the Floating City, or any of the smaller bergs and fortresses in Limb@ or the Prime Material.  Githzerai, as a race, never seem to be comfortable unless surrounded by many other people in close proximity.  Perhaps it's an unconscious fear that the world will dissolve into its consituent randomness,  perhaps it's a paranoid fear of attacks from githyanki, slaadi, illithids or others, or perhaps it's simple loneliness and a love of company.

Art

Githzerai are believed by some to have no form of artistic expression.  This is untrue.  However, other races rarely recognize githzerai art for what it is because its extreme ephemereal nature.  See, githzerai, born and bred in LIMb0, know how transitory things can be, which is why what they build is genereally practical and not too precious.  Fact is, making art out of something permenent doesn't even occur to the average gither.  Art to them is as temporary as the LImbic fluxscapes and soupforms themselves.  Githzerai art is song, dance, cooking, body-paint, and similar transitory acts.  Still, even these are spartan compared to the work of other races; it's simply the githzerai aesthetic to be as efficient as possible.  Place-names are also very utilarian and descriptive.  Xaositects are naturally a big exception, but xaositects of every race are abnormal.

Appearance

Githzerai are tall and thin, with skin ranging from dead white to tawny yellow to bright caramel.  Their ears are long and pointed, sometimes with tips that droop over like tiny dragon's wings.  A githzerai's eyelids seem thin, but not transluscent. Their eyes have slitted pupils like a snake or a cat. Githzerai dress is usually rather spartan unless elaborate decorations serve a purpose.  Githzerai xaositects wear random things, and often appear garish even to non-githzerai.

Personality

Githzerai, altered by the mind flayers in prehistoric times to stop that damned whining, have been unfavorably compared to lizards by some.  They have an ancient unblinking coolness about them that brings to mind dry reptiles lying in the sun, and their slitted pupils and notched ears only heighten this effect.  Be that as it may,  many githers have the speed and reaction time associated with snakes and saurian raptors.  Don't underestimate them.

Time

Githzerai dating is imprecise, taking the form of squiggles representing periods of varying length and significance.  Lismbo allows no more accurate method of timekeeping.  Githzerai use this abstract and inefficient method of dating even on other planes, although when living with other races they generally adopt the schema of their neighbors.

A sample city:

The City of Paths is an example of the githzerai tendency toward the spartan and utilarian gone to extremes.  The city (a town, really) has no walls anywhere; it is simply a collection of floors of varying widths hovering in the metamorphic madness of outer chaos.  The innate chaos-shaping of the githzerai anarchs ensures that no more is necessary; chaos is a good distance away.  The paths wind about fairly randomly.  There is no pre-planned design; the anarchs simply add more paths as they are needed.  The githzerai like this relatively new architectural design because it allows them to see who is coming into their settlement from a good distance away, and it saves the effort that constructing walls would entail.  Since privacy is a luxury they feel they can't afford, the inhabitants think this style is a really good deal all around.  Outsiders, naturally, often don't see it that way.  The combination of acrophobia, dizziness from the intensity of the swirling, flashing, vibrating soup all around, and utter lack of seclusion drives most visitors barmy.  Consequently, the City of Paths doesn't get all the trade it would like, but it's still a better alternative to non-anarchs than sleeping in the soup.  In an attempt to encourage trade, "rooms" in the City of Paths are free for several healthy squiggles of time, easily long enough for traders to buy and sell and bring back friends.

A fortress on the Prime:

This citidel, called simply Base by the Rrakkma bands that live there, squats in the wasteland like an enormous beetle made of broad right trangles fanning out behind a few central domes.  The site, in the world of Oerth's sea of dust, was chosen because the concentrated randomness of githzerai building materials normally kills all of the vegetation around the citidel anyway, and this site was very near the Hellfurnaces, a mountain range known to harbor large cities of hated mind flayers underneath.  The githzers navigate the waste with trained krackadoons from Li^^bo and winged drakes native to this world.

A few children have been born on Base; they have been shifted back to LiMbo for training with the Anarch's guild.  They are, however, Primes with all that entails.  Their difficulty in seeing natural portals is a handicap in githzerai society, so they may end up as loners when they fully mature.

The native nomads have thus far avoided Base, although some have suggested its extremely broad similarity with the sunken ruins they explore in their manhood rituals might make it a valid alternative.  A bigger threat is a githyanki citidel in the Hellfurnaces, whose dragon riders have identified Base from above.  They are not happy, and they have the advantage of a better hidden fortress and surprise.

Githzerai history:

-20,000 The neolithid race is Uplifted by the Pure Ones (Reigar) who consider the Oerth just one amusement out of many.

-15,000 Illithid empire at its peak. The elder brains across the worlds have connected into an enormous sentient overmind of absolute power. The illithids Shape life for their own convenience, using techniques learned from the Reigar.

-5,000 The Overmind, in its cruel efficiency, decides that the mind flayers are no longer

a vibrant race and that it would be better served linking with a younger species. After sending tendrils to myriad different slave races, it decides that young Gith, a slave bred for arena combat, is the ideal sentient being. The Overmind spends time training the girl in psionics and filling her head with thoughts of rebellion.

-4980 The illithid slave uprising. The mind flayers find their enhanced powers have mysteriously left them as the Overmind sides completely with the humans. The empire crumbles. The Overmind, unprepared for humanity's great vitality, grows huge and bloated and splits in half, becoming two separate entities. These entities are or course rivals, and call themselves Githyanki and Githzerai. Later these split again, creating the Gith and the Pirates of Gith (the Gith were created by a psionic bomb the Githzerai launched against the Githyanki colonies of Athas). Dwarves remember this event as the Defeat of the God of Evil (who they do not name).

1 squiggle: Zerthimon, a former human slavedriver and Gith's lover, accuses the Liberator of allowing her hatred of the illithids to corrupt her into evil.  He leads a third of the race in a search for a new paradise, but they end up in Limbo.  Temporarily, he explains.

2 squiggle: The reign of Zerthimon.  Considered to be the golden age.  Rrakkma bands are introduced for the first time. The egg-laying gith degenerate rapidly and are banished to the Soup, where they attatch themselves to slaadi and other native creatures.

3 squiggle: Zerthimon fights his own impossible son during the First Coincidence War.  Mortally wounded, he is carried into the soup on a barge rowed by three githzerai women no one has ever seen before.  Apocryphal tales name one as Gith.

4 squiggle: the Time of Anarchy.  The race is ruled by petty warlords.

5 squiggle: The rise of the Wizard-King.  A powerful sorcerer. warrior, and anarch unites the tribes and promises a protection of their freedoms.  He delivers.

6 squiggle: The Edict of Boundaries.  To prevent warlords from ever again threatening the  rights of the Free People of Limbo, the Wizard-King (now calling himself the God-King) forbids all magical knowledge beyond a certain level.  There is a mass exodus of wizards and their families to the Outlands and elsewhere.

7 squiggle:  The Second Coincidence War.  The God-King's troops successfully drive off a githyanki invasion.

8 squiggle: The city of Shra'kt'lor is completed.

9 squiggle: The War With the Githyanki.  An invasion of the Astral Plane ends in disaster.

10 squiggle: The Third Coincidence War.  The githzerai fight, and eventually absorb into the population, their own duplicate selves.

11 squiggle: The Mistaken War: the githzerai drive off an invasion of parasitic yellow Faux Pas.  Celebrations are declared.

12 squiggle: More of the same and the modern day.

See also: On Limb-0 for more on the plane of uttermost chaosiness and randomicity.

See The Slaadi for more on Limb^o's sentient personifications and plane-born.

Love,

Rip Van Wormer