The Demiplane Known as Coil

travel to Manifest to speak to the spirit trees and carry word to that city’s elves and elf ghosts. As followers of nature gods, these clerics despise undead almost as much as those of Aluvan and Chaniud do.

Druid: Elf druids have a deeper connection to the land, focusing their worship on more primal aspects of Eanius and Galaedros, almost as if these deities were metaphysical incarnations of the earth and sky rather than separate entities with dominion over these things. They are the guardians of the sacred groves that mark the founding points of elven civilization.

Fighter: Elf fighters are the vanguard of the elven military. They guard elven communities and lead the charge against yuan-ti invaders. Most have seen some sort of combat against yuan-ti in their lifetime.

Monk: Elf monks are almost unheard of, and those who study unarmed combat usually are specialized fighters rather than practitioners of mental and physical disciplines. Sura-Khiri has no monasteries for this sort of training.

Paladin: Elf paladins are as rare as monks in the forest. A rare follower of Eanius has the potential to be a paladin, and these are often female elves who eventually establish a bond with an aerial creature such as a pegasus, griffin, or hippogriff.

Ranger: Elf rangers are the scouts, couriers, and trackers of the elven armies. Many legends of elf heroes are about rangers who became isolated from their companions and managed to fight their way home through hostile territory and dozens of hated

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THE DEMIPLANE KNOWN AS COIL

The extraplanar yuan-ti homeland of Coil is an awful and dangerous place. Only two expeditions from the Material Plane have been known to reach Coil and return, both from Manifest and sponsored by the Piran Sedestadel. What is known about Coil is based on reports from the survivors of these trips.

Coil is an irregular-shaped finite demiplane with a tangible border. Approximately 50 miles long in one direction and 30 in the other, the place is surrounded by a huge dark wall that in some places resembles writhing snakes. The wall is solid rock and is at least 30 feet thick. The walls are at least a mile high and shift slightly over time, encroaching upon or expanding the territory of the yuan-ti.

The sky is a dull gray-blue, with a sun burning directly overhead at all times. Greasy gray clouds wander about the demiplane, sometimes blotting out the sun entirely for days. The air is warm. The daily rains are warm, as well, and strong enough to flood low places. Lightning and thunder are fairly common during these storms. The heat and humidity are equal to a tropical environment, and when combined with the rainfall, they make the place ideal for jungle growth, which covers almost all of the land. Interspersed among the regular vegetation are snakes that grow from the cursed soil like plants, attacking creatures that come near them. Some of these snakes are no more than 1 foot long, but others reach over 30 feet.

Three groups of low mountains break up the nearly flat terrain, and it is there that the yuan-ti mine iron, copper and tin (to make bronze), gold, silver, and gems to use in their magic and weapons. A river flows from one group of mountains and after a few miles forms a lake. The lake itself is inhabited by aquatic serpentine creatures that tear apart any creature that enters the water. The lake’s runoff forms a small river and swamp. Another set of mountains is the origin of a bizarre river of snakes that writhe and flow like water. Some of the snakes escape and become free-roaming, but most are content to remain with their fellows and devour anything that mistakes the river for water (and in firelight, when the sun is covered, the stream of shiny-scaled ophidians does resemble the dancing surface of water).

A miles-long chasm dominates part of the demiplane, its unknown depths unexplored by even the yuan-ti. The area around the chasm is blasted and barren for miles, and the chasm and its wasteland may be the result of a failed powerful spell by the yuan-ti. Both of the demiplane’s rivers empty into the chasm. The extreme end of the demiplane beyond the chasm is separated from the main part by a 40-foot-high cliff wall, beyond which is more jungle.

Coil is inhabited by many strange creatures, most of which are scaly reptilian versions of conventional animals and other monsters. For example, a deer from Coil might have brown scales instead of fur, and a griffon might have a pterosaurlike head and leathery draconic wings. These creatures still have the same abilities as normal creatures of their type (they do not gain or lose anything from these cosmetic changes). Despite the presence of these altered beings, the snakes of Coil are the primary “natural” creatures.

The yuan-ti are the undisputed masters of Coil, and they are the only intelligent beings that live here (save the unfortunate slaves they corrupt into tainted ones and broodguards). More than ten thousand yuan-ti of various kinds live here, with most living in or near the six large ziggurats they built. A large number also live in the great palace-fortress of Traagash Daur, a collection of stone towers that writhe like snakes. Beneath the palace are great dungeons and catacombs that extend for miles, and living at the center of them is Traagash Daur herself, a human-headed yuan-ti abomination cleric/sorcerer of Orcus. From the heart of Coil she leads her people to pillage and destroy key locations on the Material Plane.

Coil is coterminous with the Material Plane but not coexistent. When traveling from Coil to the Material Plane, the forest of Sura-Khiri is the most accessible point (the shortest routes lead there, but it is possible to travel elsewhere if the traveler is willing to spend more time doing so) and creating portals to anywhere else on the Material Plane requires more time and resources. One can travel from the Material Plane to anywhere on Coil without difficulty, although the travel time increases with distance from Sura-Khiri. Because locations in Coil are not coexistent with those in Sura-Khiri, two portals in the demiplane that are near to each other might lead to two very distant locations.

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Coil Coil

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Fortress of Baur Fortress of Baur Swamp Swamp Swamp

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foes. Elf rangers are well respected for their fighting ability and their woodland skills.

Rogue: Trained as spies and snipers, elf rogues are the unsung defenders of their homelands. They build traps along obvious paths to elven communities and shepherd the old, young, and weak when a community must be moved in an emergency.

Sorcerer: With the hourglass running out on the elven people, many young elves with an interest in magic cultivate their inner talents for sorcery rather than the lengthier study of wizardry. Older elves frown on this development but understand their motivations. Elf sorcerers tend to be moody and sensitive.

Wizard: Elves who have the patience to study wizard magic are becoming fewer, but the lure of power and the hope of restoring the elven legacy of great magic are still appealing. Elf wizards are often idealists and tend to pursue forms of item creation rather than metamagic.

History

Elves have lived in this forest for over 3,000 years, although no records exist of how they came to be there or where they lived before that. The elves lived as wanderers, traveling in groups of a few dozen, occasionally meeting peacefully to trade but sometimes engaging in battle over wealth, territory, or honor.

Their worldview was shattered when the elf smith

Mithralilthar Kerythal was witness to a meteor smashing into the heart of the forest.

From its skyborn adamantine Mithralithar forged a great blade of amazing beauty that sang whenever it struck and shone like the brightest of the night stars. Naming it Starfire, he realized that this fine weapon might be the key to uniting the elves and putting an end to the violence that killed his father in a useless battle. Tribe by tribe, he persuaded the elves to come together in peace under his rule, sometimes with words and sometimes with swordplay. He swore that as king he and his descendants would remain as honest and true as his blade, and promised that this compact would last as long as no elf of the forest raised a sword against another elf.

Mithralithar’s family has ruled Sura-Khiri for four generations, thwarting human aggression, a demonic invasion, and the attacks of Saurivadartak the Green. Now, with the forces of the yuan-ti growing ever stronger, the elves need the strength and wisdom of the bearer of Starfire more than ever. The current scion of Mithralithar’s line, Dalaglis Everwood, worries that the twilight of his people has come, and an unnatural weight of years is visible in the young elfking’s face. Many elves question fighting against the yuan-ti, believing relocation to be the wiser course, while the elders and traditionalists shudder at the thought of leaving the remaining virgin woodlands to the predations of the snake folk.

Important Sites

Unlike the human civilizations, the elves tend to have smaller mobile settlements, and only three permanent settlements are worthy of note within the forest.