Protean, Keketar

The terrain shudders and shifts from forest to ocean to arid desert in quick succession as a thirty-foot-long serpentine humanoid slithers forward, appearing to simply jump between points rather than actually moving and carrying the fabric of the Maelstrom along with it. Its scales slowly shift in color and pattern, iridescent on a glossy black surface. The only constant features are its smoldering violet eyes and a crown-like cloud of symbols that swirls about its head.

ECOLOGY

Environment any (Limbo)
Organization solitary or chorus (2–4)
Treasure standard

Keketars are the prophet-lords of the protean race, dedicating their existence to discerning and carrying out the will of their plane’s mysterious rulers.

Proteans are snake-like creatures native to the true chaos that is the natural state of the multiverse. They oppose order in all its forms and seek to unmake the planes back into their primordial state.

Appearance

Individual keketars range from 7 to 40 feet long, though they constantly shift and change, altering color and serpentine banding patterns, shrinking or elongating, and undergoing even more radical physical changes. However, a keketar possesses two key features: first, whatever configuration its body takes, its eyes are always a piercing shade of amber or violet; and second, a whirling ring of ever-changing symbols floats above and around its head like a shapeshifting crown. The cloud’s symbols coil, snarl, and intermingle with one another, gradually merging and mutating without apparent pattern. Each keketar is marked by unique stylistic elements within the symbols and the general orientation and appearance of the crown—useful for distinguishing between different individuals. They can hide or manifest this crown at will, but they usually leave it visible.

Ecology

Keketars exist as a separate protean species as well as a distinct functional caste. What is not entirely understood about keketars is whether they exist as such from birth, spawned either from the mating of other keketars or produced under chance or rare circumstance from the unions of their lesser kindred, or else are elevated to their status by the touch of divinity or exposure to some chance energy.

Keketars are chosen by foreordained chance—paradoxical as that might be—and the elevation of the worthy. Stating that the crown is by birthright, the protean was evasive when asked directly if members of its own imentesh caste were capable of ascent or promotion to the ranks of the keketars, answering only that the Maelstrom contained no impossibilities.

Society

Keketars serve as a racial priesthood for the protean deities, operating as intermediaries between the other protean castes and the entities they collectively worship. Other proteans treat keketars as nobles, though keketars rarely use this status to rule others. As with many mortal religions, dogma and theology is prone to interpretation and change, and among the proteans the situation is perhaps even more pronounced. Whatever the nature of their mysterious god or gods, separate keketars may come to dramatically different conclusions as to their will and intent. Once they pass on to their kindred proteans just what paths of action they perceive as necessary, such groups may come into conflict with others tasked with the opposite. Curiously, such conflicts in vision or interpretation only occur between individual keketars and discrete groups, but never within a gathered group.