Porton

The porton is a strange creature unique to the world of Gnibile. It appears as a shimmering disk, definitely insubstantial and not truly visible in and of itself. When one looks at a porton, one sees not the creature but a strange distortion of the air, rather like the shimmering that can be seen over a fire or something very hot. This shimmering region is about 100' in diameter and 8' to 10' in thickness. Because it does not reflect light at all, but only refract it in some strange way, it is aim ost totally invisible at night. The disk-like creatures - if creatures they truly are - float slowly through the skies of Gnibile at a speed of about 3; they can achieve a maximum speed of 12, but will not do so without a good reason. They always remain horizontal-that is, perpendicular to the direction toward Gnibile's center - and can be encountered at any altitude within the air world.

There are many sages who claim that the portons are not really creatures as such. Instead, these sages claim, they are actually gates to the plane of negative energy that show some aspects of awareness.

Combat: Portons cannot be struck by any physical form of attack. They are effectively immaterial, and so can only be harmed by magic. Magical attacks against portons must be direct; in other words, the magic must pour damaging energy into the creatures. They cannot be harmed by any physical manifestation of a spell; thus ice storm and other spells that cause their damage through some physical manifestation do them no damage. Energy spells, like lightning bolt, fireball, magic missile, etc. do harm them, as long as these dweomers can overcome the creatures' innate magical resistance. Portons are totally immune to all mindaffecting and death magic, and to poison. Slow, haste, and similar spells are also totally ineffective. Since portons have no normal senses, darkness, blindness, silence, etc. are useless against them.

Portons can channel negative planar energy into themselves, and emit it in tight beams that resembling lightning bolts of impenetrable darkness. A porton can emit two such bolts per round, to a range of 250 yards. These bolts always strike their targets, and inflict 20d6 hit points of damage or 2d6 Hull Points (in both cases, save vs. breath weapon for half damage). Porton senses seem unable to detect any object of less than size H, so most adventurers do not have to worry about their attacks. (Spelljamming vessels are another story entirely.) Any creature or object that touches a porton is instantly gated to a randomly-selected negative quasi-elemental plane, with potentially dire consequences. The porton has no conscious control over this, and therefore cannot waive the effect even should it wish to. If it wants to avoid gating something away, all it can do is avoid touching it. It is suspected that several of the spelljamming ships lost in the atmosphere of Gnibile probably ran in to portons and ended up elsewhere.

Portons have no real sense of self-preservation. Even if they are attacked by a foe that could conceivably destroy them, they will continue with whatever they were doing when the attack started. Their only concession to their foe is to blast it with negative planar energy.

Habitat/Society: Portons are solitary creatures. Occasionally two portons will encounter each other, but they never acknowledge the meeting in any way. If the creatures communicate between themselves, it is via some channel that cannot be detected by physics or magic. There have never been any reports of portons dying from old age or natural causes; similarly, no one has ever reported spotting an immature porton. If they have any reproductive cycle at all, it remains a total mystery.

There does seem to be some vague connection between the portons and the more powerful undead inhabiting Gnibile. In the vicinity of the most powerful undead, portons are rare, rather than very rare. Also, there is ambiguous evidence that some of the undead, such as Samanda, the Lich-Queen of Deathwatch, can somehow order the portons around, and expect them to follow simple instructions.

Ecology: Portons seem to draw all the energy they need from the various negative quasi-elemental planes. They do not eat anything and for obvious reasons, nothing preys upon them. They are thus totally outside the food chain.