Rautym

Rautym were a species of anomalous psionic monkey-like creatures found in the caverns and underground locations of the Savage Frontier in the North Faerûn.

Description
Rautym were small tall monkey-like creatures. They were completely hairless with their backs freckled with sports, and they had no eyes.

Behavior
Rautym were pack animals and surely where there was one rautym, the rest of the pack were not far. The creatures stuck together, not just because of being weak or fearful, but because, as a group, a pack of rautym gained power from their kin.

Their lairs were filled with small, faintly phosphorescent stones, and rautym carried such rocks when traveling away from their lairs. The rocks served as psionic beacons and aided rautym's navigation. As such, they were vulnerable to spells that created magical darkness and silence. When faced with these spells, rautym fled in panic.

When a pack of rautym participated in evoking dance magic, they often ensured their privacy by stationing shadow-formed members of the packs as sentries. Interrupted rautym dance always ensured rage and destruction.

Abilities
They possessed psionic abilities to feel sound and hear light that served as a powerful substitute to eyesight, made even more effective through danger sense. Rautym also could affect their bodies through psychometabolism: they could take on a shadow-form and use such devotions as adrenalin control, aging, and chameleon power.

Their unique ability was a form of dance magic that allowed a group of rautym to work magic through a specific form of dance. When at least two rautym are together, they could utilize this strange ability, with one of the creatures dancing and the other – as a spell focus. A single-dancer spell-casting was time-consuming – the simplest first level of complexity spells could take a single dancer rautym five hours to cast. But with more dancing rautym, they were able to cast much more powerful spells. Any spell could be cast this way, as long as the focus rautym knew of the spell or witnessed it being cast in the past. Roughly speaking, the number of dancers needed to be doubled per spell complexity level, and it was not unheard of for a huge group of rautym to spend days accumulating magic enough to unleash unknown alien spells of astonishing power.

Combat
Rautym used their psionic abilities in combat extensively. The first thing they did when faced with danger was use the adrenalin control power to boost their physical strength dramatically. When using stealth against their enemies, rautym used their shadow-form psionic ability. From the depth of shadows, rautym affected their enemies with aging, or simply surprise-attacked.

Ecology
Rautym did not need eyesight, and they lived in caverns and other underground habitats. A single pack of rautym could count from as few as four creatures or as many as forty rautym. All rautym in a pack were led by an elder, who also acted as the focus in the dance magic rituals. A pack could have multiple elders, as many as in a one-to-four ratio.