Xvart

Xvarts, also known as Xivorts are a race of small blue humanoids that were once captured gnomes.

Typical physical characteristics
Xvarts are blue-skinned humanoids with vivid orange or yellow eyes and receded hairlines. They are 3 feet (0.9 m) tall and usually wear loose cloth doublets. Their eyes are round and protruding, often described as leering and saucerlike. What little hair they have on their heads is normally dark.

Language
Xvarts speak Ghukliak, the language of goblins. The more intelligent xvarts also speak Yipyak, the kobold dialect of the Draconic language.

Relations
Xvarts often act as intermediaries between kobolds and goblins, usually dominating and taking their aggression on the kobolds. Xivorts hate ogres and giants, which enslave the creatures and use them as laborers and cannon fodder but evil gnomes and halflings have been known to employ them as spies or minions.

Xvarts have the ability to speak with bats and rats, and they use these beasts as allies and beasts of burden. Some xvarts even ride the creatures into battle.

Warfare
Rats and bats help guard their camps and Xvarts will occasionally ally themselves with wererats to carry out raids on other entities. Xvarts take great delight in taking prisoners in order to torture and ransom and this is the primary motivation behind these raids.

Xvarts rely on massed short sword armed infantry augmented with nets but key leaders are often armed with hand axes, maces, flails or morning stars. Some cultures of Xvarts however additionally utilise poisoned darts and a unique kind of spellcaster called a Shadow Caller rather than the customary tribal shamans.

A shadow caller can animate and bind its enemies' shadows; they can cause a foe's shadow to come to life and strangle them. Their power derives from pacts made with the Shadowfell in which a xvart sells part of his soul in return for the power to slay their enemies.

Xvarts have learned that their larger foes are far less dangerous if they are brought to the ground and it is for this reason that they employ the use of trained net casters in battle. When fighting a xvart ceases to care about the specific purpose or cause that they are fighting for; they consider the infliction of pain, injury and death to be as a work of art.

Religion
Xvarts have no known formal religion, but the reference to xvart tribal shamans does indicate that they may have some kind of spiritual beliefs.

Environment
Xvarts live in hilly, cavernous regions, in caves or remote forests. They have at least one village due west from Nashkel where they live in wooden huts and are protected from intruders by a trained bear they call Ursula.

As Xvarts have a strong hostile presence in the area between Baldur's Gate and Amn, it is likely that this village acted as a major staging area for xvart warbands but it is unlikely to been the only one.

History
Xvarts were originally gnomes enslaved, tortured and experimented on by the fomorians. While some xvarts remain to this day as slaves to the fomorians, those encountered in Toril are the descendants of xvarts that rebelled against their fomorian masters, using the poisoned darts that are still used by some xvart cultures today to good effect. In the end however they escaped, thanks to a pact struck with a coven of hags.

The hags had little use for the xvarts. They had freed them solely to strike a blow to the fomorians and so they left them alone to drift through the Feywild and into Toril. This extraplaner journey however exaggerated the xivorts' already twisted forms, leaving them with the glowing eyes, blue skin, and dark hair that they have now.

They have now come to hate all larger creatures, raiding their villages for food and treasure; aiming to inflict the pain upon them that they suffered at the fomorians hands.

Creative origins
Xvarts were created by Cricky Hitchcock for the Fiend Folio 1st edition game bestiary.

Publishing history
In the 4th edition Monster Manual 3, xvarts are renamed xivorts.