in other less controversial news.(good lord people calm down) it looks like we are getting maz back
the last one would actually be slann mind control and a risk of chaos corruption but still exited
This is actually from cities of the flame, an adventure suppliment released alongside the core book last year, it’s one of my favorite adventures from that book.
Stars and Scales does place that Slann into a specific constellation that gets mentioned, though I can’t remember which one it is off the top of my head. It’s definitely not Chotek’s Feather because that’s the one confirmed to be the Jade Temple’s faction, and is basically the Skink equivalent to Koatl’s claw. The skink in charge foresaw Morathi’s rise and subtly protected the city, shifting events to ensure they had her favor when she claimed it (while Fangs of Sotek lived within the city and subtly tried to keep her from taking it, only giving up in the weeks before she arrived and leaving out of fear she might give them retribution for that whole “blaining khainites for their assassinations” thing).
On the skink gender stuff though; the character talked about there first appeared in their adventure suppliment Refuges of the Realms, and features a couple times in the adventures part of Stars and Scales. I think the way they handle her gender makes sense and basically just gives textual representation to something I’d seen people talk about before when it came to Seraphon and gender- namely that coexisting with mortal races that have gender as a concept is probably going to get skinks thinking about it, as they do for a lot of similar concepts. Fangs of Sotek are even specifically noted as taking on traits of the cultures they live within to make people more comfortable with them, it makes sense that’d include their conceptions of identity.
though it also gives room for it to just be something applied to her by the mortal races, seeing this skink in a matronly role and going “ah. A lady, to be sure” and her just going “ok sure I guess” and using it when speaking in mortal tongue because they kept using it to refer to her. A lot of room for fun stuff with the concept! Especially when giving player options, it implicitly says “yes your skink can be a lady if you want” to show off a lady skink, even if she doesn’t actually entierly understand what that means.
Overall I just adore the book, I’d recommend it for the lore alone! It basically features a nu-Oxyotl, a chameleon skink trapped in a Tzeench spell that looped the same day over and over, respawning daemons slaughtering his entire warhost while he remained hidden and waited for the perfect opportunity to strike, knowing his survival would be wasted if he acted too early.
It also features a Kroxigor who survived by just bashing everything it saw for centuries straight, fighting to defend itself and the echoes of the long dead skinks trapped in an eternal performance of their last moments, not realizing he was the only real survivor left.
Who couldn’t love this guy?
