Thousands of years ago, a proud empire ruled the known world. This golden age was shattered when portals opened to Xoriat. Hordes of aberrations poured through the gates, and behind them came the daelkyr. The Lords of Madness twisted the land and its creatures, capturing the champions of the Empire and turning them into horrors.

It’s a familiar story, but there’s a twist. This isn’t the Empire of Dhakaan—and it isn’t Eberron. The people of this empire were gifted psychics, and their cities were made from crysteel and solidified emotion. They fought the daelkyr with sword and thought, the great leader Gith rallying her forces against the corrupting influence of Xoriat. But there was no victory to be won. There were no Gatekeepers in this world, no knowledge of the primal power that saved Eberron. This land was doomed. Retreat was the only option, and so Gith rallied the wisest of her kind and found a way to open portals into the realms beyond reality. The only remnant of these proud people were the heroes twisted by the Dyrrn the Corruptor, psychic champions transformed into living weapons: the Mind Flayers.

The refugees fell into the realm of Kythri, and the Churning Chaos hid them from pursuit. The greatest monks of the people—now calling themselves the Gith, after their savior—carved out a pocket of stability with their minds. They regained their strength and evaluated the situation, and here a bitter division split their people. Zerthimon the Wise maintained that the Gith should remain within Kythri, strengthening their will through the endless struggle against chaos. He believed that mental discipline was the ultimate key to victory—that in time, the Gith could impose their will on Xoriat itself, taking the daelkyr’s home just as the Lords of Madness had stolen theirs. But Gith was a warrior, and her followers yearned for battle. They knew they weren’t strong enough to face the daelkyr, but they built their fortresses in the space between spaces and began raiding different layers of reality: pillaging floating towers in Syrania and slaughtering devils on the plains of Shavarath. One day they would find a way to utterly destroy Xoriat; until then, they would hone their skills in conflicts across the planes.

Eberron wasn’t the first world visited by the daelkyr. It’s been said that the daelkyr view the destruction of worlds as a form of art; it’s an art they’ve practiced since the dawn of time. The illithids are both a relic of this conflict and a promise of what might lie ahead. Should the daelkyr rise and complete their work, there could come a time when the dolgaunts and dolgrims are all that remains of Eberron. And what of the Gith? They’re carved out a new existence beyond what we know of as reality. They’re planar hermits and plunderers, pondering mysteries we cannot imagine and gathering treasures and weapons from across the planes. Generally Gith are encountered as individuals, explorers, philosophers, or agents with a mission. But there could come a time when the Githyanki arrive in force. Will they come to destroy the daelkyr? Or will they come as conquerors?

But What About…

I remember being intrigued by the Githyanki on the cover of the Fiend Folio when I first saw it as a teenager. I was intrigued by the idea of this deeply alien society—of a civilization that had abandoned the material world and carved out a place in the planes. There’s a place for everything in Eberron, and it was obvious the Gith would be somewhere. I had thoughts on the matter, but I wasn’t the one who wrote the Gith entry in the Player’s Guide to Eberron. The PGtE suggests that the Gith were created from human or hobgoblin stock during the daelkyr invasion of Eberron, and that they escaped when the Gatekeepers bound the daelkyr. There’s a number of things I don’t like about this explanation. Essentially, it downgrades the Gith to being discarded dolgrims—which is also strange because for creatures “created by the mind flayers from hobgoblin stock” they’re not aberrations and are far less disturbing than the dolgaunts and dolgrims. More than that, I want the Gith to be the heroes of their own story—not playing second fiddle to the Gatekeepers. They may have failed to save their world, but at least they fought to the bitter end.

The other thing I like about this story is that it adds depth to the daelkyr themselves. It establishes that they’ve done this before and that if not for the Gatekeepers, Eberron would share the fate of the forgotten world of the Gith. It also provides a different approach to the enmity between the mind flayers and the Gith. It’s not simply that the illithids were slavemasters. It’s that the illithid were Gith—and remain now as the twisted reminder of the destruction of their world. And it’s not that the Gith have psychic powers because they were altered by mind flayers; it’s that the mind flayers have psionic power because they were created from the naturally psychic Gith. Given that time and space have no absolute rules in Xoriat and there’s no law about the lifespan of a mind flayer, it also leaves the possibility that some of the mind flayers on Eberron were part of that ancient war—that the mysterious grudge Xor’chyllic has against the daelkyr could tie back to its history with the Gith.

In the meantime, the Gith themselves offer hooks for planar adventures. A Githzerai player character may have come to Eberron in pursuit of a particular idea, while a Githyanki could be searching for a more practical weapon; either could be here to gather information on the daelkyr and their cults. A player Gith could be an explorer or a renegade, perhaps caryying a warning of an upcoming Githyanki incursion. Adventurers in Kythri could find shelter in a Githzerai monastery, while a Githyanki vessel could carry adventurers from plane to plane.

And what of the lost world of the Gith? What does it mean that there is a lost world? How many more are there? One possibility is that Eberron has a solar system, or that the Gith world is one of the moons. However, Xoriat defies our concepts of time and space, and I’d personally play it that from Xoriat you can enter any number of alternate versions of Eberron, the ruined Gith world is one; but what other alternate Eberrons could you reach through Xoriat?

I’m currently working on Exploring Eberron, a product for the DM’s Guild which will delve more deeply into the planes and their relationship to Eberron, along with many other subjects. I may have some previews to share soon. Thanks as always to my Patreon backers! I’ll be posting more articles once I get done with Exploring Eberron. You can also find be at Pax Unplugged, and if you’re in Portland, Oregon I’ll be doing an Eberron signing and Q&A at Guardian Games on November 23rd!