Scrivenite

Scrivenite

(Creature)

Type

Outsider
(extraplanar, lawful)

CR

4

Environment

Any (Axis)

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Source: In Hell's Bright Shadow, pg(s). 86

Scriventites are peculiar outsiders resembling collections of papers and silk ribbons floating in a roughly humanoid shape, with the back of a large, open book serving as their face. Scrivenites can also appear as seemingly inert books, whose contents appear as strange swirling text and whose pages, covers, and silken bookmarks form their humanoid bodies when they choose to take that form.

Ecology

Scrivenites are, above all else, beings of information and the written word. They exist for the purpose of recording and preserving as much information as they can, making them a species of natural historians, scholars, and cartographers. They devoutly record every scrap of information they can gather to amass into vast libraries; however, while the contents of the scrivenites' archives are nothing if not exhaustive and thorough, mortal researchers often find them impenetrable and dryly written, as scrivenites purposefully eschew any emotionality and interpretative bias in their writing, while faithfully recording even the most seemingly inconsequential minutiae of the events that they observe.

Like many other outsiders, scrivenites are formed from mortal souls after these have migrated to their home plane, although only the most pedantic mortals and the most obsessed with the past mature into scrivenites. However, the loss of memories of one's mortal life inherent in the transformation into an outsider greatly vexes the information-obsessed scrivenites, who often dedicate themselves to tracking down information about their past lives even if their emotional links to their prior selves are mostly gone.

Society

Scrivenites do not truly have a society of their own; for the most part, the serve the axiomites and Axis itself as a client race of archivists, record-keepers, and historians. They return to their endless research and recording when left to themselves, spending their time collecting new information, sorting and ordering their collections, and reviewing each other's works to ensure that they do not slip into inaccuracy and subjectivity. While axiomites disregard vermin-like gishvits that inhabit Axis, scrivenites view them with affection, and some take gishvits on as pets.