(D&D 3.5) Xephs?

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willpell
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(D&D 3.5) Xephs?

Post by willpell » Sun Aug 18, 2013 12:31 pm

I've never been able to figure out where the idea of Xephs came from. What are they supposed to be; why do they exist, other than to have "Favored Class: Soulknife"? I've heard that the Soulknife class itself is a gutted version of something that was once legendarily well-regarded, before being streamlined into oblivion by 3.5; I'm trying to find out whether the backstory of the Xephs was a similar casualty of the "briefer and more generic" design ethos at Wotco. They're described as living in a canyon full of glowing forests and being cheerful and crafty, and their names seem to be evocative of Persian history; I'm wondering if they have some obscure mythological source, originate in someone's campaign world, or were just made up whole-cloth with no real extended meaning behind them. Assuming it was the latter, I've long omitted them from my campaign world, and am only now making an effort to try and reflavor them for use, mostly because they got one really nice feat in Complete Psionic which makes me not want to write them off completely (I suppose I could have just assigned it to another race, but it seems good enough to be worth being the virtually race's entire shtick, mechanically speaking; that still leaves me needing a fluff basis for them, however).
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