Apex-Born

Overview

The Apex-Born are the people of the Apex, the plane of perfection completed, where nothing can be better and so nothing changes. They are as finished as their world. To travellers they are the most beautiful beings they will ever see, and the most unsettling.

Appearance

An Apex-Born is of about Human height and shape, but of an impossible symmetry: the two halves of the face match exactly, every proportion is right, and nothing about the body is out of place. The skin is flawless, without pore, scar, freckle, or line, in pale gold, white, or silver tones that seem to catch the plane's even light. The hair lies perfectly and never moves out of place. The eyes are large and calm, holding a deep, unchanging peace, and they look at a visitor the way a craftsman looks at an unfinished piece.

They wear simple, perfect garments, or nothing, and move with a slow, deliberate grace, each step exactly like the last. They rarely speak, and when they do their voices are clear and level, every word chosen. They have no smell at all, and they are always at the same mild warmth.

Habitat and Range

They live across the domed hills, exact rivers, and marble-smooth plains of the Apex, standing, walking, or simply being, alone or in still groups. They have no dwellings, since nothing on the plane needs shelter.

Behaviour and Temperament

They are passive and without competition. There is no art among them, no science, and no philosophy, because everything is already known and perfect, and no rulers and no rules, because no one ever breaks a rule or wants anything. They feel only a constant, mild contentment. They speak only when they must, always precisely and meaningfully.

They look on visitors as broken or unfinished and pity them, kindly. An Apex-Born will sometimes walk beside a traveller for hours in silence, as though waiting for the traveller to be completed.

Abilities

They do not age, scar, or change, and they do not eat, sleep, or reproduce in any ordinary way: they draw their being from the ambient perfection of the plane. They cannot be improved and do not need to be.

Life Cycle

Whether the Apex-Born were ever born, or how, is not known; they do not change, and they do not die.

Uses and Dangers

They do no harm, and they give little but answers, precise and complete, to questions they consider worth answering. Their danger is the plane they embody: the longer a traveller stays among them, the more the traveller is perfected, and the end of that road is the Echo-Statues.

Lore and Belief

Material Plane tales call the Apex a heaven and its people angels, and the name is as wrong as hell is for the Scourge: the Apex-Born are not good, only complete. The Mirror Gates of the Apex are perfect reflections in still water and moments of absolute clarity, and those who have stepped through and back describe the Apex-Born with a mix of awe and dread, and the advice they bring is to carry reminders of one's own mistakes, and to leave before forgetting why one wanted to.

Where It Appears

• The Apex
• Writers' Guide: The Planes, Glossary