Proteans are snake-like creatures native to the Maelstrom. Believing that true chaos is the natural state of the multiverse, they oppose order in all its forms and seek to unmake the planes back into their primordial state.

Keketars are the prophet-lords of the protean race and architects of the Maelstrom’s metaplastic reality, dedicating their existence to discerning and carrying out the will of their plane’s mysterious rulers.

Individual keketars range from 7 to 40 feet long, though they constantly shift and change like the unformed reality of the Maelstrom itself, altering color and serpentine banding patterns, shrinking or elongating, and undergoing even more radical physical changes. However, a keketar possesses two key features: first, whatever configuration its body takes, its eyes are always a piercing shade of amber or violet; and second, a whirling ring of ever-changing symbols floats above and around its head like a shapeshifting crown. The cloud’s symbols coil, snarl, and intermingle with one another, gradually merging and mutating without apparent pattern. Each keketar is marked by unique stylistic elements within the symbols and the general orientation and appearance of the crown—useful for distinguishing between different individuals. They can hide or manifest this crown at will, but they usually leave it visible.

Ecology

Keketars exist as a separate protean species as well as a distinct functional caste within the Maelstrom’s fluid, shifting environment. What is not entirely understood about keketars is whether they exist as such from birth, spawned either from the mating of other keketars or produced under chance or rare circumstance from the unions of their lesser kindred, or else are elevated to their status by the touch of divinity or exposure to some chance energy from the deep Maelstrom. Usually hidden within the unmapped depths of the deep Maelstrom, keketars are isolated from the rest of the multiverse, though sages have gleaned some—often contradictory—information from the imentesh proteans.

According to the imentesh Saeleshissik, keketars are chosen by foreordained chance—paradoxical as that might be—and the elevation of the worthy. Stating that the crown is by birthright, the protean was evasive when asked directly if members of its own imentesh caste were capable of ascent or promotion to the ranks of the keketars, answering only that the Maelstrom contained no impossibilities.

Habitat & Society

Keketars serve as a racial priesthood for the protean deities known as the Speakers in the Depths, operating as intermediaries between the other protean castes and the entities they collectively worship. Other proteans treat keketars as nobles, though keketars rarely use this status to rule others. As with many mortal religions, dogma and theology is prone to interpretation and change, and among the proteans the situation is perhaps even more pronounced. Whatever the nature of their mysterious god or gods, separate keketars may come to dramatically different conclusions as to their will and intent. Once they pass on to their kindred proteans just what paths of action they perceive as necessary, such groups may come into conflict with others tasked with the opposite. Curiously, such conflicts in vision or interpretation only occur between individual keketars and discrete groups, but never within a gathered group.