Limbo: Renovating the Residents

I am not a huge fan of much of the 3.5 ed. Planar Handbook content, but the Neraphim have struck me as a race with some potential to add a little substance to Limbo. Unlike the Githzerai they are genuine Limbo natives adapted to living in raw chaos. Unlike the Slaadi they have a low ECL, a tangible culture and society, and much greater ability to relate to other beings of the planes. Neraphim are a slightly more accessible race that can provide a bridge between typical bashers and the really weird and inscrutable beings of Limbo... and their culture is closely bound to Chaos Beasts which is potentially quite interesting too.
Entropic Reapers are really cool too, and (though not explicitly stated as being so connected) open up some possibilities for using Ygorl a little more directly, as agents of His will.

The malleable, tentacled Limboites are chaos beasts. But there's a reason no one talks or thinks about chaos beasts very much. If a creature can look like anything, it averages out as unremarkable and plain. There's nothing memorable or iconic about them.

Everyone remembers slaadi. They're just more effective game design.

Even in the PSMC, the Slaadi come across more as opportunistic thugs out to continually prove they are the strongest, rather than something that feels chaotic. I always felt that the Slaadi, even under the direct influence of the Slaad Lords, shouldn't have been locked into their rigid castes. If ever there was a race that should have a table of random traits, it's them.

This isn't true.

The death slaadi in the original Fiend Folio, like all slaadi in that book (including their rulers), were chaotic neutral. See page 81.

Painter Sprites - Servants of Rennbuu, these sprites seem to be halfling sized fey made out of wet paint. Sometimes their forms are stripes of color, other times they are swirls, dots of one color on another, humanoid frescoes depicting Ygorl's glory, or some other motley. They have no eyes or mouths and have a rough approximation to humans.

Painter Sprites can temporarily (ranging from moments to weeks) change the color of certain beings, though not those whose color confers some actual power - for example, unlike their Lord they cannot shift the races of chromatic dragons. To change the colors of others diminishes them, and can even result in their deaths. The larger the space they change the more they shrink in size and the longer they need to wait to regenerate.

Entropy Hounds - Entropy hounds are scavenging jackals made of black fire that radiates cold. They seem to subsist on entropy, following Ygorl in massive packs or suddenly shifting across the planes to where a Sinker is bringing down a kingdom or inciting a slave rebellion. Once they've come to a site ripe with entropy, they simply frolic, breathe deeply and wag their tails in joy.

While it is clear that these canine spirits can traverse the planes between sites of heavy entropy, and greater entropy allows more to planeshift to that location, no one knows how they choose their meals. Note that if one could drastically reduce the entropy in an area before the hounds could leave they would be trapped until they found another entropic location or could create such a place through excessive violence.

Time Snatchers - Time Snatchers are squat, hooded figures whose chubby forms float serenely above the ground, their paunches floating before them in their aura of low gravity. Their robes shift between red, black, grey, and indigo but this change seems to always occur between moments. Time Snatchers wear elaborate masks bearing likenesses to gods and goddesses of time, Ygorl or , Chourst, races like time dragons that have some relation to the Demiplane of Time, (in)famous chronomancers, or even artifacts that allow users to time travel.

Time Snatchers attempt to steal snatches of time, literally attacking the time stream whenever possible though usually in the safety of Limbo's depths where Chaos softens the nature of linear time. Though it takes much to bribe them, they will aid PCs who want to pull time tricks while avoiding paradox. (Time Snatchers somehow circumvent temporal paradox, though not always successfully. They are a desperate gambit for sure and their services should never be lightly sought.) When powerful energy is unleashed such as during a Cataclysm or a Time of Troubles, Time Snatchers can even throw the unsuspecting into the past or future. Quaruts slaughter any Time Snatcher on sight, though since the corpse always vanishes into the winds of the Temporal Prime one wonders if they've been killing the same Time Snatchers for untold eons.

As nomadic hunters, they'd attach themselves to a group of migrating animals.
Animals? Slaadi don't have any qualms about eating sentient creatures. In fact, mephits rank among their favorites.

As gypsy-like nomads, they could come to a town and perform useful jobs for the residents. Or, as much as I hate to play up the stereotype, they could descend on a town and steal everything not nailed down (or even stuff that was).

Stealing isn't really a slaad's thing. They're more into eating peoples' pets and impregnating random unfortunates with their brood. Taking someone's stuff is more often something they do after the fact. In addition, when they do steal stuff, it's usually something edible or which they believe to be edible (IIRC, the Slaad Lords even have a problem with their subjects breaking into their strongholds and ransacking it of edibles-- IIRC there's even a slaad lord who has or tried to make his mansion out of food, but it regularly gets stormed by slaad who munch on it)

As a barbarian horde (a la the Mongols), they could be a conquering force
They're not organized enough for that. The only time you ever see Slaadi working in concert is when they all want to infect both sides of a blood war battle army with their brood or when they truly feel threatened, such as during an invasion of Limbo. While Slaadi do form towns, outposts, cities, etc., they very rarely form a community, as they tend to function as individuals and often do not get along with their neighbors. Most of all, slaadi do not trust one another, since beings of such chaos act on a whim and are unpredictable. Thus, you can never take a slaad's word. The ones living long-term in Sigil tend to be a tad different out of necessity and generally won't engage in activities that are likely to get them sent to the mazes or singled out by the Harmonium, though IIRC most tend to live in The Hive since that area is the most lawless.

In the context of D&D, it doesn't even necessarily mean that. Keep in mind that in D&D, Law vs. Chaos is also about Authority vs. Self-Determination. It's Darkseid vs. Highfather. You don't have to be a fishmalk-type character at all in order to stand for Chaos, you can just stand for the ability of a person to choose their own way in life without having to deal with the restrictions put on them by other people.

My favorite example of CE planning comes from a quote from Angel, actually.

Very interesting debate. I thought a little bit about the stuff that's been discussed here and I wanted to share some of them with you. I have to admit that I'm not very familar with most of official literature on the Slaad besides what I've read in the 3.5 Monster manual and on this page, so please excuse me if some of my thoughts on this topic might seem a little bit odd, non-canonical, or just plain obvious to you.

I thought the easiest way to characterise the Slaad would be to look at their lawful neutral counterparts (the Modrons) and just use the exact opposite attributes which usually are associated with them, to characterise the nature of the Slaad.
The Modrons have no idea of individuality and have no individual goals or even individual ambitions. They only exist to fulfill the orders which were given to them by their higher ranking peers and nothing else. Therefore the exact opposite of this creature would be a being that examplifies the ultimate ideal of individualism. A Slaad does not accept orders of other beings unless he is forced to do so and even if that happens, it's pretty likely that he will turn against whoever forced him to omit his individuality. Furthermore a Slaad doesn't constrict his ambitions with any kind morality since that would lead to a loss of personal freedom.

The other thought I had, and here it starts to get a little bit odd, was to look for other examples of purely chaotic neutral races in other games and what characterises them. For example, if you look how the Orks in the Warhammer Universe are characterised, especially in Warhammer 40k.
The only thing Orks are interested in are fights. They don't care about who they fight and why they're fighting, as long as they're fighting. Of course this doesn't mean that individual Orks are chaotic neutral, I think most of their leaders would be chaotic evil since they try to violently oppress any possible threat to their power, but as a race they appear to be mostly chaotic neutral. What's further interesting is that, at least in Warhammer 40k, Orks make up their own rules about how the Universe works. This might lead to some very strange conclusions (e.g. red vehicles are always faster then vehicles colored in other colors) but somehow these rules still seem to work, simply because the Orks believe that they work.

Allright, what does this stuff has to do with the Slaad? Imagine a race of complete individualists. Each Slaad has his(/her/its?) own goals and does not care about the means he has to use to achieve them. If there are some Slaadi who share the same goal, they might form some kind of alliance, although it's quite likely that the Slaad with the most power tries to force the other members of this alliance into his service, simply because it's the easiest way for him to get to his goal. Those goals by the way can be completely random and it's quite likely that most Slaad are not interested in dedicating their whole existence to the achievement of one personal goal. However I don't think that personal obesssion with a certain aspect of live qualifies as being "lawful", so it's also possible that some Slaadi will get obsessed about something.
Furhtermore when it comes to their view on the multiverse and how it works, it would be again highly depend on the individual Slaad you're talking to. Since they likely spend most of their time in Limbo where, at least as far as I know, the nature of the plane is highly volatile and depends on the will of an indiviudal to shape the Plane into a certain form. Therefore it might be safe to say, that the Slaad simply make up their own "laws" of nature and hold on to them as long as they want.
You can go further and try to define certain "interests" to the certain types of Slaad, e.g. Blue Slaad would only be interested in fighting stuff, green Slaad would only be interested in Magic, but I'm not sure if this wouldn't be a little bit to "orderly" for them.

And in the end: The good thing about Chaos is that it could mean almost everything. So I think it's ok to do with the Slaad and the other inhabitants of Limbo whatever you like, as long as you don't turn them into Modrons.

P.S.: Since this is my first post here: Hello everyone!

P.P.S.: I'm from Germany, so please excuse me if my english seems a little bit wonky. It's also pretty late overhere and I didn't do any kind of spellchecking on this post so it might be even more wonky then usual.

P.P.P.S.: At last: All of the stuff I wrote is completely based on my own thoughts about this topic, since I don't have any literature besides the basic books. So if I did any kind of huge mistake in regards to the canon, please let me know.

I thought the easiest way to characterise the Slaad would be to look at their lawful neutral counterparts (the Modrons) and just use the exact opposite attributes which usually are associated with them, to characterise the nature of the Slaad.
The Modrons have no idea of individuality and have no individual goals or even individual ambitions. They only exist to fulfill the orders which were given to them by their higher ranking peers and nothing else. Therefore the exact opposite of this creature would be a being that examplifies the ultimate ideal of individualism. A Slaad does not accept orders of other beings unless he is forced to do so and even if that happens, it's pretty likely that he will turn against whoever forced him to omit his individuality. Furthermore a Slaad doesn't constrict his ambitions with any kind morality since that would lead to a loss of personal freedom.
Allright, what does this stuff has to do with the Slaad? Imagine a race of complete individualists. Each Slaad has his(/her/its?) own goals and does not care about the means he has to use to achieve them. If there are some Slaadi who share the same goal, they might form some kind of alliance, although it's quite likely that the Slaad with the most power tries to force the other members of this alliance into his service, simply because it's the easiest way for him to get to his goal. Those goals by the way can be completely random and it's quite likely that most Slaad are not interested in dedicating their whole existence to the achievement of one personal goal. However I don't think that personal obesssion with a certain aspect of live qualifies as being "lawful", so it's also possible that some Slaadi will get obsessed about something.
Furhtermore when it comes to their view on the multiverse and how it works, it would be again highly depend on the individual Slaad you're talking to.

That's precisely how they are in Planes of Chaos and other Planescape books, actually.

Another thing to bear in mind (as with all other elementals and outsiders) is that the inhabitants can, in the grand scheme of things, be viewed as part of the plane's immune system, if you will. Ecologically, they exist solely to keep their plane pure by spreading their element or alignment across their home plane and to destroy anything with foreign elemental or alignment components. The greatest problems arise when these creatures leave their indigenous habitat for different ecosystems, such as the Prime Material.
Planar Hazards also make up a major part of the plane's immune system, and as such, the hazards should be far more harmful to those of opposing elemental or alignment components. For the Spireward areas of the Outlands, you're likely to find hazards that are most dangerous to those lacking a neutral alignment component, for instance.

In the end, this means that in the case of Limbo, the elements and the churning chaos should be the most harmful to lawful creatures, to the point where the churning chaos almost seems like a sentient creature coming after the lawful PCs or NPCs, and when it comes to weather and other elemental forces, the lawful PCs seem to have really bad "luck" if you will.
Which, come to think of it, I think the luck system works well for all the chaotic planes, including Limbo-- luck modifiers may even be integral to using certain items or entering certain areas on Limbo.