So I was thinking about interesting creatures I've seen a little while ago and I remembered the Zodar(fiend folio). They seemed interesting as the information about them was left rather vague, such as who/what created them and why.
So here's my small challenge for anyone who cares to take it up:Come up with a purpose and origin for the Zodar.
Ex. Zodar were created to maintain the natural stability of the multiverse (closing tears in planar fabric that lead to the far realms and hunting down far realm related creatures that may create such rifts) and were created
by the multiverse itself, as sort of an immune system.
That's close to my original interpretation of them: every crystal sphere and plane is sentient, and has the ability to empower creatures as "proxies" of a sort to defend against threats to its natural order. I was thinking more about the threats posed by viral demiplanes - sub-planes that transform the laws of nature in the spheres or planes they infect so they become nothing more than factories for creating new viruses, which go on to infect new worlds and planes. Obviously, this doesn't work very well with infinite planes, but it's a major threat to finite ones.
In my way of thinking, a crystal sphere or demiplane is analogous to a single eukaryotic cell; each feeds on ambient cosmic energy, using that energy to grow, reproduce, and empower its natural laws (and in some cases, overdeity). Some of that energy may be passed on to divine-level beings who are worshipped there. Two planes or Material Planar spheres can mate, creating a new demiplane that has a combination of its parents' planar traits. A single one can also divide or release spores (to change metaphors). Finally, every plane is vulnerable to viral infection or planar cancer, where its laws of existence may be disastrously changed or come unraveled entirely.
The zodar are only the most minor examples of the planar immune system.