Forgive me if this is answered elsewhere, or if it's widely known information and I'm just in the dark, but in a game I'm going to be playing in, I was interested in making a Shad PC.
I've read the "official" rules for the shad, and I was curious, are they plants? humanoids? outsiders? earth elementals? I keep thinking they are a type of plant, but I could be wrong. I'm just curious in general on their rules and what they look like exactly (the physical description is great, but certain parts like "they have large eyes" can either be they have big eyes and normal irises (anime style) or they have giant solid colored eyes, so I'm curious how the Shad are supposed to look exactly)
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The most common theory is that they evolved from the insects that lived and mutated in the trees druids from the world of Verdorth introduced to the Elemental Plane of Earth. So (as the theory goes) they used to be vermin. They grow and eat plants, but I don't think they are plants. For their present-day creature type, I'd call them Humanoids, which is what Nemui called them when he converted them.
Claudio Pozas drew a shad for Planewalker at one point (along with a nathri and one of each of the other races in the character race document) but I can't find it online now.
His Planescape gallery is here: http://www.enworld.org/Pozas/planescape.html
Anybody know what happened to the other illustrations? I'm sure there was a nathri and a shad, at the least.
Anyway, they're described as gray-skinned, humanoid creatures with very short hair and large eyes and ears. They're said to be thin and wiry. The PSMCIII has an illustration by Tony DiTerlizzi of a shad, but I'm reluctant to scan it and show it to you because it doesn't exactly fit the description and might turn you off playing one (Tony D's shad is very fat). They're four to five and a half feet tall according to the PSMCIII (Planescape Monstrous Compendium: Volume III), although the Planewalker document makes them much smaller for some reason.