Garudas are noble, birdlike creatures that inhabit rugged hills. While they remain detached from humanoid societies, they are impetuous and gallant, often serving as protectors of nearby communities. Most garudas stand around 6 feet tall with a wingspan of 15 feet and weigh approximately 150 pounds.

Garudas originated in the Positive Plane as a winged race called the jyoti, infused with the light and energy of raw primal radiance. At some point in the distant past, they discovered a portal to the Material Plane and a rift developed between the more impetuous and curious jyoti who wished to explore this strange new world and those who sought only to seal the rifts that they felt infected their paradisical existence and keep their plane pure. Those that emigrated to the Material Plane renamed themselves garudas and adapted their magical powers to the skies of their new earthly home.

Jyoti. Enigmatic and swift to anger, the jyoti who remained in the Positive Plane are xenophobic in the extreme. Those encountering them sometimes assume that the jyoti are inherently good because their home plane is the source of all life, but those beliefs are quite in error, for the jyoti react to all other races with wary suspicion at best, and usually assume the worst and attack before they can themselves be attacked. They guard their crystalline cities from all intrusion, especially by creatures from other planes and servants of the gods. They have been known to hold dangerous artifacts in their vaults on behalf of desperate visitors , though in the case of holy or unholy artifacts, the jyoti are more likely to destroy the artifacts as soon as possible. Jyoti loathe natives of the Shadow Plane and the Negative Energy Plane in particular, slaying them with their crystal-tipped spears whenever encountered, though with pity in their actions toward undead.