Booka

Bookas are cousins of pixies, sprites and other fairies. Most stand 10 to 14 inches tall, and a rare few reach 15 or 16. Their slim bodies and faces are roughly human, but long pointed noses and wide ears make them a bit homely to human eyes. Delicate wings, bright as a butterfly's, sprout from their backs.

They speak a tongue close to that of other fey. About half also know elvish and a quarter speak the common tongue of humans, and any district with bookas probably has at least one who understands thieves' cant.

Few races are as peaceable, and bookas go to great lengths to dodge a fight they would surely lose. Their bite stings but does no real harm, leaving at most a welt and a drop of blood, roughly the menace of a paper cut. Turning invisible is second nature: a booka can vanish at will, even while doing something else, and does so to slip away from danger. An angered booka is another matter. It can set up delicate, cunning traps meant to hurt or even kill whoever offended it.

Bookas live wherever humans do, favoring warm, rural farm country. A booka family picks a household as good-natured as its own and moves in, preferring attics and eaves much as brownies do; in colder lands they settle by the hearth, stove or another warm spot. Sunny days go to gathering wildflowers and enjoying the countryside. On calm mornings when the house is still, they sweep and dust to pay their rent. If someone interrupts them or finds their nest, they promptly move elsewhere.

Capturing or hurting one brings the rest down on the culprit, with tricks and traps around his home scaled to the harm done. A minor slight can be smoothed over by leaving gold, jewelry or a magic item where the bookas often go. A serious or fatal injury cannot be bought off, and the resulting traps are deadly and ingenious. Assassins call a mark set up for an unusually devious trap 'booka bait' for this reason.

Unable to fight, bookas might seem easy prey, but invisibility protects them from most predators, and thinking creatures know that hunting one invites a family's revenge. A lock of booka hair, given willingly, is an uncommon ingredient in magical ink for scrolls of invisibility or of detecting it.