Brownie

A brownie is a 2-foot-tall cousin, perhaps very distant, of the halfling, looking like a miniature elf with brown hair and vivid blue eyes. It dresses in bright wool or linen trimmed with gold and usually carries leather pouches and tools for mending metal, wood, and leather. Besides their own tongue, brownies speak common and the languages of elves, pixies, sprites, and halflings.

Brownies fight only when threatened, and even then they lean on magic rather than blades. Their senses are so sharp they can never be surprised, and their agility and knack for vanishing into the background give them AC 3. Once per day each, a brownie can call on confusion, continual light, dancing lights, dimension door, mirror image (3 images), protection from evil, and ventriloquism. A cornered brownie out of spells draws a short sword.

They live in the countryside in little burrows or empty buildings, often on or near farms, which fascinate them. They eat wild fruit and gleaned grain, and being honest through and through they always repay with some service, such as milking a farmer's cows and keeping only a sip for themselves.

Some go further and become house brownies, watching local families and quietly moving in with one that meets their strict standards. By night they spin, bake, fix tools, guard the henhouse against foxes, mend clothes, and raise a clatter to wake the household if a burglar sneaks in. Dogs and livestock treat them as friends and never bark at them. Their only wage is some bread, a bit of milk, and the odd piece of fruit, and good manners require that nobody acknowledge them; brag about having a brownie and it disappears.

Strangers are watched closely until their intentions are clear. A harmless visitor is left alone; a dangerous one finds the whole community working together to drive him out. Because they know every corner of their territory, they make superb guides, and a polite request has a 50% chance of earning one's help. Brownies are not greedy, but they keep small treasures won from evil monsters or given by humans, and sometimes leave them where a deserving person in need will stumble on them.

Essentially vegetarian, they live well on the scraps of farm life, collecting after harvest the grain and fruit that would otherwise rot, in amounts too small for people to notice.

This distant relative stands less than a foot tall, with an oversized head and an enormous nose. It blends into its surroundings so well that it is only 10% detectable. Killmoulis live alongside humans wherever food is processed or stored, nesting beneath floors and inside walls and crawlspaces in a mutually beneficial arrangement.