Doomcat

A doomcat looks like an ordinary, rather battered housecat. It may be any breed or color but is usually homely: torn ears, thin flea-bitten fur, often a missing tail or leg. Only its eyes stand out, always bright and clear and usually mismatched in color. It seems unable to talk, until it chooses to speak to its "owners" in whatever language suits them. Whether it can read is unknown.

On the surface it fights like a normal cat, if a little faster and nimbler (hence its better Armor Class). It bites for 1 point of damage, scratches with both forepaws for 1-2 total, and if the front claws connect it rakes with its hind claws for another 1-2. It can turn invisible at will.

Its real menace is a kit of spell-like powers wielded at 16th priest level. For calamity it has earthquake, insect plague and transmute water to dust; for sky and storm, weather summoning, control winds and control weather; for affliction, confusion, cause disease and cause blindness or deafness; and to call beasts, animal summoning III. Touch spells work at 5 yards. It can use no more than three per day, and since these powers are limited and can backfire on the cat, it calls on them only when invisibility has failed and it feels threatened.

Doomcats are cowards who know they are weak apart from wits and a few supernatural tricks, so they fight only when cornered. When a town turns too hostile, they leave, usually dropping a dramatic catastrophe on it out of pure spite.

Nobody knows where doomcats come from. Some think one is a witch trapped in cat form; others suspect ordinary cats that soaked up unholy power from living near evil shrines.

Utterly selfish, a doomcat treats people as fools to be milked, and its con follows a familiar script. It picks a household with an animal lover, children being ideal, and first secretly strikes it with some misfortune such as sickness or a bout of bad weather. Then it shows up as a sweet stray, purring, rubbing ankles and mewing for food, until the family takes it in. After a spell of pampering, it quietly speaks to the most unstable person in the house, promising to ward off worse disasters in exchange for a little fine fish and a soft bed, vaguely hinting that cats and luck are linked. Frightened, the person agrees.

From there the demands climb until the cat lives better than anyone in the house, and its manner sours from kindly guardian to spoiled tyrant, finally to open blackmail. A family growing suspicious gets a modest show of power to remind them who is in charge. Eventually the owners have had enough and try to hurt it, and the doomcat slips off to a new mark, leaving one last horror behind.

Like any cat it eats meat and will eat almost anything when hungry, but it is spoiled and goes to great lengths for fancy food. As household after household falls for the trick, a whole village can be bled dry, until a torch-and-pitchfork mob comes hunting the "devil-cat." One tale tells of a valley village swallowed whole by an earthquake in moments.