Ethyk

The ethyk is a small mammal about the size of a lemur, with a single bulging yellow-white eye with a big black pupil, a long, partly prehensile tail, and climbing claws on all four little legs. Its coat is typically gray, brown, or a tawny red. It comes from both layers of a twin paradise in the upper planes, but travelers have carried it far beyond.

Keen hearing and smell keep it from ever being surprised, and its eye has 10-foot infravision. It can claw twice for 1d2 each and bite for 1d3, but it rarely needs to.

Its real defense is mental. Six times a day it can target one creature within 100 feet, which must save vs. spell (Wisdom bonuses apply) or spend 3d4 rounds angry, contrary, and quarrelsome toward some other random creature within 100 feet, never an ethyk. The victim must pass a Wisdom check (Intelligence for monsters without Wisdom) or physically attack that target, and anyone who tries to hold it back may be attacked too. Even without blows, the target fills the victim's attention for the full duration, and further checks may be needed depending on how provoked it feels. The victim contradicts everything the target says or does, and if they know each other it drags up every old mistake, quarrel and wound it can remember. The abuse is so vicious that most NPCs on the receiving end eventually answer with violence. Meanwhile the ethyk quietly escapes.

Wild ethyks live alone in the forests of their home plane, swinging through the trees by tail and claw and dropping to the ground mainly to hunt rodents or collect fallen nuts and fruit.

Trapped ethyks tame quickly because they readily bond with an obviously superior creature, such as their owner. A bonded ethyk uses its power to defend its master, on command if trained, and creatures it influences never turn their anger on the ethyk or its master. Trained ones ride on a master's shoulder and watch his back, behave in public, and learn simple commands such as 'sit', 'down', 'up', 'no', and 'now', the usual signal to use its power. After a year or more of training they can fetch small items, tie knots, and fight physically on command.

It hunts mice and rats, small birds, snakes and big insects in town or country and also eats fruit, nuts and plants, though it prefers meat and can live on that alone. In the wild it fends off wolves and raptors; in some cities feral ethyks infest alleys, garbage heaps and ruined buildings.

Live ethyks sell for high prices, but trapping them takes a strong will. A brisk trade in pets, including smuggling where the law forbids it, has grown up across the Outer Planes, and they are starting to turn up on other worlds.