Grain Nymph

Grain nymphs are cousins of the woodland nymphs who have made tilled fields their home, much as kilmoulis and dobies learned to live alongside spreading humankind. They share the family's extraordinary looks, which most males find irresistible, and their beauty is quite literally intoxicating. They speak common and elvish, converse freely with beasts, and call or banish insects as the crop requires.

A grain nymph will not stand and fight. Instead she lures her attacker into her field. Anyone chasing her through the grain saves vs. spell at -2 or falls under an influence much like drunkenness: he staggers, slurs his words and reacts poorly, suffering -4 to hit and a 4-point AC penalty. After 2d8 rounds he makes a Constitution check, and on a failure passes out for 1d6 hours. He wakes with a pounding headache, hates loud noise, and fights at -2 with a 2-point AC penalty for another 1d6 hours, after which he recovers.

That assumes he survives the nap. While he sleeps, the nymph calls every large farm animal within a mile; they arrive within a turn and bite, kick and trample him. He wakes after taking 8 points of damage or half his hit points, whichever is less, and may then run for it with the herd at his heels. From then on no farm animal except horses will ever be friendly to him, for the nymph has marked him, and nothing less than a wish can undo it.

Besides ordinary violence, if anyone can get close enough, she can be killed by destroying her field: burning or razing it and sowing it with salt, or any method that ruins the soil for farming. She cannot move to a new field before spring, so she dies with it.

A grain nymph settles only in fields that farmers tend with love. In return her care can double the harvest, and her field suffers no harm from natural drought or flood. Herd animals, farm beasts above all, adore her and will die defending her, charging any threat until it flees or kills them.

Field and nymph mirror each other's health: rich soil may attract one, a sick nymph may yield a poor crop, and a disrupted natural cycle may harm her. After harvest she sinks into the earth to sleep out the winter. After three years she must move on to another worthy field within 50 miles or die, and she may not return to an old field for 9 years.

At planting and harvest festivals farmers court her with offerings and vows to care for the land. She may grant a gentle tipsiness (-2 to hit and AC) at these gatherings, with no stupor or hangover.

Grain nymphs arise when forest is cleared for farms, adapting to the change by merging with the fields and rewarding those who work them. Woodland nymphs think them snobs; grain nymphs consider themselves refined and 'cultivated'. They hate grain-stealing birds and chase them off however they can.