Jermlaine [Gremlin]

Also called jinxkin or bane-midges, a jermlaine looks like a minute person in a floppy suit and leather cap, but these are its own sagging hide and pointed skull. Its limbs are wiry, its fingers and toes nimble, its nails thick with grime, and its warty gray-brown skin (and any rags) blends with stone. It squeaks like a bat or rat, talks with all rats, and has a separate 10% chance each to grasp common, dwarvish, gnomish, goblin and orc.

Bands pick on the hurt, sick and sleeping and avoid strong, alert groups, though spite may tempt them to harass anyway. Their sight is poor and infravision reaches just 30 yards, but hearing and smell reveal invisible beings half the time. Their silent scuttle gives foes -5 to surprise, and they are 75% undetectable even to watchers unless they reveal themselves.

They throw needle darts up to 120 yards (1-2 damage) and jab with 1 1/2-foot pikes (1d4); capture parties add blackjacks. Quiet passages get covered pits or overhead nets, busy ones trip cords. A fallen victim is tied up and clubbed, each blow adding a cumulative 2% knockout chance, useless against splint, banded or plate mail, so armored foes get acid or flaming oil instead. Captives are robbed, stripped, shaved hairless and dumped, bound, in some passage; the dead and 5% of captives feed the band and its rats. Near a lingering traveler, each member darts in for one cut at a strap, belt, pack or pouch and vanishes, and the damage shows only when gear falls apart 1d12 turns later.

A quarter of bands bring 1d6 rats and half bring 1d6 giant rats, never both. Bands of 35 or more include an elder who drains most magic items by handling one for 1d4 rounds (not artifacts or relics). Jermlaine save as 4 Hit Dice monsters and take nothing from half-damage attacks when they save.

These remote gnome relatives turned shame over their size into a need to humiliate bigger humanoids, and adventurers supply loot, fun and meals. Treasure is varied but small. They live a third as long as humans, cannot crossbreed, and bear one or two young; three in four are male, though danger evens out adult numbers. A clan of 4d4 related families follows the strongest or cleverest elder, who trains the young and leads big raids from the rear. Families center on mothers, who stay home with small children, then help the chief take them on practice raids.

Lairs are filthy burrows near larger caverns. Only the pens and butchery admit a human; past them, foot-high tunnels and thin cracks lead to living rooms of scavenged furniture, family nests of junk, private caches, and a communal hoard behind hidden crawlways only jermlaine fit through.

Bands are 75% likely to travel with rats and 50% to share lairs with them in full alliance; 10% of colonies ally with osquips instead. They eat insects, meat, carrion, fungus and mold, mostly lizards, saving humanoids for feasts, and adore surface food, even iron rations, stealing food bags as eagerly as purses. Sugar, candy or preserved fruit can buy a party brief peace.

Jermlaine know every party's size, makeup and condition and will sell that news. They may serve 'giants' (anyone larger) for bribes, victims or loot but never truly ally with good folk, though they may pretend; 75% eventually lie to or betray larger partners. They settle near drow, trolls or troglodytes, dodge open conflict, scavenge their neighbors' victims and battles, and may act as sentries for a price. They also clear carcasses and bodies from the deeps, so anyone seeking a lost companion's remains should ask them.