Meenlock

Meenlocks are hunched two-foot bipeds with shaggy black coats and crooked arms ending in three claws. Their hairless white heads have little toothy mouths, pug noses and big yellow eyes with no pupils. They can only growl aloud, but they project telepathic messages up to 300 feet. They shun light and are seldom seen.

Any intelligent creature of 4 Hit Dice or fewer that sees one collapses in terror for 1d4+4 rounds, half that with a successful save vs. spell. Meenlocks flee bright light and are ingenious at extinguishing it.

Their raking claws deal 1d4, and a creature struck must save vs. paralyzation or freeze for 1d6 turns. Every other round one can blink up to 60 feet by a limited form of dimension door, and foes attacking it that round suffer -4; it cannot do so while carrying anyone, and hauling a man-sized captive takes three of them.

Disturb a lair without slaying its inhabitants or replacing its stone exactly, and they hunt you that night. Trailing the group, 95% undetectable, they telepathically fix on one victim with no save allowed, choosing a paladin first, then a human, then an elf, then another demihuman. All day he feels monsters closing in to transform him and hears stealthy sounds his friends miss. Each hour he loses 1 point of Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Wisdom, to no less than half normal, and he suffers -1 to hit or, as a caster, grants +2 to saves against his spells.

Once he sleeps, they attack, surprising watchful guards 80% of the time and sleepers always. They disable guards with fear and paralysis, kill only if they must, avoid harming their prize, and drag him home, where a short, ghastly rite makes him a meenlock.

Their burrows lie in bleak, rocky woods, the entrance capped by a large flat stone that acts as a secret door. Below, a winding shaft plunges at least 100 feet, its every surface carpeted in a damp, spongy moss unique to these lairs that the meenlocks climb on. Whoever opens it senses overwhelming evil and the stench of rotting bodies, both telepathic warnings. The den at the bottom holds ragged furs, curved knives hung up for display and a pile of bones.

Meenlocks love making new members. The process seems to shrink the victim, then swiftly cover him in the lair moss. A band holds at most five; when a sixth is made, the three with the most hit points keep the lair and the other three leave to start one of their own.