Messenger Genie [Tasked]

Lean and supple, a messenger is never fully still. It wears snug garments and a tight turban over close-clipped hair, carries only light weapons, and never bothers with jewelry. Many ride enchanted mounts, though they are swift on foot as well.

A messenger's first instinct is escape. It ducks into crowds, slips behind trees, or rolls under a table rather than square off, and it will die before handing over what it carries. Cornered, it fights fast, gaining a -1 bonus to initiative, and favors darts and other thrown weapons coated with a poison only its kind brews: bardan ruqad, the cold sleep.

The poison works whether it is injected or swallowed, which makes it handy for delivering news to touchy or dangerous recipients. A victim saves vs. poison at -4. Failure means instant paralysis, yet the target stays sharply awake for 1d6+4 rounds so the message can be heard in full. Then a heavy slumber of 1d6 hours sets in, covering the courier's retreat. Throughout, the sleeper's flesh feels chilly, and more than one has been declared dead by mistake. Even undead are vulnerable, though they save at only -2.

Its daily magic, each usable once at 9th level, is haste, invisibility, shadow door, distance distortion, clear path, dimensional folding, lighten load, and aura of comfort. If the last four are unavailable, substitute strength, dimension door, pass without trace, and tiny hut.

When one is dying, it can loose its spirit onto the wind to find the closest intelligent being and plead for vengeance. Any genie within reach of that call always answers it.

Waiting is agony to these genies. They pace, fidget, and drum their fingers, and being bound or held motionless is genuine torment. There is a 10% chance that such treatment will pressure one into running an errand for captors it owes nothing. Nothing short of magical compulsion will make it reveal a message, and documents placed in its trust are guarded with its life.

On the road they are chatty and helpful, but rudeness may be repaid with a lamed horse or ruined boots. To a messenger, movement is virtue: anything slow or still is presumed lazy, wicked, or rotten. They wake before everyone and rest after everyone, not out of giddy energy but grim purpose, since their whole lives last only 10 to 15 years.

Every genie honors the messengers. Alone they are frail and seldom travel in groups, so noble genies take them under protection. Attacking one can earn a sentence of 100 years serving the genies; robbing one is punished by death.

They need little food or drink and can keep going for 40 days straight. At the end of that stretch, a messenger finds a cloud castle or a high peak, beds down in a nest of cloudstuff, and sinks into a coma that lasts a week. It wakes fully restored, ready for another 40 days.