Mite

Mites are pint-sized humanoids with warty, hairless hides from pale gray to vivid violet, wedge-shaped heads, bat ears and hooked noses. Males sport a bony skull crest and a scraggly goatee. Most wear grubby stolen scraps, and their squeaky chirping conveys only simple ideas.

Mites hunt stragglers and solo explorers with traps: pits that deal 1d6 damage, nets that catch anyone failing a save vs. paralysis, and trip wires that drop anyone failing a Dexterity check. Once the target is down or tangled, the mites swarm in with weighted clubs. Each club carries a cumulative 2% chance to stun, but only against victims wearing armor poorer than splint mail.

The captive is trussed and hauled into the warren to be jeered at for 1d4 days, then stunned again, robbed of everything and dumped elsewhere in the dungeon.

A mite warren is a maze of tiny passages threaded above and below a dungeon's main halls. Its many entrances are hidden behind carefully fitted stones and found as secret doors. Man-sized creatures fighting inside the cramped tunnels suffer -4 on attack rolls and a 4-point penalty to AC.

At the warren's heart lies a single broad, low chamber, filthy with stolen arms, armor and clothing and scattered coins. Here the mite king lounges on a tiny throne in baggy stolen clothes: 1+1 Hit Dice, a 1d4 bite, and sole keeper of the shiny gems mites adore. With him live 4d6 females (1-2 Hit Dice, bite for 1-2) and 4d6 young, who do not fight.

Mites prod, bend and lick every stolen object until bored or, more often, until it breaks. They love oversized clothes and bones, sometimes dragging home huge monster skulls.

Mites eat vermin and other small pests, and they adore iron rations. Most monsters see them as a bite-sized snack, and evil giants sometimes serve them as appetizers.

Snyads are distant cousins of mites, a little bigger at 2 1/2 feet tall, light brown, and topped with shaggy hair. They speak no known tongue yet understand mites, and the two sometimes team up, mites distracting while snyads grab. Superb thieves, they gain surprise 90% of the time, frequently plucking loot right out of a hand and then hiding in their burrow until pursuit ends. Finding a snyad hole takes a search success of 1 in 3 for elves and 1 in 4 for everyone else.

Snyads never fight, trusting their lightning reflexes. Any human or demihuman with Strength 12 can catch one with a successful attack roll; a captive kicks and wriggles but never bites, afraid of being bitten back. Their high Dexterity gives +3 on saves against spells that can be dodged. They live in small families and mate for life.