Powrie [Shadow Fey]

Powrie are sprite-sized, with wiry beards, sharp feral teeth, serpent eyes and wasp wings. Their caps are dyed red in victims' blood, and they wear crimson or scarlet tunics with long sashes that double as garrotes. A powrie can become a red wasp, hornet or similar stinging flyer such as a mud dauber or ichneumon wasp, for up to three hours total in a day. Rude to friend and foe alike, they gave rise to the saying that a nasty person has 'a red tongue' or 'a powrie's voice'.

Powrie revel in bloodshed. Their daggers deal 1 point, and their needle teeth bite for 1d4; a bitten victim saves vs. poison or is blinded as per blindness. A shrill scream forces everyone within 30 feet to save vs. spell or be deafened as by deafness. They can also twist their faces into a manic grin and gape impossibly wide; anyone within 30 feet who sees it saves vs. spell or is affected as by fear.

They backstab as 5th-level thieves for triple damage, and because their blades are so small they always coat them with type O poison first. Powrie cast illusion/phantasm spells as 5th-level mages.

Platinum weapons or weapons of +3 or better harm them; steel, which covers most ordinary arms, fails even if magical, as do lightning and electricity. Each round in direct sun burns a powrie for 1 point, or 1 point per turn under cloud. Their infravision reaches 120 feet.

They live in small paper houses like big wasp nests, entered only through tiny holes that require insect form. Inside, the clutter is trophies taken from victims.

Relentless predators that nothing deters, powrie thrive under the Prince of Shadows as his eyes and ears. When they meet a truly vile rogue or mercenary who proves utterly base, they may take him to the hidden shadow realm to become a changeling.