Quickling [Brownie]

Quicklings are slight, miniature elflike beings with sharp, feral faces and big pointed ears that jut up past the top of the head. Their eyes are cold and cruel, lit by a pinpoint of yellow. Their hair is usually silver or snow white over skin that ranges from blue-white to pale blue. They wear fine, brightly colored clothes, favoring silver and black in both fabric and metal, but never armor or anything bulky.

Their language resembles the speech of brownies and buckawns but is spoken so fast that outsiders hear only a blur of noise; to talk with others they must deliberately slow down. Most (85%) also speak true brownie, and many speak common, pixie, or halfling.

A motionless quickling is 100% invisible, and even moving it is 90% invisible; where it can dash between cover, as in woods or a boulder field, it stays 100% unseen. Its speed and agility make it far deadlier than its size suggests. It attacks three times per round and appears only as a blur, which accounts for its excellent Armor Class. When a hostile effect allows a save to avoid damage, it saves as a 19th-level priest.

Its slim needle daggers deal 1d3 to man-sized or smaller targets and 1d2 to larger ones. Leaders have a 75% chance of using blades poisoned to knock victims unconscious, with a save vs. poison required after every hit. Quicklings can also, by simple will and without any casting ritual, use dig, fire charm, forget, levitate, shatter, and ventriloquism, each once per day, though only one can be active at a time.

Long ago their ancestors were ordinary brownies who went seeking dark magical power, perhaps meaning to use it well, and were twisted by it instead. The gentle woodland folk became savage hunters who regard every other humanoid as prey. They live in extended family clans as buckawns do, each led by a 3 Hit Die individual; clans of more than ten have two such leaders plus a 4 Hit Die elder.

They haunt evil places: groves of warped, sinister trees, poisoned or cursed springs, and overgrown lands once held by powerful chaotic beings. They deal with outsiders only to further their own wicked ends, sometimes allying with imps, quasits, or wicked wizards and priests, combinations that threaten every good creature nearby.

Their racing metabolism makes them the shortest-lived of all sylvan races. A quickling matures in under a year, is fully adult by two, grows old by ten, and usually dies before 12. None has been known to pass 15 without powerful magic.