Skin Thief

Skin thieves are grotesque beast-folk who prowl the wild places of the misty dread realm in small clans. They kill people for their skins, then wear those hides to take on the looks of the dead.

Undisguised, a skin thief is a hunched, shambling humanoid with a bearlike face and thick dark fur. Its arms are unusually long, and each knotted hand has eight fingers ending in pointed nails 8-16 inches long. They deck themselves in clothing and jewelry stolen from victims, above all rings, bracers and other trinkets that show off their nails.

Lacking any tongue of their own, they speak a strange patchwork stitched together from scraps of dozens of others.

Not bright but full of low cunning, they nearly always strike at night and try to cut a victim off from help. In their natural forms they often split into small bands, one making a distracting racket while the others close in from the sides. If any are wearing a stolen skin, those use the disguise to lure a target away.

Once committed, they fight wildly, slashing with two long claws for 1d6 each and biting with rows of sharp teeth for 1d4. A wet, eerie snuffling accompanies their attacks. They pick on prey they think weaker and usually flee an even fight, preferring to hunt rather than be hunted.

A worn skin is fragile. Each hit on the wearer forces a crushing blow save for the hide, rolled as thin wood, and failure rips it open, revealing the beast and destroying the disguise for good.

These nomads roam empty country and hang around the edges of settled lands, favoring trade routes and thinly peopled areas where small groups of humans, their preferred source of food, disguises and jewelry, are easy to catch.

A clan holds two to three families and is led by whoever can bully the rest most effectively, so a chief's reign seldom outlasts a few months and leadership is constantly changing. They have no permanent homes, sheltering in caves or crude lean-tos for a month at most before moving on.

They also like to wipe out a small caravan or farm and move in for a while, wearing their victims' skins and acting out a twisted imitation of human life, even dealing with other people to draw in more prey. Sooner or later their behavior and clumsy speech give them away.

Petty and cruel, they torment those weaker than themselves. No one is sure where they came from, though most scholars think they descend from humans whose forebears took up cannibalism and whose children came to bear the stamp of that savagery. They make almost nothing themselves and steal nearly everything they own; the coveted jewelry is the only thing of real value they carry.