Wryback

Wrybacks are spiteful scavengers named for their warped, rubbery shape. An adult stands three feet tall and weighs about 50 pounds, with gray or black hide sometimes tinted blue or green. The squat, wide head carries bulging catlike eyes of oily blue or sickly green, slit nostrils on a stub of a nose, and a wide mouth of curved, needle-fine teeth.

Their short arms and legs are crooked and apelike. Each hand has three fingers and a thumb tipped with hooked ivory claws; the prehensile feet have four fingers and a thumb with flat nails and handle most delicate work. Thick pads on palms and soles let them move almost silently (90%) and scale stone that is not perfectly smooth, along with wood or anything else their claws can pierce. They walk, scamper on all fours or swing from starship beams.

Wrybacks claw when they must, but prefer to strike from hiding. Even watchful guards notice them only 50% of the time, and foes take -3 on surprise rolls. Their infravision reaches only 30 feet, but their eyes gather five times the light a human's do and glow eerily blue in the gloom. With hearing sharper than an elf's, they gain +1 on their own surprise rolls.

Instead of bones they have thin gristle rods wrapped in tough muscle, which explains the twisted look. Reduce any fall by 30 feet before figuring damage. A blunt weapon simply flattens the body; it inflicts only 1 point, and only if the wielder also succeeds at a bend bars/lift gates roll.

A site that feeds one usually feeds three or four, so groups are the rule. They stow away in cargo or climb mooring lines into the holds of ships and starships, and they plague granaries, warehouses, sewers, ruins, dungeons and any other place vermin love.

Their homeworld is unknown, but stowing away has spread them to nearly every inhabited system.

They make clumsy but effective thieves, built for prying and gripping. A lone wryback that spends ten minutes on a door or lid has an effective Strength of 16 to force it, provided it is not made wholly of stone, metal or another material its claws cannot dent. Each additional helper adds 2 points, to a maximum of 19.

One trait suits life in the void. Exposed to poison gas or deadly air, a wryback automatically falls into a deathlike trance that consumes no air and can last forever, reviving 1d4+1 rounds after good air returns. When facing death in a fight, it has a 30% chance to play dead deliberately, waking in 1d3 hours. Awake, it uses half a person's share of air on a starship.

They multiply by budding: a pregnant female sprouts 1d4+1 back warts that split open after about 10 weeks, each releasing a tiny, complete wryback of 1d3 hit points. These grow up in about eight weeks and live 25-30 years.