Urban

Tooth fairies are fey created when a willful child’s tooth (or, rarely, a whole child) is buried in a place with strong connections to the mysterious realm of the fey. Wicked and capricious, tooth fairies delight in spreading fear and pain, and have a perverse need to steal the teeth of humanoid creatures. Each night, gangs of tooth fairies stalk humanoid settlements, using their magic to confuse and distract their victims, and reveling in the looks of horror on their victims’ faces as the fey suddenly appear out of the darkness with their dirty, bloody pliers. The fairies then lull their targets to sleep and get to work at claiming their prizes. Some cautious fairies bite their targets to paralyze them and ensure the victims can’t wriggle away from the fairy’s grasping pliers; others enjoy the sounds of creatures awakening to their own screams as the fairy torments them with harsh pinches and painful tugs on fingers, teeth, or eyelids. Tooth fairies use stolen teeth either to replace their own lost teeth (if the stolen teeth are small) or to decorate their dwellings, which usually lie inside abandoned buildings or knotholes in trees. Used as stools, carved into minuscule sculptures, or worn as crowns, the prized teeth serves as trophies of their successful raids.

Dire rats grow up to 2 feet long and weigh up to 25 pounds. They are common menaces in dungeons and city sewers alike.

Grimples are filthy urban scavengers that lurk beneath the eaves of abandoned buildings, clock towers, belfries, and steeples. Sickly-looking and ragged, they shed constantly as a result of the small parasites they host. Quick climbers, grimples also have loose flaps of skin that stretch between their arms and allow them to glide short distances. Grimples despise humans and show it by attacking drunks, unlocking stables, torturing guard dogs, and loosening hanging storefront signs so that they fall on people. This does not stop them from sometimes allying with humans and other humanoids, but such collaborations are always temporary, as a grimple is ever plotting betrayal. Although a grimple is often arrogant and overbearing, its ability to vomit at will (and propensity for doing so constantly) remains its most unappealing quality. Voracious omnivores, grimples feast off garbage. They frequently target inns, restaurants, and other places where they can scavenge a steady supply of food.

Ratfolk are small, rodentlike humanoids often found traveling in nomadic trading caravans or perhaps dwelling in colonies in slums, sewers, and other normally undesirable urban sectors. Tinkerers and hoarders by nature, many ratfolk are shrewd merchants, carefully navigating the shifting alliances of black markets and bazaars. They love their stockpiles of interesting items far more than money, and would rather trade for more baubles to add to their hoards than for mere coins. Ratfolk are extremely communal, and live in large warrens with plenty of hidden crannies in which to stash their hoards or flee in times of danger, gravitating toward subterranean tunnels or tightly packed tenements in city ghettos. They feel an intense bond with their large families and kin networks, as well as with ordinary rodents of all sorts, living in chaotic harmony and fighting fiercely to defend each other when threatened. Ratfolk are generally 4 feet tall and weigh 80 pounds. They often wear robes to conceal their forms in cities, as they know other humanoids find their rodent features distasteful.

RATFOLK CHARACTERS
Ratfolk are defined by their class levels—they do not possess racial Hit Dice. All ratfolk have the following racial traits.
–2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence: Ratfolk are agile and clever, yet physically weak.
Small: Ratfolk are Small and gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a –1 penalty on CMB and to CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.
Darkvision: Ratfolk can see in the dark up to 60 feet.
Tinker: Ratfolk gain a +2 bonus on Craft (alchemy), Perception, and Use Magic Device checks.
Rodent Empathy: Ratfolk gain a +4 bonus on Handle Animal checks made to influence rodents.
Swarming: See above.
Languages: Ratfolk begin play speaking Common. Ratfolk with high intelligence can choose from any of the following bonus languages: Aklo, Draconic, Dwarven, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, Half ling, Orc, and Undercommon.

According to legend, when exceedingly vain individuals die prematurely, their spirits may live on in the hair cut from their heads shortly before or after their deaths. Such stories might explain the existence of animate hair, a living creature composed entirely of hair. The collected strands interact like an ooze, allowing the creature to shape itself and move across surfaces. It can also form pseudopods to grab or pull itself along. Animate hair possesses an uncanny ability to make itself more appealing, and can shape itself into an attractive, and often quite complex, wig. Animate hair is carnivorous, and can survive by hunting the small animals that inhabit urban environments. Animate hair’s preferred prey, however, is humanoids. By disguising itself as a wig, animate hair is able to subtly influence the creature that wears it. At first, the hair merely makes its host more vain, but when the opportunity presents itself, the animate hair compels its host to murder. Though not particularly intelligent, animate hair possesses lingering instincts that cause it to urge these murders cautiously, and usually only when its host is unobserved.  Each animate hair has a preferred type of victim, perhaps influenced by its former life. The hair of an executed criminal might target judges, while that of a murdered debutante might target young women.

Akanames, or filth lickers, are grotesque beings that live in sewers and dank caves. At night, they creep into humanoid settlements in search of their favorite food: the grime that accumulates in abandoned or unwashed houses. They are especially fond of the filth in unsanitary baths and toilets. Akanames are shy and avoid humanoids, but dislike being disturbed while they feed, and are known to attack individuals who get up to relieve themselves in the dark of night.  Most akanames are solitary scavengers, claiming a single town or city borough as their territory. Akanames hold an almost religious reverence for otyughs, and the presence of one of the massive aberrations can attract several akanames to a single location. During their nightly feedings, zealous akanames gather filth to bring back as offerings to their otyugh. In addition to serving as an object of worship, the otyugh also provides protection for the akanames’ communal lair.  Akanames resemble goblins with warty, reddish-brown skin and greasy, often patchy black hair. Their fingers and toes are broad like those of a house gecko, allowing them to cling to nearly any surface. Their joints bend in multiple directions, enabling them to wriggle through tight spaces. Akanames stand 3 feet tall when erect, but they most often move about on all fours.  An akaname’s most distinctive feature is its grotesque tongue, which is as long as the creature is tall. Akanames drag their tongues along the ground to lick up filth, but they can also use them to manipulate objects or bludgeon their opponents. The filth an akaname eats collects in the folds and grooves of its tongue, making it an effective carrier of disease.  A rare few akanames grow to be human size. These creatures gain the giant simple template and their tongue attack has a reach of 10 feet.

Sneaky and sadistic, jinkins are hideous gremlins that inhabit the dark places underground. Well acclimated to the shadows, they hide in cramped quarters and attack larger creatures when they’re strategically positioned. Jinkins commonly work with or near larger or more powerful creatures; these larger creatures provide cover for the jinkins’ trickery. They use dimension door to exit any battle that goes badly, taking any stolen goods with them. Jinkins delight in leading larger creatures into dangerous caves or pits, usually by lunging out of the shadows to make a single sneak attack against a creature and then running away, taking care while “f leeing” to remain visible to their target so that they can lure the victim into a trap. Jinkins also hold dangerous grudges, and one might follow a creature that supposedly slighted it for weeks, looking for an opportunity to take revenge. This revenge can take many forms, from leading horses astray to contaminating food supplies to directing larger monsters toward the begrudged creature. One of the most direct and unwelcome revenges of the jinkins is the destruction or cursing of magical items. Many times they’ll observe camped enemies from a distance and either steal an item to tinker with it or just use their tinkering magic at a distance to annoy the item’s owner. Once a jinkin has worked its sabotage on a stolen item, the jinkin either grows bored with the item or may attempt to return it to its owner. Jinkin lairs are often cluttered with stolen items that bear curses the jinkins themselves have forgotten all about. Dwarves in particular hate jinkins, with numerous tales in their folklore telling of tragedy at the hands of the gremlins. The loathing is largely mutual. The average jinkin stands almost 2 feet tall and weighs about 13 pounds.

Most often found in urban environments, this gremlin lives among humanity, taunting religious and scholarly organizations with its pranks. Monaciello gremlins are most commonly found in monasteries and cathedrals where they wriggle their way up from the sewers and catacombs to play tricks on the devout. These tricksters pull blankets off sleeping clergy members, harass servants, spoil food, and hide valuables from their owners. Enamored with gold, they often overinf late the value of things with illusions, and even throw handfuls of gold coins (or illusions of gold coins if they are feeling especially stingy) to distract creatures on their trail. They pull these coins from their ever-present magical bags, confident they can always pilfer more. A monaciello stands 2-1/2 feet tall and weighs approximately 20 pounds.

Maniacally destructive little brutes, vexgits delight in scrapping and sabotaging the works of larger races. The larger and more complicated the target, the better. While one of these spiteful gremlins might delight in trapping someone behind a door with a jammed lock, loosening the wheels on a carriage, or sneakily removing all the nails from a small boat, it’s when groups of vexgits get together that they’re truly dangerous. In such instances, the portcullis of a vexgit-infested gatehouse turns into a deadly weapon, while a clock tower becomes an avalanche of gears waiting to topple. Engineers warn apprentices of masterful constructions destroyed by these unruly gremlins, with many blaming their greatest failures on such tiny saboteurs. Like most gremlins, vexgits prefer to live underground, but cities and the devices they find there fascinate them, often drawing mobs of the dangerous fey to sewer tunnels and abandoned warehouses. Vexgits stand 1-1/2 feet tall and weigh approximately 16 pounds.

Swarms of flesh-eating cockroaches are extremely virulent pests. Normally carnivorous scavengers, these vermin quickly transform into aggressive hunters when amassed in great numbers, actively seeking out territory and food and gravitating to locations that readily provide both, such as dumps, graveyards, sewers, swamps, and other foul areas filled with rotting waste. Although a flesh-eating cockroach swarm prefers to feed on rot and carrion, these ravenous creatures do not balk at attacking living creatures as large as an elephant if given a chance.

Once, the entities that would become known as contemplatives were relatively normal humanoids, notable only for their extreme intelligence. At some point in the distant past, however, their race discovered a great secret within itself, unlocking the mind’s potential for such sought-after mental powers as telekinesis. Evolution— whether natural or forced by the contemplatives themselves—made their incredible brains the sole focus of their advancement, and as the contemplatives grew to rely more and more on their psychic abilities, their limbs withered and shrank. Today, a contemplative’s massive brain makes up roughly 80 percent of its body weight. Below the pulsating and partially translucent sac that protects the vital organ, the rest of its body hangs almost vestigially, used for little more than breathing and processing food. Movement, speech, and the manipulation of objects are handled by the creatures’ psychic abilities, resulting in a collection of eerily quiet figures that float slowly and precisely along the halls of their fortresses, mulling over ideas that only their advanced brains are capable of understanding. Though alien in appearance and demeanor, contemplatives are rarely malicious; instead, when their unexplainable goals bring them into conf lict with other races, it can generally be assumed that they have good reasons for their actions, though this may be of little comfort to those inconvenienced by the far-seeing brain-people’s schemes. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the contemplatives, however, is the chance that their abhorrent, brain-centric form may in fact be the ultimate destination of all humanoid evolution. A typical contemplative weighs roughly 100 pounds and measures 4 feet in diameter, though it prefers to float at the eye level of whomever it’s talking to. When it speaks inside another creature’s head, its voice is monotone and seems to come from everywhere at once, and when multiple contemplatives are encountered, they almost always use the pronoun “we” rather than the individual “I.”

A garden ooze is an animate, acidic mass of protoplasmic goo that dwells among foliage and scavenges proteins in the form of carrion or small animals that blunder into its vicinity. Although garden oozes are occasionally found in underground regions near the surface—such as sewers, sinkholes, and shallow caves—these oozes prefer the outdoors. One reason for this is that garden oozes are attracted to large collections of organic material where other tiny creatures might come to scavenge. Quick and cunning hunters when compared to most oozes, garden oozes are particularly dangerous because they readily attack creatures that wander nearby regardless of the creatures’ size. Oozes that sense prey moving closer are likely to wait to attack until the potential meal is within reach. The oozes also give chase when prey flees. Garden oozes innately change hue to match the ground underneath them, so they can be hard to spot. When a garden ooze attacks, it lashes out with a whiplike appendage coated with a potent flesh-eating acid. If injured, the ooze releases a disgusting stench that makes it harder to fight off. Further, when one garden ooze attacks, any other garden oozes nearby join in, piling on and making escape all but impossible. Fortunately for larger potential prey, most garden oozes are quite small, the largest among them reaching 3 feet in diameter before they split into smaller oozes. These oozes are also known as rat-catcher oozes or compost oozes, and some brave gardeners actually encourage the growth of such oozes in their gardens as a way to combat pests. Once the pests are under control, however, the oozes themselves must be hunted and slain before the garden is safe to tend.

An ancestral curse hangs over liminal sprites that prevents them from sleeping either inside a building or outside in the open. Fortunately for these sprites, a loophole exists that allows them to find rest within the external features of a building. As a result, liminal sprites make their homes under eaves, porches, and staircases.  Liminal sprites are fascinated by the arts, philosophy, and social intrigues of humanoids, which they experience vicariously from their hiding places, and with which they are often moved to interfere. They use their magic to bind the tongues of the witty and steal thoughts from the wise, returning them only after the moment in which they would have been useful has passed, thus adding insult to injury.  The sprites must be subtle, however, lest their unwitting hosts turn against them. They especially fear domestic animals turned loose near their hideaways. On the other hand, a homeowner who appeases the sprite with flattery and gifts finds his own eloquence improved. A 7th-level chaotic spellcaster can gain a liminal sprite as a familiar with the Improved Familiar feat, though she must take pains to find her familiar a suitable place to rest each night.  Liminal sprites stand 1 to 1-1/2 feet tall, and their mothlike wings stretch to a similar distance. Liminal sprites follow the local fashions of their city, modeling their clothes after those worn by nobles and celebrities.

Nuglub gremlins are deranged; they enjoy combat with a manic glee that other gremlins reserve for destroying devices or creating complex traps. Indeed, they spend long hours sharpening their claws, filing their teeth, and looking for the perfect ledge from which to leap into the fray. If combat doesn’t come to them, they seek it out, entering villages and killing innocents by night. Their idea of a good time is murder so silent that the victim never wakes up, so the family members find the remains the next morning and accuse one another of the atrocity. Nuglubs jealously attack armored foes, as the gremlins’ hunchbacked forms make it diff icult to wear armor made for other humanoids. A group may use its heat metal and shocking grasp abilities to weaken an opponent before mobbing it and trying to knock the foe prone. As soon as an enemy falls to the ground, all nuglubs descend on that target in a frenzy of bloodlust, grappling and biting, holding on like perverse leeches until nothing remains. Though less technically inclined than some of their kin, nuglubs like using traps. Unlike most gremlins, who prefer to sabotage existing machines, nuglubs delight in the stealthy construction of traps in areas their victims consider familiar, rigging these painful and often deadly surprises on front doors, around the floor of beds, or near cribs in nurseries. Nuglubs are the brutes of gremlin-kind. Groups of nuglubs remain small, as they tend to quarrel with each other and cannibalize those on the wrong side of an angry argument. Lone nuglubs often work with other gremlins, as they like proving they’re the strongest, and aren’t likely to kill and eat their smaller allies (though those slain by other enemies are fair game for a little snacking). Nuglubs typically stand 2-1/2 feet tall and weigh approximately 25 pounds.

The ratling is a hideous amalgamation of rat and human: a long-haired rodent with handlike front paws and a face reminiscent of the face of a leering old man. Within the ratling’s humanoid mouth are long, yellow incisors more akin to those one might find in the jaws of a rat. Ratlings are carnivores. While they can subsist on grubs, other rodents, and carrion, they prefer living food and fresh blood, particularly that of humanoid children and elderly folk. They also have a sense for magic, and lurk around temples and universities searching for scraps of knowledge or overlooked books and scrolls to steal. Ratlings associate with common rats and even mate with them, producing anything from large, aggressive rats (often with vestigial humanlike features or other sickening deformities) to infant ratlings to deformed rats. In a mixed litter, the infant ratling usually kills and eats its siblings, then arranges the dismembered and disemboweled corpses in semi-occult patterns. Elder ratlings often gain the advanced simple template or levels in cleric, oracle, witch, or wizard (a rare few gain rogue levels, especially if they associate with a thieves’ guild or wererats). These elders often become leaders of their own kind, creating cabals organized like the universities they frequently inhabit. If the ratling can gain a familiar, it usually chooses a rat—an association that often brings with it more than mere supernatural companionship. Ratlings can never select another ratling as a familiar. A chaotic evil spellcaster can gain a ratling as a familiar at 7th level by taking the Improved Familiar feat. A ratling familiar gains commune once per week as a spell-like ability, which it can use on its master’s behalf. The master usually allows the familiar to drink her blood at least once per week. A ratling measures just over 2 feet long (although half that length is its long, ratty tail) and weighs 10 pounds.

Natural wererats tend to be short and wiry, with constantly darting eyes and frequent nervous twitches. Males often have thin, ragged moustaches. Wererats prefer cities where they can blend in with the humanoid and rat population. Their abilities make them especially good at thieving and spying, and in many cities the thieves’ guild employs numerous wererat members.

An ahkhat is an elemental entity that dwells within a single building or structure. An ahkhat exists solely to maintain and protect that structure. Far from a mere butler, an ahkhat is a structure’s consciousness incarnate. Ahkhats are bound and attuned to their structures via a special keystone, usually a heavy stone block. The keystone must be part of a structure’s foundation or cornerstone, or an actual keystone within an arch. The keystone is typically carved with an icon of a humanoid figure, beneath which is written the ahkhat’s name. Anyone in possession of or touching the keystone who speaks the name can attempt to compel the ahkhat to do his will, including forcing the ahkhat inside the keystone to accept residence in a new structure, though ahkhats moving to new buildings prefer to have their original stones moved as well.

An attic whisperer spawns as the result of a lonely or neglected child’s death. Rather than animating the body of the dead youth, the creature rises from an amalgam of old toys, clothing, dust, and other objects associated with the departed—icons of the child’s neglect. The widely varying materials that fuse together to form these creatures lead to attic whisperers with vastly different appearances. Attic whisperers linger in the places where they were formed, typically old homes, orphanages, schools, debtors’ prisons, workhouses, and similar places where children might be discarded. When an attic whisperer first forms, it does so without a skull—this does not impact the creature’s abilities in any way, but it usually seeks out a small animal’s skull as a form of decoration soon after it manifests. An attic whisperers haunts shadowy, forgotten places like old buildings and dilapidated institutions, places that were once homes to both young children and subtle evils. Hiding in drafty attics and moldy basements, an attic whisperer might lie dormant for decades while the quick go about their lives—often a scant floor away. The coming of a new child, though, rekindles some hope in the creature, its animating spirits motivated by loneliness, and ever seeking comfort and companionship. Once an attic whisperer finds a potential playmate, it does all it can to ensure it will never be lonely again by attempting to lure its friend to it, singing nursery rhymes, leaving trails of old toys, or calling out in the stolen voices of other children. Destroying an attic whisperer reduces it to its component parts, usually consisting of dusty junk left to molder in the attics of old houses, though a few items, such as china dolls, small lockets, music boxes, precious marbles, fine teacups, sculpted metal soldiers, or the like, may have some value.

Jolly tricksters, tanukis love deceiving humanoids and other intelligent creatures. This mischief is usually harmless, but can turn spiteful in some situations. Popular folklore stories claim tanukis are the transformed souls of tools and housewares that were used for more than 100 years, a myth that probably results from tanukis’ ability to magically create or alter objects. Mostly encountered in disguise, tanukis enjoy visiting humanoid settlements and interacting with the people. They usually visit taverns and eateries, joining in feasts and celebrations whenever possible. Tanukis always change their disguises and rarely visit the same town twice in the same month. Tanuki mischief becomes spiteful to those who defile nature. Hunters who kill for sport or those who log trees from the forest without seeding new ones find their weapons and tools transformed into bowls and teacups. Tanukis also put more effort into their pranks when the target is a braggart, a bully, or someone of poor moral character. They like to prank brooding types as well, always hoping to bring a smile to the hard faces of such dour folk. Because of their trickster nature, tanukis get along with many fey creatures. Some tanukis even deal well with spirits, often helping them pass from this world. Though rare, violent and morbid tanukis occasionally walk the lands, bringing suffering to those they encounter. Filled with spite, these evil tanukis pull sadistic pranks, and horror stories tell of tanukis killing old women and tricking their husbands into eating soups made from their flesh. A tanuki is 5 feet tall and weighs 180 pounds.

Tenomes are hideous predators that stalk the fringes of civilization, ambushing travelers and invading the homes of rural families to feast on their bones. They typically try to get close to their victims before attacking, hiding the monstrous elements of their appearance with hooded cloaks or voluminous robes, or lying in wait along darkened trails. They avoid attacking groups that heavily outnumber them, preferring to patiently track potential prey and strike when they can take victims one at a time.  Nocturnal creatures, tenomes often travel miles from their lairs under the cover of night to terrorize rural communities. They typically rotate their hunting grounds and try to cover their tracks when farmers organize to defend their lands or locate the tenomes’ lairs. Their preferred diet of liquefied bones results in hideous corpses that can cause incredible fear in communities, and tenomes know this—they often seek to leave their boneless victims on display where they know the disgusting bodies will soon be found to deter pursuit.  Certain folktales suggest that tenomes originated as a supernatural punishment for a community that did not adequately care for its elderly. Whatever their true genesis was, these frightening monsters can now be found throughout the world, although they prefer to dwell in the fringes of urban regions. A tenome stands between 5 and 6 feet tall and weighs around 150 pounds.

An udaeus (plural udaeoi) is a fierce humanoid who’s obsessed with perfecting its skills at war. The first udaeoi were obedient warriors created by a deity out of dragon teeth, but now they are a distinct race and capable of reproducing on their own. Though an udaeus loves combat and is eager to demonstrate its abilities, it is violent only when it’s in an honorable battle; only a desperate or manipulated udaeus would resort to thuggery. Udaeoi resemble tall, athletic humans with bone-white skin and black hair. They mark themselves with tattoos or brands, usually of weapons, dragons, or battle scenes. When an udaeus hardens its flesh with its innate magic, these markings look like carvings and cracks in a marble statue. Udaeoi might hire themselves out as mercenaries or serve as soldiers in a local army. Udaeoi prefer to fight alongside their own kind, and a squadron usually comprises members of the same fighting company or family unit.

Rejected from the courts of the fey realms, danthiennes— sometimes called gossip pixies—nevertheless delight in courtly intrigue. They adore the trappings of wealth and class, but lack a deeper understanding of politics, and focus most of their energy on personal entertainment and accumulating wardrobes of rich fabrics and random jewelry. These tiny fey spend their time skulking around academies, guilds, and noble courts, stealing valuables and influencing mortal minds to create drama.  When they do reveal their presence, danthiennes portray themselves as wish granters, offering to make a person’s dreams come true in exchange for services and treasures. In reality, they have no special gift to grant wishes and rely on their magic, bluffs, and mundane theft to uphold their end of any bargain. Danthiennes rarely operate alone, usually enticing a desperate courtier into serving them in exchange for popularity. More rarely, they assemble lesser fey into mock courts, drafting unsuspecting mortals into their sometimes-deadly intrigues. As degenerate, urban cousins of nymphs, they have the ability to bond with mortal creatures and invest them with passion and confidence—but the bond is a deadly one, slowly draining the life force from their temporary partners and ultimately leaving them catatonic.  Danthiennes stand just 10 inches tall and weigh only a few pounds, despite their plump forms.

Formed from the unquiet soul of a thief wrenched from life by a wicked trap, a gearghost delights in rigging up the same threats and tortures to which it succumbed. Eager to witness the deaths of others, the gearghost prowls the place of its death, constantly maintaining and resetting any traps in that area as it waits for victims to fall into its clutches. A gearghost also has the ability to create and set new traps, and as such its lair is usually choked with perilous new snares, spikes, and pits. A gearghost only keeps treasure as a lure for hapless adventurers, often using such treasure as the trigger for one of its devious creations.

Kikimoras are house spirits who torment those with whom they live unless the poor folk cater to and cajole them. They delight in stressing homeowners by using illusion magic to make the house look much filthier than it actually is; their favored illusions are those of scuttling vermin.  Kikimoras are enemies of brownies. While brownies can be mischievous, kikimoras often invite pain and frustration on their chosen housemates instead of helping chores along. Some brownies actively seek out kikimora-infested homes with the intention of driving out the disruptive fey creatures. When homeowners refuse to appease a resident kikimora (or can’t rid themselves of her devious presence), the kikimora visits upon them a swarm of spiders, rats, or bats. Because of the subtle tricks these fey employ, inhabitants in homes plagued by kikimoras often believe they have been beset by ghosts.  Kikimoras love secretly breaking things or making such destruction seem like an accident. They proceed to trick the people in the house into leaving gifts in return for making repairs at night, much to the indignation of brownies, who view such gifts as payments for services rendered and resent the kikimoras’ transformation of such agreements into coercion.

Often found in city sewers, rat kings squirm through the muck and darkness, spreading disease and searching for food. Composed of no fewer than half a dozen rats knotted together at the tail, a rat king has one consciousness rather than many, increasing its intellect beyond that of a normal rat, and granting the rat king a cunning that allows it to stalk its prey and use improved tactics against its enemies and rivals. Known by subterranean creatures for being plague carriers, rat kings are shunned by most creatures other than rats. Some humanoids that live beneath cities (such as morlocks, derros, and mites) use rat kings in their lairs as protectors or as a way to increase the deadliness of the dire rats they use for protection. City-dwellers see rat kings as a bad omen and fear that encountering the terrifying creatures will bring sickness and death to the entire settlement. The mere sighting of a rat king may result in the quarantine of multiple city blocks. Some students of monster lore believe that a rat king begins as a group of normal rats that nested in too cramped a warren, their tails entwined and hopelessly knotted with filth and eventually growing together, and that this strange bond leads to a cooperative existence and fused mind. Naturalists studying creatures like this postulate that there could be other species of creatures susceptible to this phenomenon. Others argue that an outside influence is the only explanation for the creature’s existence, perhaps as a result of derro experimentation or the work of a mad ratfolk or wererat alchemist. A rat king is approximately 3 feet across and weighs 15 pounds.

The rope dragon is a strange and capricious shapeshifting trickster that sneaks about, disguising itself as and hiding among ordinary rope. Rope dragons most commonly use their abilities to sneak into bakeries, confectionaries, and the food stores of the wealthy in order to steal sweet and expensive foods and escape undetected. A rope dragon reserves its other main use of its shapeshifting talents— setting up pranks and traps—for those who attempt to seek out or capture it, usually after the dragon has had its way with their pantries. Those who offer food willingly to a rope dragon, or at least don’t mind the dragon’s pilfering ways, are rarely the victims of the dragon’s whimsy, and may find that when their lives or livelihoods are truly threatened, their small draconic ally uses its tricks and traps to protect them.  Rope dragons rarely interact with their own kind except to mate, but they sometimes grow curious about other places and sneak along with travelers, wanderers, or adventurers by pretending to be part of that most iconic piece of adventuring gear: the 50-foot rope. While this may cause the rope dragon’s unwitting transporter to experience an inexplicably dwindling food supply, in the end, a rope dragon doesn’t want to be left in some monster’s lair. The carrier of a rope dragon is in for a real surprise when she gets into a fight that she can’t win on her own and her rope comes to life to assist in fending off the monster. Rope dragons dislike it when other creatures become aware of their existence, however, so a rope dragon abandons such an adventurer at the first opportunity.

Griefgalls are pitiless psychic parasites that feed on emotions. Their bodies appear as tiny, squirming plant pods that closely resemble grubs. Long tendrils sprout from the pod, tipped with thorns that drip a paralytic sap. Shorter, blossoming filaments allow the creatures to see and hear. A griefgall must be implanted into a humanoid, and it quickly grows to full size, but can’t survive more than a week without a humanoid host. It attempts to conceal its body and tendrils within the host’s mouth. By extruding its filaments through the victim’s neck and scalp, it externalizes its sensory organs, disguising them as a flowery headdress or garland entwined with the victim’s hair.  A griefgall and the other griefgalls that sprout from its seedlings often form twisted family units by congregating in abandoned houses in sprawling urban areas. An elder griefgall, identifiable because it sprouts more and more tendrils as it ages, takes on the role of a matriarch.

Fueled by hatred and a need for vengeance, a revenant rises from the grave to hunt and kill its murderer. Devoid of any compassion, emotion, or logic, a revenant has but one purpose, and cannot rest until it has found vengeance.

Alien merchants that travel between planets and planes, witchwyrds stand 7 feet tall, weigh 300 pounds, and are covered in hairless blue-gray skin. Witchwyrds new to a market or eager to avoid identification during an important business deal fold their second sets of flexible arms behind their backs and dress in robes, the better to pass as a less-infamous humanoid race. Witchwyrds tend to prefer the driest, warmest regions of the areas they visit—perhaps an indicator of their mysterious home world.

Occult dragons infiltrate large urban centers in humanoid form to search for esoteric secrets and psychically charged artifacts to add to their hoards.

A devilbound creature has made a bargain with a devil, promising a service and its soul in exchange for infernal power. The specific service depends on the devil’s type and motivations, but always furthers the interests of Hell.

Sewer blights are unusual among their kind in that they thrive in artificial ecosystems rather than purely natural environs. These oozes prefer to lair in the sewers of large cities, and they see in the foul infestations, toxic fungi, and diseased creatures dwelling in such filthy warrens a sort of perverse rebuttal of civilization by the natural world. Those who dwell in the cities above are their preferred prey.  A sewer blight is 6 feet in diameter and weighs 300 pounds.