Mite

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These small creatures are not a race unto themselves, but rather grotesque, spiritually poisoned sprites that have become consumed by their baleful vices and compulsions. Hating other sprites and themselves, their obsession with malevolence has mutated their minds and their bodies. Malignant and cruel, sometimes in pairs or threesomes, these creatures steal away from the sun, seeking dark places and victims for themselves.

Mites are very clever and will hone themselves as thieves, rising as high as 5th level. They specialize in skullduggery and especially in setting and removing traps. Though small, they will arrange trap doors and sliding chutes intended to imprison their victims in small traps, where they can be patiently poisoned, starved or bled to death. Mites prefer the taste of larger humanoids, disdaining the taste of other food and particular of good faeries. The more disdainful the humanoid, the better the flesh tastes to a mite.

The bite of a mite is toxic and has the potential to impart some of the mite's malefic nature to the subject in the form of a curse. Any who are bitten must make a saving throw against magic, receiving a +1 bonus for every point of wisdom above 12. Once cursed, victims will be apparently unaffected, but will immediately refuse to harm a mite, or prevent a mite from taking action. Until the curse is lifted, the victim will be unable to spare opponents, resist taunts that encourage the victim to fight or flee a fight unless reduced to less than 20% of their hit points. This will persist even after the mite is dead, as a part of the mite lives on in the victim.

Mites will often create complex tunnels near potential victims, with these passages being as small as four inches in diameter. Mites are particularly fond of targeting isolated farms, waiting for their chance to kill off members of the humanoid family one by one, often succeeding in doing so without alerting the residents as to what is happening.

See Bestiary.