Brownie
Knee-high to a human, this large-headed creature has an almost manically friendly look on its expressive face.
The Exterminators met a brownie named Tangletop, or "Spookywisp" as he preferred, within the ruins of Gauntlight Keep. There, he convinced the party to retrieve a jeweled spyglass from a toy automaton.
Ecology and Society
Brownies make their homes in the trunks of hollow trees, small earthy burrows, and even under porches or within the crawl spaces of farmhouses. Often attired in clothes that appear to be made of plants or leaves, brownies wear belts lined with pouches and tools. Whatever language they choose to speak is often is riddled with odd pronunciations and colloquialisms. Their manner of speaking might call upon turns of phrase that are decades or even centuries out of vogue, for example, or they might mix up their metaphors in strange ways. It almost seems as if brownies adopt these quirky ways of speaking intentionally—certainly they do not react favorably to corrections to their chatter. There's often no swifter way to annoy a brownie than to try to correct its grammar. Brownies stand barely 2 feet tall and weigh about 20 pounds. When facing danger, brownies rarely engage in combat, preferring instead to confound and confuse their attackers in order to buy enough time for escape. Content with honest toil and the love of their kin, brownies maintain a pacifist nature, harassing creatures only to run them off or punish them for an insult. Despite this nature, all brownies carry a blade. They refer to their swords with a hint of disgust, and jokingly call their blades their “final trick,” reserving their use for the direst of circumstances.Personality
Honest to a fault, brownies take freely but always repay their debt through work or leave something behind as an offering. They may eat an apple from a farmer's orchard but harvest the entire tree as repayment. A brownie might eat an entire pie left on a windowsill, only to straighten up the kitchen or wash the dishes. A brownie can share a home with a family for years and years while avoiding detection. A family that is aware of a brownie in their midst usually finds this a beneficial relationship and leaves dishes of milk, pieces of fruit, trinkets, and sometimes even wine as gifts. In exchange, the resident brownie keeps the home clean, mends clothes, repairs tools, and shoos away vermin and small predators. Bragging about having a brownie in the house is the best way to lose one. Brownies distrust foxes and fear wolves, and they avoid farms with dogs.Brownies of Note
Tangletop
Geographic Distribution
