Vexgit

I’ve touched on this a little bit before, but one of the odd things about Pathfinder’s gremlins is that there isn’t really a “default” species.  Jinkins have the more classical gremlin look, but it’s vexgits who display the gremlins’ characteristic antipathy toward machines.  If gremlins represent nature’s “ability to dismantle, decompose, erode, and reclaim,” as Fey Revisited puts it, vexgits are the most direct expression of nature’s antipathy toward not just the works of Man in general, but machines themselves—in all their complicated, accident-prone glory—in particular.

On their own and in small groups, vexgits are good low-level encounters, especially if your party has a fondness for firearms, machinery, or alchemy.  But even at higher levels, they’re excellent for complicating encounters.  Fighting monsters on, say, an experimental airship is bad enough.  But trying to fight monsters while vexgits are tearing the ship apart all around you ought to make even mid-level PCs burst out into sweats… 

Say it with me now: “There’s a gremlin on the side of the dirigible!”

The walled town of Thurvin is under siege!  And having seen his enemy erecting siege towers just out of catapult range, the lord of Thurvin has a desperate plan.  He gathers together a group of novice adventurers—each a son or daughter of one of his trusted advisors—and instructs them to descend into the dungeons beneath the city.  They have 48 hours to brave dire rats, venomous snakes, and magical snares in order to capture a mob of vexgits—alive.  Then, gods willing, they will need to sneak the creatures behind enemy lines and set them free upon the siege engines.

The vexgit Gowltimble has found a delightful new game to play: He has turned his talent for warping machinery into constructing traps and cages to hold an attic whisperer’s many “playmates.”  The pair has settled in the rooms below the broken clock tower on Market Street.  This ideal location ensures that the attic whisperer has a steady supply of young victims to lure away and the gremlin has plenty of rusty gears, springs, coils, and other bric-a-brac with which to construct his cruel devices.

Scaffold lives up to its name: It’s an entire city built on a mountain-sized structure of iron trusses and buttresses—the remnant of a long-lost civilization.  Along the innumerable balconies, ropewalks, and cable car lines, humans, gnomes, and the windborne (sylphs) duel for territory with hobgoblins and spire drakes.  But the true enemies of Scaffold are the vexgits that lurk in the unused nooks and crannies of the soaring city.  Hobs and humans have actually been known to break off mid-battle and go vexgit hunting together after spotting one of the creatures, so hated are the evil fey for their life-threatening pranks.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 145

Sigh.  I hate having to rewrite an entire entry because I left my rough draft on my work computer.  D’oh!

More on all the gremlin varieties can be found in Tim Hitchcock’s chapter on them in Fey Revisited.