I’m fascinated by gremlins in Pathfinder, because I just
can't peg down the design philosophy behind them. There’s no “default” gremlin, like there was in the world’s
oldest role-playing game—jinkins kind of have
the look, but it’s the insectile vexgits who have the usual hatred of
machines. (And let’s be real: The
real default “gremlins” in Pathfinder are its iconic goblins anyway.) Pathfinder’s gremlins also don’t belong
to any one tradition like, say, the oni, or have a coherent feel despite being
borrowed from all over, like psychopomps.
Instead they’re a mishmash of physiognomies and abilities, both real
(that is, from our world’s folklore) and imagined. It’s like someone mixed up the Lego collections of Brian
Froud, Charles de Lint, Jorge Luis Borges, and Jim Henson all in the same
bucket and built whatever came to mind.
That’s not a knock against them; it's just
interesting—they're a monster family that defies easy categorization and
ordering…just like gremlins themselves.
So creating a gremlin out of Jenny Haniver, a Cockney name
for a bizarre Belgian tchotchke
(and I say that as a bizarre Belgian, if only by birth, myself) made out of a
mummified skate? Sure, why the
hell not?! And the fact is, it works, because the haniver is instantly
real-feeling in its own right. I
don’t question that it’s an actual creature because…well, it kind of is.
Every gremlin has a focus, and hanivers are about stealing
little treasures and objects of value.
That precious thing of yours that nevertheless managed to lose itself?—a
haniver’s doing, courtesy of its misplacement ability. The intrinsic worth of an object means
nothing to a haniver; it's another creatures desire for the object that gives stolen
things value to the fey.
At CR 1/2, hanivers are great aquatic/coastal encounters for
PCs just starting out. A
fishing village’s annual haniver hunt is not a bad way to throw together a
disparate group of PCs. And since
hanivers are congenital thieves, they can land PCs in hot water with the law at
a low enough level that 1st-level fighters are still a threat PCs will have to
take seriously.
It’s Hope Harbor’s
annual haniver roundup. Teams
of boats go out to catch as many of the troublesome gremlins as they can. Even landlubbers get into the act, as
having a properly prepared haniver hung on your door is meant to ward off ill
luck (or at least, more gremlins).
But this year’s hunt is fouled by a boating accident that may be a
murder, sightings of the mysterious shoal elves, and rumors that the hunt has
angered Magatha the Sea Witch…not to mention swarms of hanivers that prove
exceedingly difficult to net or kill.
A dwarven thane
demands to see a mermaid, pointing to a relic of his old adventuring days:
a dried and shriveled haniver. He
may be off his shop stool, but he strong-arms a group of young adventures into
hunting for “mermaids” with him.
When they actually do face the troublesome gremlins, he slips away…off
to meet a mermaid he fell in love with in his youth, whom he has secretly and
faithfully visited every 20 years since.
Usually hanivers
steal trinkets of little value to anyone but their owners. But when a haniver overhears a
power-hungry noble covet a young prince’s signet ring, it cannot resist the
theft…and inadvertently causes a crisis of succession. Now the prince’s guardians and the noble’s
retainers hunt the ring and each other.
The haniver realizes what he’s done can only cause trouble for him and
his kin, but the more desperate the searchers get, the more his fey nature refuses
to let him return the ring.
Talking the gremlin out of his prize possession may take a lot of
diplomacy…but it’s nothing compared to talking one’s way past the noble’s men
without being searched and detained.
I should mention that participating in a haniver hunt might
cause PCs some alignment troubles, as they are neutral creatures and reasonably
intelligent to boot. That also
might make the custom of nailing dead hanivers to one’s door a bit
troublesome. If you want to avoid
those dilemmas, you can just have the greedy and territorial fey attack the
PCs…but if it’s an experienced group of players, make ’em squirm a bit if they
attack the fey without talking first.
More on the haniver can be found in Pathfinder #25: The
Bastards of Erebus. That issue also gave us the Pathfinder
version of the rot grub, our first look at the strix, and the torble, which a
reader asked me to do adventure seeds forever
ago. (I will get to it! Eventually!)
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