Magmin

So how do you run your magmins?  If I’m recalling correctly (always a risky assumption, but bear with me), they were nuisances and comic relief in most editions of the world’s oldest role-playing game.  They were never going to be the object of your quests, but they always served to make the object of your quests harder.  Fire elementals might sear you, but magmins were the ones who burned your spellbook.  If you needed to sneak silently into a dragon’s lair via the back way, that was when a magmin chose to pick a fight.

Pathfinder’s magmins add to that by being paranoid, querulous, and—oddly enough—connoisseurs.  They are protective of their lairs—especially their precious, carefully spiced magma pools—and any interlopers are liable to be challenged, questioned, and discouraged or driven off.  So they’re still potential comic relief…but underneath there is a bit more substance, even backbone.  PCs may scoff at the magmins’ preoccupation with their magma pools, but that very obsession gives magmins something to defend.

A party of adventurers hires a swaggering ifrit to guide them through the Canyon of Flame.  Along the way, he manages to insult not just one, but three separate magmin guards—in very graphic terms.  All of which is highly amusing at first…until gang upon gang of the creatures surround the party in a box canyon.  They demand an apology, treasure, and food for their cooking pools…which may or may not include the ifrit and any adventurers who joined the ribald fun.

Magmins are on the hunt for new spices in preparation for a cooking contest at one of their conclaves.  Some of the spices include cinnamon, rubies, shaved ioun stones, salt mephit salts, construct soot, familiar hair, and finely aged half-elf.

Asking questions—and demanding answers—is second nature to magmins.  Magmin rhetorician Xerxes Flametongue has turned this inquisitiveness into a school of philosophy (centered around his race’s natural paranoia).  Sages, wizards, bards, and alchemists can all learn something (including several skills, feats, and rare secrets) from Xerxes, provided they can survive the heat of his classroom…and the attacks of his even more paranoid disciples and students.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 189

Happy Thanksgiving!  Of course, the day’s almost over, so I guess I’m hoping it was happy.  Better late than never.  And if you’re one of my non-American readers, if you know any Yanks, please take them out for a drink—they’re liable to be a tad homesick this weekend.