Æglor

Æglor
Hit Dice: 1d4
Armor Class: 9[10]
Attacks: 2 Weapon (1d6)
Saving Throw: 18
Special: Immune to non-magical weapons, destroyed by light, low weight
Move: 24
Alignment: Chaos
Challenge Level/XP: B/10

Chaotic Sorcerers commonly use evil rituals to provide themselves with willing servants and foot soldiers. Most commonly, they employ their twisting magics to turn Humans into Orcs or Dwarves into Goblins, but occasionally, with the right knowledge, they will bend the Fey to their will.

Æglor are Seelie Fey who have been warped by dark magic into servants of Chaos. They unquestioningly obey their masters and, where once they took delight in song, dance, beauty and mischief, now delight only in battle, slaughter and destruction. In appearance they are very short humanoids clad in dark hooded robes that cover them completely. They almost always appear in mobs of 5d20 and are small enough that two of them are able to attack an opponent in a space where only one normal-sized attacker would fit. Æglor move and attack quickly, swarming and overwhelming their opponents.

Æglor are immune to non-magical weapons but their small size and weight means that when an Æglor is hit with a weapon in combat then the Æglor is thrown into the air 5d4 feet away from the character, taking no damage. Æglor are not immune to magic. The weakness of the Æglor is that they dissolve completely into the air when exposed to light. Their hooded robes magically cling to them and normally protect them from light but when an opponent makes a critical hit on an Æglor this signifies that the hood or some other part of the robe has been lifted back and the Æglor dissolves with robe and weapon. If called shot mechanics are used then called shots can be applied to targeting an Æglor's hood.
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These guys popped into my head a week or so ago as a mental picture of manic bloodthirsty hybrids of Jawas and the little yellow minions from the Despicable Me movies. I've been messing around with Fey in my designing recently and these guys actually solved a few problems for me. For one, I long ago decided that most monstrous humanoids in my setting (the notable exception being Kobolds) are twisted humans and demi-humans, a la Tolkien, but, besides Orcs being twisted Humans, I hadn't ever nailed down a whole lot - I'm still not sure what bugbears and hob-goblins are. The Æglor helped me decide that Goblins are twisted Dwarves, since Elves are Fey in my setting. In addition, I've got a sorcerer luring Fey into a trap in my megadungeon for use in a Carcosa-style ritual but I hadn't figured out what that was going to be until I realized that the sorcerer could be tiring of his human assistants and planning on replacing them with Æglor, created from the Fey he has trapped in a dark ritual requiring the still-beating heart of the Faerie King. So, if the players don't figure this out and stop it in time whenever I actually start running games again, then there will be hordes of these little guys running around the dungeon giving them problems.

I really like the image of these guys mobbing a room and the fighters, with multiple attacks against opponents with less than 1 HD, desperately knocking these guys harmlessly across the room only to watch them rebound and join the mad rush against the party again, occasionally with one occasionally disappearing but all of the characters too busy fighting the others off to notice exactly what happened or how to replicate it without a Wisdom check (so, "the little robed guy you just hit disappears into the air; everyone make a Wisdom check"). Yes, this is designed to scare and confuse players.

Also, once they figure this out, it makes for a great opportunity for them to use Zack's called shot mechanic. Over and over again. Which means that there will be lots and lots of fumbles.