The Faerie Ring whimsy At first blush, these frenetic fey are innocent and fascinating creatures However, metal is what gremlins truly crave They have a burning hunger for metal and a mouth fi lled with rows of indestructible, shark-like teeth ready for action: the teeth are laced with adamantine and enable a gremlin to eat their way through the strongest varieties of metals Rich enough sources of metal can actually trigger the strange transformation of a single gremlin into a frenzied swarm of gnashing teeth intent on devouring all metal in sight As if that wasn’t enough, gremlins also have a strange effect on both other creatures and machinery Creatures simply appear clumsier around these fey, and machinery (from the simplest hunter’s bow to the grandest clockwork creation) tends to break or malfunction more readily Cursed are the city dwellers who try to make pets of the gremlins that they stumble across in their travels The matabiri-engineered gremlin aversion to remain in close proximity to one another has, over time, had an unfortunate side effect When content with their own kind, gremlins enjoy exploring Nibiru and trailing in Flibbertigibbet’s wake across the planes But they have been dispersing more readily since the matabiri intervention to the Material Plane, and that is where they are most quickly evolving beyond the matabiri’s carefully tailored controls These divergent evolutionary branches have since become their own species with their behavior and appearances often radically different from the original stock Environment & Society: Limited in number by the matabiri, most gremlins reside within Flibbertigibbet’s demesne, matching their profound fecundity with an equally spectacular rate of attrition, often bloody, pyrotechnic, and typically of their own doing Within the Divided Kingdom and throughout the meandering pathways of Nibiru, they endlessly cavort in whatever whimsy strikes them They don’t have a society so much as a vague, irrational propensity to blindly listen to Flibbertigibbet or, more frequently, bitterclaws acting like elder siblings attempting to place some semblance of (often irrational) social order in place Left to their own devices, gremlins are most often simply destructive, even as they seek to emulate Flibbertigibbet or his later, more intelligent creations Typical Characteristics: Gremlins appear simply to be fuzzy, little creatures with curiously large mouths and ears and a perhaps too-developed sense of curiosity These cat-sized creatures are equally comfortable walking on two legs as on all fours as they gambol about sniffing at the air When triggered by their own ravenous metal gluttony, they grow significantly more fearsome in both demeanor and size, both as a result of — 25 —