This squat humanoid seems to be nearly all head—an unfortunate circumstance, considering how ugly its puffy blue face is.

Descended from even smaller fey, the mites are among the most pitiful and craven dwellers of the dark. Hideously ugly, even goblins have been known to mock mites for their homely appearances, mockery most mites take to heart and nurture for weeks, months, or even years in their tiny homes, until their distress and anger finally overcome their natural cowardice and impel them forth on short-lived bouts of bloody vengeance from the doubtful safety of a spider's back.

Mites, once closer to the strange realm of the fey, have grown larger and stockier after countless generations spent on the Material Plane. Yet still, their stature places them at the bottom of the pile in the dangerous caverns in which they live. Their traditional enemies are dwarves and gnomes, particularly the svirfneblin of the deep underground caves. The one thing that gives them a significant edge over an enemy in a fight is their natural ability to empathize with normally mindless vermin—mites are particularly fond of spiders, centipedes, and cave fishers, and a mite colony usually has a few of these far more dangerous monsters on hand to defend the group.

Although they have lost the supernatural ability to tinker with magic items, luck, or mechanical objects possessed by their more sinister and dangerous gremlin kin, mites retain the ability to perform minor magical tricks with prestidigitation, and often use these tricks to annoy their enemies. When faced with dangerous foes, a mite uses its doom ability to hex a foe—a mite's eyes bulge hideously open when it uses this spell-like ability.

A mite is 3 feet tall and weighs 40 pounds.

Special Abilities

Hatred (Ex) Mites receive a +1 bonus on attack rolls against humanoid creatures of the dwarf or gnome subtype due to special training against these hated foes.

Vermin Empathy (Ex) This ability functions as a druid's wild empathy, save that a mite can only use this ability on vermin. A mite gains a +4 racial bonus on this check. Vermin are normally mindless, but this empathic communication imparts on them a modicum of implanted intelligence, allowing mites to train Medium vermin and use them as mounts. Vermin empathy treats swarms as if they were one creature possessing a single mind—a mite can thus use this ability to influence and direct the actions of swarms with relative ease.