The Strange Bestiary
An errant tear or missing button can cause great trouble for the puppets of Middlecap. It might result in blindness or all the stuffing in their bodies falling out. Luckily, the puppets can always count on the grim tailors to tend to their injuries and repair their wounds. These silent, menacing figures drift through the lands of Middlecap, their spindly bodies gently carrying them across the queer countryside. The tailors stand over 9 feet (3 m) tall and have painfully thin bodies, and they wear black tuxedos and top hats. Rather than skin, they have cloth bodies, and their faces have buttons for eyes and stitched mouths.
Each tailor carries a bright silver needle, a pair of shears, and several spools of silvery thread. The tailors use these tools to repair damaged puppets, their deft, spidery hands perfect for making minor repairs without leaving signs of the stitching. As helpful as the tailors are to the puppets, they have no love for humans and may turn their implements of repair into implements of death against intruders.
If a recursor who is a trained puppeteer appears in Middlecap, grim tailors sense it and view her as a threat like no other. Unless the recursor can escape within a few hours, she is hunted down by a bundle of grim tailors intent on sewing her to death.
Motive: Protect the puppets
Environment (Middlecap | Magic): Anywhere
Health: 27
Damage Inflicted: Moderate wound (5 points)
Movement: Short
Modifications: Perception as level 7.
Combat: A grim tailor attacks a foe with needle and thread. A target damaged by the needle must also make a Might defense roll. On a failure, the tailor cocoons the victim with strands of thread as strong as steel cable. While cocooned, the victim cannot physically move or use an action to do anything that involves movement except for trying to break free. Another character can use an action to cut the victim free. While the victim is cocooned, attacks against him hit automatically.
Grim tailor's cocoon: level 4
A tailor can also throw a needle like a javelin to hit targets within short distance for a moderate wound (5 points).
A grim tailor's body is filled with sand. If a tailor takes damage from a piercing or slashing weapon, it bleeds sand until it can repair the hole (which requires an action). During this time, the tailor loses 1 point of health each round. If it is reduced to 0 health, it collapses into a heap of cloth.
Interaction: Grim tailors react violently to anyone they perceive as threatening a puppet, even if that person has good cause. The silent protectors do not speak, and their black button eyes betray nothing about what they're thinking—if they think at all.
Use: When a character intentionally or accidentally damages a puppet, a grim tailor comes out from behind a feature in the landscape and moves to help the injured puppet.
Loot: A searching character is likely to find 1d6 gold buttons and at least one cypher hidden among the tailor's possessions.
GM Intrusion: A character becomes tangled in the tailor's thread. When the tailor moves, the PC moves with it until she can succeed on an Intellect-based task to untangle the thread.