The Folly

Tiny fey, chaotic evil

Armor Class 16 (natural armor)
Hit Points 71 (13d4 + 39)
Speed 15 ft., fly 30 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
15 (+2)	14 (+2)	17 (+3)	12 (+1)	7 (-2)	19 (+4)

Saving Throws Dexterity +5, Constitution +6
Skills Arcana +4, Athletics +5, Perception +1, Persuasion +7
Senses darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 11
Languages Common, Draconic, Sylvan
Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)

Special Traits

• Innate Spellcasting. The folly’s spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 15, +7 to hit with spell attacks). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
• At will: acid splash, chill touch, eldritch blast, mage hand, minor illusion, poison spray, prestidigitation, shocking grasp, vicious mockery
• 3/day each: disguise self, flaming sphere, hideous laughter, invisibility, phantasmal killer, silent image, sleep, suggestion
• 1/day: dispel magic, fear, fireball, hypnotic pattern 1/week each: animate objects, arcane gate, polymorph (10x normal casting time and requires at least 3 follies participating in the ritual)
• 1/month each: earthquake, gate, reverse gravity (100x normal casting time and requires at least 10 follies participating in the ritual)
• Quick Breeding. The follies both breed and mature very quickly, but they also don’t much care about self-preservation. Therefore, even though they often do things that get themselves killed, their population never seems to drop.
• Wild Misperception. The follies misunderstand almost anything said to them in the most horrible possible way. For example, if asked, “Please make those children new shoes,” they will happily slay the children and use their skins to make new shoes. They don’t do this on purpose. They just get absolutely everything horribly, horribly wrong whenever it is at all possible to do so. Even when they do properly understand a request, they will find a horrible way to execute it. For example, if asked, “Please bring me a glass of water,” they might steal a poor family’s only nice glass or open a gateway to the elemental plane of water, flooding the town, just to fill the glass. Everything they can do wrong, they will.

Actions

• +1 Tiny Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d2 + 3) slashing damage.
• +1 Tiny Shortbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, range 40/160 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d2 + 3) piercing damage.

About

This tiny humanoid resembles a grey-skinned cross between a pixie and a goblin, with red and brown butterfly wings, like fresh blood splattered over older, dried blood.

Once upon a time, a well-meaning lawful good deity, whose name is lost to history, happened upon the abandoned servant-army of a chaotic evil deity and decided to devote spare time, over the course of several centuries, to the reformation of this evil servant species.

The results were all but catastrophic, though not in the ways the deity might have expected. As it turned out, the corrupted fey were convinced to adopt the values of a lawful good life path such as justice, respect, honesty, valor, and generosity (and many others). Unfortunately, the god who had corrupted them had made them so intrinsically, innately chaotic evil, that even after they decided to be good, they were so bad at it that everything they did, nevertheless, still turned out to be evil. This earned them the name “the folly” because all the time spent teaching them goodness had turned out to be folly.

More often than fighting fair, the folly will murder or torment those weaker than them in the name of some dreadful misunderstanding of compassion. If faced with an actual challenge, they are likely to attempt to make friends. What the folly desire most is to become good enough to please the near-forgotten deity who tried to teach them. To this end, they seek noble and virtuous leaders to guide them, but woe betide the virtuous party who attempts to help them, and indeed, woe betide also the evil party who gets caught tricking them. The first will see horror and suffering everywhere in their wake, while the second are likely to be poisoned in their sleep in the name of “justice”.

The folly wear little suits of gleaming armor and are always terribly honest and courteous in the horrible things they say. “Why did you burn that house down?” “You asked us to clean it! It’s very clean now! Why, you almost can’t tell there was ever a house there!”