Quickling

D&D 2024 monster: Quickling. Source: Volo's Guide to Monsters. challenge rating 1, creature type Fey, Tiny size, speed 120 ft. Quicklings rocket through haunting, twisted forests where the unseelie fey hold sway, both in the Feywild and in the world. Racing faster than the eye can track, each appears as little more than a blurry wavering in the air. A quickling is a small, slender fey, similar to a miniature elf with sharp, feral features. Its cold, cruel eyes gleam like jewels. Live Fast, Die Young Quicklings owe their existence-and their plight-to the Queen of Air and Darkness, the dread ruler of the Gloaming Court. Once a race of lazy and egotistical fey, the creatures that would become the quicklings were late in answering the queen's summons one time too many. To hasten their pace and teach them to mind her will, the queen shrank their stature and sped up their internal clocks. The queen's curse gave quicklings their amazing speed but also accelerated their passage through life-no quickling lives longer than fifteen years. They race themselves to death, and scheme as fast as they run. Too Fast for Words The mortal realm is a ponderous place to a quickling's eye: a hurricane creeps gradually across the sky, a torrent of rain drifts earthward like lazy snowflakes, lightning crawls in a meandering path from cloud to cloud. The slow and boring world seems to be populated by torpid creatures whose deep, mooing speech lacks meaning. To other creatures, a quickling seems blindingly fast, vanishing into an indistinct blur as it moves. Its cruel laughter is a burst of rapid staccato sounds, its speech a shrill squeal. Only when a quickling deliberately slows down, which it prefers not to do, can other beings properly see, hear, and comprehend it. Never truly at rest, a "stationary" quickling constantly paces and shifts in place, as though it can't wait to be off again. Mischief, Not Murder Quicklings have a capricious nature that goes well with their energy level: th...