Tickbite

Tickbites are common curiosities among urban tinkerers and thieves' guilds: cheap, reliable clockwork constructs sold as household pests that 'retrieve' lost keys. They originated in the workshops of a reclusive mechanist known only as Korbin Fallow, who crafted them as tools for his locksmith apprentices. Over time, unscrupulous fence networks and guilds repurposed the design as automatic pickpockets. Rumor holds that a small stash of original Fallow models can still be found in the soot-dark vaults beneath the tradequarter of Halvurn. Adventurers encounter Tickbites most often where locks, keys, and secrets congregate: magistrates' offices, temple vestries, and caravan wagons. The Guild of Quiet Hands keeps a careful list of known Tickbite patterns and occasionally deploys them as distractions in larger heists. Scholars such as Archivist Merek of the Halvurn Academy debate whether later Tickbites inherit any semblance of 'memory' from their owners; some scribes claim a Tickbite returned a stolen reliquary key to a priest after a year, though such tales remain unverified.

About the size of a real house mouse but with exaggerated mechanical joints: a domed brass carapace with fine engraved lines, a small glass lens set like an eye, and exposed pinions that click in a steady rhythm. Its snout is a tapered steel nozzle, and from beneath segmented flank-plates a slender, articulated manipulator arm folds — no thicker than a fingernail but tipped with a hook and tiny nippers. The tail is a coiled spring ending in a magnetized claw. Rivet heads form the 'shoulders' and tiny oil stains collect where gears meet; patches of soot and repair solder show a history of field fixes. Scale: stands roughly as tall as a human hand's width, able to slip through a standard keyhole or under a door by angling its body.