Dark creepers are short, spindly humanoids with pale skin who like to wrap themselves in loose, dark clothing, leaving little exposed save their eyes and hands. Dark creepers detest sunlight and avoid any light as best they can, dwelling alone in dungeons or profane villages even deeper underground, composed of clans of 75-100 individuals. 25% of the population of a dark creeper village will be female. These villages are always governed by a dark stalker (q.v.).

Solitary dark creepers tend to carry their treasure with them, concealed within the many loose folds of their dark clothing. There is a 20% chance a dark creeper will carry a magic dagger, 15% chance of a magic ring, and 10% chance of either 1d4 gems of random value or 1d3 items of random jewellery. Lair treasure probabilities for a lone dark creeper are 50% for a magic dagger, 10% for a magic ring, 30% for gems or jewellery. To generate treasure for a dark creeper village, multiply individual treasure chances by the number of males, adding 5d20 pp and 5d12 gp.

Dark creepers have all the skills of a 4th level thief along with the following abilities: Detect magic and create darkness for 1 hour in a 50-ft radius from target thrice per day. The creepers’ general plan of attack is to use their darkness power to extinguish a party’s light sources, then sneak in and destroy all lanterns, torches, oil flasks, and tinderboxes. Any magical sources of light gain a saving throw vs magical cold to negate the affects of darkness upon that item only, if it fails the save it will function normally after 1 hour. After it accomplishes this task, the dark creeper will use its detect magic to find and steal any small magic items it can detect. Though the dark creeper will not fight to the death to steal the party’s magic items, it craves them and will take foolhardy chances if it feels it has even a small chance of success. A creeper’s darkness power will stop infravision, but it will generally only use it on a party’s sources of artificial light. A party travelling in the dark using infravision will not likely be blacked out by the creeper’s darkness.

In combat a creeper is AC 0 in darkness, and if it has a magic dagger or magic ring as part of its treasure hoard it will use them. A dark creeper’s darkness power can be negated by spells that create light, and in such a case the creeper is only AC 8. When a creeper dies it body magically immolates in a fiercely hot blaze of disgusting purple and green flames. Metal items, including magical items of metal, carried as part of the creeper’s treasure hoard have an 80% of surviving this magical fire undamaged. Any magic item damaged by the creeper’s death fire will lose its enchantment.