Image from Wikimedia (cropped)

Doorcreepers are small, wicked demons. They are not bouncing, gibbering imps, however. They move purposefully, and with malign intelligence, often draped in dark rags or swathed in cloaks. Doorcreepers range from malicious (stealing pies, reversing or garbling the text in books) to pure wickedness (poisoning wells, removing the eyes from children, turning pets inside out). They are said to love sweets and fresh blood. In the stories, they have no head for wine.

Their vocalizations are a combination of hisses, growls, and booming bass tones which seem to echo from far-off places with little correspondence to their actual size or location. They are said to be able to speak through the mouths of others, leading to the saying “that was a doorcreeper talking”, often used after having spoken something one wishes to retract. They speak their own language which sages connect to no other existing tongue, but also parrot arbitrary snippets of other languages, often said to be inconvenient secrets.

The scariest thing about the doorcreepers? Once they have gone through a door, any other door they walk through can lead back to that previously traversed threshold. Thus, once they get into a town, it is almost impossible to get rid of a doorcreeper haunting without finding and killing the whole group. If the affected structure is known, it will be ritually destroyed, though it is said that the residents of a building infected by doorcreepers may have some strange influence over them, leading some dark magicians to attempt luring the creepers (a burn-worthy offence, if discovered).