Key Imp
‘Hey! That thing is doing my job!’ exclaimed the thief Nivoq.
‘His name is Kwertle,’ Oslar the paladin said as the watched the small creature swallow a key then open a door for the adventuring party.
‘We do have another task for you,’ added Lakko the magic-user.
‘What is that?’ inquired Nivoq.
‘Find us more keys, we are getting low, make sure they were in locks, too,’ replied Lakko.
The thief grumbled and snuck off trying to figure out a way to lose the key imp.
Key Imp: AC 3 [+16], HD 2 (9hp), Att Bite (1d4), THAC0 15 [+4], MV 60’ (20’)/ 90′ (30′) flying SV D10 W11 P12 B13 S14 (5), ML 8, AL N, XP 45, NA 1(1d4), TT D ▶ Dimension Door: Once per day can teleport to any known location within 300′. ▶ Kill the lights: once per day can extinguish all light within 250′. Light sources cannot be relit for 30 minutes, magical light sources have a 50% chance of being affected. ▶ Infravision: 90′. ▶ Open Locks: 90% chance to Open Locks when fed a key.
These small batwinged creatures are not really imps, or at least if they are they are a terrestrial and not an extra-planar creature as they manifest in strange places on the Material Plane. Highly prized by adventurers these fickle creatures will open locks for others if fed a key, most any key will do as long as it once fit in a lock of some sort as keys ‘made on the spot’ will not work and will probably cause the creature to disappear, playing hard to get until either it is fed a proper key or it gets tired of the game and wanders off seeking other companions.
Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets-An oldschool gaming blog.... 
These poor things are taking a lot of risks for a meal, what with no Find/Remove Traps score. 🙂
Bet some of them get a taste for certain types of keys and become fussy about whet they’ll eat. Not too bad if it’s brass or iron keys, could get expensive if they prefer silver or mithril or gem-encrusted gold-plated ones.
That Kill The Lights trick’s a dandy. Good one for a wizard-thief to try to research as a spell.
LikeLiked by 1 person
People leave keys everywhere and I see them as a kind of earthbound daemon that perhaps does not need to eat and only consumes the keys symbolically, maybe if opened up they have a stash of keys inside.
LikeLike
You’re missing the point. They may not need to eat and can certainly find keys if they did need to, but they will happily take a key from an adventurer to open a strange lock. The kinds of locks adventurers want opened often come complete with concealed traps and magical curses. Poor thing’s only got about 9HP and a 12+ save versus poison. I don’t like the odds of him reaching retirement age. 🙂
LikeLike