mousehole

a small crepuscular mouse that freezes under a watching gaze and darts the moment it breaks. it pilfers dropped seed and crumb — never a growing crop, never a chest — carries it off to a crack in the wall, and come winter it moves into your walls, where the skitter is a sound only you can hear in your own house.

two hit points, no drops, no xp: the mouse exists so the predators above it have something small and real to answer to. cats always hunt them. crows, magpies and the dogs join in behind soft gates, mostly missing, and the barghest refuses the whole business as beneath an omen.