Pimpernel 'Pim' Pockets, a Rock Gnome Gnome Rogue — D&D 5e NPC portrait
#0209

Pimpernel 'Pim' Pockets

"The Fold-Seeker"

Male (He/Him) · 124 years, middle-aged for a gnome

Ability Scores

STR
8
-1
DEX
18
+4
CON
14
+2
INT
16
+3
WIS
10
+0
CHA
14
+2

Combat

Armor Class
16
Studded Leather + DEX
Hit Points
66
Hit Dice: 9d8
Initiative
+4
Speed
25 ft.
Proficiency
+4
Passive Perception
14

Attacks

Inkless Stylus (Shortsword Stats)+81d6+4 piercing
Mage Hand LegerdemainN/AN/A

Personality

Personality

Pim speaks in rapid-fire bursts, often finishing his own sentences before they've truly begun. He moves with a jittery, kinetic energy, constantly adjusting his three-lensed monocle. He treats everyone—from beggars to kings—with the same absent-minded friendliness, usually while trying to measure the distance between their ears.

Ideal

Perspective. 'The world is much bigger, and much smaller, than you’ve been led to believe. I’m just smoothing out the creases.'

Bond

The Overlap Archive. It is his life's work, a collection of impossible maps that prove the world is not as solid as it seems.

Flaw

Pim is physically incapable of leaving a 'locked' space alone; he considers an unpicked lock to be a personal insult to the nature of reality.

Backstory

Pim Pockets didn't start as a thief; he started as a surveyor who simply couldn't accept that two points were only connected by the distance between them. While mapping the ducal sewers, he noticed a 'hiccup' in the masonry—a corner that measured ninety degrees from the inside but ninety-two from the outside. When he leaned into that extra two degrees, he didn't hit a wall; he stepped directly into the Duke’s private wine cellar three floors up. This was the birth of 'The Overlap Archive.'

Since that day, Pim has viewed the material plane as a poorly-starched shirt, full of wrinkles and folds that most people are too dull to notice. He opened his shop not to sell maps, but to fund his obsession with 'Geometry Errors.' He has spent decades documenting these spatial anomalies, treating the city’s most secure vaults like interesting footnotes in a grander manuscript. To Pim, a vault door isn't a security measure; it’s a localized lack of imagination on the part of the architect.

He is famously infuriating to the City Watch. They have caught him inside 'impenetrable' locations dozens of times, only to find him sitting cross-legged on the floor, nibbling a radish and sketching the way the shadows fall across the floorboards. He never takes the gold; he only takes the 'path.' Once he has mapped the anomaly, he leaves a small, perfectly folded paper crane where the treasure should be, a calling card that drives the local nobility into fits of confused rage.

Abilities & Actions

Spatial Crease (Bonus Action)

When Pim uses his Cunning Action to Disengage or Dash, he can momentarily 'fold' the air around him. He teleports up to 15 feet to an unoccupied space he can see. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.

The Inkless Stylus (Signature Item)

Pim wields a silver stylus that carves glowing blue lines of pure force into the air. As an action, he can draw a 'Ghost Door' on a flat surface. This creates a 5-foot-wide, 8-foot-tall illusory doorway that lasts for 1 minute. Pim and any creature he designates can see through the 'door' as if the wall were glass, though it remains physically solid.

Geometry Error (1/Day)

Pim identifies a flaw in the local architecture. As an action, he touches a non-magical wall, floor, or ceiling. A 5-foot-cube portion of the object becomes ethereal for 1 round, allowing Pim to step through it as if it weren't there. If he ends his turn inside the object, he is shunted to the nearest open space and takes 1d10 force damage.

Magical Ambush

If Pim is hidden from a creature when he casts a spell on it, the creature has disadvantage on any saving throw it makes against the spell this turn.

DM Notes

Pim should be played with 'Doctor Who' energy—manic, brilliant, and slightly detached from physical danger. He refers to hallways as 'corrugations' and doors as 'unnecessary interruptions.' Gesture: He constantly uses his Mage Hand to hold his snacks or steady his floating maps while his real hands are busy sketching. Reaction: If threatened, he doesn't cower; he looks at the attacker’s feet and says, 'Oh dear, your footprint is overlapping with the fourth dimension, you really should step left... about three inches.'