by Michael Fountain
FREQUENCY: Very rare
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOR CLASS: -3
MOVE: 9” when corporeal, 36” when not
HIT DICE: 100+ (estimate)
% IN LAIR: Nil
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NUMBER OF ATTACKS: 0
DAMAGE/ATTACK: Nil
SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below
SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below
MAGIC RESISTANCE: See below
INTELLIGENCE: Supra-genius, though
not known to apply themselves
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic
good
SIZE: S, M, or L, according to whim
(Medium size predominates)
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes:
Nil
The pooka is an invisible
Celtic spirit
of a dipsomaniac
nature who appears,
when it wishes to appear before mortal
eyes, in the form of a white rabbit at
least
six feet tall and dressed in impeccably
tailored human clothes.
Although this rabbit-shape is the apparition
of choice, pookas have also
been reported in the form of shaggy and
disreputable-looking Shetland ponies
(with or without burrs in their coats);
as
drunken Irish elk; and as derby-hatted
and cigar-smoking mice and/or guinea
pigs. It was a somewhat theatrical pooka
of the Jazz Age who gave rise to drunken
stories about “pink
elephants.” Another
pooka was the source of the old “We
don’t get many kangaroos in here”/“And
at these prices you won’t get any more!”
joke.
Because the pooka shows itself to only
one person at a time (never to a group),
and then only to one of good alignment
with charisma
of 16 or higher—and then
only when the person is at least three
drinks drunk — the pooka’s existence is
often discounted as an hallucination, diagnosed
as some wild variety of delirium
tremens.
An offended pooka will vanish away if
met with the caution and (deserved) paranoia
most adventurers greet new experiences
with. When met with an open
air of unsurprised acceptance — a gen
tlemanly introduction, a “How do you
do?” and a handshake, an invitation to
have a drink —the pooka can become a
drinking buddy and helpmate with no
small amount of power.
Pookas have the ability to stop time.
Putting it more precisely, the pooka can
step outside of our time sequence, go
wherever it wants for as long as it wants,
and then return to where it started from
without one minute of “real” time elapsing.
As put by Mr. Elwood P. Dowd,
whose adventures with a six-foot, oneand-
a-half-inch invisible rabbit form the
basis of Mary Coyle Chase’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning play, Harvey: “...Einstein
has overcome time and space. Harvey
(the pooka) has overcome not only
time
and space — but any objections.”
Half of all pookas encountered are
able to take a friend along on these timestopping
jaunts. This is not the gamewrecking
power it might at first seem to
be. No pooka, for instance, will walk an
adventurer through a dungeon “ahead of
time” in unfair safety; the pooka would
feel its friendship was being taken advantage
of and vanish away, leaving the
opportunist stranded in the middle of
some horrible danger.
Pookas offer little or no help in treasure
seeking or dungeon exploration.
They seldom show themselves to fighters,
and they can be even more frustrating
to magic-users and clerics, for they
seem impervious to magic spells and
magic weapons, and shed attempts to
control them like water off a duck’s back.
It is supposed that the pooka uses its
time-stopping ability to free itself from
our time limitations before a spell or
a
blow even has time to hang itself in the
air, thus “dodging” or “outrunning” any
attack.
None of this is to imply that a pooka is
of little use to any mortal except as a
drinking companion. The pooka considers
itself a lover, not a fighter, and this
outlook puts its caprices at the service
of
good-willed, fun-seeking adventurers.
Pookas, full of song and poetry when
in their
cups, love to assist mortals in the
conduct of a love affair (or affairs).
They
will “stop the clock” so that a friend
might slip away from a boring time for
a
quick romp (or a quick drink) and then
slip back again without being suspected.
They are useful when slipping into a
bedchamber without being detected by
father, wife or husband; they are invaluable
when rescuing a harem.
A certain renowned beauty,
being of a
nature both generous and lusty, had
three different suitors living in three
different
towns. With the aid of her friendly
pooka, this lady married all three men
and to this day keeps them all content
while she, having her cake and eating it
too, remains youthful and ecstatic, if
a
bit tuckered.
Some pookas are as prone to play
tricks as to help. Barber and Riches’ Dictionary
of Fabulous Beasts describes “a
wild and shaggy colt hung with chains
which haunted wild places, and misled
benighted travelers.” That book also reports
variations on the name, among
them phooka, and in Wales, pwca.
Pookas have not vanished from the
modern world;
they still show up from
time to time, in cheerful defiance of logic.
A woman in my own practice, a Ms.
N— (who has given permission for her
story to be told here), was once visited
by a pooka in the form of a small (11
inches high, or 1 foot, 2 inches with hat)
bipedal guinea pig. Ms. N—was then a
resident in a lonely hotel in a strange
town, and had returned to her room one
night after work and dinner to have an
evening whiskey. As she sat “with a
slight bun on” there was a brisk knock
on
the door. In came the aforementioned
guinea pig, carrying two small but bulging
suitcases, wearing a derby hat and
sporting an Alhambra Manila Blunt cigar.
“Hiya, kid,” it said, and ensconced
itself on the bed for a period of two
weeks. Its nights were spent regaling Ms.
N — with stories of ribald adventure,
while its days were spent organizing a
running crap game, conducting liaisons
with at least three chambermaids, and
running down to the lobby for more
quarters to put in the “Magic Fingers”
box. This is the most recent incident of
pooka visitation this author has come
across.
It is believed that Shakespeare knew
the pooka that used to hang out in the
Mermaid Tavern,
and combined some of
the habits of this “merry wanderer of the
night” — such as lover’s pranks and time
warping (“I’ll put a girdle round about
the earth/In forty minutes”) —with those
of the English household spirit, Robing
Goodfellow, for his Midsummer Night’s
Dream. This confusion may have arisen
from the fact that the small European
household dragons who brought treasure
to their landlords were also called
puks. Or maybe Shakespeare was already
in his cups when he was first introduced
and never quite caught the name.
BlBLlOGRAPHY
Barber, Richard, and Riches, Anne, A
Dictionary of Fabulous Beasts, Walker
and Company, New York, 1971.
Chase, Mary Coyle, Harvey, contained
in the anthology Comedy Tonight! edited
by Mary Sherwin, Doubleday and Co.,
1977, copyright 1972 by Mary Chase,
acting rights through author’s agent, Harold
Freedman, Brandt & Brandt Dramatic
Dept.; amateur rights controlled by
Dramatist’s Play Service, New York.
Shapespeare, William, A Midsummer
Night’s Dream.
| Dragon magazine | - | Monster Manual III | - | Dragon #60 |