Half-Mephs

HALF-ICEMEPHS

–4 Constitution, –4 Charisma, +4 Intelligence, +2 Dexterity
Small: As a Small creature, a half-icemeph gains a +1 size bonus to Armor Class, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, and a +4 size bonus on Hide checks, but he uses smaller weapons than humans use, and his lifting and carrying limits are three-quarters of those of a Medium character.
Half-icemeph base land speed is 20 feet.
Darkvision: Half-icemephs can see in the dark up to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and functions with no light at all.
Cold Resistance 5.
–5 racial penalty on Diplomacy checks. Half-icemephs are widely considered to be abominations and freaks, and they return the hatred that most strangers show with an icy bitterness.
–5 racial penalty on Hide checks. Half-icemephs stand out easily.
Human Blood: For all effects related to race, a half-icemeph is considered a human.
Deformed Body: A half-icemeph cannot wear normal armor or clothing. He must have armor or clothing tailor made, at a cost of triple the normal market price. (This cost includes the difficulty of finding a merchant willing to sell to him.)
Ice Mephit Heritage: A half-icemeph takes lethal damage from heat exposure that would normally deal nonlethal damage. Half-icemephs have vulnerability to fire, and take 150% damage from it. A half-icemeph does not recover lost hit points normally unless in a cold (near-freezing) area.
Cold Link (Su): A half-icemeph casts all spells with the fire descriptor at –2 to effective caster level, and all cold spells at +2 to effective caster level.
Automatic Languages: Common. Bonus Languages: Aquan, Auran, Terran
Spell-Like Abilities: 1/day— resist energy (cold only), chill metal. Caster level character level+2.
Favored Class: Wizard. A half-icemeph’s wizard levels does not count when determining whether or not he takes an experience point penalty.

No one can really say how ice mephits managed to reproduce with humans. It's speculated that some of the more eccentric mages conducted experiments with magically altered, captive humans and the more humanoid mephits, and this was the end result. Whatever the case, not all half-mephs survive to birth, and many of them die within their first year of life. Those that make it possess some extraordinary qualities, but invariably grow to be stunted, never attaining full human size. They age as humans do.

It is said that none of the mephit-human crossbreeds ever developed breath weapons or functional wings, and the mage eventually lost interest in further research. Still, the descendants of the few survivors live on, somewhere on Mori. "Half-meph" is a term applied to any with their distinctive traits, no matter if the ancestry of the being is truly half mephit, or if only enough mephit blood remains to make its influence clear.