Gremishka

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In 3e they threw off any attempts at subtlety and just copied the design of the critters from the movie Gremlins (1984).

Gremishkas are wicked, spiteful, lizard-monkey-rat-things that infest the dark corners of the Demiplane of Dread. They've been around since the inception of Ravenloft in the setting's Monstrous Appendix Compendiums for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition, then made it into Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition in both Denizens of Darkness (3.0) and Denizens of Dread (3.5), with their final appearance to date being in Van Richten's Guide for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

AD&D

In their original iteration, gremishkas are stated to be a branch of the gremlin family native to the Demiplane of Dread, with the biggest difference being that gremishkas don't have wings. Standing about 2ft tall on average, a gremishka looks like a furry goblin with a protruding, muzzle-like face and cat-like eyes; their bestial aspect is so pronounced that they have been mistaken for small dogs or large cats from a distance. Despite looking like a demented monkey-thing, gremishkas are actually highly intelligent, with an average Intelligence score of 13-14 (compared to the human average of 9-10). Chaotic Evil in alignment, they mostly live as parasites and pests; they inhabit urban or underground environments, occupying caves, abandoned buildings, forgotten allies, neglected cellars, sewer systems and the like, and creep into houses at night to steal food and small trinkets that they take a liking to. Their only major interest seems to be in playing pranks and setting traps for other races, which they like to watch from the shadows, snickering as some fool ends up falling into their oft-complex machinations. Omnivorous, they eat anything they can catch, primarily feeding on rats, vermin and small pets. They have been known to form a temporary attachment to children who are their size and live near their lairs. Gremishka are hunted by just about anything that can find and catch them, including large snakes, dogs, giant spiders, kobolds, and many more — especially humans.

In combat, gremishkas rely on numbers - swarming over foes in a grappling horde to gnaw, bite, claw and rend - and on speed, which manifests mechanically as an unusually high armor class of 4 and a +4 bonus to all saves against AoE attacks. They dislike bright light, but it doesn't actually hurt them.

3e

In 3rd edition, gremishkas get very little changes compared to some. They are still a "dread" equivalent of the common gremlin, being described as "twice as bad and twice as deadly". They're Tiny sized Magical Beasts, and now have the "Skitterish" racial weakness, which forces them to make a DC 15 Fear save if suddenly exposed to bright light. Otherwise, they're basically retreads of their AD&D counterparts, although they have new art visibly inspired by the Gremlins horror-comedy movies of the 90s.

5e

Like many other returning Ravenloft beasties, the 5e gremishka comes with a brand new look and a brand new backstory, with tweaked abilities to match. In 5e, gremishkas are what you get when a rookie spellcaster botches an attempt to create life, presumably making them a kind of dread/failed homunculus - as such, they are especially prevalent in the magocratic realm of Hazlan. 5e Gremishkas have an appetite for magical stuff such as spellbooks, spell components, and familiars, and love to torment the mages that gave them life. Despite their strong connection to magic, the use of it in their proximity can have unpredictable results, either healing them, bouncing off of them and hitting someone else, or, worst of all, causing the gremishka to explode into scaly chunks. These chunks then regenerate into fully grown duplicates of the original gremishka, and immediately form a swarm that is almost immune to spells of 3rd level and lower!

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