psychotick
Auror
Hi,
I was reading the world building thread about re-mything which I enjoyed when it occurred to me that as sci fi fantasy writers we really should be coming up with a few of our own unique critters / races instead of just using the established tropes.
So I thought why not have a place where we can share our own creations.
To start things off if people are interested, I thought I'd include a couple of my own and see what you guys think of them.
Snap Dragon - this is a monster I developed for my book Wildling. It's not really a dragon despite the name. It's a walking forest sort of shaped a little like a dragon / reptile. It lives on a high central plateau and most of the time just looks like a copse. But every so often - normally at night - it sort of uproots itself and starts hunting unfortunate campers. It has no muscles or skin, but is in fact just comprised of densely interwoven branches and roots, and it hunts by essentially sneaking up on its prey and then crushing them underfoot so to speak. After that it settles back down and slowly absorbs their crushed juicy remains through its root system. The name comes because it is roughly shaped like a dragon, and because of the snapping sound it makes when its foot comes crashing down on an unfortunate victim. It is essentially huge, slow moving and indestructible to most weapons, but if you can set it on fire and run away for long enough it'll burn to ash.
Sprig - these are living trees rather like the spriggen in some RPG's. They come from the book I'm just finishing up called The Arcanist. In essence they are extremely thin - think not much thicker than brook handles - humanoid shaped trees with shoulders and hips but no heads etc. Each shoulder might have two or three arms sprouting from it, each hip two or three legs, and of course the arms and legs are essentially thin branches. They have no intelligence but can obey orders and be used as an army. They kill because each end of an arm or leg is essentially a spear point, that can be driven through flesh or mild steel. They walk slowly and in jerky movements, but are very hard to kill. They're very hard to hit with a gun because of their thinness, and you wouldn't want to face one with sword in hand because lets face it - they might have six or more spears to impale you with while you're trying to defend against one.
Anyway, there's two of mine. Let me know what you think and I'd love to see some of yours.
Cheers, Greg.
I was reading the world building thread about re-mything which I enjoyed when it occurred to me that as sci fi fantasy writers we really should be coming up with a few of our own unique critters / races instead of just using the established tropes.
So I thought why not have a place where we can share our own creations.
To start things off if people are interested, I thought I'd include a couple of my own and see what you guys think of them.
Snap Dragon - this is a monster I developed for my book Wildling. It's not really a dragon despite the name. It's a walking forest sort of shaped a little like a dragon / reptile. It lives on a high central plateau and most of the time just looks like a copse. But every so often - normally at night - it sort of uproots itself and starts hunting unfortunate campers. It has no muscles or skin, but is in fact just comprised of densely interwoven branches and roots, and it hunts by essentially sneaking up on its prey and then crushing them underfoot so to speak. After that it settles back down and slowly absorbs their crushed juicy remains through its root system. The name comes because it is roughly shaped like a dragon, and because of the snapping sound it makes when its foot comes crashing down on an unfortunate victim. It is essentially huge, slow moving and indestructible to most weapons, but if you can set it on fire and run away for long enough it'll burn to ash.
Sprig - these are living trees rather like the spriggen in some RPG's. They come from the book I'm just finishing up called The Arcanist. In essence they are extremely thin - think not much thicker than brook handles - humanoid shaped trees with shoulders and hips but no heads etc. Each shoulder might have two or three arms sprouting from it, each hip two or three legs, and of course the arms and legs are essentially thin branches. They have no intelligence but can obey orders and be used as an army. They kill because each end of an arm or leg is essentially a spear point, that can be driven through flesh or mild steel. They walk slowly and in jerky movements, but are very hard to kill. They're very hard to hit with a gun because of their thinness, and you wouldn't want to face one with sword in hand because lets face it - they might have six or more spears to impale you with while you're trying to defend against one.
Anyway, there's two of mine. Let me know what you think and I'd love to see some of yours.
Cheers, Greg.