Civilized Monsters

[skip.knox]

I don't mean polite; I mean the word in its original sense of those who build cities. I've been surprised to find how few of these there are. Legends (plus modern myth makers) have plenty of one-off monsters--gorgons, hydras, that sort of thing--but comparatively few who might likely have writing, build cities, have kingdoms and armies. Who, in brief, would be likely opponents of human/elf/dwarf civilizations. I leave aside orcs as a modern invention.

I also leave aside vampires and were-anything at all. Those are just riffs on humans. I've made troll kingdoms for Altearth, and I do plan to use orcs, but I'm coming up rather empty. Goblins are marginal candidates and I could have made them work, except I made them explicitly non-civilized already. Short-sighted, that. I could stretch a point and have hobgoblins.

There are merfolk, admittedly, but they aren't going to conquer Switzerland. Lizardmen appear to be the best candidate right now. Research has turned up little useful. Most monsters of legend are either unique or are scattered, living in family groups or small packs. Oh, I should mention that ogres start out as dangerous enemies, but over the course of a few centuries they come to live in a somewhat queasy but amicable relationship with their neighbors.

What am I overlooking? They don't need to be inherently evil, but they should have traits that make them fundamentally incompatible. Trolls, for example, are deeply nomadic. It's in their nature to trample across your garden. Orcs are monotheists, at odds with the polytheism of my neo-Roman world. We don't need to make the enemy Evil to make them dangerous and implacable foes.

 

[Devor]

I think you're missing a whole category of otherworldly creatures, the heavens, the fairy realms, the underworld. In real myths you see stories about creatures that people might believe exist, but especially as travel picks up and the world shrinks, and people explore, the idea that there's another civilization terrorizing your tiny home is one of the first to go. So creatures that may once have been code for your enemy neighbors to the south get replaced by otherworlds, stories get rewritten and blurred with the legends of Valhalla and the like.

Here's a quick start:

List of mythological places - Wikipedia
Lost lands - Wikipedia

 

[Futhark]

There are many stories of giants that built cities. The Firbolgs are giants in DnD, and you could make them monstrous rather than enlarged humans.

 

[skip.knox]

Devor: I'm already using Atlantis and Hollow Earth. There are some goofy-looking creatures associated with hollow earth theories, but nothing that feels useful. The mythological places article is a nice list; I'll file that one away. But both references are to places. I'm looking for races, the beings that would live there. You'll notice that most of those places are human-centered; either lost lands, or afterlife lands.

Futhark: I've given consideration to giants, but I just have a hard time carving out enough space for them to have entire cities. Unless I put them up in the clouds, of course! I've sort of been ducking giants because they are mostly just very big humans. If I use them, I need some sort of hook that lets me develop a different anthropology (you'll excuse the word) for them.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

 

[Devor]

But both references are to places. I'm looking for races, the beings that would live there.

That's kind of the thing, though. Instead of taking a monster and humanizing the place, I think you'll have to take a place and sort of monsterize the people there.

 

[Futhark]

Of course you duck giants, you can’t jump over them, can you? Funny that you mention Hollow Earth. I was just thinking the other day that it could be within the realm of possibility that there is a Swiss cheese layer to the crust. Imagine country sized caverns, a complete biome populated by say, insects with lungs so they could grow as big as a horse, octopuses with cartilage so they can walk, descendants of dinosaurs that can curse fluently in six languages, and well, you get the idea.

 

[skip.knox]

The Swiss cheese theory was proposed. Can't remember the source because I chose the hollow option instead.

I'm not looking for new environments or worlds, though. Altearth is plenty for me. I was just struck by how few kingdom-level monster races there are. Drow are just another version of elves. Ditto duergar and dwarves (if only we had a conjunction that began with 'd' ...). Most monsters from actual legend are as I said before, either unique or live in packs or family units. I guess if you're going to have legends, it's more believable to claim there's a werewolf out in the forest than it is to say there's an entire kingdom complete with cities and trade routes just over that mountain range.

I'm happy with my orcs empire and the five troll kingdoms. I may wind up putting lizardmen in North Africa, obvious as that may be. I've a notion about merfolk, but I doubt it'll make it into a story any time soon. Hint: Atlantis sunk.

Addendum: not the fellow I was thinking of before, but there's an even older Swiss cheese theory of the earth. It was held by a 16th century Italian heretic. His story (he was a peasant IIRC) is told in a great little book by Carlo Ginzberg called The Cheese and the Worms.

 

[ThinkerX]

Rule of thumb with different races is the 'Rule of Three' - three races plus humans. More than that, and the readership can start getting confused. Tolkien had dwarves, elves, and hobbits (on the good side), and orcs/goblins and trolls on the bad side, plus critters like Ents and giant spiders - this over several hefty volumes.

That said, as pointed out before, much of my primary world is cribbed from the AD&D 'Historical Earth' sourcebooks, which do include varieties of elves, dwarves, and other races. Initially, the idea was to have large kingdoms of these races dotting the map, much like you did with Altearth.

At the time, I was wrestling with 'alignment issues' with AD&D - finding the ethos assigned to the various races more than a little arbitrary. So, I stepped back a bit and decided to give a race - goblins - reasons to be...less than pleasant. Biological reasons. First, I made it so they were 'hatched' rather than 'born' - Tolkien alludes in passing to something similar. Second, I skewed the male/female ratio to 100 to 1 or better - but the male goblins still have the desire to reproduce, making for fierce competition and a need for them to prove themselves - often in battle. This didn't stop them from creating high order civilizations, but it does make them dangerous neighbors. A lot of the construction and basic organization is done by quasi-monastic orders that have take vows of celibacy. There are official arena style contests for breeding rights, and assassination for the same is at least semi-legal. Mayhap something similar would work with you.