Favorite Creatures in Fantasy

[Philip Overby]

I personally love the cactus people (actually all the creatures) from China Mieville's Bas-Lag world. And the Weaver, which is described as:

a multi-dimensional being in the form of a giant spider, who speaks in a never-ending torrent of free-verse poetry

Wait a minute...what? Yeah, so I like weird creatures in my fantasy. Gollum is a particularly unique creature and so is Cthulhu (although he is some sort of elder god, so maybe not exactly a creature?) What creatures do you like? Dragons, ettercaps, Jabberwockys, ogres, frost giants, gelatinous cubes, lizardmen?

Share!

 

[myrddin173]

One of my new favorites is from Catherine Fisher's Relic Master series which I am almost finished with. There is a race of creatures called the Sekoi who are seven-fingered humanoid felines. There culture is heavily based on story-telling and listening to one of them telling a story can easily find you trapped in your mind relieving it until it is over. One of the Sekoi is a member of the main group and I like him for his wry sense of humor.

There are probably more I will check in again later once I remember them.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

I love me the Kandra, and the Inquisitors from Mistrborn. The Myrdral from WoT when I imagine them scare my eternal soul. Good times with those people!

 

[Wolfen]

I love me the Kandra, and the Inquisitors from Mistrborn. The Myrdral from WoT when I imagine them scare my eternal soul. Good times with those people!

lovelovelovelovelove the kandra

 

[Dante Sawyer]

lovelovelovelovelove the kandra

I too love the Kandra. TenSoon... classic. But my favorite comes from Firesoul (Map the Dragon's book). It's called a xyntrix (or at least I think that's how you spell it off of the top of my head). It's this small little creature that crafts its body off of its environment. Pretty cool!
I also like the "wolves" from King's Wolves of the Calla. Dr. Doom lookalikes who throw deadly snitches and use lightsabers... yeah, I can get into that.

 

[Leuco]

I saw a picture of a Myconid in the Monster Manual that I found rather fascinating. I think Toad from Super Mario Bros. is a kind of Myconid too. I don't know what it is about them, but I think they're interesting. I may do some research to find out where this idea of fungus people came from. Maybe they're supposed to be representations of something else.

 

[Cheryl]

I'm really boring and generic but I really love unicorns and dragons. There was a time in my life that I believed they existed and I wanted a pet dragon.

 

[Seth son of Tom]

personally i still love the classics elves, dwarves, centaurs, orcs, dragons, phoenixes, etc.

 

[DameiThiessen]

Lately I've been really into Dragons, Chimeras, and Greek Sphinxes. I have an elder character who is filling as my beasty, and I wanted her to have the general shape of a Sphinx (head and chest of a woman, animal body) but with avian and reptilian body parts.

 

[Linqy]

I fell absolutely in love with TenSoon, kandra are very high in my list of awesomest creatures ever. Too bad I'll never be able to steal them for a novel of my own XD

But for me the absolute one true love is Vampires. Any way shape or form. I love the mythological air of mystery about them and the infinite possibilities they offer. Ranging from pure evil, to horribly nasty to completely romantic.

 

[mythique890]

I have always, always been absolutely fascinated with the idea of dragons. They are the king of the fantasy jungle.

I've never read "Relic Masters," but myrddin's description of the Sekoi sounds really cool.

Selkies from Celtic mythology are another favorite of mine, and I like how some authors I've read recently expanded on the myth in a way that a 'selkie' was any animal that could shed or take back it's animal skin to become human for a while. I sort of like a lot of creatures from Celtic mythology, and there are a lot of them!

I like the idea of centaurs but I'm not quite sure what I'd ever do with them writing-wise, even though I love Foley from Artemis Fowl.

Mermaids are cool in all versions from Disney to scaries with green skin and seaweed hair, but again, not sure what I'd ever be able to do with them.

Werewolves, unicorns, sea monsters (like Nessie or the leviathan)... I like those too. I have a lot of favorites! Reading about obscure mythological/fantasy creatures is really inspiring to me and makes me wonder how to use them in stories.

 

[Raven's Quill]

Sirens, mermaids, elves - I love the graceful, willowy creatures. Love to be interested to some new ones though!

 

[Whitefur]

Dragons all the way. It doesn't matter from which book or universe they come from as long as they're not overly human, aka not humans-dressed-in-dragon-suits.

They're also the reason why I won't play Skyrim. I won't be able to bring myself to kill them, even if they're some pixels bunched together to form the image of a dragon.

 

[TWErvin2]

I've always liked the ur-viles from Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever trilogies.

Dark, creatures of power that form fighting wedges, where however many form up focus their power on the loremaster at the point, enabling him to wield magic able to defeat most magics thrown against them. Individually, they're not slouches either. Dark, roynish creatures, without eyes. It's difficult to adequately describe them outside the Land--the world Donaldson created.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

The malices from Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife series. Really terrifying, really hard to kill.

 

[Map the Dragon]

In no particular order...

Dragons - From just about any work
Draconians - Dragonlance
Nuar - Dreamworld
Koloss - Mistborn
Hobbits - Duh
Shadow-Walkers - Empires of Magic
Minotaur - as per Dragonlance

 

[Thalian]

I love dragons and the power that they represent, except I don't necessarily like how powerful they are in the Dungeons & Dragons world because they can pretty much do anything that anybody else can do, just better.

I am basically just a sucker for the regular fantasy creatures; orcs, goblins, trolls, dragons, elves, dwarves and the like. There is just something to be said about the simplicity of that type of world.

 

[FictionQuest]

For a slightly lighthearted answer, I really enjoyed the Luggage in the early Discworld stories.

 

[Maid Of Glass]

Dragons, Dragons, Dragons and more Dragons so long as they're well written! and I adore Vampires, but none of this sparkly, animal eating nonsense, proper human killing elegant monsters with capes and coffins and a name like Count Dracula x]

 

[Steerpike]

T'lann Imass from Steven Erikson's Malazan books. Also, the Jaghut, from the same series.

Various creatures from Lovecraft's mythos.

Selkies.

Dragons, if done well.

Pistol wraiths from the Iron Kingdoms d20 setting are kind of cool too.

The Dzur from Steven Brust's works; especially Tazendra, a Dzur warrior and mage.