Monsters : Be they Good, or Bad.

[King_Cagn]

Aye, another thread I thought I might make that I find interesting about world building, monster creation. I was wondering what original or borrowed monsters you guys may have come up with for your worlds?

I'll start off with, the Wailing Serpent : An Grand Eldritch Abomination that is said to resemble a serpent so large it's inconceivable, it is a mass of bones and flesh with feathery wings. The Wailing Serpent's 'facial' features is merely a set of large titanic teeth, when they open a large eye dwells within.

It is said that the Wailing Serpent feeds on the insanity of people, yet it is this insanity that it gives them. Due to its grotesque form the beast is said to merely open its mouth and with it's eye entire towns and even cities are driven insane. Its origins are unclear yet it is believed that it is one of the creations of the Architects, a divine race that was spawned from the flesh of the fallen 'Forefathers' in their great war, they came to the new plain shortly to die after building many great and now ancient lost things. A Wailing Serpent is said to have its name because of the sound it makes when it comes, but it's also said it's because of the sound its victims make when it opens it mouth/eye, this cannot be proven because the creature is a rare occurrence due to the fact that it only appears after every millennia...

VeÂ0‘6k¨¦ Kone : The VeÂ0‘6k¨¦ Kone, or Great Horses as they're known are a mystic race of steeds that roam the lands, these horses aren't ordinary steeds because they've two heads, are up to 8 ft tall and are immortal. Some look at them as abominations due to their black coats, silvery manes and piercing red eyes, these beings aren't violent because they often run away an disappear into clouds of dark smoke but when they're violent they do kill with mercy and without hesitation.

According to legend, the VeÂ0‘6k¨¦ Kone were the horses for the gods given to them by the first known Ancestors as a sign of wanting peace between both Celestials, the gods refused the horses and cast down to earth, in mockery they gave them two heads and made them fear all other forms of creation. Unknown to the gods, the Ancestors instilled the need within all races to catch and tame these wild, majestic creatures. To this day only a few have been said to have caught a two headed horse but it still doesn't stop countless more from trying...

 

[Noma Galway]

So, I'm not sure if they are actually monsters, as I'm not sure what the term "monster" really entails. I have a race of beings known only as the Immortals (though I'm looking for a better name). They are humanoid with black wings. Every footstep they take kills a mortal, or so the legends say. Not sure on that yet. The only way for one to die is to drown in deep water. They tend to fly, as they do not want to be responsible for the deaths of so many people. They land at the site of large fires, since they are born from fires. They have a constant number. When one dies, another is born. This is vaguely reminiscent of phoenixes except they are completely different individuals. They have ravens as companions, and the ravens are also immortal.

 

[Jabrosky]

I love to use prehistoric wildlife, especially dinosaurs. I've been infatuated with them since childhood. The neatest thing about them is even though they existed, enough enigma remains about them to invite speculation about what they were really like.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

In Wildling I came up with the Snapdragon. (Catchy name I thought!) A sort of walking lizard shaped forest of branches that literally uproots itself every so often and goes wandering. It kills its prey by basically stepping on them - something that's done so quickly that that there's a snapping sound (hence the name). Then it eats its prey by soaking up the bloody remains through the roots in its feet. And they're so big and the branches and therefore the body so open that you can't really killit with arrows or swords. What you need is fire - and then running away while it slowly burns out.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Smith]

The Snapdragon sounds awesome, psychotick! I'm a sucker for monstrous plants.

Monsters are some of my favourite parts of world-building, I love monsters, and I've been obsessed with monster movies and mythological monsters since I was a kid, so they provide lots of inspiration fodder. The only ones I have required in my WIP so far are The Eight Curses, though my protagonist himself has entered folkloric tradition as a monster himself, children-eating style. The Eight Curses are a group of monsters who haunt the folklore of this one small part of my world. They live in shadows, underground, in caves, and sometimes walk in plain sight. Each have a different mode of behaviour, target prey and attached stories, but often they'll eat or steal some vital part of you. One likes to eat orphaned children and wears a necklace of children's bones, one is a giant betentacled monster who lulls you into a stupor before she eats you because she hates screams, and another, conversely, is attracted to screams and is a glutton for the shadows of interesting people.

If I ever write a sequel to my present novel, it will deal with my protagonist's attempts to avoid being turned into a Curse, which is actually a high honour his patron god wishes to bestow upon him. He, unfortunately, would rather just die.

 

[Braveface]

Some very cool ideas in this thread!

I like to use a genus, then develop different 'castes' of monsters. So there are the big daddies and the mooks who come from the same kind of gene pool. Their temperament depends on how they connect with the source of evil. Right now I'm thinking decomposing creatures...scavengers...vultures and such...for my inspiration. Especially creatures that do the work of decomposition too.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I'm like to create monsters that are fun to draw and have stupid names. For example, instead of a Hell Hound, I have an Eternal Dalmation. It's like a Hell Hound, but with fun-to-draw spots. Also, Hell Hound sounds too much like Hellephant. I can't have both. I choose you, Hellephant!

I also like to make huge distorted monsters and demons. Ty Tongul, the Great Indulger is my favorite distorted demon. He does everything in excess, so even his body parts are excessive. He has a second mouth that stretches across his fat gut. He has five eyes--three on his head and two on his chest, and lots of horns, nostrils and many, many ears. He has three arms (two rights) and three legs (two lefts), and he's huge. His weapon: priestchucks. That's two dead priests chained together at the ankles and wielded as nunchucks (which, fortunately for the nuns in my world, are just chained sticks).

 

[Philip Overby]

I like bizarre monsters in my stories as well. My stories don't feel right unless they have some kind of monsters in them. I'm really interested in nightmarish creatures that would make me pee my pants if I saw them in real life. I have one monster in my current WIP called an Emperor's Hand daemon that I really like. It's basically a Russian nesting doll of demons. As my MC kills one, another pops out and another and another. By the time the battle's over, there are dozens of progressively smaller demon corpses littered all over the place.

Good clean fun!

 

[skip.knox]

I've got many, because I borrow freely from medieval legend. The one that's in my WIP is the lindwurm. This is a flightless dragon that lives entirely underground. It has incredibly hard teeth, plus emits an acid in its mouth, and essentially consumes rock (this tends to be hard on living creatures, too). The lindwurm's system processes the rock then excretes gems through openings all around its body. This is where precious gems come from. It also excretes through its many feet (think millipede) a substance called lindsilver, which glows with its own light that lasts for decades before degrading into normal silver. This is where veins of silver come from. A lindwurm never stops growing. Eventually it becomes so large, it can no longer feed itself and it dies.

There was a time when a few lindwurms came to the surface, but that was only during the Second Dark Age. After that time, they dwelt deep under mountains and were seen so seldom, even by dwarves, they became memories and then legends.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I like bizarre monsters in my stories as well. My stories don't feel right unless they have some kind of monsters in them. I'm really interested in nightmarish creatures that would make me pee my pants if I saw them in real life. I have one monster in my current WIP called an Emperor's Hand daemon that I really like. It's basically a Russian nesting doll of demons. As my MC kills one, another pops out and another and another. By the time the battle's over, there are dozens of progressively smaller demon corpses littered all over the place.

Good clean fun!

That is funny. About an hour ago, my 6-year-old reminded me of Tootin'Comin' (Tutankhamun). He was inspired after my daughter got over a serious stomach flu last week, and she was farting in an unladylike manner several times in a row. The monster had five legs, three mouths, and a large eye on top of his brown, hairy star-shaped body. He could only look up, and he was taller than your average tiger wood tree, so my daughters and the Roku-Roku Rainbow Girls (originally characters from MS challenges!) just had to avoid getting stomped on. Of course, the monster made tooting sounds, since he was inspired by my daughter's uncontrollable farting.

Yes, it's childish! The girls are 6 and 4. (The 1 year old is spared… for now.) But they remember this monster well, and I had to chase them while piggybacking the little one. For some reason, if I have a baby on my back, I make a good monster. It worked out well that Tootin'Comin' has multiple mouths. Hannah mimics my monster sounds. Luckily, the sound was never farty. It's not cute for a baby to make that sound on purpose.

 

[McBeardstache the Hairy]

I have a race of quasi-divine creatures called the Illuse. In my world, Dragons have the ability to speak things into existence, and the Illuse have the ability to dream things, including themselves into existence. They literally think, therefore they are.
They actually are a race that predates creation, and are speculated to have been the original creators. They are all bound to each other, and when one dies, every other Illuse feels their absence. But when one dies, they can literally dream their physical form back to life, or travel to another realm. Illuse also appear to be the same race as whatever race looks at them. If a dwarf sees an Illuse, they will see a dwarf, as the Illuse do not have a physical form that is within mortal comprehension.

They're a dead race in my world, because the Heart of Illuse, a great gemstone crafted of pure light, was shattered. And it severed the bonds of the Illuse from the physical realm. They still exist, but on a plane neither higher nor lower than the mortal one. They are just separated.

I can't quite remember where I came up with the concept of them. It kinda just happened.

 

[Gryphos]

In my world there is a being called the Bozu, inspired by the Umibōzu of Japanese myth. It lives in the ocean and sometimes emerges to block a ship's path. Its appearance is that of a huge jet black humanoid that can tower over the largest seaships. Its exact features are all obscured by shadow and the only things visible are its bright yellow circular eyes.

When it encounters a ship sometimes it will attack and capsize it, but most of the time it just stands there and stares at the crew. Sailors who have met it talk about how they heard its whispers in their heads as it stared at them and some returning sailors have even been driven mad by it.

Over time it's turned into a mythical boogeyman-like figure. Children in coastal towns are told to behave or else the Bozu will appear and turn its gaze on them. And some occultists have even started to worship it as a god, believing it to be one of the 'Occult Lords'.

 

[Wanara009]

I like to borrow from old Indonesian legends, especially the legend as to how the city of Surabaya got its name. I also look toward speculative documentaries such as 'The Future is Wild' or 'Alien Planet' or the 'Walking with...' Series for inspiration. Of course, I tried to make my world as grounded as possible, so 'real' monsters are rare and those that are real are either personification of natural force (sky, sea, land) and thus more in the purview of a religion-topic thread or mundane animals with greatly exaggerated reputation.

One of such legendary beasts is the Bayashura aka Sea Dragons, a colossal sea crocodile that haunts the open ocean between the two main continent in the world. Think Pliosaur crossed with Kaprosuchus. Its bite is strong enough to put hole in metal hull, so ship that sailed between the continents must always have a few cannons pointed downward.

The other is Suraganas aka Trench Beasts, a large shark with strange, serpentine like body. Think the love child of Basilosaurus and a shark. The only other creature that pose a threat to an adult Suraganas in the natural world is Bayashura and vice-versa. Furthermore, Suraganas are social creatures that often hunts in packs, using the bioluminescene on their flank to signal members of its pack.

Lasts of the sea monsters are the Coral King aka Pulau-Ikan, a species filter feeding giants fish that can grow the size of a football stadium. When they are young, they have armour to protect them. As they grow larger, mostarmour disappear save for the porous, fragile dorsal plates. These creature are lethargic, often staying half-submerged and adrift for long periods of time to soak up sunlight for the symbiotic algae and sea weed that took root in their dorsal plates. Their size also make them an ecosystem onto themselves.

 

[Michael J. Tobias]

Still creating, but thus far I have 3 unique creatures in my WIP:

1. Harqua - Large hulking products of dark magic gone awry. In the early days of dark magic, many tried to use it to create a race of super humans. What they got were harqua, standing between 7 and 9 feet in height, they are large, heavily muscled, and always have some type of malformation, usually eyes at different heights, one limb longer than the other, etc... They are rare, since dark magic is now very rare, but the very few that exist are servants to those who unashamedly follow the dark religion.

2. Draequus (pronounced Dry-kus) - A mythological beast according to nearly everyone in my world, they are actually real (which is eventually revealed). They are the products of dragons mating with horses (yeah, I know, but hey, my world, my rules ) Picture horses with scaled hides, about 1.5 times the size of large draft horses, with thicker legs that are built more like dragon legs (knees bend backwards rather than forwards like human knees or horse knees), and snouts that are thinner and more reptilian. They are also very intelligent and they cast a natural shield around them (and anyone they choose to include) that nullifies magic. They are also about 4 times as fast as a horse.

3. Trievors - Another product of dark magic, these are creatures of nothing but pure appetite that feed on two things: fear and human flesh. They have four arms and two legs, very sharp claws, scaled bodies, heads like wolves with stunted snouts, but larger mouths and teeth. They are extraordinarily intelligent and take great pleasure in capturing humans (the younger the better) and devouring them while they live in order to maximize their satisfaction of both hungers. To this end, they have developed a specific poison that renders humans paralyzed but keeps them conscious and oblivious to pain, which they deliver via darts and blowguns.

 

[Svrtnsse]

A little while ago I posted about the wind bears I made up: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/world-building/10674-introducing-wind-bear.html

They're basically large winged bears and I came up with them as I needed a flying version of werewolves (any predatory mammal would do, but they had to be flying as well).

More recently (last night) I came up with the Night Squirrel. It's similar to a normal squirrel except it's nocturnal and its fur is dark blue. Its most distinctive feature is that when it gets scared or feels threatened its tail flashes bright white. The tail also sends a light shock into anyone who touches it while it's flashing.