Fantastical Creatures Worldbuilding

Pikehorn;

Strong, lithe, deer-like quadrapeds that roam mineral-rich highlands in herds. They eat roots and mouthfuls of rocky dirt as a source of iron and wolfram. The diet supplies the species with a metalic fur coat that can ripple in waves (similar to iron filings over a magnet) in mating displays. All Pikehorn sport a wide chitinous face-plate, while only the males of the species also grow a large pair of axe shaped metal horns, which are locked with the horns of other males in displays of dominance. The species seems to have naturally evolved some of the thought patterns required to produce weak ferromancy effects, as can be seen by the electricity that acrs between their horns during dominance competitions and defense displays. Often, the Pikehorn with the longest horns will become the Alpha of a herd, as the greater distance from face to horn-tip will help to lessen the pain of the constant electrical discharges.

While the meat of the Pikehorn is revolting to most, the animal was once hunted for the high quality weapons that could be crafted from their horns by the developing societies of the time. In the modern era, they are prized as trophy animals and for the curious conductive properties of their hides.

I have done monster worldbuilding threads here for years. They are never long lived and few people post in them.

People post critters. Someone reads them (few, since it turns into a wall of text) and the thread dies with no comment. We need some discussion.

Let's try to amend this. Entries here look like original. My proposal is to comment every other monster, tell what you don't like about it and say propose ideas on how to improve them or expand on their biology encounter potential.

I will start:

Mimicry. Many real creatures do it. A mimic is more interesting since it camouflages as manmade objects.

How to improve: Result of an animate plant druidic ritual gone wrong. Can mantain the flower shape for long periods of time. For this assassins like them. Gift you victim a bouquet of white flowers and snake will do the kill for you.
Used as security of druidic groves. The sacred tree is surrounded by a field of white flowers that will turn into a deadly swarm if the head druid so decide.

Not much different form Assassin Vine. a tree that tries to kill you. The genjutsu is nice. But it relies on death from exhaustion. It means days for humans. Too long. And a more classic "makes them asleep and never wake up" is too standard for a plant monster.
No ideas so far on how to make it better.

>Flying eels
Float using gas bladders, hunt by dropping onto prey, biting and strangling it, and slithering away to refill their bladders. Tend to nest under the eaves of buildings, which can often lead to or exacerbate house fires

A floating butterfly with extra pair of wings. They shed little sparks or cinders when they flap

>Mammalian silk maker
Tarsier-like, the silk started off as scent glands in the elbows. Long fingers except for the pinkies, which they hook the strands around to keep it close. They make homes, traps, clothes, use them for travel. Waiting in their traps, they look like they're praying/prostrating, laying with their arms splayed in front of them. They also make loose nets to entangle prey, like an ogre spider

I believe people like to express their own ideas, and want other people to comment their ideas, but are unwilling to spend energy doing the same to others. This is the reason writefaggotry threads died. And even they tried to make every posting user review someone else story.

Anyway I believe we can build something in this thread.
>Lagocust
a classical example of crossing 2 animals. They are cute voracious fluffy beings that multiply incredibly fast and devour everything in their way.
They are just normal bunnies from Australia.

You fused two species that occupy the same niche, "grow fast, form a swarm and devour everything on your way".

Maybe you could add a 7 years cycle like cicades. The eggs lay dormant for 7 years.

I dig it, let's see (opinions obv):
I really don't see how controlling a corpse would help a creature the size of a tooth. Wouldn't it be easier for it to just eat the carrion? And what does it add to or change about a regular zombie?
You could have it be a nut, like a popcorn seed that gets stuck in the mouth and takes root, TURNING someone into a zombie a la cordyceps. OR maybe a colony of these little creatures that turn things that aren't supposed to be mouths into mouths, like treasure chests or clams or pitcher plants, or yeah, the skulls of dead animals

forget the psychedelics and go straight up reality warping; the tree warps space like a gravity well, so it's faster/shorter walk to approach it and slower/farther to walk away from it. It's not aggressive, it just passively traps animals. A little copse of these trees could actually be an entire ecosystem or forest unto itself, and they could be used as a defense, lining a castle or town or what have you

I'd lean into the pit part, make them passive predators. Maybe have them open their mouths like 180 degrees and sit in tree hollows or make a burrow themselves. Underwater? Maybe they hunt like pelicans, and you need to investigate why the levy/lake/etc water level is falling so rapidly. Use them in crafting bags of holding, either improvised or as an ingredient/upgrade?

cooking itself doesn't seem like a good idea, evolution wise. Let it be immune, like a salamander, and actually catching it is super dangerous, as it flaps wildly to throw flaming oil everywhere. Also could have it like an archerfish, shooting fireballs at prey

Iron isn't great for conducting electricity, I'd play up the magnetism more, like they're rarely able to hit each other with their horns as they're pushed away. This also makes killing them difficult as iron weapons can't get close, and more primitive weapons can't pierce their heavy coat

Lilygator

These creatures live on calm waters that have dense surface vegetation.
They come on many sizes, from small ones the size of a house cat up to 9 meters from the tip of tail to the snout.
They are cornivorous and hunt by ambushing prey, using the shiny keratinous orb on the tip of their tongue to attract flying creatures, as well as a distracted person, and staying still with their three jaws open like three leaf lilypad.
They are relatively weak and slow except for their bite, which is incredibly fast and strong.
Although it may look strange, the creature's head is not split in two, the frontal part is only a modified set of jaws, the brain case, eyes and nostrils are located on the small pink area above the flower jaws. The yellow eyes at each side of the jaws are decoys, a defence machanism against predators like large birds that tend to aim at the head and eyes.
The creature is specially vulnerable when it has to venture out of water in search of a better hunting spot.
Outside of water or if their desguise is busted, the Lilygators tend to try to flee, prefering to strike while not seen, but they sometimes will chase a prey that manages to escape their grasp.

I can see reality warping being cool but that seems reserved for something more...Powerful I feel. Using pollen as a vector for innate psychic powers seems a bit more on the normal side to me in such a setting where things like that exists

That said, here's a whole ecosystem for you.

The Sand Seas

-Scholars have intimated that the Golden Waste is a product of a celestial body crashing into the earth many ages past and the act of doing so utterly destroyed the land turning the ground into a powdery sand so fine it flows like water. Stranger still is that with the advent of modern technology the scholars have found that many creatures that swim in its depths have adapted to the sand sea in such a way as to produce sounds that affect the sand itself. Dyrehorns are an air breathing mammalian species similar in nature to dolphins having feet instead of being fused into fins like their water dwelling kin. Most notably is the horn like protrusion where the melon is located and creates a special sound frequency that allows the dyrehorns to swim effortlessly even at depth in the sand sea where the sand is packed far tighter and does not flow as freely. Other such creatures are said to have similar adaptions and live farther below where even man made submersibles would need to employ drills to continue further.

Nice. Insulting things is easy. You start from there and constructive criticism come out itself.

Yep they suck cause they are standard zombies.
Unlike other zombies they try to bite you and then run away. During the bite is quite likely that an infected teeth remain stuck in your body. If the wound is treated badly (you bandage it and cast heal) the tooth remains and start taking over the new host. It releases thin hair like filaments that spread through blood vessels and then starts slowly traveling inside your body toward the mouth.
Often early stage of infection is discovered when the infected guy is wounded again and amid his flowing blood black hair is seen. Pulling on those hair will extract the evil tooth from inside your body.
Nothing too fancy actually. Just normal zombies propagating through zombie bites but with more body horror involved.
Yet I like the idea of turning stuff that are not mouth into mouthes. (I like deidara from Naruto). Maybe some animals found a symbiotic relationship with them: they allow a colony of those teeth to grow on a part of their body (tail/hand) which gives them a biting attack and the filaments are beneficial to the host(dunno, really hard to cut through=natural venal armor).
Is there a way to keep both?

Space warping. I like it. Druids and mages cultivate a garden of those trees disposed in special pattern in order to form a pocket reality bubble. It takes time and older bubbles are bigger, but I always like the idea of pocket dimensions.
Using it integrate inot castle defense system is cooler but much more complex to imagine.
You can probably get away with some Esher like configurations.

Like the 2D angel from Evangelion. A 2D black hole that travels and consumes.

Maybe their defense mechanism against predators is to generate heat. If you bite something and your mouth star burning you let go. It is not a big problem underwater when water dissipates most of the heat.
But in the air they start suffocating and hurting, release the fie, start hurting more, release more flames. Until dead and cooked.

I like the magnetism idea more. Normal animals during horn fighting risk breaking horn and getting hurt. Magnetic repulsion will make such fights less riskier. Also since they prevent metal blows it is a sought material for armor.
(will wirte more) but now need to do a thing with my flatmate for 1 hour.

>Reef Apprentice
A small species of octopus, they are most known for their above average intellect, even for cephalopods. Their ink is a thick, sludgy mucus they use to decorate their lairs as a sort of crude spellbook. Most only know a single spell, but they have been observed learning spells from each other on the rare occasions these solitary creatures meet. The largest and oldest have been observed using magic as advanced as flight to catch prey and avoid predators.

I meant no insult, but with the character limit it's hard not to be blunt, and the reasons for inventing creatures are hard to discern.
Like the body horror aspect of the tooth thing,
or really wanting the fish to cook itself.

If you want the body horror AND extra mouths, might I suggest growing teratomas(gnarly stuff, would not image search) that tear open and become mouths, making the host both an incubator and a more virulent infector. Could even become a kind of tooth armor or weapons

as for the warp trees, I just imagined a wall/fence of them around the perimeter, with a gap at the entrance. You could spend ten minutes going through the gate, or three hours passing by the tree

Just DM the fucking game, no one gives a shit about your "worldbuilding"

just classical mimetic ambush predator.

To be able to repel metals that are not magnetic you need to have an alternating field that both create parassite currents and pushes them away. This would require an active element i.e. the Pikehorn has to be alive in order to use this ability. But physics can go suck dick and we will still have our armor that stops high speed metal weapons.

>>Flying eels
Can they be red? And a creepy clown herd them?
Right now they are a normal creature that hides in the ceiling and jumps on you. Their flying ability is totally irrelevant.

>buttefly
picrelated is a better version of a beaitfull but useless butterfly.

>Mammalian silk maker
Just make them spider people, or intelligent spiders.

A series of mimicry predators were proposed in this thread. But this is the one I like the most. Probably cause it has the best picture. Or because it is bigger. The idea of a the ground yuo are standing turning into the trap is not new but I still find it fascinating.
For some reason I imagine them in the middle of a zen garden.

You dumbass, this is the important kind worldbuilding. He's worldbuilding monsters, eg., the shit his players are going to fight

I basically monkeys with spiderweb traps, or spiders with hands. They could hold spears, swing around, lasso stuff. More active, less creepy crawly, and less alien than smart bugs. Also, maybe playing on something to do with harps. Anyway, yeah, I guess I could just make them spiders but where's the fun in that?

The flying eels are definitely an outside mob. I'm imagining them at the docks, dive bombing rats and stuff. Again, you're right in that they're mundane, but the flying thing is like their whole gimmick. That and exploding

>meant no insult
I'm not offended. I wanted to say that we MUST insult. It is the easiest form of criticism and we should apply it. We are on Veeky Forums, no one here gets offended easily.

Anyway since we speaking here I wanted to present two monsters I was thinking about:

Myconids ooze hybrids:
Fungus is a lhuge unmoving organism with the sentience of a child. In order to acquire food it creates Myconids. Sentient mushroom people, that do all the work (search for food, protect it etc.) Myconids has no mouth and lasts until its intiial energy storage is consumed. Typically 2 years. Myconids are much more inteligient that the original fungus, but as replciants in Blade Runner are slaves with expiry date to it.

I want to create some sort of symbiosis between oozes (possible sentient) and myconids. Any idea?
Spider web people
Based on picrelated but in human form. would different colonies form a city?

I for once like to read bestiaries.

a pic of something similar.

Oh man, I have something kinda(?) similar in that I wanted slimes that look more like worm balls than Jell-o.
youtube.com/watch?v=TcKpx2DxGwY
They inhabit skeletons or other structures since they can only really pull, becoming the muscles that puppet the monster.

To be symbiotic, you could make the fungus the structure that the slimes move. It could also account for the disparity in intelligence (I'm not personally a fan of the 'drones' being smarter than the 'queen', but I could see it working). Maybe the slimes farm the fungus, and that's why the Myconids have a time limit; they eat the fungus structure underneath.

as for the spider ppl, WOULD they form a city? Based off picture, they don't seem smart enough OR fast enough. Also, why would they, what are their goals? Camouflage, a trap? Does one pretend to be a baker, hoping someone will come in? I think a similar thing could be pulled off by having a city of cadavers being puppeted by spiders, only ever really moving the arms and Weekend-at-Bernie's-ing it up everywhere, instead of walking spider-Jaegers around. Still, depends on what you want. Could definitely go body snatchers if you wanted to

The dryad inhabits a grove as a guardian.

To do this, they attach to a particularly strong tree and animate its roots. These roots attach to living creatures and take over their bodies. Once attached, they feed off of their thrall, slowly killing it over a period of months, and use the host's body to defend the grove and attract other hosts to parasite off of.

The dryad's strongest power is its song: it pacifies all but the strongest-willed, and enchants the vulnerable, enticing them into surrending their bodies to its roots. With the power of their song and the manpower of their thralls, they usually maintain uncontested control over an area until destroyed.

In appearance, they look like clusters of typically feminine faces made of tree bark. (Dryads hosted in oak trees are known to be more masculine.) Each of the faces talk, and their voices forming angelic harmonies which help them to reason with intelligent creatures that they fail to enchant with their songs.

In combat, they rely on their thralls, who retain the skills and knowledge of their past life. Weak thralls can also be positioned strategically to trip up opponents on the roots attached to them. The dryad possesses one direct method of attachment, biting, but frankly, if you get bit by an immobile face on a tree, it's your own damn fault.

Dryads can be defeated by chopping down or otherwise destroying their home tree, but will come back on a different tree on the morning after the next full moon. The only way to thoroughly kill a dryad is to burn down the entire grove, which may be necessary. When a dryad is killed, it's thralls are released, although the root leaves an unsightly scar behind. Released thralls are stricken with a case of temporary amnesia that rapidly wears off; they will never remember the time they spent enthralled.

The dryad possesses one direct method of ATTACK, rather.

I used this in a game where most of the players were absent. The premise was, the absent PCs were enchanted by the dryad, and the remaining PCs had to figure out what was going on, decide whether to fight (the dryad lied that the thralls would die if she did), then take her down without hurting the enthralled PCs too badly.
The players that were there ended up being crazy about it, though one of the absent ones didn't like the idea of me playing their character while they were enthralled. Overall, I'd call it a pretty big success.

Nice video, I thought it was fake but seems tubifex worms are a thing.

Myconids:
When a Myconid die all nutrients inside it's body are already consumed. The original fungus and everybody else in the caverns do not bother digesting it, as it would require too much calories for the nutrients it is worth. So those dried husks of dead replicants stand around offering their sponge exoskeleton to anyone willing to live inside. For example a slime....

Nah I like your idea better.

Slimes cultivating their new bodies.
Still I prefer myconids intelligent, it is more horrific growing and killing intelligent beings. It is like driving edible cars. Awesome.
No reason why they can both exist.
And then we have a lone myconid that was able to attain lichdom. Unable to truly die he attacked a slime colony again and again in a Dark Soul fascion. Until he was able to kill the Slime Queen, whose crown he wears to this day. They call him the Pale King.

Spider ppl.
My mine inspiration is the creepiness factor. Button eyes like in coraline. Jerky movements. Maybe spiders are just curious and want to learn how humans live. So they build such a submarine to explore their culture. Like they are creepy as fuck but have no bad intentions.
Still no reason to form a city and a society... Guess it is better left as a solo encounter.

Body snatcher spiders are cool but nWoD Werewolves does it better.

Don't be so mad, it's what ya wanted dude

Any ideas for variations on flying snakes?

...

1.Picrelated

2.The feathered serpent from South Americans myths, Which is very cool for reasons besides being a flying serpent. I always thought of him as a dragon (especially when he is in human form)

3. picralted.

I like that one

A swarm of hair-thin vipers floating on a draft

A spring-shaped snake launching itself from the wall/ceiling

Does it make an exaggerated BOI-OI-OING sound whenever it leaps? If you're going to make something that ludicrously silly you might as well go the extra mile.

Black Willows

Black willows are willow trees that have grown in parts of the world where the veil between the physical world and the world of shadows is particularly thin and for whatever reason, this particular tree is most affected by this.

Black WIllows are distinguished by their off color appearance being darkened or nearly black in color.

On it's own the tree has no particular anomolous properties but does have the effect of attracting spirits towards it making areas where they grow especially haunted.

Necromancers prize these trees for their wood is used in the crafting of various items suited for their craft. such as the frames of Camera Obscuras or wands.

>Trilokite
These trilobites conquered a new environment when the prehistoric sea where they dwelt dried up. Their flat carapaces are shaped like kites, allowing them to glide freely in the wind. Trilokites can feed normally, but they get most of their energy by flying out in a storm and getting charged with lightnings striking them. The edges of their kite carapaces are razor sharp, and they attack their enemies by flying at them and slicing them in half.

>Sunfish
A curious creature, this fish swims not in water or even in air, but in sunlight itself. Rumours say that the first of their kind came to the world from the sun itself via its rays. They feed on flecks of sunlight and are often enthusiastically fed by children wielding mirrors. While their meat that tastes like orange juice is a valued delicacy, eating them is risky because their innards contain venom that causes sunstrokes.

>Zephinch
According to orcish legends, the progenitor of these walkless birds was tasked by the creator god with bringing him some soil from the seventh sky to sculpt the land from, but the bird hid some of the soil under its wings in hope to create its own land later on. Of course, the demiurge noticed the trick and cursed the bird with being unable to ever land on the ground he created. These birds spend all of their time flying and hunting for aeroplankton. When necessary, they lay special eggs filled with a gas lighter that air that stay afloat in the sky and build their flying nests around clusters of these eggs.

>Parhelia
Parhelias look like walruses with spiral tusks, flowing golden hair and no limbs, propelling themselves forward by rolling around. Inhabiting mirages, they are not seen very often except when they venture into the surrounding desert in search for food. They feed on reflections - any person or creature bitten by it loses its reflection forever and could never use mirrors or any other reflective surfaces again.

>Flower Snake/Orchid Viper
Mimicry is always a nice way to improve a mundane animal.

>Hairy teeth
This one baffles me a bit, why does it have to be teeth?

>Euclid Trees
Not sure if trees also fall under creatures, but okay, this one is not bad. I only wonder why it's called a Euclid tree.

I like this one, rabbit and locust are not the first two animals I'd combine.

>Walking Pits
>A walking pit is a magical creature close in appearance to a frog crossed with a bulldog
So it's a French Bulldog? This looks more like a cursed creature to me than a real animal because I don't understand how it actually eats.

I don't understand, is it like an antlion crossed with a chameleon?

I like this one, can easily see its use in a campaign.

I think the abilities of this one could be more developed, it reads like just a crazy looking dear.

Again, I'm not so sure if trees belong together with animals, but this one has its uses in a campaign.

Linkeaters. Linkeaters are said to be a sort of worm, or sometimes a centipede. The more famed variety make their homes inside encyclopedia articles, where they happily chew on all the hyperlinks they come across. As a result, many a blue link has turned red. The bane of all scholars (and not a few students), they have acquired quite a fearsome reputation. Much online graffiti depicts the constant battle against the armies of linkrot (this is, of course, humorous).

They have long white bodies, which they use to disguise themselves against common backgrounds. They are supposedly related to confuserpants, the black snakes which contort themselves into nonsensical articles to lead the unwary scholar astray.

Maiden Spiders

As cities have grown larger and more industrious various animals have like wise adapted to the new urban centers that the huddled masses of mortals have called home.

In the alleyways and dark places of the city spiders the size of large dogs will veil themselves in their own silk which gives off a minor illusion effect making them seem like a woman in distress on the ground and reaching out for help groaning in pain.

While they have no problem feeding upon the other urban creatures who may be drawn to the site of a destressed human they prefer humans and will throw their cloaks on the humans and bite them when they come within range and quickly scuttle to a nest nearby to finish feeding.

When confronted by multiple individuals they will turn and flee only fighting if they are cornered.

There are those who have specialized in catching such spiders alive in order to milk them for their silk prized for making lightweight but durable clothing and baring some of the illusion magic from the spider as well.

...

Yellow watchers
Gigantic yellow hydorzoan that live in waterways. They are scavengers and normally would wait in coral reefs and eat the corpses of fish that sink to the bottom, recently they have taken to waiting at docks and eating the fish that fall off the trawls of boats. If undisturbed they are harmless, however they produce a powerful acid when disturbed that creates a dead zone in the water. This dead zone can disturb other yellow watchers and cause a chain reaction. Their removal is a constant need and any coastal town will have someone willing to pay to get rid of a few.

>now need to do a thing with my flatmate for 1 hour

Pretty much what I was thinking of the entire time honestly.

Stoop Trolls

Another product of cities are the various Fey creatures who have migrated from the forests and have taken to the asphalt and bricks and trash of the city.

Stoop Trolls get their names by inhabiting areas of abandoned apartments and other such buildings getting their name from sitting on the stoops. They normally hide within the shadows in and around the buildings but when they sense a child nearby they will make themselves known or make subtle attempts to make their presence known to the child to make them curious enough to come by alone. Once alone the Stoop Troll will entice the child into it's lair to play where it and other stoop trolls will then proceed to kill the child, eat it, and then dress the body in ragged cloths wherein it will be reborn as a new stoop troll. If left unchecked Stoop Trolls can multiple to the point where they become less subtle and will attack adults even if their numbers are great enough.

Of note, the Fire of Arles Street was attributed to the rioting of the pooring denizens of the city who raged against the Constables for not doing enough to protect them and their children. This proved a useful cover for the inquistors who destroyed the stoop troll warrens and their bodies

I dig it

>Tubers
Hollow worms whose insides are the same as the outsides, basically living Water Wigglers. Small ones invade ant and termite nests, but larger ones have begun invading plumbing systems and even the sewers themselves. They 'hunt' by either unfolding toward their prey, squishing it against the tunnel wall, OR sucking their prey into the central cavity formed from the ring that is the tuber's body. This is also their main method of travel. I imagine they're covered in/excreting a sticky digestive slime

...

...

Chimney Geist

A strange breed of birds that superficially resemble Ravens with puffy dirty feathers. These creatures tend to keep towards their name sake often found around the filthy bellowing chimeys of factories prancing in the smog and ruffling their feathers.

On days when the smog is particularly bad then the Chimney Geist will begin to gather in numbers with smoke protruding from their bodies and becoming semi luminous with pockets of heat forming around them.

In this state they will decend upon small animals en mass and smother it with their bodies which begin to glow slightly from the heat they build up as their smothering sets the poor creature ablaze from which they feed upon the ashes.

Their presence is tolerated for the most part because they tend to hunt other such unsavory creatures in the city but at what cost ?

Dhuragoo

Generally found on dense jungles and dark swamps, these creatures are related to wyverns but have adapted to live mostly on land and on water, losing powered flight but still capable of gliding.
They lost their eye sight but are able to "see" using the pouches on either side of their heads, which can detect small eletric impulses and sounds. They produce a faint clicking noise that is probably used for echolocation.
Their bite is very powerful and their worm like maw has a weak hemotoxin to it, enough to kill small prey but on larger creatures, such as humans, it is generally not lethal if treated.
Normally hunts alone, is very territorial and canibalistic.

my first sexual experience was putting my dick in one of these.

good times

Mine was playing a Goddamn choose-your-own-adventure game.

Great game btw

...

>as its poison is incredibly virulent
>as its poison
>poison
Reeeeeee

OP here, wow, didn't expect the thread to get this much attention!

Are you brain damaged?

He is.
>muh venom
Fuck off.

Yeah, venom and poison are substantially interchangeable. Even technically speaking, all venom is poison (it's simply that not all poison is venom).

>wanting to angry type to user because that is a fucking Mackerel not a trout.

>realizing that I've probably got autism

nice. Nothing to add to them. Seem pretty solid.

Fantasy games has this problem. You can materials with interesting lore but at the end of the day they give very few mechanical bonuses. Nothing that would convince your level 12 party to go out of their way to acquire such materials.

The only cool metals I have ever found are Mithrill (+1 to armor) and Admantium (+1 to weapons).

>Zephinch are neat. Do they sleep while glading or only in their nests?

>Parhelia, Love the eating the reflection part but for the rest I dislike their look as nothing suggest a link to mirrors and reflections.

>Hairy teeth
ANother post above expanded on them.

>Walking pits. As a curse that makes the creature hunger forever it is pretty cool.

>Linkeaters
I like modern monsters and items:

>An oriental dragon under the Chinese district (a not quite dead Koi fish that recovered and jumped over a "waterfall" in the sewer).

>Explosive program
A .txt file made of explosive runes. Explodes when opened.

watching Hellsing Ulitmate Ep.10. Very important.

a herbivore hunting dog. Hmm...

Goth horror critters Are good. Burning stuff and eating ash is neat. When they reach critical mass do they provoke a fire that bruns cit to the gorund? Or a tempest of ash that turns the city into a copy of pompei?

A weaker version of a wyvern. ith bat echolocation. Nothing particular interesting. Unless some sort of bizarre method to hunt thm is employed by locals.

It is rare.

Anyone have ever done interesting things with picrelated?

>Navel of the World
A large, throbbing, slimy creature that resembles a beached blobfish above the ground, but has a vast mycelium permeating the ground for miles across and below. While it lacks any limbs or otherwise means to interact with the world, it has no problem finding food due to its one peculiar ability. Navel of the World can change the gravity in a vast radius around it, so that birds and animals naturally fall into its enormously wide mouth. If allowed to grow unchecked, one such creature can level cities during its feeding rituals.

>Helveticus
The body of a helveticus resembles that of a fairly ordinary primate with three eyes arranged in a vertical line and a tapir trunk in place of a nose. However, it's the creature's limbs where it's truly unusual. They start normally, then branch into two forearms at the elbow/knee; these forearms, in their turn, also branch into two others, and so on for four iterations, resulting in the grand total of 32 hands and feet. However, the use of terms "hands" and "feet" is misleading, as each of the final forearms ends in a different appendage, encompassing nearly every possible appendage that exists in the animal kingdom. There are humanoid hands and crab pincers, mantis scythes and walrus flippers, bird talons, hooves, drills, propellers and so on - it has an appendage for every situation.

>Castlephant
These imposing pachyderms all grow a large, tall camel-like hump on their backs shaped curiously similar to a tower. Unlike camels, the hump is hollow inside, has holes through which it can be entered and is covered on the outside by a thick horn-like layer of keratin. Aromatic glands on the inside of the tower secret pheromones that attract the local primates to settle inside of it. This results in a symbiosis where monkeys protect the elephant by pelting any predators or hunters that dare approach with rocks from their tower, and the elephant provides a convenient and safe lair for the monkey tribe.

>Do they sleep while glading or only in their nests?
Sleeping is the main reason why they need nests.

>I dislike their look as nothing suggest a link to mirrors and reflections
I wanted them to be flying quicksilver fellyfish, but decided against it. I actually appreciate how their look has nothing to do with their quirk, it makes them less obviously a creature made up for RPG's.

An old one.

>Candleflies
Luminescent flying insects that lay their eggs in dead flesh, giving their larvae ample food supply when they hatch. Candleflies and their larvae produce a small amount of necromantic energy, not enough to raise anything on their own but well-known to reanimate a corpse in a colony given enough time to fully develop.
The mature flies do not usually stray far from the host corpse, instead breeding in and consuming its rotting flesh until the undead kills another or strays across another corpse whereupon the mature flies will migrate and form a new colony.
Cultures in the regions Candleflies are found consider it especially important to bury or incinerate their dead, as large-scale infestations can quickly lead to undead uprisings, blights upon the land and even attract liches and necromancers.

I always want to read more about necromancy creatures but they all end up as variation of zombies, liches or vampires.

I can post my OC undead if you don't mind a big dump.

go for it.

I always like the idea of a Sand Sea. Gargantuan creatures swim in it. Sand is much harder the water so the creatures are VERY slow. It takes them eons to surface and re submerge. Whole cities were build on their backs (Building on solid "rock" beats building on sand) and then they went undersand with the whole city.

Somebody above wanted an undead?

The sand sea is a nice idea, makes me think of Monster Hunter and Breath of Fire IV, but I think it would be interesting if this concept was used for it

youtube.com/watch?v=My4RA5I0FKs

I can't grasp how a celestial body crash would turn the ground to dust creating a sea of sand instead of fusing the debris due to the heat of the impact, unless it was a comet that was made out of the fine powder and ice, and once it hit the atmosphere it shattered like the Tunguska incident.
But even if the impact did indeed turn the ground to dust it would be interesting if it had some sort of volcanic activity, maybe triggered by the impact, only instead of volcanoes it made a wide spread bed of gas vents and geysers that blow gas on a mostly uniform fashion, turning the sand into a flowing sea.

Wasn't he REEEEing because the poison was virulent ... like, a poison =/= virus kinda situation?

I don't want to trash up the thread with offtopic, so I made a pastebin.

pastebin.com/VH24znNz

Are you a Russian?

My old custom Exalted creatures. Some mine, some from players who just wanted neat beasties and famliuars

I used some modded stats, mostly dividing things into 'mundane creatures' and 'supernatural creatures'. Mostly just creatures with extra dots made OOC to be a legit threat to the exalts and useful in combat at the higher powered ESS 4-5 levels we liked to play at.
That and one mad Twilight who just thought invisible spiders were cool. So i kept making his bigger . . . and then it was a pattern spider 'all along' cause that's cool shit.

>Fortress Crab
Dude, that's literally just a horseshoe crab, but big.

>virulent (adj): bitterly hostile

All of my Wow. I study physics. And it annoys me creating sand whales that can never function... But this. Wow.
An underground volcano activity that generates a constant hot air flow under the desert. The continuous movement will grind the sand into an incredible fine powder. The hot air raises from the desert and many birds can glide on it in ways that are forbidden by normal air physics. Giant manta rays may be possible!

Thank you for sharing that!

Da... Was it apparent form my broken english or from context?

>A weaker version of a wyvern. ith bat echolocation. Nothing particular interesting. Unless some sort of bizarre method to hunt thm is employed by locals.
I meant them to be weak, a random creature for a low level encounter or stalking scenario were you can have the players try to not get ambushed by the creepazoid. I imagine this creature being able to "see" in 360° and being very nimble and hard to hit since it can sense the area surrounding it in all directions. It also makes it extra hard to predict what it will do since it does not turn it's head to look at things.
For inventive ways to hunt it I would leave the players to guess based on these informations, they could start to bash swords against shields to cause a sound disruption, they could lure the thing into a trap, use magic or something else to hit it with something hard to detect like fire or things that are too fast like bullets.

Yes, and Horseshoe crabs are cool. Blue blood and all those eyes. Aliens and supernatural monsters if there ever were. I think it's cool to have shells big enough to use as huts though. Catch one and people eat for a year and have a nice armored hut/poor boat if they need.
I"d like to see a group of natives who hunt the things and have horseshoe crab weapons, and live in horseshoe crab hunts and wear horseshoe crab armor and horseshoe crab boats.

You may want to take a second look at the picture you posted.

>Terror Horror Spiders Of Fear
Resemble an ordinary small spider in all respects, with a somewhat painful bite (similar to that of a wolf spider). It would probably take at least dozens of such bites to seriously threaten an adult human.

Notable Exception 1: They sometimes attack in swarms for unknown reasons. In some cases, up to millions of individuals have infested a home or campsite, rendering it temporarily uninhabitable.

Notable Exception 2: They have mutant city cockroach grade toughness, making most attempts to squish, crush or cut them comparatively ineffective.

oh and they like to burrow in to your flesh while you sleep

That's not what I meant, your monster is just a real animal, but big. Does this even qualify as worldbuilding?

Pápiapus

Bizarre large sea predators that generally hunt small fish, shrimps and hard shelled creatures. They don't hunt humans for food, but are very territorial and will attack anyone it sees as a threat.
The creature has a duck bill that it uses to track prey under water using eletric sensing organs spread on the surface of the bill, the bill itself may look sturdy but it is soft and rubbery, the powerful shell cracking jaws are further back inside it's bill.
They can grow up to 7 meters in lenght and are surprisingly fast outside of water despite it's awkward gait.
They are very inteligent and are known to use rocks to smash hard shelled prey, this inteligence is also noticeble when it fights, as it quickly figures out what works and what doesn't work against a particular foe, and is smart enough to flee if outmatched.
They attack using their body weight, sliding and slamming against foes and using their flat claws. They can also spray pressurized, extremely salty water from glands on it's nostrils, usually aiming at the eyes, and on their forlimbs the males of the species has a pair of venomous spurs, the neurotoxin they produces has a peculiar effect, it floods the nervous system with pain and can cause death from shock.

Not that one, but I was not about to cut it out just to load the rest.

That and I don't get much excuse to post up my old Exalted stuff these days

Creatures that burrow or creatures that live underground inside caves?

...

>your monster is just a real animal, but big. Does this even qualify as worldbuilding?
You have no idea the amount of work that goes in to that. You can't just do "a real animal, but big", because it runs in to hard walls like the square-cube relationship and energy requirements. Scaling things up requires making fundamental alterations to physics, biological processes, chemistry and materials science. And then in turn you have to deal with the consequences of those choices all through your setting.

There are actually few things more challenging, from a worldbuilding perspective, than making a setting with a "regular" giant in it.

>You have no idea the amount of work that goes in to that
So it's a huge amount of work wasted - and that is implying that anyone cares about the square-cube relationship and all that autism. Because real people don't.

2 Things:
#1: Obvious sarcasm is obvious.
#B: Engineers are people, too.

I think I would like this better if it were more like a reason why people get lost in the woods, a terrain obstacle or trap of sorts rather than a psionic enemy. The pollen is more of a psychotropic, and damaging the tree won't disrupt its effects (though perhaps an antidote could be concocted from the sap?).

Maybe make them like aspens, with multiple trunks spread out across an area linked by a common root system. So wherever the prey collapses, the root system can send up tendrils from there, as opposed to sending out vines to pull you in to the trunk.

It's not very obvious after seeing people post detailed maps of air currents in their setting in /wbg/

Today I learn. Okay makes sense then to add that the comet cause the activity? I just said it like that because it sounded cool but now this adds a whole new angle that's even more awesome.

>live underground inside caves?
that one. Stuff like Grue.

i had that pic lying around for years... And never bothered trying to read it...
I feel like an idiot.

ЛOЛ

>A spring-shaped snake launching itself from the wall/ceiling
Not spring-shaped, but snakes that launch themselves at you from above at great speed are an actual thing from ancient folklore.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaculus

...

>a classical example of crossing 2 animals.
I mean that was honestly the point, I like cute shit, bunnies are cute, and I wanted to combine two vegetation-ravaging plagues into one. I'm not a fan of the 7 year cycle for this one b/c then the swarm mechanism would either be hyper rare or be triggered every 7 years. I like the unpredictability that the mechanism being set off my stimula.

And
>combining two animals
You can say that about many animals that exist IRL, if not almost every single one, since adaptations are derivative. In fantasy worlds the conditions such as existence of sun light, vegetation, a given air density and pressure, a given gravity, etc. match exactly those of our "real life", so it's only logical that made up creatures in those environments will have developed adaptions that match and even combine traits of "real animals".

>Laser Elemental
This is what you get if you get a cellophane balloon in the shape of a man and fill it with lasers. It's weighs a few pounds and is fully of hot bars of light. It looks like a lightsaber orgy in there, constantly pulsing and changing color.
Laser elementals are created when a normal laser gets trapped in the prism maze of Prismax the Unblinking. There's also a strange reification process that involves molasses, balloons, and lots of MDMA. So basically, a wizard did it.
Although lots of people think that there is a plane of lasers, though.