Bassoe
Well-known member
The sietch's version of this sufficient velocity thread or this alternate history forum thread. Anyone got ideas?
worldbuilding original monsters
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Val the Moofia Boss
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How about creatures from early American folklore?
A wild Hodag spotted in Wisconsin. Legend says that this ferocious beast can be tamed! Wouldn't you want one as a pet? Or would you like to find out what its eggs taste like?
Legend says that if a man's heart is so weighed down by greed, it might turn into a block of ice, and he might find himself roaming the woods as a Wendigo, ever wanting...
A wild Hodag spotted in Wisconsin. Legend says that this ferocious beast can be tamed! Wouldn't you want one as a pet? Or would you like to find out what its eggs taste like?
Legend says that if a man's heart is so weighed down by greed, it might turn into a block of ice, and he might find himself roaming the woods as a Wendigo, ever wanting...
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Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Hmm, for something off the top of my head:
Float Devils:
Actually sharing a very distant ancestor with jellyfish, this stratospheric creature has tissues similar to aerogel that make it incredibly light and allows it to float on high upper winds with minimal effort. It's also almost completely transparent and normally lives in the cloud layers, where it metabolizes energetic gasses like methane as well as feeding on the occasional high-flying bird or insect. For hundreds of thousands of years, the only interactions with humans have been rare attacks on mountain climbers.
In recent times some have been caught on aircraft and brought back down to the surface. They're not particularly strong and move slowly but they're venomous and nearly invisible. Bereft the normal mix of gasses they feed on, they have to consume large quantities of meat to survive and they have no natural fear of humans, though they don't actually intentionally target humans over other prey and will consume dogs, cattle, birds, insects, or any other animal they can wrap their stomachs around. They range in size from the tip of a finger to large enough to engulf houses.
Their preferred method of attack is to float a few meters above the ground and gently settle over an unsuspecting target like a floofy, poison-laced quilt, though if their target is fast-moving like a bird they may instead spread themselves like a net and let it fly into their embrace. Its venom causes paralysis and digestion begins immediately, though whether the victim dies of being eaten alive or suffocates in its folds is a coin-toss.
A float devil that absorbs enough calories may eventually get the energy to fly back to the upper cloud layers, or if the hunting's been particularly successful it may instead reproduce and spread millions of smaller float devils instead.
Float Devils:
Actually sharing a very distant ancestor with jellyfish, this stratospheric creature has tissues similar to aerogel that make it incredibly light and allows it to float on high upper winds with minimal effort. It's also almost completely transparent and normally lives in the cloud layers, where it metabolizes energetic gasses like methane as well as feeding on the occasional high-flying bird or insect. For hundreds of thousands of years, the only interactions with humans have been rare attacks on mountain climbers.
In recent times some have been caught on aircraft and brought back down to the surface. They're not particularly strong and move slowly but they're venomous and nearly invisible. Bereft the normal mix of gasses they feed on, they have to consume large quantities of meat to survive and they have no natural fear of humans, though they don't actually intentionally target humans over other prey and will consume dogs, cattle, birds, insects, or any other animal they can wrap their stomachs around. They range in size from the tip of a finger to large enough to engulf houses.
Their preferred method of attack is to float a few meters above the ground and gently settle over an unsuspecting target like a floofy, poison-laced quilt, though if their target is fast-moving like a bird they may instead spread themselves like a net and let it fly into their embrace. Its venom causes paralysis and digestion begins immediately, though whether the victim dies of being eaten alive or suffocates in its folds is a coin-toss.
A float devil that absorbs enough calories may eventually get the energy to fly back to the upper cloud layers, or if the hunting's been particularly successful it may instead reproduce and spread millions of smaller float devils instead.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Psychopomp
These varied creatures are hard-working members of the divine bureaucracy, charged with making sure the souls of the dead reach the correct afterlife. Unfortunately in a twist nobody could have seen coming, the God of Death himself died some thousands of years ago and nobody knows the equivalent of his computer passwords. Many of the functions of the afterlife are thus not working, including the ability to imbue new psychopomps. As a result, the survivors are heavily overworked due to population growth overwhelming them.
In normal affairs psychopomps do not interact with mundane living humans at all, though rare magicians and especially necromancers can interact with them. However, they do accrue vacation time during which they briefly get to live. The extreme overwork and stress on Psychopomps have led to episodes of incredibly entitled tourists who, if every demand is not met, may place powerful curses on whoever didn't make their vacation extra-special.
Worse, there are certain factions among the psychopomps who have decided to take matters into their own hands. With the afterlives not working at full function and the remaining psychopomps barely able to handle the influx of souls, they have proposed the radical option of doing all they can to reduce the human population and reduce future workload. These psychopomps have forsaken their normal authority and spend their vacation time influencing human society to produce conditions that will retard birthrates and cause population bombs and cause human living conditions to worsen in order to further reduce the population. They're promoting plagues, wars, famines, brutal dictatorships, and other conditions that will kill as many as possible. While this temporarily increases workload, they believe it will reduce it in the long run, and in the short run it forces the psychopomps who disagree with them to run themselves ragged trying to keep up with demand, and thus don't have time to oppose them. Some psychopomps in the most extremist faction are even pro-extinction....
Night Washers
Somewhat associated with psychopomps, the Night Washers are a charitable volunteer organization that washes the clothes of those who died by violence so that they appear more presentable when going before the Judges of the Dead. They manifest as skeletal women in ragged white garments that stay immaculately clean even when the Night Washer is hip-deep in a river. They manifest pale hair that floats around them in a halo. As they work, Night Washers wail over the sins of the dead and the suffering of the living, trading morbid and macabre stories of horrible deaths as they wash.
Night Washers manifest only at night at lonely streams and rivers where they pound clothes with stones and use ancient lye soaps to clean. If an unwary traveler comes near, especially if there's been a war or natural disaster so that there are a large number of clothes, the Night Washers may drag the traveler into the stream and force them to help wash. Those who resist or refuse may suffer a curse, or if they manage to particularly aggravate the Night Washers on a bad night they may break the traveler's legs and drown them in the river. Even travelers who cooperate are exposed to the energies of death and will suffer nightmares from listening to the Night Washer's stories and will be able to perceive spirits such as psychopomps afterwards. However, those who are willing to help strangers and put hard work into washing may also receive a death-related blessing and will receive extra support from the Night Washers when their own turn before the Judges of the Dead comes up.
These varied creatures are hard-working members of the divine bureaucracy, charged with making sure the souls of the dead reach the correct afterlife. Unfortunately in a twist nobody could have seen coming, the God of Death himself died some thousands of years ago and nobody knows the equivalent of his computer passwords. Many of the functions of the afterlife are thus not working, including the ability to imbue new psychopomps. As a result, the survivors are heavily overworked due to population growth overwhelming them.
In normal affairs psychopomps do not interact with mundane living humans at all, though rare magicians and especially necromancers can interact with them. However, they do accrue vacation time during which they briefly get to live. The extreme overwork and stress on Psychopomps have led to episodes of incredibly entitled tourists who, if every demand is not met, may place powerful curses on whoever didn't make their vacation extra-special.
Worse, there are certain factions among the psychopomps who have decided to take matters into their own hands. With the afterlives not working at full function and the remaining psychopomps barely able to handle the influx of souls, they have proposed the radical option of doing all they can to reduce the human population and reduce future workload. These psychopomps have forsaken their normal authority and spend their vacation time influencing human society to produce conditions that will retard birthrates and cause population bombs and cause human living conditions to worsen in order to further reduce the population. They're promoting plagues, wars, famines, brutal dictatorships, and other conditions that will kill as many as possible. While this temporarily increases workload, they believe it will reduce it in the long run, and in the short run it forces the psychopomps who disagree with them to run themselves ragged trying to keep up with demand, and thus don't have time to oppose them. Some psychopomps in the most extremist faction are even pro-extinction....
Night Washers
Somewhat associated with psychopomps, the Night Washers are a charitable volunteer organization that washes the clothes of those who died by violence so that they appear more presentable when going before the Judges of the Dead. They manifest as skeletal women in ragged white garments that stay immaculately clean even when the Night Washer is hip-deep in a river. They manifest pale hair that floats around them in a halo. As they work, Night Washers wail over the sins of the dead and the suffering of the living, trading morbid and macabre stories of horrible deaths as they wash.
Night Washers manifest only at night at lonely streams and rivers where they pound clothes with stones and use ancient lye soaps to clean. If an unwary traveler comes near, especially if there's been a war or natural disaster so that there are a large number of clothes, the Night Washers may drag the traveler into the stream and force them to help wash. Those who resist or refuse may suffer a curse, or if they manage to particularly aggravate the Night Washers on a bad night they may break the traveler's legs and drown them in the river. Even travelers who cooperate are exposed to the energies of death and will suffer nightmares from listening to the Night Washer's stories and will be able to perceive spirits such as psychopomps afterwards. However, those who are willing to help strangers and put hard work into washing may also receive a death-related blessing and will receive extra support from the Night Washers when their own turn before the Judges of the Dead comes up.
Rusałka from polish folklore - oryginally beautiful girls with green hairs who lived in rivers or lakes and drowned young handsome mans/but only them/.Apparently,they were seen later with them,quite happy.
I read some polish sci-fi short novel,when they live in modern Warsaw and looking for right kind of prey on parties.
So...if you are handsome,beware of beautiful girls with green hairs!
/I never been one,so i am safe/
I read some polish sci-fi short novel,when they live in modern Warsaw and looking for right kind of prey on parties.
So...if you are handsome,beware of beautiful girls with green hairs!
/I never been one,so i am safe/
Bassoe
Well-known member
Bonehead Crabs
A species of crustacean. Their larva are scavengers, who'll only metamorphosize into adulthood if they can find the head of a relatively fresh human or animal corpse. They'll eat the flesh off the skull, then nestle inside the empty brainpan, then grow extensions of their body outward, forming a sort of spindly skeletal crude mimicry of the body the skull they now possess once had, composed of crustacean anatomy sculpted into replicating non-crustacean anatomy (a "ribcage" made from fused-together claws or "fingers" consisting of thickened prehensile antenna, etc). The skull is retained as the Bonehead Crab's head although with additional crustacean bits to make it work. Eyestalks protrude into the empty eye sockets from the core of the crab's body inside the former brainpan, there crab mandibles behind the skull's teeth, etc.
Part of the reason why they need fresh bodies, aside from requiring the calories for their metamorphosis, is that they can copy information from undecayed neurons, giving them rudimentary memories of their host's former life and skills.
I could see all kinds of stories:
artwork of a human-derived bonehead crab, drawn by ramul on deviantart, based on a description by me
artwork of a canine-derived bonehead crab, drawn by ramul on deviantart, based on a description by me
A species of crustacean. Their larva are scavengers, who'll only metamorphosize into adulthood if they can find the head of a relatively fresh human or animal corpse. They'll eat the flesh off the skull, then nestle inside the empty brainpan, then grow extensions of their body outward, forming a sort of spindly skeletal crude mimicry of the body the skull they now possess once had, composed of crustacean anatomy sculpted into replicating non-crustacean anatomy (a "ribcage" made from fused-together claws or "fingers" consisting of thickened prehensile antenna, etc). The skull is retained as the Bonehead Crab's head although with additional crustacean bits to make it work. Eyestalks protrude into the empty eye sockets from the core of the crab's body inside the former brainpan, there crab mandibles behind the skull's teeth, etc.
Part of the reason why they need fresh bodies, aside from requiring the calories for their metamorphosis, is that they can copy information from undecayed neurons, giving them rudimentary memories of their host's former life and skills.
I could see all kinds of stories:
- A sort of ghost story knockoff with a Bonehead Crab believing itself to be a shipwrecked survivor trying to return home at all costs while being confused over why everyone who they encounter panics.
- An Innsmouth-style deal with a coastal town. Humans provide corpses, Bonehead Crabs provide treasure looted from shipwrecks and a sort of afterlife.
- A community formed from multiple corpses in a single sunken shipwreck. The individuals have formed a cargo cult around the ship and their fragmentary memories of their roles aboard it left over from human life, with former captain as high priest.
artwork of a human-derived bonehead crab, drawn by ramul on deviantart, based on a description by me
artwork of a canine-derived bonehead crab, drawn by ramul on deviantart, based on a description by me
Bassoe
Well-known member
Bassoe
Well-known member
Sasquatchs are human. Genetically anyway.
Humans are heavily neotenous, meaning we retain juvenile traits into adulthood compared to other primate species. Another dramatic example of neoteny are axolotol salamanders, who, under artificial conditions can be induced to metamorphose into a form like the adulthood of their evolutionary predecessors.
Sasquatchs are basically the same thing, they're "adult" humans. Sagittal crest, brow ridge, much greater prognathism of the jaws, much furrier, a smaller braincase and eyes to face ratio, larger and less social, etc.
Just as iodine will trigger metamorphosis in axolotols, there's some unknown substance or phenomena with the same effect on humans and whatever it is, it can be found somewhere in the North American forest wilderness and mythological descriptions of a "curse" that transforms its victims into cannibalistic subhuman forest monsters indicate it's been there a while.
Humans are heavily neotenous, meaning we retain juvenile traits into adulthood compared to other primate species. Another dramatic example of neoteny are axolotol salamanders, who, under artificial conditions can be induced to metamorphose into a form like the adulthood of their evolutionary predecessors.
Sasquatchs are basically the same thing, they're "adult" humans. Sagittal crest, brow ridge, much greater prognathism of the jaws, much furrier, a smaller braincase and eyes to face ratio, larger and less social, etc.
Just as iodine will trigger metamorphosis in axolotols, there's some unknown substance or phenomena with the same effect on humans and whatever it is, it can be found somewhere in the North American forest wilderness and mythological descriptions of a "curse" that transforms its victims into cannibalistic subhuman forest monsters indicate it's been there a while.
Eparkhos
Well-known member
Not really monsters, per se, but weird aliens I've come up with. Forgive me if the writing isn't the best, a lot of it is just ideas.
Mind-Weavers:
Ancient space-faring arachnids who took to the stars eons before humanity even came into existence. They're infatuated with knowledge, and so gathered as much as they could wherever they could find it, and even built up a religion around understanding the universe by knowing as much as they possibly could. But, the universe being as massive as it is, can't be understood by a single mind, or even a collective. So the Mind-Weavers constructed a network of pure energy, hidden inside warped spacetime conduits, cycling across existence eternally, within which exist their minds.
There's a bunch of ramifications--how do beings of pure energy/knowledge function? Do they have generators to power the network? What happens if you break into the folded space?--but it seems like an interesting start.
Space Hellbenders:
Interstellar life forms, vast shifting patterns of skin and organs (made of energy, maybe, or some sort of transitional state of matter so that it can feed off cosmic rays?) that drifts through the depths of space. It is very careful to do as little as possible, and it hides itself by matching its temperature and radiation to the surrounding depths of space as closely as it can. It is hiding from another ancient being, a predator attracted by the slightest noise or abberation. If anything sentient approaches it, the Hellbender will abruptly strike, hoping to destroy the offender and flee before the predator arrives.
Mind-Weavers:
Ancient space-faring arachnids who took to the stars eons before humanity even came into existence. They're infatuated with knowledge, and so gathered as much as they could wherever they could find it, and even built up a religion around understanding the universe by knowing as much as they possibly could. But, the universe being as massive as it is, can't be understood by a single mind, or even a collective. So the Mind-Weavers constructed a network of pure energy, hidden inside warped spacetime conduits, cycling across existence eternally, within which exist their minds.
There's a bunch of ramifications--how do beings of pure energy/knowledge function? Do they have generators to power the network? What happens if you break into the folded space?--but it seems like an interesting start.
Space Hellbenders:
Interstellar life forms, vast shifting patterns of skin and organs (made of energy, maybe, or some sort of transitional state of matter so that it can feed off cosmic rays?) that drifts through the depths of space. It is very careful to do as little as possible, and it hides itself by matching its temperature and radiation to the surrounding depths of space as closely as it can. It is hiding from another ancient being, a predator attracted by the slightest noise or abberation. If anything sentient approaches it, the Hellbender will abruptly strike, hoping to destroy the offender and flee before the predator arrives.
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Bassoe
Well-known member
Photogenic Hound
The silent alarm of a bank in ████ was repeatedly triggered, however nothing was stolen and when security arrived there was never any sign of the intruder. Until they checked the security camera footage and saw a creature. And it hadn't left, camera footage of the room showed the creature present while people actually in the room saw nothing. Consistently. The Hound can only be perceived by artificial means. Cameras, microphones, security systems, automatic sliding doors, etc detect it, human eyes don't and it walks out of the way when people try to touch it. Unclear if the Hound actually exists as a physical creature or some kind of bizarre photobombing computer virus inserting CGI clips into footage and if there's more than one of them. Potentially, they're actually quite common, but most places don't have sufficient camera coverage for us to notice.
The silent alarm of a bank in ████ was repeatedly triggered, however nothing was stolen and when security arrived there was never any sign of the intruder. Until they checked the security camera footage and saw a creature. And it hadn't left, camera footage of the room showed the creature present while people actually in the room saw nothing. Consistently. The Hound can only be perceived by artificial means. Cameras, microphones, security systems, automatic sliding doors, etc detect it, human eyes don't and it walks out of the way when people try to touch it. Unclear if the Hound actually exists as a physical creature or some kind of bizarre photobombing computer virus inserting CGI clips into footage and if there's more than one of them. Potentially, they're actually quite common, but most places don't have sufficient camera coverage for us to notice.