[Technology and Magic] Supernatural Creatures

Post Reply
User avatar
Czernobog
Posts: 1315
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 9:27 am
Location: Holy Terra

[Technology and Magic] Supernatural Creatures

Post by Czernobog »

SUPERNATURAL CREATURES

Supernatural creatures are defined as those that have magic as an integral part of their biology. Such creatures are relatively common on Earth, and are treated as normal animals, although some are quite intelligent. Another category of supernatural creatures are those that dwell in areas accessible only through magic, such as outside our universe. But for simplicity's sake the ones that dwell on Earth will be categorised according to their natural habitat, excepting the ones that are nigh-omnipresent, which will come first.

Dragons

Dragons are large, reptilian/avian creatures that are commonly used as aerial mounts. They have the natural ability to breathe fire, and can fly the length of Great Britain in a single day, although none transcontinental flights have been attempted, and they can only seat one person at a time. There are many variants of dragon; the British Red, the Sand Dragon from Egypt, the Storm Dragons that fly over the Atlantic, and even the rare, more serpentine subspecies of Celestial Dragon from the aptly-named Dragon Kingdom of China. All types of dragon have several things in common though; the ability of flight, the ability to breathe fire, and the ability, in times of stress, to perform magical effects. Their biology would not function without magic, and it is fought that they were descended from reptiles mutated during the Event, a cascade of raw magical energy that struck the entire world.

Undead
Undead are corpses reanimated by a necromancer or in natural conditions, an especial occurrence in the blighted lands of Transylvania and Stygius, where the dead do not rest easy. They are often feral, displaying none of the intelligence they had in life, and are often carnivores, eating flesh to delay the decay of their bodies. Their minds can be taken over by a skilled mage, just as with animals, or, regrettably, humans. Nevertheless, there are many types of undead, which will be explained in more detail below.

Heartless
A Heartless is a mage who seeks immortality by removing his own heart. Under most circumstances this would be fatal, but the mage instead uses a ritual to keep him alive, in a sort of stasis, until the heart can be placed within a specially-enchanted obsidian box. Then, the heart begins to beat again, not decaying or failing to work, but instead alive and acting exactly as if it was still in the body. The mage's eyes begin to glow, while his hair and skin become deathly pale. He begins to act with psychopathy, and is often arrogant and needlessly cruel. They can only be killed by either destroying the heart or destroying or removing the head, along with cremation and other things that completely destroy the body. They also require fresh blood to stay alive, and it is likely that Heartless have inspired some of the myths about vampires, which are not known to exist.

Ghouls
Ghouls are your typical undead: near mindless, steadily decaying, and predatory upon humans. They hunt in packs, shambling along, although they can move quicker if necessary. They are preternaturally strong, the magic that keeps them alive infusing their muscles with strength. They also have tremendous supplies of endurance, but their true strength is against the weak and the terrified, and they can be driven off if they are met with strong resistance, and are weak against heat and light. Along with humans, most animals can become ghouls, excepting those that have magic as a part of their biology. Ghouls can take any form; from skeletal to barely decayed, yet all have the same basic characteristics.

Humonculi
Humonculi are special creations, typically of depraved mages or insane experimenters. Their creation consists of a ritual murder of a pregnant woman, after which an aborted foetus is placed in the womb to finish its gestation. The resulting creation does not truly live, and is often insane. However, amulets are often used to keep them (barely) sane, and the resulting abominations can control their shapes, shifting into the form of anything they have seen. They can impersonate a person flawlessly, and are often used as infiltrators by Stygius. However, there is always something odd and vaguely disturbing about them, and most who see them are slightly disturbed by them.

Geists
Geists are fragments of personality from a dead person, bound to this world by strong magic or unfulfilled desires. However, over the millennia most eventually become vindictive or spiteful, hating the mortal world and humanity out of loneliness and anger that they are not helped in returning to the afterlife, for the soul sometimes passes on and leaves the mind behind. Some are, regrettably, enslaved by rogue mages, including those of Stygius and those that dwell in the forsaken land of Transylvania. Female Geists are commonly known to scientists as Banshees and male ones as Wraiths, however, there are usually a multitude of local names for them in any region you care to name.

Mara
Mara are perhaps the most unusual undead. They cannot move during the day; instead, they move at night, flittering from shadow to shadow and disguising themselves as such. Then, they sneak up to a person sleeping, and give him visions, through an as yet unexplained process (although it has a similarity to certain illusions created by mages) of his worst fear. Their power lies only in the mind; if the person can survive the experience, the Mara will escape and vanish into the shadows, but if he dies of fright (which is all too common), the Mara will drain all his blood and thus sustain itself.

Immortals
Immortals are beings halfway between life and death, trapped in an accursed half-life. They are created through ritual, although the recipient of this 'gift' needs to be willing. The ritual requires one thing to complete its work: the unwilling death of a child. Such an act of mind-numbing abhorrence is illegal in most states, except in Stygius where it is used to create the Immortal guards of Lord Acheron and the dreaded Black Legionnaires.

Gholam
Gholam are creatures typically created by a depraved mage or experimenter, created solely to kill. They are hulking brutes, eight feet tall and driven onwards by magic-absorbing chemicals placed in their blood. They are dim-witted and unintelligent, a contrast to humonculi, which are often dangerously cunning. They literally feel no pain and can ignore wounds that would cripple or kill others, in addition to having terrifyingly fast regenerative qualities. The best way to kill them is to burn them with fire, for that is the one thing that they cannot regenerate from. In addition to this, when a gholam has slaughtered sufficient numbers of people, they are sometimes driven into a frenzy of animalistic killing, after which they can die of exhaustion.

Liches
A Liche is a mage that has decided to become immortal, though not in the usual way of Heartless or Immortals. He places his immortal soul inside a charm known as a phylactery, and then becomes immortal. Eventually, he will begin to rot alive, until the last pieces of flesh fall off the bone and he becomes a true Liche. As long as the phylactery is not destroyed, he will survive in some form, regenerating from a fragment of his own body placed within. The most (in)famous and ancient Liche was Koschei the Deathless, who mysteriously vanished in 1345, after having terrorised Russia for millennia.

Anthropophagi
Anthropophagi are monstrosities, creatures created with the dark art of biourgy. They have sickly-looking, sallow skin, and they have no head, a set of eyes and a maw inside their chest. Their name means 'man eaters' and they live up to that reputation, for they have an all-consuming urge to devour human flesh. They have powerful jaws, and can move incredibly fast on their sticklike legs.

Shades
Shades are created from a group of Geists fused permanently into one collective being inside the womb of a living (and often unwilling) woman, a process that kills the woman carrying them and drives the Geists permanently insane. When 'born', such creations are often set loose into the world to cause havoc as they will. The mere presence of a Shade spreads despair and sends forth visions of dismay, a thing that only the most strong-willed can overcome.

Walking Worms
Walking Worms are creatures that are composed of a colony of undead worms or insects, often with a single group mind that wills only to feed. They are fast, and can be controlled by mages, and are often created by them as living weapons. They can disintegrate into their component parts, and are thus extremely hard to kill, as they can only be truly destroyed by killing all the component animals at once.

Mumiyah
Mumiyah are shambling horrors, created when a person is mummified alive while necrourgic incantations are cast, the soul trapped forever inside the bandages and rotting form. They are slow and dim-witted as a result of this, and this can be exploited while in battle with them. They are often mind-controlled by the mages that created them, so that they have no choice but to kill, forced to watch helplessly as they kill the mage's enemies, trapped forever inside their own bodies.

Forest Creatures

Forest Spirits
Known as nymphs, dryads, striga and fae in a number of regions, forest spirits often take the form of preternaturally beautiful females, a device to lure in their prey. It is when their prey get close that they close the trap, transforming into their true form, a being with talons of iron-hard wood and covered with tough bark, which can withstand several rifle shots at close range. They rip their unfortunate victims to pieces with iron-hard talons, drinking the vital fluids, then going into the forest in search of new prey.

Desert Creatures

Samakhar
Samakhar are centipede-like creatures that travel under the sand, hunting for prey by sensing the vibrations they make in the earth. When they find them, they rip them apart with a flurry of scything talons, before devouring the remains. They are most commonly found in hot climates, particularly in Africa, although a few nests have been discovered in North America, most likely smuggled there as pets. They can tunnel through solid rock, making these tunnels into their nests, and there are few materials that can keep them confined.

Ressisepti
Ressisepti typically dwell in Egypt, along the Nile river, although they have appeared in several other places as well. They are typically serpentine, with a humanoid torso. Other than this, little is known about them, although the Egyptians believe they are incarnations of the Nile's waters.

Phoenixes
The Phoenix, or firebird, is a rare creature most commonly found in Egypt or Anatolia. They have a strange method of reproduction; they lay great amounts of eggs and mate for life, one of the Phoenixes, at the moment the eggs are due to hatch, incinerating itself in a blaze of fire and giving the eggs the necessary warmth to soften them and allow the hatchlings to break free. They are a protected creature in both the Empire of the Phoenix and the Egyptian Theocracy, the Egyptians seeing them as the heralds of Atum-Ra and the Imperials having them as their national symbol, a phoenix bursting from flames being the emblem on their flag.

Basilisk
The basilisk, or King of Serpents, is a uniquely dangerous creature. It can spit poison for ten paces, the mere touch of which on exposed skin kills in seconds. There is no known cure, and the basilisk's poison is preternaturally deadly. It is for this reason that it is hunted down wherever possible. The basilisk is an immense snake, like a cobra, coloured emerald green, that tunnels through the sand and attacks lone prey. It then devours the corpse, which can feed it for up to a year.

Oceanic Creatures

Kraken
Kraken are the scourge of the high seas. They are known to attack ships, destroying them and consuming the crew, and are the top predator in the oceans. With tentacles that can rip wooden boats apart and are 150 feet long, they can even do heavy damage to an ironclad. Fortunately, if they are wounded heavily they will dive back into the deeps to recover, and thus they often attack unarmed fishing vessels instead of heavily armed warships.

Leviathan
Leviathan are immense sea serpents, about 200 feet long. They are mostly herbivorous, but are fiercely territorial and will attack anything that enters their territory, except when mating season comes. Ships passing through the oceans thus make care to avoid Leviathan territories, which are often marked on maps.

Prometheans
Prometheans are gigantic crabs, with nigh-impenetrable shells and claws that can literally crack small wooden boats in half, destroying them with pathetic ease. They are carnivorous, their most often prey being Leviathans and whales, which they eat with ravening hunger.
Last edited by Czernobog on Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:13 pm, edited 7 times in total.
You have ruled this galaxy for ten thousand years.
You have little of account to show for your efforts.
Order. Unity. Obedience.
We taught the galaxy these things.

And we shall do so again.
User avatar
Dakarne
Posts: 578
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:00 pm
Location: England. :(
Contact:

Re: [Magic] Supernatural Creatures

Post by Dakarne »

I find it amusing that you have all of the typical mythological creatures, but just because someone told you to do so, you left off the elves and dwarves, both of which are a very prominent and common part of Northern European mythology. It's funny, really; even if your dwarves and elves are as cliché as they come, you do have the right to say no.

You've learned to take criticism and listen to it, and that's progress, but now you need to learn how to be able to ignore part of what you listen to. Now, I'm not saying reintroduce the elves and dwarves. The world can indeed work without them. What I'm saying, and using this as an example, is that you do have the choice and ability to ignore the influences of others, and say 'well, I want X in my world, so I'm keeping it' instead of just following the criticism blindly. The decisions in your 'verses lie with you at the end of the day, not the one or two people criticising you. You have to listen to some of it if you want to progress, but you don't have to listen to all of it. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what to listen to and what not to listen to; you need to start making a few judgements of your own.
Image
'For the moment, mortal, they find the thought of killing me more desirable than that of killing you.'
'And what are their chances?'
'The answer to that is evident in how long they've been hesitating, wouldn't you think, mortal?'

-Anomander Rake and Ganoes Paran in Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
Post Reply