Just as
humans are boring, horses are boring. In a fantasy world where magic allows any
animal to be trained, why bother with horses? Why not bears or lions or
dinosaurs? What do small races like gnomes or pixies ride into battle? Not all
animals are war-mounts either; why have cows in the farm when there’s better
eating on a diplodocus? What in the animal rooting through your bins is
something worse than a fox.
Lets
start with some bullet points;
Ecology of the X: Even creatures that
didn’t evolve need to fit into the world at large. Let’s say you have griffins,
and to avoid arguments, a wizard made the first ones. Where do they live now?
What do they eat? What impact did introducing a giant flying predator have on,
for instance, sheep farming>? Or children playing outdoors? When a bird crap
hits you, it’s meant to be lucky; if a griffin crap hits you it’d break your
neck. And how much would a griffin need to eat to stay airborne anyway? Flight
isn’t the most economic form of movement.
Fantasy
ecology has been written about, particularly in Dragon Magazine articles relating to Dungeons and Dragons monsters.
Beyond that, looking at similar creatures (Lion prides, for example, might be a
useful basis for our griffins) can give you an idea how your new creation fits
into the world.
Beast of a thousand Adjectives: When a
person reads a story, they get their own mental picture of an animal. It
needn’t be exactly the same as the mental picture you have when you imagine it,
and leaving a description with no room for interpretation will put a reader
off.
For
example;
An ostrich.
We all
know what an ostrich looks like (and if you don’t, image search for ostriches,
I think you’ll find it worthwhile). If we’re being fantastic, though, we don’t
want just ostriches!
A yellow ostrich.
There! We now have a slightly more fantastic ostrich for our story. But why stop there?
A yellow ostrich with a lizards tail.
Why
stop there?
A yellow ostrich with an iguana’s tail, and
cloven hooves.
A yellow and red ostrich with a deep crimson iguana’s tail, flat wide cloven hooves and a thin curved vestigial spur running parallel to its ulna...
Over-describing
becomes a barrier to a reader. If you’re artistically minded, by all means draw
the creature you’re describing. But don’t spend longer describing a creature
in-story than is vitally necessary. Let the audience imagine the creature they
want, even if it’s not exactly how you picture it. Take, for instance, the
Balrog from the Lord of the Rings books.
There’s a lot less description of it than you’d imagine; the book doesn’t even
specify how big it is or whether it has wings; artists have depicted it as
demonic even though the text makes no assertions as such. We’ll never be
entirely certain how Tolkien envisaged the Balrog, but it doesn’t really
matter. The description of the creature is enough for artists to interpret in
many different ways.
Also,
when describing a creature, never ever do this;
A yellow and red ostrich with a deep crimson
iguana’s tail, flat wide cloven hooves and a thin curved vestigial spur running
parallel to its ulna went past, never to be seen or spoken of again.
Those blasphemous Qliphoth!: This is at
the other end of the descriptive spectrum, where the audience is given too
little to actually envisage anything. Sometimes, this is the point with truly
alien creatures. It defeats the point of an unimaginable horror if the author
goes on to describe it. However, if its a creature we don’t have any clear idea
of, its hard to imagine how it interacts with the world. For example;
The Qliphoth attacked.
The
who-what-now? How do you even pronounce that? How does it attack? Does it bite,
or shoot a gun? Let’s try again;
The protagonist couldn’t see the Qliphoth
clearly; ungodly adjectives obscured its unknowable, blasphemous form. Raising
its surreal tentacle, it struck out to attack.
Did you
spot the most important word in that example? It was ‘tentacle’. Soon as you
say tentacle, the audience know what to expect; some form of squid-lord,
probably borne from Lovecraft’s allergy to seafood. But the Qliphoth isn’t
Lovecraftian! It’s a totally different unknowable horror with tentacles! Now
there’s nothing wrong with squid-like monstrosities, but if the protagonist can
see the thing, he’ll understand it as a squid like monstrosity and therefore so
will the audience. Giving more description of the weirdness, as viewed by a protagonist
looking at it, makes the creature seem more real.
The protagonist could see the Qliphoth,
though what he saw didn’t make sense. What could’ve been oily skin tore away
from metallic bones, leaving them exposed before new flesh quivered to the surface.
It was as if it was trying to appear human, but the protagonists shape was as
alien to it as the Qliphoth was to him. Razor teeth rose to the surface like
bones at low tide, converging at the ends of its boneless limbs. With a
metallic screech, it lashed out at the protagonist with every limb it had.
Example creatures
Before
we make some new creatures, let’s figure out some variables to work with.
Description:
What does the creature look like? How big is it? Does it resemble any real
creatures?
Origin:
If a creature didn’t evolve, where did it come from? I consider this one
optional; the best creation myths are multiple choice, after all.
Ecology:
How does the creature interact with its environment? Is it in balance with
nature, or a destructive parasite? Where does it like to live? How is it
adapted to its habitat?
Relationship
to humans: Which eats the other? Is the creature feared, or hunted? Can it be
domesticated, or is it too wild?
Looking
at our example kingdom, we’re already got two new creatures; our first King was
Darus of the Golden Steed, and we’ve hinted that the Shadow Way ends up with
its casters becoming Dark Horrors. These two seem like fittingly disparate
examples.
Golden Steed
Description: A gold coloured horse
isn’t particularly interesting; how about a literal gold horse? Although a solid gold horse
would be worth more dead than alive (in the few seconds before it sank into the
earth and imploded), I like the idea of living metal. Perhaps only its coat and
mane are golden; its body is magic-infused metal, with the flesh flexible and
light, while its bones are hard as steel.
Ecology: What would a metal horse eat,
other than metal? It’d roam round otherwise barren rock fields, breaking down
boulders to chew on whatever ore it could find. Like a real herbivore, doing
this propagates a whole ecosystem; if it’s unable to digest soil or organic
material, the horse’s gravelly droppings would be the most fertile soil in the
kingdom. Herds of metal horses could convert indigestible mountains into loamy
hillsides in a few months!
Making
the Golden Steed a species rather than a one-off lessens Darus, in my opinion.
Perhaps a golden horse is incredibly rare; tin, iron and copper horses are more
likely to form herds. Capturing and training a gold horse is a Herculean task,
and worthy of our king’s legend.
Throughout
writing the example kingdom, I’ve pictured it on flat prairie land rather than
mountainous regions. Perhaps the land was full of outcrops and boulders long
ago, until the rock-eating horses flattened it out.
Origin: I’m leaning towards ‘Forged by
the Gods’ for this species. It’s a bit of a cop-out, as it handwaves the
creation myth and means the creature needn’t have a prupose beyond ‘divine
curio’. Some things in the world, though, should be inexplicable; even if the
metal horses aren’t divine creations, the kingdom’s people might believe them
to be.
Relationship to humans: We don’t want
metal horses to usurp regular horses entirely. There’s a lot of reason why
humans domesticated horses, most of which don’t matter in a magical world. But
the example kingdom is low-magic, with unpredictable powers; the horses,
therefore, must stay. Changing one thing could make the metal horses less
desirable as steeds; what if we changed their temperament? Looking at cousins
to the horse, zebras are more aggressive than horses, and panic under stress.
They can still be broken or trained, but doing so is far more risky than
horses. Our metal steeds could be similarly wild; this would make Darus riding
one into battle even more impressive.
Dark Horror
Description: Unlike the
Golden Steed, Dark Horrors are insidious body-stealing parasites. Details vary
from one individual to another; we’ve established that there’s been a grand
total of seven potential Dark Horrors in our kingdom. Let’s say not everyone
who practices the Shadow Way inevitably turns, but there’s been a few; enough
to be considered more than one-offs. It’s not entirely clear when the Dark
Horror takes over; some believe the human side never truly dies, but becomes
trapped in an alien body, still able to see and hear and sense the world but
unable to control the Dark Horrors actions. As no-one’s ever recovered from
becoming a Dark Horror, details of how they work aren’t common knowledge.
Dark
Horrors begin as humanoid, but as the spirit takes over, it ‘forgets’ how the
body fits together and begins to mutate. Hands split into claws, bones begin
warping before being spat out altogether, and skin falls away to reveal swollen
musculature and withered organs. No-one’s witnessed further mutations; at this
point witnesses are usually stabbing the Horror till it stops twitching, then burning
what remains as far away from their crops as possible.
Ecology: Let’s say there’s been three
Dark Horrors thus far. No-one’s sure what equilibrium they might have with
their environment, due to the aforementioned stabbing/burning. Seeing as the
ashes of a Dark Horror are toxic enough to kill any plant life they fall on,
it’s unlikely a living one would benefit its host ecosystem.
Origin: The bound spirit that was
mother to the Shadow Way was the first Dark Horror; although it started with
human appearance and personality, the darkness took over in the end. The spirit
that was bound wasn’t analogous to the spirits of the Wild Way; I like the idea
that it was a forgotten spirit, older than the Wild Way. It didn’t resent the
binding as a Wild spirit would; this doesn’t mean it was entirely benevolent.
Perhaps Dark Horrors are its method of procreation, using humans as a host.
Relationship to humans: Remember the
whole ‘stabbing and burning’? Don’t think the Dark Horrors aren’t deserving of
this fate; once their cover’s blown, they’re unlikely to be friendly. Perhaps
if they start appearing in less manageable numbers, our example kingdom will
see some other form of social interaction with them. Or the Horrors will eat
entire continents and leave nothing but ash in their wake. I’m not sure which
makes the more interesting story right now.