Timewaster's Guide Archive
Alternate Realities => TW(i)G => Topic started by: Spriggan on May 21, 2004, 03:27:14 PM
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ok this is a thread that will discuss all manner of creatures in the setting. From what normal (earth) creatures there are to new ones we make. As well as any monsters (magical or non-magical) that we include in the setting.
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Ok first off is Horses and Camels. Are they here and what roles? Or are there non and they are replaces by others? Like giant lizards or raptor like mounts that people ride.
Second is the Griffons that SE included, what is they're role and commonality?
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1) I see no reason to specifically exclude horses or camels. It'd give a nice "oh, I can identify that" thing. I think we should keep 'em unless you have a need to remove them. I'd like to keep horses definitely, because the nomad plains will need something. But I suppose I could come up with another beast of burden if it comes down to that.
2) griffen. predator, obviously. likes to eat horses and camels, incidentally, or other cattle (unless there are no camels, then well, it has to eat some other largish animal). The role it fills is essentially that of a flying lion or other big cat. So it's a lot more efficient. That means, for ecological balance reasons, it needs to be much more rare than a lion would be. Perhaps not all their eggs mature and hatch, so they don't multiply so quickly. So, I'd sum up with common enough that people know they're not myths, at least, people near their environmnets. But definitely not so common that you see one every day, unless you live real near a nest (in which case, don't try raising cattle, and in lean years, make sure they don't come for you).
This pretty much applies to any griffon. If they have the fore parts of a bird of prey, then their method of getting food is essentially carnivorous (sharp beak, talons), so even if they have the hindquarters of an herbivore (like a hippogriff), they still prey on animals, and big ones if they're horse/lion/whatever sized. (I suppose you could have a squrrill-griff which preys on... rabbits? Maybe cats and dogs if it feels ambitious -- which gives me an idea....)
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Ok, that answers a lot. I wasn't sure how much familiarty you wanted to keep and weither or not Griffians were common mounts.
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I mentioned horses and oxen specifically in my writeups of Silkur and Bregtoran. It can all be changed, of course.
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there's nothing to prevent someone from making a tribe, or a very elite guard, that uses griffons of some type as a mount (hippogriffs seem easiest to sit on) but the wouldn't be "common" mounts. They'd be a rare cavalry, and greatly feared. I'd even add in a factor that the griffons are very difficult to breed or domesticate, just for realism.
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From what you read in the intro material on Azmoth, it seems like Griffon cavalry is reserved to rumored northmen, as if it were unheard of in other places.
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I didn't mean to imply that. I'm not sure what's conveying that impression either.
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Well I;m comming up with some new mounts for the desert areas. I'll let you know once I've decided.
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I'm thinking of haveing "water Oxe" that are like a cross between a hippo and an oxe that the Parths and Tarths use to pull barges along the river. As well as a osterage/raptor type bird that is used as a fast pased rideing mount in the desert lands since deserts aren't kind to horses.
There will be Crocidiles, lions as cattle preditors along the river as well as a few new races I haven't decided upon. There porbaly won't be any griffons since Parth isn't near any mountains or very high hills. I'm also planning on bringing versions of both Kappa and Kelpie as either faries or Darklings.
Haven't gotten to the rest of Parth just yet.
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So after another quick reading of the intro material I found that according to this...
All observed examples have shared some traditional traits. They are meat eaters, and therefore prey frequently on domesticated animals. They tend to be solitary, and are never observed in more than a family group. All of them retain the wings of the bird heritage and are capable of flight, making them exceedingly dangerous. All observed samples have also had the posterior of a mammal, though scholars theorize the potential for reptilian griffons.
...griffons may be more common than I supposed. This, though, is where I got the idea of griffon cavalry to be rare/unheard of:
There are even rumors of tribal peoples who ride griffons into battle.
(speaking of peoples in the North.)
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A few more ideas that I'm thinking of.
Huge Elefant sized insects (probaly beetles) that have herds in the deserts. Insects need less water then other animals so I think this might be a nice addition to a desert planet. Also sometime relay big ones (weither or not their the same specites or look the same is something I have yet to decide upon) wander in from the southern wastes (ie past that 800 mile mark) that are as big as some small houses.
Second is what are our plans for Ghosts, entities and undead in general?
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big insects = cool
ghosts and the undead. Well, we dont' want to eliminate the possibility, I don't think. But I don't think we want whole nations of undead. The supernatural should be uncommon. If you want to refer to the undead, like a land where the dead walk, or a famous ghost, or something, leave it as superstition and rumors for now, I'd think.
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I was planning on haveing some old ruins that were haunted, and maybe a ghost caravan that wandered the desert at night seaming to interact with something that no one else can see. I don't realy care to have many of your standard D&D undead but I do want to have spirits or ghosts in places. Most not being able to interact with the material world almost as if you're looking into the Spirit world. But if it's not what you want to do I can scrap that.
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well, it sounds good. Is there any reason why the main write up can't be 'travellers report' or something? So when we actually do adventures or stories there, we can make it real or false reports about the ghosts
That way, thde main setting can be vague, but we can make it surprising when we actually need to detail it. more of a showmanship/suspense thing than anythign else.
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That's more or less what I was going to do, but I wanted to know if I could go down that path. We still need to develop a spirit world of sometype too. Becasue once the main write up is done and if I feel like it I'll realy go into some of those ideas.
And here's another discussion topic. What are going to be the equivalent (if any) to goblins/orcs in our world? I'm sure you want to do darklings for that. So I guess my question is are there different classifcations of darklings? Can I have a band of them like you would "Easy" mobs in D&D. Or are we not going to have a standard wussy race in the world and just leave it up to what ever we want to do.
And that just made me think of something else. What is the "role" of darklings? where are they. what do they do, like etc? I think the main antagoist race needs to be fleshed out some so we can actualy use them in the settings.
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well, there are two broad classes:
the destructive ones. These would have similar roles to those of D&D orcs or hobgoblins. THey're out to kill and destroy humanity and their accomplishments
The subversive ones; these are less obvious. They're harder to identify on sight, and they try to persuade and subvert humans into destroying themselves. They're happy to do this to individuals, but if they can get whole societies to do it, that's even better.
None of them look exactly alike, though.
Statistically, then, you could group them. To put it in d20 terms, you could have stats blocks for each of small, medium, and large version of the violent ones (with some variation in each, to account for their abilities) and then add in a "special ability" like, some fly, some can tunnel, some are immune to something, whatever. And then do something simlar for the more subversive ones.
So yeah, there would definitely be a band of them living somewhere or wandering, like you'd have a band of gnolls or something in D&D.
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In our world insects haven't grown beyond a certain size range because the weight of such a large exoskeleton is prohibitive to movement/living. But we're making up a world, so I suppose we could bend some rules...
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since we are going to be makeing this a RPG as well I think we need to come up with some "names" for the different classes. So if there are 3-4 different sizes of the agressive ones the maybe have a different name for each of those size classes. And, to use your D20 example, have a chart or 2 that the user rolls for random abilites and stat modifiers or even adding a class level or two.
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well, I figure any real names they have will be slang. Maybe vary from location to location. I could come up with names later. I'm not doing any game stats yet, so I'm not making those charts. I'm going to wait until we have a system, though I suspect that's a long way off considering Fell's situation.
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I understand not wanting to do the system stuff now. But I do think we need some of that info for the setting.
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I'll think up some cool names as I can then. Give me sugestions if you have them. I want to stay away from names like "ogre" or "goblin" though.
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I think how I would break them up is different from how you want to. How I would is take the different size catagories (say 4 or 5) then under each of those seperate them by element. so lets do water (useing D&D names just for refrences sake), size one: kappa, size 2:Kelpe, size 3: doger, size 4: water Elemental, size 5: water Demon.
Then do that for all of them.
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SE or Kije have either of you read my above suggestion for Darkling classifications?
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I want to think about it, but my mind has been on other things. I don't know if I want to make up so many darn names. If we even do 3 sizes for each elemental type, then we're looking at 24 names. That's too much. Much too much.
I'm much more satisfied by calling them "big darklings" or little darklings, or whatever. Since their abilities don't alter that much by size (well, bigger = stronger usually, right) there's no reason to make so many distinctions in terms of what people would actually call them. I always thought that it would be a continuity too, not that there are several sizes that fit nicely into boxes, so there'd be no where to cut it of at any point.
basically, they'd be identified by about how big they are, called darklings, and if it was relevant, there'd be a reference to which kind of elemental magic they used.
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I like the idea of having the darklings be variable in appearance, size, abilities, etc. I like having them be difficult to classify. I think for system purposes we could work out some general rules/mechanics for GMs to use, but for setting purposes we can leave it ambiguous. I think having them be more ambiguous keeps true to the idea that most people on Azmoth don't understand the true nature of the world, and the resulting conflict (AzMozeth and DiAnthnik's struggle for the world.) Darklings can still be a mystery.
And I like having a darkling be able to be in the shape of a horse, or a rat, or a man, or perversions of each. Obviously, the size/shape will affect the abilities.
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Heh, reading through all these threads again
I'm thinkign Darklings will be called by whatever their abilities are. "He's a digger" like that
"He's a flyer, but he's also a clipper" (he's also got pincers instead of hands."