RPG Brainstorming

More weird critters and other stuff from the depths of the internet to your feverish brain all courtesy of Netherwerks.  Just add dice, makes its own sauce...

(No picture available at this time--I'll draw one for later...)
The Minhocao.  A twenty-foot long millipede...which reminds me of the The Vaults of Yoh Vombis by Clark Ashton Smith where they see a similar creature, only much longer...You can read more about the supposed Mega-Millipede at Fortean Times.

Picture from Dalhousie University

Rusticles. Bacteria named Halomonas titanicae are eating the Titanic over 2-miles down below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. More details at Discovery's site, from which we quote: "While potentially dangerous to underwater metal structures like shipwrecks, as well as offshore oil and gas pipelines, the newly discovered species could also offer positive applications for industry." Bacteria that break down iron. Yeah that might be a bit of a problem for shipping, oil rigs and pipelines.  Sufficiently advanced and widely proliferated in a world's waterways, it'd bring back wooden ships in a hurry. This also gives you a nice one-two punch, microbially, when you factor in the recently uncovered bacteria that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA.  Bacteria are cool.  They outnumber us billions to one.  So watch what you say--they might be listening.

conjoined Acromyrmex ants, collected in Botucatu, Brazil (credit: Rodrigo Feitosa)

Dorsally-fused 'dual-chassis' leaf-cutter ants. There's another photo of the two-headed Brazilian leaf-cutter ant at the Myrmecos page. Literaly Two-Headed Ants.  Just blow them up to Giant Economy-size (ala Them!) and you have yourself one heck of a nasty critter. This is a freak of nature that is just begging to be adapted into an RPG.  What a cool monster!  It would be just the sort of thing that could guard a pair of corridors at once. Bonus: consider what a  myrmecologist combined with some basic genetic engineering might be like. Or consider a myrmemancer: Ant-based magics...very scary stuff.  Alex Wild's site Myrmecos is rapidly becoming one of my personal favorite finds thanks to the TYWKIWDBI blog. Insects make some of the best monsters; insects, crustaceans, deep sea creatures, worms and those weird little squishy-things that make players cringe.  Fun stuff.