RPG Brainstorming: Jennifer's Monsters

This installment of RPG Brainstorming is being handled by our extra special Guest Blogger Jennifer from Book Scorpion's Lair.  Jennifer maintains an extensive collection of stock images at her DeviantART gallery, including a number of old illustrations of monsters and mythical creatures that people may find useful--so definitely drop by and say 'Hi!' sometime.

Werewolf - silver bullets, piece of cake. Red-eyed black dog - yawn. Giant red-haired gorilla - been there, done that. Velvet worms - not agai ... wait, what?

I'd love a velvet worm as a pet, but as a monster they would make me run. They sneak up on you and the first thing you probably notice of them is the gentle touch of an antenna. Before you can say ew!, you're covered in sticky slime. Even if you manage to run, the velvet worm will follow you single-mindedly and if it captures you, you can look forward to having your intestines dissolved. Some species of velvet worms even hunt in packs. Here are a few links to Velvet Worms at Buzzle, A site with some good introductory facts on Velvet Worms, Encyclopedia Britannica on Velvet Worms, The Australian Museum page for Velvet Worms, Arkive, Spitting with a Segmented Brain, and at the bottom of this post at the Real Monstrosities blog is a Velvet Worm.

Image from: http://spluch.blogspot.com/2007/01/giant-centipedes.html

Centipedes are even worse. I encountered centipedes in one memorable Cthulhu adventure and it was a very close call - they are extremely fast and aggressive. Add to that the fact that they have a poisonous and painful bite, can walk up walls and on the ceiling and that they can raise themselves on the last three leg pairs and you have a monster no-one will forget. Here's a video of a giant centipede catching a bat in flight while the centipede is hanging from the ceiling of a cave. Scolopendra.be has more infomation on them, as has Arkive.

Assassin bugs are great, too - not only do they look like aliens, they also have an extremely painful sting and can hit your eyes with a defensive liquid from about a foot away (millipedes can do that, too). An assassin bug will wait for its prey to walk by, coming closer very slowly and will then attack in the blink of an eye, ramming that long and sharp proboscis into their prey. Think Brain Bug. Here's a video of an Assassin Bug in action. With that image stuck in your head, you can find out more at Assassinbug.com.

Speaking of Starship Troopers, Bombardier Beetles are really weird and were the inspiration for the Tanker Bugs, the ones that shot flaming liquid from their mouth. Bombardier beetles can't shoot flames, but if you pester one too much, you will get sprayed with a hot gas that is definitely painful if you get some in your eyes or on your skin. The beetle stores hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide in two separate chambers in its body, mixes them in a third chamber and the mixture heats up to about 100°C/212 °, becomes gaseous and then gets fired at the attacker. Don't think you're safe if you're in front of the beetle. It can swivel the firing gland between its legs or over its back. Oh, and it can repeat the attack multiple times per second. Here's an article with some cool pictures of the process

Some nice Cornish Mussels courtesy of Wikimedia

Mussels - yeah, right. What can they do, except give you food poisoning? Apart from being a lot more mobile than people think, here's a mussel that gives me nightmares. Forget killer clams (the most inoffensive animals ever, whatever Doctor Who may want us to believe), clampires are the way to go. You can find more photos of mussels of various types and sorts at the Unio Galleries.

Image from: http://www.bgsd.k12.wa.us/hml/jr_cam/macros/tl_pond/tl_pond.html

And finally, dragonfly larvae. Two words: extendable jaws.


Jennifer's Monsters by Bookscorpion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at oldschoolheretic.blogspot.com.
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RPG Brainstorming: Some Real-Life Monsters

The world around us is a far more weird and wonderful place than most of us ever realize.  Below are a few peculiar items lifted from YouTube to spark your creativity. I'm already thinking up a scenario that combines all of these critters into a set of linked encounters...


Ouch.  Enough said.


These are shrimp for crying out loud...Shrimp...save versus shrimp?  The thing just snaps its specially-modified claw and the resulting implosion of air bubbles temporily reaches the temperature of the surface of the sun.  You can't manage that with a Zippo lighter at a Lynnerd Skynnerd concert.  (Freebird!)  Anyone making-up this sort of critter would very likely get laughed at and then punched.  Hard.  Repeatedly.  But it's real, and now you have proof of it courtesy of the BBC. 


Drunk Monkeys.  Another denizen lurking in some dimly lit corner of an inn, bar or gin-joint near you--some of them aren't just drunks, though, some of them belong to thief-troupes...and they might have friends amongst the roving bands of Rogue Baboons...


Breakdancing skunks, or could it be olfactory capoeira?  That's some dance of defiance.


Okay, maybe these would work just fine, especially if they were enlarged and perhaps trained by some sort of aquatic being to serve as guards along the shoreline or in the midst of a really big mangove swamp...best not be carrying a lantern near that pool...


Now this is just too good not to use for an encounter.  Wonder who'd train and use such critters as mounts?  A good critter to summon for a quick get-a-way as well, if you can call up a big enough specimen...


Parasitic fungi that infect the victim's body and mind--and it's real--and there are over a thousand vrieties that are out there, possibly one that can convert PCs into weirdly elegant sculptures.  It's not just Yuggothian Mi-Go that you need to worry about...

Let me know if you found any of this useful.