Zombies - Not Zombies

Long ago when the world was new and the oldkin walked the lands there was one named Joomavesi. Joomavesi was beautiful and her black hair rippled and folded like the mountains. For long she walked beneath the stars seeking paradise and she found it on an island where the heart of the earth boiled the sea.

According to a personality profile at work, I fixate a lot on "what?" questions. I, being biased, think they're the best way to get to the core of an issue or problem which I believe is critical because if you don't know the core of the issue, you can't actually fix a problem or communicate the problem to those who can fix it.

The Vyderac are a type of blood sucking insectoid found in the Swordfish Islands. The Matron, or Queen, is totally stationary, but heavily armored and defended by her swarm. Her maggots reinforce the hive area, build additional blood reservoirs as the colony expands and can be transformed into the other three types of vyderac. The seekers identify food for the colony. The swarmers overwhelm the food and make sure it's blood doesn't clot. The feeders drain the food of its juices and transport the juices back to the matron so she can feed the colony.

Enjoy!

Long, long ago, before the Swordfish Islands ever came into being as a concept, I was reading through the AD&D DMG looking for interesting magical items to put in the paths of my players, and I "rediscovered" the Chime of Opening. I've read the magical items section of that book hundreds of times, but the possibilities surrounding the idea of a chime that can open things had never resonated for me. This is probably because I *love* playing thieves, *love* getting my hands dirty with lockpicking, and absolutely despise anything that makes noise and might reveal my location, or attract unwanted attention.

Check out BBCs video of a net-casting spider

I'm not sure what we'd do without the British and their amazing investment in the pursuit of capturing and understanding nature.

These net spiders hunt at night, don't have the best eyesight in the world, and instead of creating a "traditional" spider's web, they just keep a little webbing, like a net, between their forelegs. For years scientists have been aware of this behavior, but they hadn't been able to see exactly how the spider's capture process works. If you check out this BBC link you can see it in all its slow motion glory.

Bastimentos color morph of Dendrobates pumilio from Wikipedia

Poison Dart Frogs have always had a special place in my heart. Most are about the size of your thumbnail, and a spec of poison off their back the size of a grain of sand can, reportedly, kill a human. I decided early on that the Swordfish Islands needed these tiny little guys hopping about the islands but it wasn't 'till quite recently that we decided what their poisons would do.

African Sunrise by Austin Thomas

Timing can be an interesting thing. After putting up my quick post on the Wydarr I decided to catch up with my blog reading and came across Noisms' post On Creating New Monsters in which he speculates that it's impossible to create monsters that are truly novel and without antecedents. There's great stuff in the comments over there, and I was going to just post my own thoughts, but they started to get so long that I figured I may as well make a blog post. Happy double post Thursday!

The Bone-Back Wydarr by Safari512

Safari drew up this cuddly looking critter before coming on board with the Swordfish Islands. He had it buried in a pile of more traditional amazingness (mummies, werewolves etc). and as soon as Wintergreen, The Diviner and I saw it, we knew this tiny abomination needed a home on the islands. Safari said he'd just been fucking around while sketching it up and hadn't really had any plans or thoughts as to how it "worked", so we brainstormed up a few things.

We figure that the Wydarr are diggers. The bone-like hooks it has for forelimbs grow continually, much like a hamster's teeth, so as a hamster needs to chew continually, a Wydarr needs to dig. They eat anything, are roughly the size of a two drawer filing cabinet, and tend to travel in packs of either 1d4 or 1d6. There's also a Crystalback variant with metallic plates or bands in place of fur, and crystal spikes in place of bone, sketch is done, but not yet scanned!

Turning to myths and legends for monsters is awesome, but now that we have all these awesome HD cameras, timelapse and whatnot it's become so much easier to see just how truly terrifying nature is. It could just be that I've been reading Roles, Rules and Rolls' posts on Hodgson a little too closely, but the ocean is full of terrible, terrible things, like coral:

Plate Coral Feeding:

Fighting Corals:

Makes me wonder what a non-underwater garden of these things would be like.

I don't think he sells patties...

With Safari on the team we're consistently running into the best problem ever: his interpretations of what we've planned or written push us beyond what we'd ever imagined.

See... When planning out some of the monsters that appear on the islands, we got kind of lazy. We didn't mean to, but we fell into unimaginative tropes and put "Giant Crab" on the list o' monsters.  Runescape did it. Skyrim did it. WoW did it. Mega Man did it. Why not us? Giant Crabs are all over the place (including your mom's pants). They fit the bill. Got a beach? Need fodder? How about crabs? Basic. Simple.

Safari, as it turns out, was having none of that. He came back with a galley crushing monstrosity of absolutely gargantuan proportions, with human teeth. The Diviner, Wintergreen and I were ashamed of ourselves. The Swordfish Islands doesn't have room for common "fodder". What had we been thinking? We knew better. And once again, Safari took something that'd we'd included as an aside, and made it badass.

So we stepped it up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLoXDFDeD9E

Dear nature, thanks for being scary.

Just got the timelapse for this lovely lady uploaded. Watch Safari work his freehand magic here.

 

Let's talk about The Vyderac!

The Vyderac, sometimes referred to as Crimson Fiends, are hive based, "insectoid" found on The Swordfish Islands. Vyderacs can be categorized into five specific morph- and physi- ologies:

• Matron (or Queen)
• Maggot
• Seeker
• Swarmer
• Feeder

Vyderacs require the blood of living creatures to survive, and the five specialized types work together with terrifying efficiency to see that the needs of the hive are met. See below the jump for a super rough writeup of them all!

After reading the Wikipedia article on D&D Hags, I got to thinking: How about instead of giving one of the pieces of The Tome to the Ogres on Hot Springs Isle, we put it with The Hag in the caves below the Southern Lighthouse.

Baba Yaga by Matthew Starbuck

The Hag could use a number of ogres (frequently polymorphed) as minions, and since Hags hunger for humanoid flesh, she could have a minion (human or otherwise) in Swordfish Bay who sends adventurers to meet their death in her domain. Could make for a nice "people are missing" plot in which everyone is traced back to a particular series of assignments from a particular person in town, and they've all been eaten by The Hag. "Hag's Eyes" also sound like a fun toy to incorporate into things, and it could be The Hag's agent that sends people out looking for pieces of The Tome in the first place. She could also be actively using the piece she has (for maximum fun!).

Below are the interesting bits from the Wikipedia article on D&D Hags.