I actually very, very, very much like this idea, but with the addition of one thing. You could easily create multiple castes for the creatures, giving each caste a slightly different body - for instance, one might have three arms, one might have an extra leg, another might move slightly faster or slower, etc. Other than that they could be completely identical.
[SELECT_CASTE:TRASH_GOLEM_1]
[BODY:TRASH_GOLEM]
[SELECT_CASTE:TRASH_GOLEM_2]
[BODY:TRASH_GOLEM:TG_ARM]
[SELECT_CASTE:TRASH_GOLEM_3]
[BODY:TRASH_GOLEM:TG_2ARM]
etc.
followed by,
[SELECT_CASTE:ALL]
and then the rest of everything. That would give them a little bit of variability so it wasn't like, "Every pile of garbage looks the same".
Also, I came up with something last night that might almost be a solution to our issue with canon creatures. Yes, the main fortress is over, but, Vanya's story isn't. It's still considered canon, right? (Unless I missed something somewhere, and it got downgraded...) I could
potentially work in a one-off or a quick reference here and there to it - that's all it needs to become a real thing. (For example: frog moss, Mr Frog's love of little birds, chardonnay, etc., were all one-off jokes that became something much more. Little jokes do big things.)
I also
really like the idea of including gnolls as a skulker civ. Not so much animal men, because then you'd be seriously lucky if you saw them at all.
Also, random, I need to rewrite the radioactivity code in Java... I've been procrastinating on it for a while now.
Oh, but! Good news! I've added three chapters to my "chapter stockpile" so far, so it won't be more than a couple days before I have enough to start posting.