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[NW_Kohaku]

In the development postings, Toady and Three Toe have been talking about generating catacombs with new types of Night Creature-like creatures which are suitable for living in sewers and other subterranean zones.  In the Future of the Fortress thread, this has led to a spin-off discussion about mythology, and new creatures and powers that creatures can have.

So, this is a "brainstorming" thread, where posters are encouraged to come up with stories of creatures from myth or fiction that have very unusual logic or goals. 

I don't mean just another bizarrely-shaped critter that just likes to eat dwarves like all the Forgotten Beasts or most other cavern creatures, I mean creatures that have truly strange habits, and feed upon or behave by very strange rules.  The purpose is to create a list of creatures that would be radically different in the way that they actually would pose a challenge to the player... if they are actually even hostile to the player at all. 

Here was what we were discussing before:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Catacombs! Undead! Make sure you activate the waypoint or it's a huge hassle if your adventurer has to run all the way from the inner cloister to get back to your body!

I'm hoping to see proper vampires, personally, with some of their insanely numerous associated powers.

I'd like to see weaknesses and such be procedurally generated, but unique to monster type. So all the hags are weak to oak wood, and the trolls hate honey, or whatever. Of course, right now I think that each individual night creature is unique compared to all the rest, so unless we get one super-successful night creature that takes enough mates and sires enough children to perpetuate itself (a la Dracula), then we have to deal with the odd fact that the peasants somehow know how to defeat the night creature, but are unable to do it themselves.

If monster types do end up being the way Toady goes (or the successful single night creature posited above), then you have the justification that some folk hero has killed one before, and therefore everyone knows the story. This leads to the situation where all the villagers just know that if you carry holly berries around on your person the local monster won't bother you- unfriendly little towns may withhold this information in order to dispose of unwelcome foreigners who wouldn't know the custom. This could lead to the quasi-symbiotic situation where the villagers are afforded some measure of protection from bandits and the like because the outsiders do not know how to defeat the monster, and since this is beneficial to the villagers they never tell outsiders how to defeat it, which helps the monster kill new victims.

Weaknesses may not kill the creature, though.

Vampires, as Dante was saying, have a weakness to beans - they aren't killed by beans, but they have to stop and count the beans.  It distracts them.

I've looked up mythologies from around the world, and some cultures have very quirky, if not outright humorous "weaknesses" for some monsters.

Kappa, for example, are Japanese river creatures that look like humanoid turtles with beaks and carry a plate on their head.  The plate is somehow affixed to the top of their bald head and contains the water from their home body of water.  If they ever lose contact with their home water, they die immediately, so breaking the plate is the killer weakness of the creature.  Their second-favorite meal is human (especially human children)... something.  The actual thing they eat changes depending on the story, but generally, it's either the livers, intestines, or some portion of the human's soul, which they suck out through the belly button (or some other, lower opening in the human). 

Thing is, their absolute favorite food is cucumbers.  So if you bribe kappa with cucumbers, they'll leave you alone, and won't eat you.  There are festivals where people write the names of their family members on cucumbers, and toss the cucumbers in the river to bribe the kappa every year, giving up a tribute of cucumbers so the monsters don't eat their souls.

Other amusing things are that, for all their potential soul-eating, you can just plain talk to them, as well, and they were forced to obey customary politeness.  If you bow deeply to a kappa in greeting, they would have to bow just as deeply in return, which could spill the water out of their plate, and defeat the kappa for you.

Anyway, something like a way to distract or bribe a monster would probably be more generally known knowledge, since it's something where you didn't have to kill the creature to know it.  Maybe a not-quite-so-hostile monster will just outright go up and ask to be bribed if he prefers people throw him his favorite food of their own accord as a sort of protection racket.  I mean, the more people know that leaving your favorite whip wine out near your cave will keep you from busting in and killing their family, the more whip wine you'll suddenly find out near your cave for you to drink whenever, right?

Don't forget that not all weaknesses are just about what hurts it more. It could also be the requirements for it to hunt or spot a creature.

For example Chinease (I THINK it is) vampires hunt by smelling one's breath. Thus holding your breath legitimately works.

So I guess another weakness could be a condition where the creature lacks the ability to sense the presence of something.

So lets see weaknesses so far
1) Cannot notice
2) Hurt
3) Satiated
4) Stall

I mean if you want more things people have done to avoid monsters
-Walking across a bridge backwards avoids the attention of fairies (and trolls)
-Hemlock under your pillow wards off spirits (I think)
-Wolvesbane wards off Werewolves

Oooh there should be Nightcreatures where if you say their name three times they should just strangle you no matter where you are and they are. Bloodymary should TOTALLY be a night creature!

In some variations of the kappa story, the plate is actually a bowl-shaped indent on the top of their head. Which makes for another possible weakness, certain parts of the body on the creature can be an Achilles's Heel weakness.

For example, a particular Night Creature may have a tail. The creature cutting off the tail will weaken the creature. In the case of a spouse, removing said tail could restore them to their original form.

I like idea of the possible random weaknesses as like Kohaku pointed out, the kind of folk creatures that Night Creatures are based on have this tendency and at times can be funny in a Nightmare Retardant kind-of-way (which makes sense, as the most likely reason for the weird or funny weaknesses might have be to make the monster less scary).

If randomly generated creatures end up having various weaknesses to materials or poisons, it could be easilly handled by having to learn the Legends about those creatures.

Talking with certain individuals about those Night Creatures would yield information about them, their strengths and weaknesses.  Then you could look around in Legends mode and basically get a list of what weaknesses various creatures have for that world generation.

Adventurer: "What do you know of the beasts that are plaguing your town?"
Peasant: Leans in close
Peasant: "They say that the Horned Woman can't stand the sight of Diamonds."
Peasant: "But maybe that's just an old wives tale."

While we're on the topic of weaknesses, though, might as well share some more myth...

Hercules fought two very notable creatures as part of his trials - the Hydra and the Nemian Lion. 

Although the hydra is already in the game, a part of the myth that isn't already a part of the game is that the hydra had poisonous blood and heads that would regrow as he cut them off.  Hercules "failed" the trial of the hydra because he had to get advice for how to defeat the hydra (cauterizing the wound with fire to prevent the head from regrowing), but after defeating the hydra, he put his arrows in the blood of the hydra, and used those as poison arrows in his subsequent adventures.

There was also the Nemian Lion, whose hide was essentially impervious to harm.  Basically similar to having adamantine skin, the lion could not be harmed by conventional kinetic attack... through its hide.  Some tellings of the myth state the weakness of the lion was to attack its open mouth, and crack the skull from the inside, where its hide did not protect it.  (Which sounds a lot like a video game boss...  "Who would have thought that the boss's only weakness was its giant, glowing red eye?")  Hercules then hollowed the lion out, and used its hide as a cloak as a sort of armor.

Also, since I was trying to think of "alternate" type of monster, Celtic folktales have the Leanan Sidhe (or some variant spelling thereof).  Sidhe are a general class of fairies in Celtic myth, but the Leanen Sidhe takes the form of beautiful women who act like greek muses - inspiring artists and craftsmen, but at the same time, draining away portions of their life as they pour it into their work. 

Some versions of the myth have them feeding off of artistry, and encourage artists to literally put their souls onto their canvas, so that they can feed off them.  Other versions have them as something like a succubus.  Other versions just play the whole thing as a metaphor for romance in general, and say that any woman can take the aspect of a Leanan Sidhe, and if your love is unrequited, you become her slave, and if you resist her, and her love is unrequited, she becomes your slave.

And of course, there are the potentially beneficial kind of monster, like the Russian Domovoi, or its Japanese counterpart, the Zashiki-Warashi.  These are creatures that like to live in people's houses, but hide.  As long as they are living with you, they bring your family good fortune, but if they ever leave, it will fall immediately to ruin.  As such, if you have one of those, you have to find ways to ensure it can't ever leave, even if that means trying to find a way to cage it.  Domovoi are generally entirely benign, unless angered, although Zashiki-Warashi are child-like and enjoy pranks.

When you get onto Japanese stuff, though, they have entirely crazy monsters, like Tenjoname, the ceiling-licker.  Apparently a mythological rationalization for water damage to ceilings, the tenjoname literally is a creature that wants to break into your house in the middle of the night to lick your ceiling (and do nothing else), leaving a slobber stain on it.

I'd honestly like to see some more of the utterly bizarre-but-benign magical creatures out there.

Simply being able to use the power of a god from the world generated to protect yourself from certain creatures would be an interesting idea. On another note it might be interesting to be able to bribe some creatures to leave you alone but also potentially protect you from other creatures maybe of the same kind or maybe just weaker creatures. Being able to borrow the powers of other creatures to protect yourself would certainly be an interesting addition.

That and I can imagine an awesome story of a hero obtaining power from a night creature or megabeast early on to proterct them then when they obtain enough of there own power coming back to slay the creature.

Well, monsters in Dwarf Fortress are rare. In generic roguelike, you kill dozens of monsters per minute. In Dwarf Fortress, you spend a lot of time wandering from town to town and finding a monster's lair and then killing one monster. They are so uncommon they could very well all have distinct disadvantages without you having to have a bloated inventory.

In fact, anything that makes monsters a bit more different from a random goblin is good.

Yes, if you have to be specifically hunting for a monster, or know that only 3 particular night creatures are in the area, you can stock up on that one town's particular creature's weaknesses at the local shops, rather than knowing that horned hags are vulnerable to shark leather bags, and carrying one around everywhere after you've left the only town near one (or killed the last of the horned hags) . 

Also,

As for my own take, I think weaknesses would be fun as long as one thought is borne in mind: With enough firepower, anything should be removed from the material world. If it is weak against garlic, and I have garlic, cool. If it's weak against garlic, and I have an axe, I should be able to have a shot at mangling it until it's no longer able to physically exist.

I definitely agree with this.

Even things like trolls that regenerate unless you kill them with fire or acid should eventually stop regenerating if you chop it into kindling and then mash the kindling into paste enough times.  EVENTUALLY, its energy supply or food supply or whatever will run out, and it should just plain starve to death after you keep mashing it into a finer and finer paste faster than it can heal.

An interesting weakness for a monster might be to be beaten with part of its own anatomy.

This is actually more likely and reasonable than you might think. For instance, imagine a creature with extremely tough skin, but also extremely sharp claws capable of piercing that skin better than your own weapon. Alternatively, imagine stinging a giant scorpion with its own stinger.

You know the idea of a night creature feeding off of an emotion would be very amusing. In fact that would be something I'd want to see happen! Cause if there were such night creatures like for example "Feed off of scaring people by surprising them" I could see a whole lot of interesting ideas that could come together for new night creatures.

One case can be the "Dream Eater" a japanese mythical creature that's sort of like a dream catcher, that generally eats peoples dreams (usually nightmares from what I remember). This is the kind of stuff fantasy is made for!

Please make this possible Toady!

Whew, that was a lot of quotes.

By the by, I searched for existing night creatures or strange monster topics, and the only threads I got were about specific types of creatures, like dragons or golems, the Underground Diversity thread (already implemented), and a thread that was on this exact topic whose OP was edited to say "Screw it, someone else start a new topic."  So I figured I would.

[freeformschooler]

I'm going to be the first one that says it: randomly generated undead/other creatures that kill not to feed, but to equip themselves with the weapons and armor of their prey. They're just intelligent enough to see that power comes in belongings. Just to provide a contrast to the generalized "hoarder" night creatures we have now.

[Vactor]

I'll be bold and suggest a multi-tile creature:

An immobile creature that grows into adjacent tiles, it would work like creatures do now, leaving the tile passable to crawling, and able to attack adjacent squares.

I would imagine this being some kind of disease (possibly from forgotten beasts) that causes the body of the deceased to continue to grow and spread like an undead moss.  It could have randomized body parts from its  hosts body type, with procedurally generated connectivity.

Imagine a catacomb passageway with gnarled arms hanging from the walls and ceiling, assorted eyes and mouths and other parts scatter across its surface.  If you wanted to get through you could make a run for it, or start hacking off limbs to clear a way.

[EmperorNuthulu]

I'll be bold and suggest a multi-tile creature:

An immobile creature that grows into adjacent tiles, it would work like creatures do now, leaving the tile passable to crawling, and able to attack adjacent squares.

I would imagine this being some kind of disease (possibly from forgotten beasts) that causes the body of the deceased to continue to grow and spread like an undead moss.  It could have randomized body parts from its  hosts body type, with procedurally generated connectivity.

Imagine a catacomb passageway with gnarled arms hanging from the walls and ceiling, assorted eyes and mouths and other parts scatter across its surface.  If you wanted to get through you could make a run for it, or start hacking off limbs to clear a way.

That sounds absolutely horrific and terrifying...

It probably would fit into dwarf fortress though, considering the other horrors we have.

Also do we know if these sewers will have running water in them? if so then we could have something like swimming blobs of filth that ambush you and drag you under water.

[loose nut]

This is more modern and less mythological, but what about Alien style parasites whose larval form eats a living host? Or one who paralyses the host and takes them back to their lair first, like a wasp?

More broadly, what about creatures with multi-stage life cycles?

[Fieari]

I am reminded of "firebirds"* in Dave Duncan's "Lord of the Fire Lands".  In that, firebirds are a cross between earth and fire elementals mixed with an animal of the wizard's choice.  It's utterly invincible to anything but water, and incapable of seeing even large quantities of the stuff.  You basically have to lure it into the ocean to kill it.

That's a good example of the "Unable to see" style weakness, I think.

*Not always a bird

[Vactor]

I'll be bold and suggest a multi-tile creature:

An immobile creature that grows into adjacent tiles, it would work like creatures do now, leaving the tile passable to crawling, and able to attack adjacent squares.

I would imagine this being some kind of disease (possibly from forgotten beasts) that causes the body of the deceased to continue to grow and spread like an undead moss.  It could have randomized body parts from its  hosts body type, with procedurally generated connectivity.

Imagine a catacomb passageway with gnarled arms hanging from the walls and ceiling, assorted eyes and mouths and other parts scatter across its surface.  If you wanted to get through you could make a run for it, or start hacking off limbs to clear a way.

That sounds absolutely horrific and terrifying...

It probably would fit into dwarf fortress though, considering the other horrors we have.

Also do we know if these sewers will have running water in them? if so then we could have something like swimming blobs of filth that ambush you and drag you under water.

Just as a follow up to this, i do think this would be the easiest type of multi-tile creature to implement, as it could effectively be an individual immobile creature in each square, each independently killable.  This could also show up in fortress mode, where a catacomb that has fallen into disuse could become infested. (could be sphere/biome specific, or as a result of forgotten beast effects) It could also be a source of miasma.

[harborpirate]

Creatures that turn things to stone and/or metal, and/or creatures that eat [loose] stone and/or metal would be interesting additions (if they aren't already included, I'm not too familiar with the entire roster of monsters and monster powers, since I mostly play fortress mode and build megaprojects).

Imagine coming across what appears to be a half eaten stone statue of a dwarf, that turns out to be the corpse of an ancient dwarf turned to stone long ago.

Or a creature that attacks you in adventurer mode, but only because it wants to eat your sword (and not necessarily you).

[loose nut]

Monsters that appoint themselves guardians of a wood, a river, a battlefield, a vein of ore, an artifact.

Monsters, or crazy hermits, or cults!

[Acanthus117]

Monsters that appoint themselves guardians of a wood, a river, a battlefield, a vein of ore, an artifact.

I like this idea. Imagine if in worldgen some epic hero is slain and they make a temple for him, and then a random spirit thing manifests as the 'protector' of the temple. Due to the fact that the hero was a really cool guy and everyone liked him and stuff, there'll be loot in that temple to sell/use.

Then, the civ that made the temple crumbles, leaving the temple (and its protector spirit monster) relatively unscathed.

Hundreds of years later, a wandering mercenary hears tales of the haunted temple filled with gold...

I'll be bold and suggest a multi-tile creature:

An immobile creature that grows into adjacent tiles, it would work like creatures do now, leaving the tile passable to crawling, and able to attack adjacent squares.

I would imagine this being some kind of disease (possibly from forgotten beasts) that causes the body of the deceased to continue to grow and spread like an undead moss.  It could have randomized body parts from its  hosts body type, with procedurally generated connectivity.

Imagine a catacomb passageway with gnarled arms hanging from the walls and ceiling, assorted eyes and mouths and other parts scatter across its surface.  If you wanted to get through you could make a run for it, or start hacking off limbs to clear a way.

That sounds absolutely horrific and terrifying...

It probably would fit into dwarf fortress though, considering the other horrors we have.

Also do we know if these sewers will have running water in them? if so then we could have something like swimming blobs of filth that ambush you and drag you under water.

Just as a follow up to this, i do think this would be the easiest type of multi-tile creature to implement, as it could effectively be an individual immobile creature in each square, each independently killable.  This could also show up in fortress mode, where a catacomb that has fallen into disuse could become infested. (could be sphere/biome specific, or as a result of forgotten beast effects) It could also be a source of miasma.

I love this idea. It fits into the whole feel of DF, and who wouldn't want to see tons of disembodied eyes and arms and stuff?

[Ale and Axes]

Shape-shifting is quite a common mythical monster trait. Vampires turning into bats or mist, Ghouls can take the form of hyenas in their original Arabian myths. There's a German zombie called a Nachzehrer that can take the form of a pig.

[Light forger]

"A strange creature struggles towards a man in the distance it is flayed and mutilated. It does not breath but there are gasps of pain as it walks looking at the horror-stuck human with great loathing in it's eyes it bows to hims and says "We will honorably duel for your fate." The man draws a small dirks as it raises a blood-stained longsword of a ancient make and with a few clear strikes slays the man as he falls to the ground and his blood covers the ground it seems almost sad."


Razzorth or Damned Ones are soldiers of old who did terrible deeds in combat battle failing to honor those who they had slain the god of combat and honor cursed to be flayed and mutilated like there victims. To end the curse they must do honorable combat with soldiers until one beats them honorably. They are know to haunt catacombs.


Notes: Damned Ones have to honor ALL requests so if you are on a quest you can make it wait for you to finish before it can attack you. When formals greetings for cultures are made it will have to honor them too.They are needless to say very patience and will let you go hoping you will grow strong enough to end there suffering.  There weapons are masterwork as even more of a curse as they can't let someone kill them and can't use another weapon this dooms many that could have killed them to there deaths. They both hate and love the as living they can end there curse but they are free to be unhonorable and die.

       

[Geneoce]

On the subject of multitile "creatures" some form of elven M.A.D spell/curse/whatever would be pretty cool.

Thinking something along the lines of an elven retreat gets torched by humans to make room for expansion, then a few years later toxic vines/plants/fungi bloom in the area. Something akin to a badass, maleviolent, semi-intelligent version of cordyceps that enslaves the inhabitants or feeds off them.

I can imagine an overgrown village full of plant-infested human parodies of elves slaying all intruders into this new "forest"

It would have to be civ dependant though, like maybe just for more fanatic/corrupt version of elves or something.

[Fidna]

I'd like to see some things more akin to traditional Gaelic and some Brythonic faeries. They were often not so much outright malicious (though they often could be) so much as possessed of a very warped sense of ethics that lacked the remotest sense of empathy for others. And a lot of them just looked weird. There's a Scottish creature that had a head the size of a whale on a man's body, with translucent skin and an enormous grin. He'd wander up on beaches sometimes and consume people with his massive maw. In one story, a priest gets it to stop by offering him hospitality (he gave him a cask of wine), and asked why it did such awful things. "I'm hungry." Then it went back into the sea. Some are pretty nebulous creatures, too. Like a kind of giant hairy man in some Manx and Scottish myths is seen, sometimes, but disappears into fog, and leaves a person with a sense of unnatural dread that drives a person mad with terror, often to the point of suicide. Hill-women were some kind of vampire like being that moved in groups. One would convince a lone traveler they needed assistance. If they followed, they'd be torn limb from limb by the rest of the group and their blood consumed from the wounds, and the creatures were revealed to be the dessicated phantoms of deceased women. I use these specific examples because they all had the same severe weakness to worked iron. Touching it would cause them to die. I find it funny because it's such a plain metal. I'd like some very bizarre, dangerous, or just gross things that could die by such bizarrely simple means (given, at least in said cultures, iron wasn't exceedingly hard to come by; considering the Gaels' view of how their people came to be, with invading Ireland and all with superior weapons, it was probably just a commentary on that, but it still lead to some hilarious and weird myths).

I'd really like to see catacombs and such offering creatures specific to the cultures that built them. Think of a civilization resembling the old Norse peoples; tombs could sometimes be guarded by something akin to a draugr in certain cases. But similar beings don't exist in all other mythologies. It'd be a good chance for some dynamism culturally, giving a region more direct character in relationship to the peoples who live in it. It'd really be nice when cultures are themselves more dynamic.

[Vorthon]

Hey, NW_Kohaku, that was my thread you found, wasn't it?

I was having some trouble with formatting. (My carefully formatted summary/list kept getting screwed up by the forum. >.<)

Also, Domovoi.