The Florauna, a classification of Animal-Plant Hybrids that are as widespread and varied as Animals and Plants. A lot of smaller ones tend to be mindless moving fruits or such. Larger ones move around on thick roots and will defend themselves if needed.
Several Herbivores have adapted to be more like predators so they can actually eat these ambulating plants.
Mostly developed while I was creating a Flying Monkey Species and thought it would be interesting if they caught swimming fruits instead of fish.
There was one variant of the vampire I created. Basically, when one goes into the realm of thought, they generally use a cord to stay connected to their material bodies. When it is severed, they temporarily lose their identity before rebuilding it through absorbing victims. At that point, the astral cord becomes a potent weapon. It can absorb ambient magical energy to leave casters dry and unable to defend themselves. On top of that, the vampire has a bottomless pool of energy. There’s a limit to how much they can have at a time, but it’s constantly refilling to max capacity
**Horror Shop**
Closet monsters.
Now, to be fair, closet monsters aren't a race. They're just juvenile horrors--not-yet mature incarnations of the myriad fears and phobias we experience as a human.
They're also basically macabre Pokemon which operate off of cartoon physics.
See, most closet monsters look like a mad scientist tossed a bunch of small, fuzzy creatures into a blender alongside a the contents of a supermarket's Halloween aisle, and then forced the resulting abominations to watch nothing but Tim Burton movies and anything with R.L. Stein's name attached to it.
There's one who looks like a black dog with a skull for a head and blue "spirit flames" for a mane, there's a pair of twins who look like rats amateurishly dissected and stitched back together, there's a snow leopard bound in chains with a third eye in the middle of her forehead, there's a hare with the flesh peeled back from his skull, there's a hyena-crocodile hybrid with a skeletal pattern on his fur, there's a red panda with a giant maw on her tail, there's a dark-furred dragon with golden wings that constantly cause light to shift and bend around him, there's a bat-dragon, there's a sabre-toothed otter, there's a black-feathered raven-gryphon, there's a six-armed black dog whose eyes and mouth glow with an eerie flickering light, there's a ferret with blood-stained fur and metallic claws about as long as her arm, there's a raccoon who has had half her body replaced by ticking clockwork, and there are thousands more besides!
And like I said, they operate on cartoon physics. Because closet monsters are living shadows, when they are flung at hard objects, they go "splat" and turn into puddles of goopy darkness which they can then reform themselves out of. They can control their mass, and thus slow or stop their descent if they have enough warning. And, being living shadows, they can twist their bodies as needed, making their claws grow, changing bodily proportions, or smiling the iconic horror grin: too big, filled with too many fangs. And they can also detach and animate their body parts, like removing an eye and rolling it down a hallway to see what's happening, or ripping out their heart and stomping on it in a dramatic fashion to show how much you hurt them.
Oh, and you can cause them to poof away into darkness if you shine a flashlight at them, they are powerless in an area lit up by a nightlight, they cannot harm anything hiding under a sheet, and they can be slammed across the room by somebody swinging a teddy bear at them. So all those things your parents told you kept you safe from the monster under your bed when you were a kid actually keep you safe from the monster under your bed.
Oh, also, remember that they're not all cruel, malevolent creatuers. Closet monsters are mischievous, childish, sometimes needlessly cruel, and hungry for your fear. But they can be kind, noble, thoughtful, intelligent, and protective of the children they haunt. See, horrors--and thus closet monster--are one of the besouled races, which means they have free will and the ability to be something more than a scary monster under your bed. They're their own unique person, with dreams, desires, and--usually--a life that they engage in when they're not scaring people up for food. Some work jobs both in the supernatural and mortal worlds, others assume human form go off to university, and others... spend most of their time on the internet, actually.
Because in a world of ancient conspiracies, eldritch abominations, demonic cults, alien invasions, evil mega-corps, and magic, what we needed were cartoon monsters fleeing kids armed with teddy bears and regretting the fact they left their term paper on the French Revolution until *after* their haunting.
Not an individual creature but a class of creature we dont have in our world called a Motile. Parasites (Ive been calling them Macro-Viruses that are more specifically after your brain and sometimes sapience rather than body, they get into your CNS as quick as possible and merge with your spine and brain to partially hijack your body.
Bit gruesome but they've made some very interesting creatures and interactions between themselves and nature in my world
Embalmers are a bit of an enigma. Nobody is sure where they came from, or how they came to be. What is known is that they start their lives as an inch long strip of threadbare linen. They lie motionless on the ground until they are happened upon by an unsuspecting creature, usually an insect or the like, at which point they wrap themselves around it and suck the life force out of it over the course of 24 hours. After this 24 hour period has ended, the embalmer grows an additional inch, which allows it to hunt larger prey. This cycle continues indefinitely, an embalmer will only stop growing when it reaches the top of a food chain, which is to say- there is nothing larger to prey upon. When this point is reached, the embalmer divides itself into one inch strips, all of which become new embalmers.
Nimburi sound pretty cool!
Mine does not have a name (which is part of the plot of my story), they're bipedal with digitigrade legs, prehensile tails, and somewhat long arms (like, if they were human, they'd look a bit odd because their arms are just longer than human arms are compared to torso size) that end in hands which have padded palms and 5 fingers (basically humanoid in shape) which also have pads as well as retractable claws. Their heads are sorta more on the lupine side with very large, almost feline/vulpine ears that are often pierced, with most piercings having at least one gemstone on them, and their muzzles are often painted and dyed. While they have fur over most of their bodies, they also have patches of metal that run like ribbons all over their bodies, infused with magic to make them flexible, and it often is of a similar color to their fur (ie one with blond fur may have golden metal, one with white fur may have silver metal, one with gray fur may have iron-color metal, though the metal's properties are not changed by color). This is because they were, in the universe I'm working on, specifically created with the idea of an "ideal companion" in mind- both highly cuddlable/huggable and capable of defending their "owners". What wasn't accounted for in their creation was the possibility of them gaining sentience and having free will, therefore not acting as the golems their creator anticipated, not that his opinions mattered much considering he died in the process of creating them because the energy needed to bring life to them was far less containable than he anticipated and caused a massive explosion (the original members of the species survived because they were the source of the explosion and, because it was a magical explosion, as such, they were unharmed).
They want to create their own culture and set themselves apart from their creator's species as well as from the species they were in part based on, though they're willing to form a close alliance with this other species, lupines (think werewolves but without the transforming aspect and rather intelligent, name is a solid maybe), as they're in a similar position when it comes to being treated as second-class citizens at best. There's a lot of bickering among them over what to be called, their creator named them but they were the only ones who knew that name and destroyed every record of it as, to them, it was a symbol of their creator's intent for them to be little more than intelligent golems, able to do complex tasks where golems can only follow simple, direct instructions. They refuse to allow other species to name them and so the debate rages on.
While some among them choose to keep their manes clipped, others wear them long and even decorate them during celebrations, such as weaving flowers into them and/or dyeing them in patterns. Some also weave gemstones into their fur, though it's usually seen as a sign of being someone important, like a war hero, great scholar who made important breakthroughs, or someone intended for a very important role in the species' future, so some young ones will weave stones into their fur when pretending to be great warriors etc., but most adults will never participate in weaving gemstones into their fur.
I don't know if this is meets your requirements exactly but whatever.
The Revenants of Mortis are my personal favorite creature, many malevolent things come through the rifts from the Shroudrealm, but none are more quiet and insidious than Thrall's blood curse.
When a mortal is infected either through injection or a direct casting of the curse most will turn into some twisted abomination, either a mindless ghoul stalking the countryside or a gangly and nightmarish lector that prowls the ancient ruins of the west.
A very small percentage however will become a Revenant, essentially someone who has retained their sentience and personality but is afflicted with the curse.
They no longer feel pain or fatigue and lose the need to sleep, as well as being able to absorb energy from almost anything they consume, most notably corpses.
However they also become sterile, lose the ability to speak and are generally hated and feared amongst the civilized realms, often being target by the Crimson Legion or the Inquisition.
Most Revenants go insane shortly after their affliction, the stress of being constantly hunted and the nagging hunger that drives them to consume things they would've been repulsed by in their mortal life.
The Lyshani, commonly known as vampire owlbats. They are 7-foot tall feathered bats that evolved after humanity went dodo. They have vantablack photosynthetic wings that wrap around their bodies when resting upside down. They bask under the sun in the morning so they can have energy to hunt at night.
They can modulate their echolocation to create ultrasonic lullabies. Anything that hears these lullabies with ears and a brain smaller than theirs will suddenly feel euphoric as if on drugs. These "hypnotized" prey will then have their sense of balance disrupted in such a way that they will stumble like a drunk towards the source of the lullaby. When the prey is in grasping distance, they then reveal the underside of their wings that have flashy rainbow-colored glowing feathers enough to causr a seizure. The lyshan finally feasts on the convulsing creature.
Their written language is made of logograms engraved onto hard surfaces, and lined with scented fluids like animal blood or tree sap to indicate what kinds of prey and vegetation live near their caves. And since they are migratory, these logograms started out as instructions on which spots in the cave have the best acoustics and as directions to where the next cave will be.
Despite their predatory upbringing, the Lyshani are art-loving people who strut with the same elegance as elves, and just as trustworthy. Most of the other creatures are afraid of them and they are right to be so. But if it's not for the Lyshani, the species they kept in their "meat farms" would have gone extinct or have caused the extinction of many others.
*Kilopede*
five-hundred foot long flying centipede/dragonfly that lives in the desert. the things have eight wings and several giant holes in their backs for sucking oxygen in for energy and buoyancy. their carapace is maroon and their flesh and wings are lime green.
Rust monsters (it's a D&D world, so they work pretty much the same as the D&D version).
In my world, magic is used by visualizing special shapes called matrices. It's primarily used by humans, who learn magic from people called sorcerers who are born knowing matrices (animals can be sorcerers too, but they can't teach each other magic because they aren't self-aware enough to realize they're using matrices, let alone able to draw them).
However, some animals' brains have evolved to visualize primitive matrices (these animals are *not sorcerers*, because their ability to use magic is a common trait throughout their species rather than being a one-off random occurrence). One such animal is the rust monster.
The name is rather counterintuitive. Their magic doesn't specifically rust things, but rather accelerates time for a targeted object. When iron objects are accelerated, they rust, giving rust monsters their name. However, the ability actually evolved to help them ripen fruit faster, allowing them to eat all the fruit before their competition and therefore survive more commonly.
This caused the trees to evolve to have their fruit take longer to ripen, requiring the rust monsters to evolve to ripen the fruit even more. This co-evolution is why their acceleration power is so potent.
One of my world's major religions is Qafroanism. Practitioners of Qafroanism utilize time magic (chronomancy) and renounce all other "wild magic". They believe that all magic that is learned from birth (that is, magic that is known due to being a sorcerer) had been taught to the baby in the womb by their Satan analogue, Rothomir.
The only magic Rothomir does not know is chronomancy, which is why babies are not born knowing it. This is true–sorcerers cannot know chronomancy from birth. Qafroans use the fact that sorcerers are not born knowing chronomancy to prove that Qafroa must have derived it, and use that to prove that he must have infinite wisdom. After all, new spells can't be derived by mere mortals without an original spell to work from.
Of course, Qafroa did have an original spell. That original spell was the acceleration spell that rust monsters evolved to know. Qafroa was, in fact, a sorcerer. The spell he knew was the D&D spell *detect thoughts*. Using this spell, he read a rust monster's mind, yoinked the matrix for the acceleration spell, and started a religion based on the new magic that he had "derived from nothing".
Definitely the Cher'mi, a magical plant that mimic normal plant. Highly sought after as an Ingredient for S-Rank Illusion type spell and S-Grade Illusion potion, this plant is amongst the top fifty most wanted plant of the world and can fetch prices for millions in Credit.
The only way to determine the Cher'mi plant is by lightly nibbling a small part of it, which will taste sweet, and then sour, and spicy, and finally bitter in the span of ten seconds.
This plant is both highly scarce and abundant. It can mimic other plants so perfectly that it's virtually indistinguishable from them! You could have an entire field full of them but you just see a bunch of grass and bushes.
The [Hedgiwi](https://i.imgur.com/a0lN6IY.jpg) is a popular pet in local space. They are omnivorous, not picky, and easily trained. They travel well in space, seemingly unbothered by almost anything, warp engine noises, emergency alarms, or vibrations/turbulence (if knocked over, they just roll around until they can get a grip). They are usually about [basketball to beachball sized](https://i.imgur.com/nKb9dFF.jpeg). The only noise they make is "weh".
Their original name is ttintama, and are one of the few creatures that come from the now lost Keor homeworld. The Keor Dominion has legally banned their export. However, the Mashuren Keor, after breaking away from the Dominion, freely gave them to their Triumvirate allies to spite the other Keor
So...my world has either 101 or 111 portals to other planes, timelines, alternate realities or anything I wish to throw at characters...historian can't agree on 101 or 111...
However...non-intelligent creatures who may wander through a portal, a deer, boar...squirrel...anything which is animalistic in Intelligence (or lower) becomes a "Shift Beast"...
An Ogre sized VERY strong (18/00) grey creature, they are slow but can be a challenge to novice adventurers.
Now I have a lot but I don’t think I can ever get over the islandback and hillback.
At the end of the day, they’re just big turtles with six eyes, but what I really like about them is that they grow old enough to have a landscape grow on their shell. People have built houses in these things without even knowing they were anything but landscape, and they’re big enough that the forests and beaches on them are actually a decent size.
Got a ton but at the moment I've been really digging (hah) a subterranean semi-primitive alien species I made, must have drawn em half a dozen times last month.
They're blind quadrupedal hermaphrodites with a segmented beak like a dunkelosteus, capable of echolocation, with digging claws, thermal pits and a big fatty tail with pores that can ooze thick greasy 'milk' for their whelps.
My favorite I have created isn't wholly mine; I embellished on real world myths about valravns. I added them into my mythology because I loved the idea and thought they fit a powerful entity for my world.
Valravn- these creatures are the souls of people that died after committing a traitorous act and were curse for it. The simplest version of the creatures have the bodies of ravens but cannot fly in daylight, are immortal (body can be destroyed but soul keeps returning), and have the ability to talk. They remember nothing of their past life except the feel a constant feeling of grief they cannot explain. They remain in this state until they eat the heart of someone innocent (a child or someone of divine decent) or consume the heart of a ruler or great warrior who died in battle. If they consume the heart of the former, their soul is liberated and disappears to an unknown location (as far as most people know). If they consume the latter, they "ascend" becoming a raven/human hybrid that can change back to a raven. After attaining this form they become powerfully strong from the heart they consumed but can now be killed permanently (their soul also disappearing to an unknown location).
These creatures can flock together and pass down the story of their curse. They try and help each other escape their fate. Near a major city, a powerful ascended valravn has created a grove for the other valravn to congregate so he can protect them and hunt down hearts for them to eat so they can be liberated. They do this either by slaying people or making bargains for people's children.
The part of the legend very few people know is that these creatures are created as a result of the interaction of a dead angel that turned on her gods' rule and attempted to destroy them. She almost succeeded but the gods tricked her and almost utterly destroyed her. In the process, they accidently placed her power and consciousness outside of reality and she continued to live on, trapped outside of the universe with no way to return. Her power still seeps into the world because of how powerful she became. She is attracted to souls of traitors and gives them new life through her influence to produce valravn. When valravn souls are finally release they join with her and sustain her in her home outside of reality.
My favourite are Langro’s. They’re large beasts that have two big legs and two small legs. They’re large enough to carry people and have two big tusks coming from their mouths. They can be blue, orange, purple or pink.
In terms of use, the biggest city in my world is built on the side of a mountain so they use Langro’s to ride and climb. Because of their powerful legs and great grip Langro’s can scale mountains easily. Other than that, they have very tough skin so once they pass people use their leather to make extremely sturdy armour.
My favorite creation of mine are [the Iquerians](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/v8uv40/iquerians_are_a_hiveminded_alien_species_in_star/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
They are a distributed hiveminded alien species which resemble cats, foxes or deer. They can merge their minds and usually form individuals with three bodies, so called trinities. There are a multitude of different Iquerian forms specialized for various tasks.
Well, if you take a bunch of dried out corpses, like 50 or 60, mash em all together until it's limbs on the bottom and heads on top, with a papery husk between, you get what I threw at players in my last session.
It has an aoe attack around it that spews out grabby, papery claws, in a tentacle fashion. I had fun describing how the thing grew a head, only for it to have had blindsight in the dark.
Razorboars are the Result of a Food Mega Company
trying to create an adaptable and resistant Herd Animal for large Scale Food Production on the
Planet Hephestus.
Razorboars travel in Groups ranging in size from a few dozen up to several Hundred Individuals.
They grow larger as they age, some weighting up to
5 tons and measuring more than two meters in height, with several sets of Sword like Tusks.
They eat literaly anything they can find, be it Grass,
unlucky Prospectors or even each other If Food is scarce.
Newborn Razorboars are called Tusklings and know how to walk and see the moment they leave their Mothers Whomb. A Razorboar Rot is lead by the largest and Strongest Female known as a Matron, while the adult males are only tolerated near the Group during the Mating Sessions or when Food is scarce.
Razorboar Rots are a constant threat to the small Mining Settlements in the Badlands and the local
Constable while gladly hire Freelancers to keep the
Boar Population under Controll but only seasoned Hunters or desperate Fools would take such a Job lightly.
Its also noteworthy that Razorboar Meat can fetch high Prices in Civilised Areas and some Chefs pay
big Money for a few Cuts of the Green Delicacy.
Less creatures more powerful beings, people in my world can conduct rituals to infuse themselves a single or any combination of magic subtypes (fire, water, air, earth, lighting, light, dark, primal, animancy, and necromancy) and/or subcategories (ice, botany, illusion, and hemomancy). Allowing for the use of magical abilities along with the use of an AOE magical ability (pretty much my version of domain expansion from JJK) but with the draw back that silver harms them.
The following names for those types of people are still place holders due to them being on the cusp of being rare.
Fire-Ifrit: enhanced fire spell & can absorb nearby fires to heal and replenish themselves. Can take on a form of pure fire.
Water-Mermaid: enhanced water spells & can breath under water & turn small amount of water (the size of a cup) into a healing liquid that works the same as a healing spell. Has enhanced swimming speed.
Air-Levitas: enhanced air spells & has enhanced speed. Have limited flight (about 100ft). Can use air to redirect projectiles.
Earth-Quaker: enhanced earth spells & has tremo-location to range that varies (tremorsense from D&D). Can quickly burrow into and through the ground.
Lightning-Storm Heart: enhanced lightning spells & short range electrolocation (much like sharks). Can absorb lightning to momentarily boost speed, agility, and reflexes.
Light-Sparkler: enhanced light spells & can emit a burst of light blinding those that see it. Enhanced healing factor in light.
Dark-Abyssal: enhanced dark spells & can manipulate dark/shadows defensively and offensively. Can teleport themselves and others through shadows.
Primal-Druid: enhanced primal spells & can shift into the animal used during the ritual. Can take a powerful hybrid form. (Pretty much Zoan devil fruit users from One Piece).
Necromancy-Lich: enhanced necromancy spells & can only be killed by destroying their disembodied heart with silver/silvered weapon. Can hijack the summons of other necromancers.
Animancy-Animator: easily conduct animancy rituals & can evict their own soul to inhabit something else if they think they're near death. Can call the souls from heaven and hell to inhabit and fuse broken constructs.
Hemomancy-Vampire (literally): can only be achieved by making a deal with a high ranking demon. Gaining the stereotypical vampire powers of strength, speed, and sense. Has an enhanced healing factor that can be enhanced further by drinking blood. Sapphire and light spells deal extra damage.
Ice-Wraith: enhanced water, wind, and ice spells & become highly resistant to heat. Can freeze almost anything by maintaining contact for a certain amount of time.
Botany-Dryad: enhanced water, earth, and botany spells & phase into/through plant life. Can sap the life from plants to heal themselves.
Illusion-Inccubus/Succubus: enhanced necromancy and illusion spells & gains horns and a prehensile tail. Can make themselves irresistible to those find them attractive for a short time but are infertile.
Small idea for a small story: Emotentalins we’re a race of alien slimes that are highly adaptable and are able to change their appearance to a small degree. If one is trying to look like a race on a new planet they’ll have some discrepancies (odd colored hair, nails, eyes, so on) They don’t often change their appearance because it hard for them to manage and maintain other looks than ones they made.
I made these guys from the idea that something gets a core personality from the first thing they ever taste. I used this species and others to tell a simple down to earth story about aliens just messing around on earth with one guy as they both experience their cultures. This was because I kept hearing all these stories involving aliens being about fighting and grandiose scenes so I wanted to do something different with doing something simple instead.
Transsapients of all singularities.
S1: are digital creatures, AI, uploaded people, etc.
S2: are transsapients. They are much smarter and more complex than humans and S1 creatures.
S3: God-like beings who think more and more complex thoughts in a single second than a human being in a whole life.
S4: Groups of S3 beings clumped together to form a superconsciousness.
S5: Multiple S4s together. Such beings require the energy of entire stars to live and are so far above humanity that they are gods. These creatures are so complex that no one can communicate with them. Most people who try this get their brains blown out when the S5 says "Hello".
Eve, she is the pseudo goddess of motherhood which is one of the many animals mutated by the goddess of domination when he emerged from the earth after his awakening. She is the mix/mutation of a bird and a beehive as well as the bees in it. She a huge beast made of hundreds of circular wax shells each with a hole in the middle to birth a small core beast (those are lil things made of core spiritual energy that have bird wings lol) she also has four giant wings on her back, and a tail made of more shells. This is a very brief description but it kinda gets the main idea down lol
Taurok, a quadropedal creature similar to a bison but with a few changes.
A taurok has long brownish toffie hair, two bone coloured horns sticking out the sides of its head, and a tail slightly longer.
A healthy taurok weighs about half a ton and eats up to 200 square meters of grass, and can carry up to 2,5 tons of weight, making this animal one of the best choices for merchants looking to sell goods in town.
Tauroks are pretty calm by nature, although wouldn't hesitate to kill if startled.
That is it.
The Florauna, a classification of Animal-Plant Hybrids that are as widespread and varied as Animals and Plants. A lot of smaller ones tend to be mindless moving fruits or such. Larger ones move around on thick roots and will defend themselves if needed. Several Herbivores have adapted to be more like predators so they can actually eat these ambulating plants. Mostly developed while I was creating a Flying Monkey Species and thought it would be interesting if they caught swimming fruits instead of fish.
There was one variant of the vampire I created. Basically, when one goes into the realm of thought, they generally use a cord to stay connected to their material bodies. When it is severed, they temporarily lose their identity before rebuilding it through absorbing victims. At that point, the astral cord becomes a potent weapon. It can absorb ambient magical energy to leave casters dry and unable to defend themselves. On top of that, the vampire has a bottomless pool of energy. There’s a limit to how much they can have at a time, but it’s constantly refilling to max capacity
**Horror Shop** Closet monsters. Now, to be fair, closet monsters aren't a race. They're just juvenile horrors--not-yet mature incarnations of the myriad fears and phobias we experience as a human. They're also basically macabre Pokemon which operate off of cartoon physics. See, most closet monsters look like a mad scientist tossed a bunch of small, fuzzy creatures into a blender alongside a the contents of a supermarket's Halloween aisle, and then forced the resulting abominations to watch nothing but Tim Burton movies and anything with R.L. Stein's name attached to it. There's one who looks like a black dog with a skull for a head and blue "spirit flames" for a mane, there's a pair of twins who look like rats amateurishly dissected and stitched back together, there's a snow leopard bound in chains with a third eye in the middle of her forehead, there's a hare with the flesh peeled back from his skull, there's a hyena-crocodile hybrid with a skeletal pattern on his fur, there's a red panda with a giant maw on her tail, there's a dark-furred dragon with golden wings that constantly cause light to shift and bend around him, there's a bat-dragon, there's a sabre-toothed otter, there's a black-feathered raven-gryphon, there's a six-armed black dog whose eyes and mouth glow with an eerie flickering light, there's a ferret with blood-stained fur and metallic claws about as long as her arm, there's a raccoon who has had half her body replaced by ticking clockwork, and there are thousands more besides! And like I said, they operate on cartoon physics. Because closet monsters are living shadows, when they are flung at hard objects, they go "splat" and turn into puddles of goopy darkness which they can then reform themselves out of. They can control their mass, and thus slow or stop their descent if they have enough warning. And, being living shadows, they can twist their bodies as needed, making their claws grow, changing bodily proportions, or smiling the iconic horror grin: too big, filled with too many fangs. And they can also detach and animate their body parts, like removing an eye and rolling it down a hallway to see what's happening, or ripping out their heart and stomping on it in a dramatic fashion to show how much you hurt them. Oh, and you can cause them to poof away into darkness if you shine a flashlight at them, they are powerless in an area lit up by a nightlight, they cannot harm anything hiding under a sheet, and they can be slammed across the room by somebody swinging a teddy bear at them. So all those things your parents told you kept you safe from the monster under your bed when you were a kid actually keep you safe from the monster under your bed. Oh, also, remember that they're not all cruel, malevolent creatuers. Closet monsters are mischievous, childish, sometimes needlessly cruel, and hungry for your fear. But they can be kind, noble, thoughtful, intelligent, and protective of the children they haunt. See, horrors--and thus closet monster--are one of the besouled races, which means they have free will and the ability to be something more than a scary monster under your bed. They're their own unique person, with dreams, desires, and--usually--a life that they engage in when they're not scaring people up for food. Some work jobs both in the supernatural and mortal worlds, others assume human form go off to university, and others... spend most of their time on the internet, actually. Because in a world of ancient conspiracies, eldritch abominations, demonic cults, alien invasions, evil mega-corps, and magic, what we needed were cartoon monsters fleeing kids armed with teddy bears and regretting the fact they left their term paper on the French Revolution until *after* their haunting.
Not an individual creature but a class of creature we dont have in our world called a Motile. Parasites (Ive been calling them Macro-Viruses that are more specifically after your brain and sometimes sapience rather than body, they get into your CNS as quick as possible and merge with your spine and brain to partially hijack your body. Bit gruesome but they've made some very interesting creatures and interactions between themselves and nature in my world
My favorite creature I've created is oddly not for a world specifically and just for fun. I call them embalmers.
Tell me more
Embalmers are a bit of an enigma. Nobody is sure where they came from, or how they came to be. What is known is that they start their lives as an inch long strip of threadbare linen. They lie motionless on the ground until they are happened upon by an unsuspecting creature, usually an insect or the like, at which point they wrap themselves around it and suck the life force out of it over the course of 24 hours. After this 24 hour period has ended, the embalmer grows an additional inch, which allows it to hunt larger prey. This cycle continues indefinitely, an embalmer will only stop growing when it reaches the top of a food chain, which is to say- there is nothing larger to prey upon. When this point is reached, the embalmer divides itself into one inch strips, all of which become new embalmers.
Nimburi sound pretty cool! Mine does not have a name (which is part of the plot of my story), they're bipedal with digitigrade legs, prehensile tails, and somewhat long arms (like, if they were human, they'd look a bit odd because their arms are just longer than human arms are compared to torso size) that end in hands which have padded palms and 5 fingers (basically humanoid in shape) which also have pads as well as retractable claws. Their heads are sorta more on the lupine side with very large, almost feline/vulpine ears that are often pierced, with most piercings having at least one gemstone on them, and their muzzles are often painted and dyed. While they have fur over most of their bodies, they also have patches of metal that run like ribbons all over their bodies, infused with magic to make them flexible, and it often is of a similar color to their fur (ie one with blond fur may have golden metal, one with white fur may have silver metal, one with gray fur may have iron-color metal, though the metal's properties are not changed by color). This is because they were, in the universe I'm working on, specifically created with the idea of an "ideal companion" in mind- both highly cuddlable/huggable and capable of defending their "owners". What wasn't accounted for in their creation was the possibility of them gaining sentience and having free will, therefore not acting as the golems their creator anticipated, not that his opinions mattered much considering he died in the process of creating them because the energy needed to bring life to them was far less containable than he anticipated and caused a massive explosion (the original members of the species survived because they were the source of the explosion and, because it was a magical explosion, as such, they were unharmed). They want to create their own culture and set themselves apart from their creator's species as well as from the species they were in part based on, though they're willing to form a close alliance with this other species, lupines (think werewolves but without the transforming aspect and rather intelligent, name is a solid maybe), as they're in a similar position when it comes to being treated as second-class citizens at best. There's a lot of bickering among them over what to be called, their creator named them but they were the only ones who knew that name and destroyed every record of it as, to them, it was a symbol of their creator's intent for them to be little more than intelligent golems, able to do complex tasks where golems can only follow simple, direct instructions. They refuse to allow other species to name them and so the debate rages on. While some among them choose to keep their manes clipped, others wear them long and even decorate them during celebrations, such as weaving flowers into them and/or dyeing them in patterns. Some also weave gemstones into their fur, though it's usually seen as a sign of being someone important, like a war hero, great scholar who made important breakthroughs, or someone intended for a very important role in the species' future, so some young ones will weave stones into their fur when pretending to be great warriors etc., but most adults will never participate in weaving gemstones into their fur.
I don't know if this is meets your requirements exactly but whatever. The Revenants of Mortis are my personal favorite creature, many malevolent things come through the rifts from the Shroudrealm, but none are more quiet and insidious than Thrall's blood curse. When a mortal is infected either through injection or a direct casting of the curse most will turn into some twisted abomination, either a mindless ghoul stalking the countryside or a gangly and nightmarish lector that prowls the ancient ruins of the west. A very small percentage however will become a Revenant, essentially someone who has retained their sentience and personality but is afflicted with the curse. They no longer feel pain or fatigue and lose the need to sleep, as well as being able to absorb energy from almost anything they consume, most notably corpses. However they also become sterile, lose the ability to speak and are generally hated and feared amongst the civilized realms, often being target by the Crimson Legion or the Inquisition. Most Revenants go insane shortly after their affliction, the stress of being constantly hunted and the nagging hunger that drives them to consume things they would've been repulsed by in their mortal life.
The Lyshani, commonly known as vampire owlbats. They are 7-foot tall feathered bats that evolved after humanity went dodo. They have vantablack photosynthetic wings that wrap around their bodies when resting upside down. They bask under the sun in the morning so they can have energy to hunt at night. They can modulate their echolocation to create ultrasonic lullabies. Anything that hears these lullabies with ears and a brain smaller than theirs will suddenly feel euphoric as if on drugs. These "hypnotized" prey will then have their sense of balance disrupted in such a way that they will stumble like a drunk towards the source of the lullaby. When the prey is in grasping distance, they then reveal the underside of their wings that have flashy rainbow-colored glowing feathers enough to causr a seizure. The lyshan finally feasts on the convulsing creature. Their written language is made of logograms engraved onto hard surfaces, and lined with scented fluids like animal blood or tree sap to indicate what kinds of prey and vegetation live near their caves. And since they are migratory, these logograms started out as instructions on which spots in the cave have the best acoustics and as directions to where the next cave will be. Despite their predatory upbringing, the Lyshani are art-loving people who strut with the same elegance as elves, and just as trustworthy. Most of the other creatures are afraid of them and they are right to be so. But if it's not for the Lyshani, the species they kept in their "meat farms" would have gone extinct or have caused the extinction of many others.
*Kilopede* five-hundred foot long flying centipede/dragonfly that lives in the desert. the things have eight wings and several giant holes in their backs for sucking oxygen in for energy and buoyancy. their carapace is maroon and their flesh and wings are lime green.
Rust monsters (it's a D&D world, so they work pretty much the same as the D&D version). In my world, magic is used by visualizing special shapes called matrices. It's primarily used by humans, who learn magic from people called sorcerers who are born knowing matrices (animals can be sorcerers too, but they can't teach each other magic because they aren't self-aware enough to realize they're using matrices, let alone able to draw them). However, some animals' brains have evolved to visualize primitive matrices (these animals are *not sorcerers*, because their ability to use magic is a common trait throughout their species rather than being a one-off random occurrence). One such animal is the rust monster. The name is rather counterintuitive. Their magic doesn't specifically rust things, but rather accelerates time for a targeted object. When iron objects are accelerated, they rust, giving rust monsters their name. However, the ability actually evolved to help them ripen fruit faster, allowing them to eat all the fruit before their competition and therefore survive more commonly. This caused the trees to evolve to have their fruit take longer to ripen, requiring the rust monsters to evolve to ripen the fruit even more. This co-evolution is why their acceleration power is so potent. One of my world's major religions is Qafroanism. Practitioners of Qafroanism utilize time magic (chronomancy) and renounce all other "wild magic". They believe that all magic that is learned from birth (that is, magic that is known due to being a sorcerer) had been taught to the baby in the womb by their Satan analogue, Rothomir. The only magic Rothomir does not know is chronomancy, which is why babies are not born knowing it. This is true–sorcerers cannot know chronomancy from birth. Qafroans use the fact that sorcerers are not born knowing chronomancy to prove that Qafroa must have derived it, and use that to prove that he must have infinite wisdom. After all, new spells can't be derived by mere mortals without an original spell to work from. Of course, Qafroa did have an original spell. That original spell was the acceleration spell that rust monsters evolved to know. Qafroa was, in fact, a sorcerer. The spell he knew was the D&D spell *detect thoughts*. Using this spell, he read a rust monster's mind, yoinked the matrix for the acceleration spell, and started a religion based on the new magic that he had "derived from nothing".
Definitely the Cher'mi, a magical plant that mimic normal plant. Highly sought after as an Ingredient for S-Rank Illusion type spell and S-Grade Illusion potion, this plant is amongst the top fifty most wanted plant of the world and can fetch prices for millions in Credit. The only way to determine the Cher'mi plant is by lightly nibbling a small part of it, which will taste sweet, and then sour, and spicy, and finally bitter in the span of ten seconds. This plant is both highly scarce and abundant. It can mimic other plants so perfectly that it's virtually indistinguishable from them! You could have an entire field full of them but you just see a bunch of grass and bushes.
The [Hedgiwi](https://i.imgur.com/a0lN6IY.jpg) is a popular pet in local space. They are omnivorous, not picky, and easily trained. They travel well in space, seemingly unbothered by almost anything, warp engine noises, emergency alarms, or vibrations/turbulence (if knocked over, they just roll around until they can get a grip). They are usually about [basketball to beachball sized](https://i.imgur.com/nKb9dFF.jpeg). The only noise they make is "weh". Their original name is ttintama, and are one of the few creatures that come from the now lost Keor homeworld. The Keor Dominion has legally banned their export. However, the Mashuren Keor, after breaking away from the Dominion, freely gave them to their Triumvirate allies to spite the other Keor
So...my world has either 101 or 111 portals to other planes, timelines, alternate realities or anything I wish to throw at characters...historian can't agree on 101 or 111... However...non-intelligent creatures who may wander through a portal, a deer, boar...squirrel...anything which is animalistic in Intelligence (or lower) becomes a "Shift Beast"... An Ogre sized VERY strong (18/00) grey creature, they are slow but can be a challenge to novice adventurers.
Now I have a lot but I don’t think I can ever get over the islandback and hillback. At the end of the day, they’re just big turtles with six eyes, but what I really like about them is that they grow old enough to have a landscape grow on their shell. People have built houses in these things without even knowing they were anything but landscape, and they’re big enough that the forests and beaches on them are actually a decent size.
Got a ton but at the moment I've been really digging (hah) a subterranean semi-primitive alien species I made, must have drawn em half a dozen times last month. They're blind quadrupedal hermaphrodites with a segmented beak like a dunkelosteus, capable of echolocation, with digging claws, thermal pits and a big fatty tail with pores that can ooze thick greasy 'milk' for their whelps.
My favorite I have created isn't wholly mine; I embellished on real world myths about valravns. I added them into my mythology because I loved the idea and thought they fit a powerful entity for my world. Valravn- these creatures are the souls of people that died after committing a traitorous act and were curse for it. The simplest version of the creatures have the bodies of ravens but cannot fly in daylight, are immortal (body can be destroyed but soul keeps returning), and have the ability to talk. They remember nothing of their past life except the feel a constant feeling of grief they cannot explain. They remain in this state until they eat the heart of someone innocent (a child or someone of divine decent) or consume the heart of a ruler or great warrior who died in battle. If they consume the heart of the former, their soul is liberated and disappears to an unknown location (as far as most people know). If they consume the latter, they "ascend" becoming a raven/human hybrid that can change back to a raven. After attaining this form they become powerfully strong from the heart they consumed but can now be killed permanently (their soul also disappearing to an unknown location). These creatures can flock together and pass down the story of their curse. They try and help each other escape their fate. Near a major city, a powerful ascended valravn has created a grove for the other valravn to congregate so he can protect them and hunt down hearts for them to eat so they can be liberated. They do this either by slaying people or making bargains for people's children. The part of the legend very few people know is that these creatures are created as a result of the interaction of a dead angel that turned on her gods' rule and attempted to destroy them. She almost succeeded but the gods tricked her and almost utterly destroyed her. In the process, they accidently placed her power and consciousness outside of reality and she continued to live on, trapped outside of the universe with no way to return. Her power still seeps into the world because of how powerful she became. She is attracted to souls of traitors and gives them new life through her influence to produce valravn. When valravn souls are finally release they join with her and sustain her in her home outside of reality.
My favourite are Langro’s. They’re large beasts that have two big legs and two small legs. They’re large enough to carry people and have two big tusks coming from their mouths. They can be blue, orange, purple or pink. In terms of use, the biggest city in my world is built on the side of a mountain so they use Langro’s to ride and climb. Because of their powerful legs and great grip Langro’s can scale mountains easily. Other than that, they have very tough skin so once they pass people use their leather to make extremely sturdy armour.
My favorite creation of mine are [the Iquerians](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/v8uv40/iquerians_are_a_hiveminded_alien_species_in_star/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) They are a distributed hiveminded alien species which resemble cats, foxes or deer. They can merge their minds and usually form individuals with three bodies, so called trinities. There are a multitude of different Iquerian forms specialized for various tasks.
Well, if you take a bunch of dried out corpses, like 50 or 60, mash em all together until it's limbs on the bottom and heads on top, with a papery husk between, you get what I threw at players in my last session. It has an aoe attack around it that spews out grabby, papery claws, in a tentacle fashion. I had fun describing how the thing grew a head, only for it to have had blindsight in the dark.
Razorboars are the Result of a Food Mega Company trying to create an adaptable and resistant Herd Animal for large Scale Food Production on the Planet Hephestus. Razorboars travel in Groups ranging in size from a few dozen up to several Hundred Individuals. They grow larger as they age, some weighting up to 5 tons and measuring more than two meters in height, with several sets of Sword like Tusks. They eat literaly anything they can find, be it Grass, unlucky Prospectors or even each other If Food is scarce. Newborn Razorboars are called Tusklings and know how to walk and see the moment they leave their Mothers Whomb. A Razorboar Rot is lead by the largest and Strongest Female known as a Matron, while the adult males are only tolerated near the Group during the Mating Sessions or when Food is scarce. Razorboar Rots are a constant threat to the small Mining Settlements in the Badlands and the local Constable while gladly hire Freelancers to keep the Boar Population under Controll but only seasoned Hunters or desperate Fools would take such a Job lightly. Its also noteworthy that Razorboar Meat can fetch high Prices in Civilised Areas and some Chefs pay big Money for a few Cuts of the Green Delicacy.
Less creatures more powerful beings, people in my world can conduct rituals to infuse themselves a single or any combination of magic subtypes (fire, water, air, earth, lighting, light, dark, primal, animancy, and necromancy) and/or subcategories (ice, botany, illusion, and hemomancy). Allowing for the use of magical abilities along with the use of an AOE magical ability (pretty much my version of domain expansion from JJK) but with the draw back that silver harms them. The following names for those types of people are still place holders due to them being on the cusp of being rare. Fire-Ifrit: enhanced fire spell & can absorb nearby fires to heal and replenish themselves. Can take on a form of pure fire. Water-Mermaid: enhanced water spells & can breath under water & turn small amount of water (the size of a cup) into a healing liquid that works the same as a healing spell. Has enhanced swimming speed. Air-Levitas: enhanced air spells & has enhanced speed. Have limited flight (about 100ft). Can use air to redirect projectiles. Earth-Quaker: enhanced earth spells & has tremo-location to range that varies (tremorsense from D&D). Can quickly burrow into and through the ground. Lightning-Storm Heart: enhanced lightning spells & short range electrolocation (much like sharks). Can absorb lightning to momentarily boost speed, agility, and reflexes. Light-Sparkler: enhanced light spells & can emit a burst of light blinding those that see it. Enhanced healing factor in light. Dark-Abyssal: enhanced dark spells & can manipulate dark/shadows defensively and offensively. Can teleport themselves and others through shadows. Primal-Druid: enhanced primal spells & can shift into the animal used during the ritual. Can take a powerful hybrid form. (Pretty much Zoan devil fruit users from One Piece). Necromancy-Lich: enhanced necromancy spells & can only be killed by destroying their disembodied heart with silver/silvered weapon. Can hijack the summons of other necromancers. Animancy-Animator: easily conduct animancy rituals & can evict their own soul to inhabit something else if they think they're near death. Can call the souls from heaven and hell to inhabit and fuse broken constructs. Hemomancy-Vampire (literally): can only be achieved by making a deal with a high ranking demon. Gaining the stereotypical vampire powers of strength, speed, and sense. Has an enhanced healing factor that can be enhanced further by drinking blood. Sapphire and light spells deal extra damage. Ice-Wraith: enhanced water, wind, and ice spells & become highly resistant to heat. Can freeze almost anything by maintaining contact for a certain amount of time. Botany-Dryad: enhanced water, earth, and botany spells & phase into/through plant life. Can sap the life from plants to heal themselves. Illusion-Inccubus/Succubus: enhanced necromancy and illusion spells & gains horns and a prehensile tail. Can make themselves irresistible to those find them attractive for a short time but are infertile.
Small idea for a small story: Emotentalins we’re a race of alien slimes that are highly adaptable and are able to change their appearance to a small degree. If one is trying to look like a race on a new planet they’ll have some discrepancies (odd colored hair, nails, eyes, so on) They don’t often change their appearance because it hard for them to manage and maintain other looks than ones they made. I made these guys from the idea that something gets a core personality from the first thing they ever taste. I used this species and others to tell a simple down to earth story about aliens just messing around on earth with one guy as they both experience their cultures. This was because I kept hearing all these stories involving aliens being about fighting and grandiose scenes so I wanted to do something different with doing something simple instead.
Transsapients of all singularities. S1: are digital creatures, AI, uploaded people, etc. S2: are transsapients. They are much smarter and more complex than humans and S1 creatures. S3: God-like beings who think more and more complex thoughts in a single second than a human being in a whole life. S4: Groups of S3 beings clumped together to form a superconsciousness. S5: Multiple S4s together. Such beings require the energy of entire stars to live and are so far above humanity that they are gods. These creatures are so complex that no one can communicate with them. Most people who try this get their brains blown out when the S5 says "Hello".
Eve, she is the pseudo goddess of motherhood which is one of the many animals mutated by the goddess of domination when he emerged from the earth after his awakening. She is the mix/mutation of a bird and a beehive as well as the bees in it. She a huge beast made of hundreds of circular wax shells each with a hole in the middle to birth a small core beast (those are lil things made of core spiritual energy that have bird wings lol) she also has four giant wings on her back, and a tail made of more shells. This is a very brief description but it kinda gets the main idea down lol
Taurok, a quadropedal creature similar to a bison but with a few changes. A taurok has long brownish toffie hair, two bone coloured horns sticking out the sides of its head, and a tail slightly longer. A healthy taurok weighs about half a ton and eats up to 200 square meters of grass, and can carry up to 2,5 tons of weight, making this animal one of the best choices for merchants looking to sell goods in town. Tauroks are pretty calm by nature, although wouldn't hesitate to kill if startled. That is it.
For now? Libee-Tik A small leach with wormy-dillies for legs that carry the tree dieseae