Your personal takes on already existing creatures

Posted 5 years, 15 days ago by Caine

Everyone is familiar with species like vampires and werewolves, but the way people incorporate them into their worldsettings can vary greatly.

How do you personally portray already existing mythological creatures and species in your characters/settings? How do they differ from their original myths and/or lore, and what do they have in common, if anything?

Just make sure to be polite! Whether people portray a creature as cute or terrifying, they should be respected. This thread is not a contest over who does it the best!

Cecaelia ErisTheClown

Cacaelia is a temp name before I come up with something cooler, but I guess that's what octopus ladies are called! The is me having my cake and eating it too on scary mermaids vs romantic mermaids.. She is very interested in meeting humans and with women, nonbinary people, and those questioning gender, it is an authentic love that can accept romantic rejection, and she wants to show them they are worthy of love and respect. She can shape shift to appear fully human or to match someone's preference, but this is the form she defaults to. She also flirts with men but only to see what they do. If they respond too strongly showing they don't respect women, she drowns them.

But she's not a "biological" mermaid, in my world all fae are kind of just magic beings, meaning I can focus her into the cultural and thematic roles of mermaids rather than laying out a mermaid society or biology. She made up this form and isn't actually confined to the ocean, she just tends to stay on the coasts because she can meet humans as well as contribute to the winds and water cycle so it rains a desirable amount inland. However, I plan on making her top and the surface of her tentacles appear more like garments made from sea creature hide, that's my explanation for how biological mermaids would have scales while being otherwise mammalian.

Jade-Everstone

hope reposting on this thread is ok bc i'm back with a few more takes

Demons

Demons aren't all inherently evil and infact there's plenty who are just neutral or have 'good values'. Neutral demons act like your average everyday people but with cool hellish powers. They still enjoy pranks and messing with people but in a harmless way like saran wrapping their friend's desk or hiding Nicolas Cage faces all over the house.

On the note of haunting people, neural demons either keep it to harmless pranks for friends and strangers and save harmful stuff a la scaring people and destroying their house for the people they dislike (or bad people in general)

Evil demons still exist such as Tri, but they're not as common as neutral ones and mostly stay in hell (where neutral demons travel and/or move out of hell)

Ghosts (death mention)

Ghosts are rare and it's completely random who becomes one after they die. Ghosts and other living beings have spent time figuring out what causes it but it all goes back to "it just happens!" They're practically immortal with the only thing able to kill/destroy them is very special magic weapons and rituals which have been banned and the latter being a lost art. The only way to get rid of a ghost is welp, sealing them away and hoping no one frees them.

Ghosts either stick with their old ways (eg. stay in their mansion, don't know how to use a phone, and stay in their clothes from their time period) or change with the times. They're also less affected by stuff like alcohol and it takes a lot more for them to get drunk for example.

Robots (part 2 lol)

here's a few I didn't share in my earlier post

this one's hard to describe so here's a quick diagram to help me a bit:

Most Robots are actually programs that can move freely between different units if they want to. Their 'program' is their brain / memories, and any other file they keep and they can move between different units (or even into a computer terminal) if they have the drivers for it (ex: Prisma has both a humanoid/android body, a TV-head body, and a terminal she uses. On the flipside RGBIA doesn't have the drivers to move between different units so she's stuck in her unit unless she wants to upgrade)

Now onto free-will. Robots can be created with or without free will. However, robots created without free will can develop it overtime (eg; Prisma didn't start off with it but ended up gaining it within 5-6 months of existing). There's a lot of controversy on how to handle this especially with the ones created w/o free will were bought as 'merchandise' to do stuff like housekeeping, modeling, entertainment, and various other jobs. The government did make it illegal to tamper with/remove a robot's free will after it's been a year + granted regular rights to free-will robots (eg: you have to pay them, can't treat them as an object, and messing with and damaging their programming w/o their consent can be considered assault)

Humans?!

Yes! Humans!

For starters, worlds where humans don't exist, they're are considered mythical creatures that only exist in legends, pop culture, and in some cases they're treated as monsters or boogeymen to scare kids into behaving themselves.

In my sci-fi world, spaceverse, humans do exist but they aren't considered strong or weak. If anything they're viewed as pests since in that world Earth was destroyed after resources were exploited as well as a few other moons and planets. Many other races don't have a good view on them as a result and some even go out of their way to shoo them off their planets.

vampyric

for me personally, as much as i love traditional vampires, im MOST fond of my vyres!
i stole this species from runescape basically jfjdjfh and expanded upon it and developed it beyond the limited info they had!
at this point i truly consider my vyres to be separate from canon vyres xD

Constance SkywardtheDragon

Constance is a kuda-gitsune (pipe fox), but they weren’t summoned by a mage or bound to a family; they were found causing mischief in a house and attempted to possess Ravi, but Aria bungled a spell intended to force them out of Ravi’s body, causing the two to be bound together, though Ravi regained control of her body unless she purposefully gives it to Constance. Constance is able to appear in their fox form, but maintains a mental link with Ravi; otherwise, they spend most of their time inside Ravi’s head as a “spirit” form.

{Species} Accursed Blood CanineKing

+ holy blood

this entire story of mine started off as "modern world but demons and angels exist" and the concept of demon hunters. idk when and why i decided to make my own personal lore of the two bc essentially in the end they're still basically a demon/ angel, but i decided to make origin/ mythos like lore and like. a species like thing lol

origin story summary/ explanation, warning for general gore

it's a basic story about two gods creating the universe, one being a fake story about how the "good" god (azazel) cut down the "bad" god (zamal) to save the universe they made, and the other being the real story of how azazel betrayed zamal. azael basically cut zamal into pieces and trapped him inside the core of the earth, but when zamal was cut, his blood filled w/ betrayal and malice affected the earth and created "sins", the id, the idea of "bad" in the world and threw it into chaos. azazel, seeing their creations turn bad and want to control and watch the world more closely for more control, cut his eyes and casted it down to the earth and cried tears and blood to counter azazel's own blood. and so zamal is slowly trying to put his pieces back together and free himself, while azazel watches over the earth and tries to keep him down there.

the idea of the two is the same of just, demons vs angels lol, but focuses on souls and blood more :P the only big difference i made to differentiate is the origin story that i'm pretty pleased about lol (just gotta give a better motivation to azazel whoops)

Ragnhild Aleksandra Anker ClyncyeRudje

Rags is a ghoul, which in their case means they're a type of undead that are compelled towards cannibalism. While in their current form they no longer feel any drive to eat humans, they did (before they ascended) deliberately starve themself by hiding away from humans whenever possible (which inevitably made it harder for them to not lose control and rampage when they were near humans...). These days, being a deity, while they do hunt and devour other gods (or other sufficiently-powerful beings) when able, they usually just grimly tolerate the extreme, unending hunger they feel; their ability to resist the compulsion has gotten stronger as they've aged, so lapses only last a moment as long as they can feel other minds nearby (the mindreading is unrelated to their being a ghoul, that's just a Them thing).

They're also the last of their kind; one of their earliest divine acts was removing the ability of new ghouls to form, because they found it too cruel to knowingly let other people suffer through it when they knew they could stop it from happening.

They could also be considered an angel, being the servant and translator of a higher power, although they're the only one of their group that has traditional "angel" traits besides that (Voices are, uh. Weird. Of the four that show up in the entire series, while three have humanoid shapes only Rags looks even mostly organic about it.).

'Gun-Amok' Buck WhiskeyWorks

Wow, surprised I never caught this thread when it was first created. Well, here we are. Honestly, I just really wanted to combine a cowboy and his horse. Can't think of any better or more apt combo.

Everyone else has such in-depth lore... I'm over here just like; save a horse ride a centaur.

Vladimir tim-in-a-box

VLadimir is a so called "vampire". But the thing you have to know about them is, that they aren't really vapires at all, they are fruit bats, they don't drink blood but fruity cocktails. They don't even have much to do with vampires, they came out the same way as mole people, they are just your regular run of the mill hybrid of a human and underground/cave dwelling animal, they are just the other kind of the completely ordinary people. But, because there are bats involved, of course everyone quickly relates it to the vampire myths, which is really just a complete misconception. The bat people themselves don't really do much to deny it tho because that fits in better with edgy and mysterious T@Ö#Ä3 where they live, than just some random dude badgering you at farmer's market if your juice is ~really~ made form organic strawberries :T *Still better than twilight tho

Church ★ Angry-Moth-Noises

Oh boy I have a few. Church is based off of English folklore. That being Black Shuck. I have done adaptions on a few other hell/fairy hounds, and have a few more to do. But for this character, I adapted Black Shuck into a species for his story. (That is constantly being scrapped and started over for well over 10 years now lol)

damascus

OH BOY I LIKE THIS THREAD...

Angels: My angels have a few types. There are angels from Heaven, who have a humanoid form covered in wings and eyes. They take on human forms to visit earth. Remiel, who was temporarily barred from re-entering heaven until he changed his ways, maintains this type of form, sans wings.

There are then angels from paradise, which is not really heaven but certainly feels like it. These "angels" take on human forms, but their true forms are those of monoliths. In other words, angels from paradise are just floating, telepathic chunks of rock and gemstone. Sigourney Alice was created from one of these monoliths, but is half human and therefore shunned by them.

Demons come from a caste society. Hell is structured carefully, each demon in their place. Yves is a demon from a medium caste, as he has some small amount of succubus blood in him. Helvetica, on the other hand, has mostly imp blood, and is extremely low ranking. The highest ranking demons, aside from Lucifer and his family, are Maidens, consorts to Satan who have gone through a series of painful trials to become his "brides." Next come nobles and high ranking war demons; lower nobles, succubi, cultists, and then imps and lower class demons. Demons can move through the ranks, but not easily. It is definitely much easier to be de-ranked form a succubus to a minor imp than it is to go from impdom up to nobility.

Vampires I haven't suuuuuper developed the lore of, but they all have pink eyes (because I like the look.) In the coven I'm developing, they keep humans as companions who willingly allow the vamps to drink from them; in turn, the vampires take care of them as well. They are a bit like parasites; their souls can leave their bodies and hitch a ride on a human host body. If a vampire's body was to be destroyed beyond repair, they could survive, so long as they make it into another body in time.

Oni are a species I've worked on a loooot. They're rather froglike, descending from Roke, who were polliwog like beings several thousand years ago. As a result, they worship frogs and other amphibians. I have a lot of info on them here actually!

Witches since I just saw them mentioned above: Most of the witch types I write control elemental magic. ( Calvin is the exception to the rule, being a more traditional, all-around witch. ) Alexandira in particular is ~~the avatar, master of the four elements~~ a witch who controls water fire earth and air. She also controls music magic, using a harp for protective spells. But she would be unable to use her harp for elemental magic, or her staff for protective spells. Different objects have different abilities, basically, and those weapons are required to do magic.

Caine

Manual bump