Over at his blog Beedo posted some rather clever alternative origins for humanoid monsters, to be used in a summer campaign for his children. It was a pretty interesting post and got me thinking about things. The origin I've used for most humanoids lately comes from half-remembered snippets of Norse mythology and from a somewhat slanted interpretation of describing the enemies that Dwarves and Rangers in AD&D 1e get special bonuses against as "giant class humanoids". My idea is that the "giant" in "giant class" doesn't (obviously) mean "huge", but perhaps means "man-like creations of primordial creatures that oppose the gods".
All well and good, but that leaves a few other humanoids unexplained: Lizardmen, Serpentmen (such as D&D's Yuan-ti), Frogmen (such as D&D's Bullywugs), and Troglodytes. Those all share the interesting quality of being amphibian or reptilian. Perhaps that implies a connection? A third set of creators? That might deserve some exploration of its own...
In the science fantasy approach those guys could be living fossils, experiments of alien gods/sorcerers, or mutant animals or humans after generations of exposure to radiation from the Great Mushroom War.
ReplyDeleteIn straight up fancy, many they do have their on cold blooded gods competing with the mammalian ones?
Or something.