Torpedo Bees
perdita floridensis diabolicus
[The Day After Ragnarok]
Prior to the Serpentfall, these Floridian bees were small, inoffensive, and were aquatic in their larval and pupal stage. Being drowned under the obscenely mutagenic impact of tons of Serpent-tainted seawater has made their descendants much larger (6 to 8 inches), exceptionally aggressive, and fully amphibious. A Torpedo Bee can fly at full speed in water and air.
Drankfay
Drankfay are, thankfully, rare. Not because they’re dangerous — well, any more dangerous than any other Fae species, at least — but because the way a nature spirit becomes one is rather alarmingly humiliating. Mortals tend to feel bad about it all, even if the Drankfay isn’t upset about what happened to her. You see, Drankfay are what you get when a nature spirit associated with, say, potatoes gets accidentally caught up in the distilling process and promptly fermented.
Digital Spiders
Well, the spiders themselves are not digital. And the webs that they spin aren’t digital, either. More or less. What the webs are are virtually perfect, organic optical fiber cables that work better than anything that’s not the absolute cutting edge (and, in the early Interstellar Era, ‘cutting edge’ can mean ‘mono-molecular’). The cables are also easy to repair; Digital Spiders can be easily trained to walk the webs and fix breaks as they occur.
Voodoo Remoras
Naturally, these devices are neither the product of any sort of syncretic spirit-based religion, nor made up of actual scavenger fish. A Voodoo Remora isn’t even organic: it’s all raw galvanic fluid and platinum and gold aetheric current wiring and the rest of the old-style Mad Science aesthetic. Just, you know, updated with 21st century manufacturing. Fortunately, most Mad Scientists can’t make the conceptual leap that lets them realize that, just because their science is steeped in pre-Einsteinian physics, their engineering and machining doesn’t have to be late Victorian-era as well.
Blame this.
North Carolina Land Muskie – Google Docs
North Carolina Land Muskie
Esox masquinongy infernalis
This amphibious, unpleasantly giant (10 feet, 1,000 pounds), and amphibious fish is, fortunately, sufficiently different from the common North American muskie to prevent reproduction. And ‘fortunately’ is justified: certainly just about everybody in the world who knows anything about Land Muskies is prepared to do virtually anything needed to ‘prevent reproduction.’ Indeed, the legendary ‘black ops’ section of the Endangered Species Act reportedly authorizes a bounty for dead Land Muskies, no questions asked — or permitted.
Continue reading Creature Seed: The North Carolina Land Muskie.
Gumibehrs
Spelled that way because the trademark is still enforced, even in the 26th Century. Apparently sweetened gelatin is still going to be a thing for our descendants. Go figure, huh?
Anyway, gumibehrs are essentially transparent blobs of free-moving alien plant matter that lack any kind of bone structure or exoskeleton at all. Their skin is, however, incredibly strong, and can get them enough traction to allow a gumibehr to reach a decent rate of speed once it gets started. While the species is obviously highly plastic and flexible, it relaxes to a shape that is indeed reasonably ursinoid: hence, the name. They reproduce via the usual wind-borne pollination method, albeit a bit more proactively than normal: gumibehrs typically release pollen via regular outgassing of built-up oxygen in a centralized waste orifice. Gumibehrs typically move on all fours, but can be trained to walk upright.
Mummified Spitfires – Google Docs
Mummified Spitfires
The legend has it that, after World War 2, the British government buried a number of Spitfire airplanes in Burma (after prepping them for long-term storage underground). This legend has been investigated several times, over the years; most recently in 2013. It’s pretty clear by now that, in fact, no Spitfires were ever actually buried in that country.
Well, of course not. The British buried the blessed things in Australia. Even in 1945 it was becoming clear that decolonization was looming on the horizon. God only knows who would rule Burma after the land left the Empire; probably would end up being some military junta, or something equally obnoxious. Better to put the planes out in the Outback, where it was dryer, handy to various friendly magical communities, and under the oversight of, well, yes, Australians, but they were good chaps. Underneath it all.
Carnideer
They were to be Doctor Ampersand Relentless Struggle’s (let us just say that the man had a complicated upbringing) finest creation, and a fitting revenge for human intrusion in the woods! Behold! The CARNIDEER! Genetically engineered with lupine DNA to give it a taste for meat and blood! Quake before its serrated Antlers! Tremble at the thought of its heightened senses! Fear the wrath of Mother Gaia, fools! Fear, and DIE!!!!!
Blame this. Because I sure do.
Screaming Death Killbot 6000 – Google Docs
Screaming Death Killbot 6000
It’s three feet tall, made of mirror-smooth and polished flexible steel that somehow never shows any sort of seam or joint. It has a roughly humanoid face, with two alarmingly large glowing eyes and a LCD ‘mouth’ that flashes when it ‘laughs,’ which the Screaming Death Killbot 6000 does often — typically when it’s killing its prey. The hands and feet all end in alarming-looking blades that shock, stab, serrate at high speed, or otherwise inflict prodigious amounts of blood and pain. And it talks just the way, while using just the dementedly-cheerful child’s voice, that you’d expect from something called the ‘Screaming Death Killbot 6000.’
Continue reading Creature seed: the Screaming Death Killbot 6000.
Blobees
Yup. They’re little flying blobs with gooey wings that pollinate plants. They’re about the size of a bumblebee, move about as quickly as a bumblebee, and live in what’s sort of a hive. Crack a Blobee ‘hive’ open, though, and you get a lot of undifferentiated protoplasm and a bunch of something that kind of tastes like honey (good luck figuring out a hive’s lifespan, assuming that the question even makes any kind of sense.). Where Blobees also differ from regular bees is that, since they’re pretty much flying droplets of goo, they can get through screen doors and windows without very much trouble.
