Under-used supernatural creatures

Anybody noticed how skewed the use even in a overlookable list like the Olympic gods of the Greek Pantheon is? Some get all the fame...

P.S. Not supernatural, but the Edicaria fauna has potential too!

I'd like to see more youkai in general in Western fiction. Ninja Sentai Kakuranger showed a good way to adapt most of them into a modern, urban setting, I'd like to see us Yanks give it a try.

You don't tend to see homunculi pop up often. Kitsune are a rare sight as well.

learn 2 nasu pleb

"Just the Nasuverse" is "often" now?

D&D has homunculi, and Pathfinder added kitsunes as a PC race in a supplement.

Knocking on the knowledge-sponges of tropers and seeing what nuggets of creativity hop out is ever so fruitful. Many folks added excellent examples, but sometimes it's fun not only taking underused supernatural creatures and then tweaking them just a bit to up the creep factor. For instance, I have a concept of Scylla using a famed drawing of Ulysses facing off against her (the one with tentacles coming off of her many heads), but instead of tentacles... making them feet. Of course, this would have no effect on, say, Quentin Tarantino, but for most I would hope it would make their skin crawl.

I think Ilithids/mind flayers should be used more often.

I think those are under copyright. They didn't make the jump from D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder.

The following monsters are considered "Product Identity" by Wizards of the Coast and are therefore not part of the OGL:

• beholder/gauth
• carrion crawler
• displacer beast
• githyanki
• githzerai
• kuo-toa
• mind flayer
• slaad
• umber hulk
• yuan-ti

One source says "Illithid" is copyrighted by Hasbro (Wot C), but a lot of games use the term. I remember FF Tactics had "mind flayers" so I don't know if the copyright was in effect back then. A lot of these creatures aren't terribly specific or rather are Tropetastic and general enough, so you can essentially use them if you avoid the names. Displacer beast annoys me the most considering it's a Coeurl from Black Destroyer and many properties use the original creature's name without problems.

I'm going to borrow a quote of a rundown on them from EN World because I love it so much:

I'd argue that slaads' being-of-pure-chaos schtick is as important as them being frog monsters. Not that beings of pure chaos are D&D-only either.

I've always found them slightly disappointing. The ultimate incarnations of chaos are frogs. Not even cool frogs, just frog people.

edited 24th Jul '14 3:41:12 AM by Matues

Anyone else want to see more nightmares? They sit on your chest when you're sleeping and give you bad dreams. In other words, an Ur-Rake.

Dokkaebi, from Korean folklore. Because they have so many different aspects and incarnations. I'll try to explain them via more famous analogs.

They're commonly translated as goblins or imps. Because they're little mischievous things that play random pranks on people. In this case, they don't have a fixed form - although classic bedsheet ghosts with traditional Koreans masks for a face seem common enough.

Or they're seen as ogres. Fierce and monstrous man-eaters that harm people. But this is mostly a result of confusion and mingling with Japanese oni, who are basically myth-ified mountain bandits. However, there are creatures surprisingly similiar to oni that are also sometimes called dokkaebi. Those ones probably share a mythological root - the yaksha of Indian lore.

Expanding from the yaksha above, dokkaebi can be seen as trolls. Both yaksha and trolls are part nature spirit and part giant monsters. And both trolls and dokkaebi share fae qualities, in that both are magical tricksters and illusionists. And dokkaebi are commonly known to standby in mountain roads to challenge travelers to a game of wrestling. The trick here is that dokkaebi are actually one-legged, and their left legs are an illusion. Trip that one, and the dokkaebi loses. Fail to figure that out, and you're left utterly exhausted and humiliated.

For those familiar with Japanese youkai, the tsukumogami are simiiar enough as well. You see, tsukumogami are man-made objects given life after aging a hundred years. And sometimes, dokkaebi are described as being born when human blood (normal or menstrual) touches a man-made object.

Lastly, one ancient and near-forgotten aspect of dokkaebi is that they're masculine demigods of fertility. They're big and strong physiques represent male manpower to tend the land and crops. And the magic powers dokkaebi are often said to wield (even in the above incarnations) heavily share this theme. Clubs that conjure gold, pots that flood with rice, hats that bestow invisibility - stuff like that.

... Now that I think about it, these are best described as djinn. And djinn themselves are quite underused; we get giants made out of clouds or fire that grant wishes too much.

Tim Powers' take on the djinn is probably the most interesting variant I've seen. Their thoughts exist as whatever matter is in fluid motion at the moment: "wind, dust, snow, agitated water, swarms of bugs, hysterical mobs." They're also huge and very, very powerful; angels are often conflated with the djinn. Unfortunately, attracting their power and making use of it requires a blood sacrifice, and the djinn sacrament involves eating human flesh.

Kitsune were mentioned earlier, but while I love them, they are not uncommon in Japanese media overall. The Korean gumiho and the Chinese huli jing, however, really do not receive their due attention as the scary, scary beasties that they are; nor do the other animal spirits of Japanese lore, some of which are quite familiar to natives but fairly obscure overseas—tengu, for instance.

I'm familiar with kitsune and tengu, but what are the others?

gumiho/kumiho are korean kitsune, basically.

significantly more viscious, iirc.

ive only seen them appear in an scp foundation page.

hulijung are, as you can probably tell from association, the chinese variant, though a quick look at a wikipedia page suggests they're more generally just fox spirits and not necessarily ninetailed, and are basically akin to fairies.

edited 30th Jul '14 11:49:09 AM by Tarsen

I think people don't use gnolls enough. They're mostly associated with D&D, but I don't think they're under copyright — they were used in Discworld and World of Warcraft, at least. Hyenas are some of my favorite animals, so I love the idea of humanoid hyenas. They're also a nice alternative to the overused orcs and goblins.

In general I feel there should be more hyena monsters. Not enough werehyenas.

edited 30th Jul '14 1:20:12 PM by Zarek

I have a game system I've been working on for years (which I've been slacking on completely, sadly) where gnolls are related to what are essentially werewolves but trapped in that form and went insane, eventually breaking away from the other tribe and multiplying like crazy. I also cribbed the cannibal aspect because it's more thoroughly scary.

Gumiho are certainly similar to kitsune, but the mythologies differ in some significant respects that make each interesting for different reasons. There are comparisons to be drawn with Eastern European vampire myths, but perhaps the English tale of Mister Fox would be more fitting.

You mean the one by Roald Dahl?

Spinosegnosaurus (some way up): I'll confess to being more partial to mara or one of the other names-that-aren't-commonly-used-in-English-to-mean-something-related-but-very-common, but yes, I miss the makers of nightmares too (I'll include the proper kind of incubi and succubi in that category, too). I especially hate how basically everything that uses the name turns it into an evil horse.

If it's a fundamentally-magical but non-supernatural intelligent being it's "basically akin to fairies", though. :P

edited 6th Aug '14 6:24:46 PM by Noaqiyeum

Ah; so many good ideas, so little time... African cryptids need some more love. Kudos to anyone who uses the alleged 'lost dinosaurs' and makes them something original.

Yeah, I was going to mention those. In addition to the Mokele-mbembe, there's the Kongamato (a pterosaur, and thus not actually a dinosaur, but who cares?), the Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu (a stegosaur), the Emela-ntouka, the Ngoubou (ceratopsians) and the Nguma-monene (a large reptile that doesn't fit the description of any dinosaur in familiar with). I also seem to remember reading about carnosaur sightings in the area, but I've unfortunately lost the reference for this.

edited 8th Aug '14 4:22:49 AM by Spinosegnosaurus77

Kasai Rex is a Congolese theropod cryptid. :D

There's also the burrunjor which comes to mind, but that's Australian.