this is high-resolution character art I made for "internal" use, such as stickers and merch, including an "opposite side" for reversible charms and standees.
Chip was a character especially created around the solution to his story arc. From day one, Fern was going to have to swap around the roles of Chip, Crash, and Jay, with Chip having always been a Computer Guy who became a Barista Guy, in much the same way the best of us with what should be useful degrees or experience may yet end up serving coffee to people who make a whole lot more money.
His coffee cup theming was meant to make equal thematic sense to both roles, too, since it's also a symbol of office work. There's a joke in there about Coding in Javascript, too.
"Flair" is so named because that's what you call pins and personal accessories, of course, but it's also a bit of a nod to the "Flair" joke in Office Space. She is of course actually a conceptual parasite, like many other concept beings, and needs a host vessel to interact with realities she feeds upon. The more she feeds, the more the concept of a Coffee Shop can take root and spread through that reality, and she's already quite successful in our own.
Flair has an additional little secret, too, hinted at in her design, which some commenters already speculated upon. Technically all things that exist in the setting came from fragments of the Old Flesh, but she's still a fragment of it, just as much as the Parliament. She simply doesn't affiliate with them or care about their cause herself. :)
Parasitic flukes typically have tadpole-like larvae called cercariae, which erupt from the bodies of their snail and slug hosts, then use acid to dissolve their way into their next host. Almost all aquatic freshwater snails are used this way by flukes, and the image of a dopey, oblivious snail spurting fast-moving, corrosive parasites has always fascinated me. I discussed the concept in my "Bioweapons" article here, and I later wrote about a different kind of cercariae (minus the snail) in this experimental fiction post, but it really needed to be a Mortasheen monster some day, and became a brand new Wormbrain for Book One.
I opted against making it the obvious snail-like creature, and gave it a host body resembling the "muller larvae" of other marine worms, which I previously drew from to update an old "Resident Evil" fan monster, which you can see at the end of this review.
I felt the dumpy blob, with its beady eyes and big floppy bill-mouth, was a perfect contrast to the horrifying danger it actually conceals.
You'll notice a color discrepancy right away of course. Too many monsters were pinkish, so the more toothpaste-blue version might end up being the final!
Included is an old sketch page of various design possibilities. I still like the fatter, lump-shaped, eyeless one and may still use that as a similar monster someday.
A revamp of the older monster "Chlorofoul," which was originally designed as a peapod with exploding eyeball "peas." The new monster has a longer pod body, designed to look a little more like a veiny intestine, and its "soldier beans" have more animal-like features, with clawed legs, to emphasize better that the Botanical class are hybrid half-plants rather than just ambulatory vegetables.
Avoiding the use of the color green can get almost frustrating, but I established it as a "rule" for Botanicals for multiple reasons and I'm sticking by it! The name change was not only due to this, but because "Chlorofoul" told you absolutely nothing about the monster itself.
Not yet added to the final book, but set to be added for its final coming update, Scyllawatt is a brand new Vampire class based on Siphonophores. Its design somewhat homages one of my first favorite Magic: The Gathering creatures, the Krovikan Horror, while drawing from both the more famous Portuguese Man O' War and more elongated wormlike deep-sea Siphonophora.
The glowing eyes were a last-minute idea. I originally invisioned it totally eyeless, with a xenomorph feel, but the head felt too empty, and the bright light eyes felt even more cold and ominous to me. Part of me regrets not giving it more of a weird quadrupedal body; a bunch of polyps forming into the shape of a vertebrate-like superpredator. As cool a concept as that is, though, it would have made for a less memorable visual, in my opinion, than a 300 foot long chain-creature that floats through the upper atmosphere.
Considering I'm constantly working so hard that I miss updates, yet people continue to be patrons; how much does it actually matter to you that I post private, patrons-only stuff?
This is a fully anonymous poll that only you can view:
I ask this because one of my patreon supporters (it's impossible to tell who) actually leaks all of my content to the public anyway. I wonder why someone would; I don't know that it affects my income any, but I wonder if this person hoped they would be damaging my ability to pay rent, or something. It's more than a little disturbing, and it's impossible to really do anything about it, other than making things free anyhow so that there's no point.
Rather than exclusive content, I could try to bring back requests or provide something else to people.
I've now gone the longest ever without updating on patreon, missed most of my intended Halloween content updates for the first time in my website's existence, and gone the longest I've ever gone without updating Awful Hospital.
This is all 100% due to working on Mortasheen. If you weren't aware, @gutsygills on tumblr has been helping me put the game together for months now, and without her help, there'd be pretty much no hope of progress at all, since the gameplay developer has still left me flying blind with only rare contact.
I wanted the game out by Halloween, but that proved impossible. As we speak, I've spent weeks working all day, every day, neglecting pretty much everything else (maybe including some of my health) to try and make the first book presentable by the end of the year, which right now is only three more days away.
I am actually close enough that I could still have a decent first digital book in the coming few days, though it still won't contain all the content it was supposed to. Even some artists I paid up to three years ago just never got around to their work, so I've also had to do a lot of extra artwork myself, in addition to tedious editing and formatting of text alone for tens of hours at a time.
The number of things I want to do with my life and art the minute I'm done with this book is kind of massive.
I've been absurdly busy all October, so some additional updates will still be coming a bit late, but as I continue to try and bring the Mortasheen book together, I can for now offer bits and pieces of completed material; the attached PDF details the "player races" (biotypes) that will be in the first book, including two sample NPC's and two entire pages of lore each for Shades, Mutants, Sectilians, Merrow, Borg, Orlok, Zombies, the all new Mushmen and a couple bonus pages on "retro" humans (us!)
-A jellyfish creature that also kind of looks like a sheet ghost, with luminous eyes just under the surface of the bell. Not sure if I actually prefer this for Mortasheen or to save it for something else, like a creepypasta.
-A mange mite arthropoid. I definitely want to use this design. Mange mites actually tunnel through host skin by secreting digestive enzymes, melting the surrounding tissue into liquid. This causes the horrible, painful rash we call "scabies," but in giant size Arthropoid form, it'd obviously be a lot worse!
-A creature in my notes listed as "SONARDEVIL." Layers of batlike ears are draped over its head where eyes would've been.
-A creature in the notes as "GEODUCK." A terrifying predator that's actually a goofy clam with google eyes on the shell.
The Mortasheen RPG is coming along faster now thanks to a lot of help from my friend and now paid staff member, Gigi or Gutsygills, who learned the beta system well enough to stat up hundreds of monsters before I even proposed she do so for the actual RPG book. In finalizing the selection of monsters for said book, we wound up needing some creatures that could be common, "lower level" and much simpler than most, revolving around a single battle mechanic that they do exceptionally well; such as the mechanics we have for draining blood!
Other bloodsucking Monsters in the setting were a little more complex or specialized, so I dug up one of my oldest pre-Mortasheen ideas for a creature I used to call "Bloodglug." This monster was from all the way back in my early teens, for a setting that never even really came together as anything but a generic fantasy adventure concept.
The Bloodglug was simply a creature covered head to toe in red needles that could all drain blood, but I never did settle on a design for it. Revisiting it, I sketched a variety of urchin-like and blob-like creatures that felt alright, but not quite memorable enough yet. I then came up with something a bit different; a monster not entirely needle-coated but with a large number of barbs and claws.
Thinking of it like a large "fish hook" I came up with a gnarled, anchor-shaped monster with lots of sharp outgrowths, slightly evoking a skeleton fish but more alien on closer inspection; a bit "buglike," even a bit "plantlike."
I thought of this creature as withering up into a mummified hibernative state, like a tardigrade or a rotifer, during which it blow around in the wind like a tumbleweed or tangle together with others of its kind into massive hedges, awakening again when it tastes the blood of some clumsy interloper.
I liked this and will probably still use it for another monster, but it was still a bit more involved than the "simple bloodsucker" I set out to do, and even the design felt too elaborate for that role; I really wanted something visually simpler, like a little kid could learn to draw.
I tried drawing some middle grounds between the "fish hook tumbleweed" and the simple "sea urchin blobs" I started with, resulting in fuzzy, prickly shapes that were almost rodent-like, with clusters of thorns for "ears" and a "tail." I gave these simpler cartoon eyes on the front, and all in all these designs began to remind me more of prickly "hitch-hiker" seeds, or burrs, which I've always had a fascination with. In fact, one of the first fan-made Pokemon I ever came up with was a bloodsucking insect that acted like one of these seeds, using claws on its head to latch on to passing creatures in a ticklike manner.
Simplifying it down more, I wound up with a monster resembling a round, prickly seed pod with additional pods as "ears" and a "tail," which really started getting an iconic "mascot-monster" feel to it.
In the final design, I decided to resist the temptation to give this creature a more obviously "Tangela"-like void for a face, something I'd give to far too many more monsters if I didn't have any restraint, but its large eyes still fill a shared, almost squareish socket. I made its single pair of limbs a little smaller and brought them closer in to the body, to "distract" a bit less. I flattened the "ears" from balls into paddle-shaped appendages, and gave them large more obvious curved hooks, like a pair of crab pincers, that I could really see being difficult to remove, and finally I streamlined its body into a more teardrop sort of shape.
The name "Bleedouch" came fairly early, a play on "bleed out," replacing "Bloodglug" both because that doesn't have a catchy gimmick to it and because that name from the very beginning was a knockoff of "Bloodlug" from an obscure fantasy book (I think the "Lone Wolf" interactive book series?), which was a gelatinous mass of tubes.
All this was done before I even finalized the concept for the creature's lore, which I wrote after finishing the artwork, then Gigi gave it a functioning statblock using Mortasheen's beta rules:
I illustrated a party game in 2010, which wasn't terribly successful but can still be found for purchase online!
Attached is a zip file containing not just the above images but high resolution images for several more creatures, a PDF of the game's unreleased beta rules, and a fairly lengthy text file on my rationale behind each one.
This was a game in which the heads, bodies, and tails of these creatures were individual mix-and-match cards, so what you see here is how I drew them, but what you get in the final game are randomized with no "true" combination.
Reviewing the creature designs, setting and premise of one of my favorite series of the 2020's, the 12-episode anime Deca-Dence!
This series has a seemingly straightforward setup in its first episode: the last surviving humans defend themselves from monsters in a giant, mobile city fortress.
The second episode then immediately reveals what's really going on, and it's as wacky as it is horrifying!
This article will go up on bogleech.com "publicly" later in the year.
I no longer remember the name of the site, but I was once paid to design elemental arena bosses for a neopets-like game project around 2006, I think. I was give animal species (or groups as broad as "lizard!") and the elemental arenas they belonged to, not all of which I can remember, though some are self-explanatory, like the time element dragonfly and lightning gazelle :)
I believe the moth hummingbird was for the "light" element.
Looks like the idea here was that the eyes and mouths on this creature's hands are holes all the way through the palms, just like a flat mask, that it can line up with the stalked eyes and tongue sticking up out of its neck hole. Might be fun to use for something someday! It was probably going to be a Mortasheen monster. Maybe a Joker?
Nearly 20 years ago, the website Fay-Sim contacted me about designing and drawing some creatures for the site. Surprisingly, they liked and approved almost every single sketch I sent them. I'm not sure if they're still a presence anywhere on the site, but I know they even made some buttons and t-shirts with a couple of them back in the day!
Attached is a zip file of all 20+ creatures along with a text file describing them all, though I haven't too much to say about each. It's especially funny that they approved every design because that included multiple takes on a Nuckelavee and a Kelpie. I thought they'd just pick their favorite from each one!
Now writing SCP-esque entries for the original Kaiju I shared some years back on bogleech. I'd like to spruce them up with more polished artwork (or even convincing photomanipulations???) if I ever can before I share these outside Patreon. For now the original doodles are good enough, and you might be the only readers of these for up to a year.
RBC066 is a Category 4 bipedal chordate 103 meters in maximum height, though the subject's hunched posture seldom exceeds 60 meters. These measurements exclude its cranial fin rays, which add another 9 meters when fully erect.
PHYSIOLOGY: The subject has a thin anthropoid frame with a relatively small torso. Its long legs are digitigrade with clawed, four-toed feet, while the arms are elongated enough to reach the ground and end in clawed, four-fingered hands. All digits are webbed. The head is similar in physiology to the Stomiidae (dragon eels and viperfish) with an elongated lower jaw and large, unlidded white eyes. Each eye is divided into two segments by a diagonal bar of epidermal tissue, giving a "four eyed" impression. Fans of thin, sharp, unwebbed bony rays sprout from the top of the head, the upper back, the elbows, the backs of the lower legs and the corners of its jaws. The creature's skin is uniformly scarlet in coloration and coated in sharp, serrated denticles 15cm in length. The fin rays are orange.
DESTRUCTIVE CAPABILITIES:
066 maintains an average internal body temperature of 900C, and its oily circulatory fluid combusts on contact with oxygen. The chemical mechanism of this combustion has yet to be determined as the substance dissipates completely in the process and attempts at sample retrieval directly from 066 have been unsuccessful. The RBC's tissue structures are impervious to all tested thermal extremes, though 066 becomes more agitated in environmental conditions below freezing. It is capable of projecting its volatile bodily fluids from its tubular tongue up to a distance of 300m.
ACTIVITY PATTERNS:
066 consistently spawns from the sulfuric craters of the Polynesian Hellmouth, a chain of active volcanic islands that emerged off the coast of New Zealand with the first known manifestation of 066. It is unaggressive towards humans and has demonstrated protective behavior towards humans inhabiting its manifestation site. It is otherwise extremely aggressive towards all known RBC's, and is known to move toward any RBC's it detects within the Pacific ocean and up to 100km inland of any Pacific coastline. On terminating an RBC it will retrieve a "trophy" from the carcass, ideally a skull or equivalent cranial support structure, which it adds to a growing collection around the perimeter of HC01, the Hellmouth's largest crater and the RBC's preferred resting place.
IMPACT:
The docility of 066 towards non-RBC lifeforms within its manifestation territory has resulted in an ongoing global emigration to the Polynesian Hellmouth and an emergent culture surrounding the idolization of the "Hellcarp" ranging from a secular tourism industry to multiple religious movements. In 2067 construction began on a network of enclosed, unmarked facilities lining the interior walls of several larger craters, and by 2070 these structures appeared to be inhabited by a long term population numbering in the thousands. The ownership and purpose of these facilities remains unknown to the general public, and its inhabitants resist all outside contact. Referred to as "Sulfurtown" by locals, popular rumor holds that its inhabitants are part of a religious cult engaged in genetic experimentation with 066, and sightings of "fish people" in and around the sulfuric lakes have increased exponentially over the past decade.
An alleged data breach outlines both the scientific research and religious beliefs of a movement identifying itself as the "Children of the Boiling Queen," but its authenticity has been called into question. A second, conflicting document suggests that 066 was selected by an anonymous scientific institute for an ongoing study into the pharmaceutical potential of RBC genetics due in part to the creature's approachability and unusual biochemistry. This document discusses an urgency to protect the institution's identity from an unidentified rival and addresses the more fantastic rumors of cult activity or hybridization experiments as a useful diversion.
On 03/12/74 another anonymous party supported the authenticity of both data leaks, stating that the Children of the Boiling Queen are an unauthorized movement among "non-academic" employees founded by an individual whose identity and motivations have eluded upper staff.
This was an illustration made for the original Doctor Phage "creepypasta," depicting a prototypical Phage, Phleboto, and a third doctor who hasn't really been revisited since. Originally, I was just torn between whether Phage or Phleboto should be the main monster of the Hospital setting, back when it was never going to be anything but that single short story, but I eventually came to think of them as part of a group of entities almost like Clive Barker's Cenobites. Once I decided there'd be more than one, it was only natural that the littlest nerdiest one be the boss, not to mention that a bacteriophage is the most ancient "doctor" there is.
I just had to round them out with a third, or so I thought, and hastily came up with the pustule-like being. By now, the world they inhabit holds that all doctors should resemble things utilized in medicine, so the "pustule" was phased out...but actually, the earliest "vaccines" known to man were simply fluids collected by smallpox sores, so I think perhaps this character would still work as the manifested concept of inoculation? I held for a while that Phleboto would cover that topic, but he's really more the concept of anything and everything done with a hypodermic. He's also gotten a lot bigger and more menacing in the years since this art; current Phleboto would barely even fit into an exam room, but that's why he's got the long neck :)
The rest of my work for the game "Crystal Catacombs," with PDF's, hi-res PNG's, production stuff and a text file explaining each creature! ZIP file attached for download.
A few miscellaneous monster sketches from the past few weeks, by far not the only ones but just some favorites I may develop further in the future. These include:
-A ceratopsian Ectosaur with a bit of insect in its skull design, not sure about this one, I like it but it's not quite hitting that Ectosaur ghostliness for me yet?
-A monster inspired by both "The Tingler" and "Fiend Without a Face," producing brain slugs from a skull-like central nest. In the corner is also a sketch of how I'd interpret the Crawling Eye from the film of the same name.
-Doodles of a blobby monster actually made of sand and seashells, or a colony of mutant foraminifers or maybe an Ectosaur based on fossil plankton.
-Kelp Mermaid?
-A monster resembling a pair of long, ghastly arms that emerge from a small bag. Couldn't resist giving it "pac-man ghost" eyes. I thought perhaps the boils covering its arms are full of acid, functioning almost like a jellyfish's stinging cells. This feels like such a fun little monster to draw it ought to be kind of "important" or "iconic." Almost want to save it for its own smaller project than Mortasheen, but I don't know.
I wrote this stream of consciousness without establishing exactly what the setting or backstory would be, except that I wanted most of these "creatures" to feel as little like "creatures" as I could get away with.
Fauna 001: a flattened and transparent blue arrow. Its opposite end has never been observed. It extends slowly and cuts matter, which dissolves into its surface and evidently sustains it. No two 001 instances have been observed at the same precise depth, or observed to ever adjust their depth.
Fauna 002: a thin, vertical column of polygonal segments. Segments range from six to 27 sided shapes and rotate in alternating directions, generating friction between segments. The heat attracts Fauna 003, which ignite and carbonize.
Fauna 003: clear, flimsy, "heart" shaped organisms lined with angular veins that bioluminesce across the visible spectrum. "Flap" through the void by folding and unfolding lengthwise. Fauna 003 are attracted to heat, and each individual splits into new 003 when exposed to heat from any source other than Fauna 002. This is not a matter of temperature level; 003 is unharmed by heat sources equivalent or hotter than 002.
Fauna 004: invisible, shape currently unknown. Presence is marked by a metallic buzzing sound. 004 consumes metals by unknown means, easily tearing away small pieces which remain visible in what is assumed to be its interior, dissolving over the course of several hours. 004 evidently identifies metal by a combination of texture and color.
INCIDENT F004-1: a chrome-plated plastic object was offered to an 004. Specimen "ingested" the object, then violently ejected it toward the survey vessel. It emitted a previously undocumented sound as it fled, and subsequently no instances of 004 have since attempted to feed on survey equipment or experimental offerings. It is hypothesized that instances of 004 either communicate with one another over food sources or all observed instances were of the same individual.
Fauna 005: a multicolored disk of light, varying in size. Can "loosen" into a spiral filament and "tighten" again with enough force to crush solid objects as it reconfigures back into a disk. Prefers to "attack" objects that emit light. Oboe music causes 005 to turn uniformly purple and discontinue all aggressive behavior.
Fauna 006: a flexible seven pointed star-like shape, blacker than the surrounding void. Its surface details are visually imperceptible, but physical contact suggests that its surface is covered in fine, sharp growths that can "drill" into solid matter, consuming material in the process. Any light source filtered through blue glass will cause 006 to "scream" and collapse into a small spherical configuration, which plummets downward.
Fauna 007: identifiable by dense, continuous soundwaves confined strictly within a drifting egg-shaped area with a wider, flattened "tail." Dubbed the "soundwhale" by survey crew. No other material or energy components have yet been identified. All matter within Fauna 007 slowly evaporates in a pattern physically consistent with sonic bombardment, regardless of actual strength or density. Smaller 007 have been detected following larger specimens, and are incapable of "feeding" on their own. Evaporated matter is instead passed to these smaller specimens through a cone-shaped area that can extend and retract from the "underside" of the "adult's" borders.
Fauna 008: identifiable by nothing other than an emotional state felt by all survey crew, neither pleasant nor distressing but reportedly incomparable to any other nameable emotion. Size, shape and movement speed of 008 was recently ascertained by arranging personnel in a grid and instructing participants to report the sensation in real time. 008 was subsequently determined to be roughly twelve meters in length and one meter wide with two rigid "wings" of equal length to the body, roughly an "airplane-shaped" area. All other Fauna are observed attempting to flee from 008 if capable of locomotion. Fauna that cannot evade 008 are observed to vanish instantly on contact with its absolute borders. Analysis concludes "prey" are destroyed by tremendous gravitational force comparable to a black hole. It is not known why organisms and materials foreign to interspace are unaffected.
Fauna 009: not directly observed. Survey crew observed various other fauna in states of physical decay, unmoving. Close visual observation of the fractal-like decomposition triggers immediate knowledge of Fauna 009 as a pulsating cloud of loosely connected particles which exist precisely 0.023 seconds in the future.
Fauna 010: a rubbery blue-grey object likened to a stingray, but invisible and evidently immaterial on only its ventral surface. Matter passing into this "empty" side of the being is lost as 010 continues its high speed flight through the void, and is observed to grow in mass exactly equal to this "ingested" material. A probe retrieved from a captive 010 was found to be coated in a material almost identical in chemical composition and consistency to petroleum jelly. 010 visibly increased in size as the probe was inserted, and decreased proportionally as the probe was retrieved.
Fauna 011: a collection of up to five long, rippling red "curtains" radiating out from a subatomic central point, likened to a spatial singularity but lacking a gravitational field. These "curtains" or "arms" extend up to sixteen miles in length and widen to roughly a mile in maximum width before ending abruptly. This material wraps around nearly any matter it comes into contact with and slowly ferries it to the central singularity. Instantaneously, these "consumed" objects are ejected as red corundum ("ruby"). Several billion of these gemstone waste products drift around the center of 011 in a dense cloud.
Fauna 012: the most "animaloid" fauna yet observed. A cross shaped configuration of white, flexible, segmented tubes. 012 walks in a crablike manner on Fauna 011's tentacles, remaining at least half a mile distant from all others of its kind. Seemingly undetected by 011, it capable of consuming matter through any of its tube tips and will attempt to feed on captured material before 011 can consume it. All instances of 012 "stood up" on a single tube and "waved" their remaining three as the probe passed over them, emitting a series of "saxophone-like" cries.
Fauna 013: an amoeboid mass of ochre-colored dough with many finer hairlike pseudopoda, 60 meters across. Any object approaching within 100 meters is impaled by a pseudopodal "lance" that can extend to 100.05 meters in 1/100th of a second.
Fauna 014: thus far identical in every observable aspect to a common adult housecat, female, calico breed and missing its left rear leg due to an unknown past injury. Observed sleeping comfortably atop Fauna 013, awakening every four to six hours to clean itself, stretch, and return to sleep. Fauna 014 emits a continuous sound indistinguishable from the purring of a normal cat whenever conscious. Fauna 013 and 014 have been observed 24 reported times over a period of 72 years with no observable changes in behavior or apparent health.
INCIDENT F014-1: crew held a position outside the range of 013's defense mechanisms and attempted to attract 014's interest with a number of audio recordings. These included a range of feline calls, food bags and food cans being opened, running water, birdsong, cat toys and human speech samples. 014 ignored all stimuli but the human voice, which it reacted to by fleeing to the opposite side of 013. 013 immediately began approaching the survey crew and readying its "lances." All further interference with Fauna 013-014 is prohibited.
Fauna 015: object resembling two "crescent moons" intersecting with one another in a cross shaped configuration. Pale blue, luminous surface is covered in circular pits that emit a continuous ringing sound.
INCIDENT F015-1: object began to follow survey crew 023, during which an increasing number of crew began to emit the same sound and attempted to leave the safety of the exploration vessel. As soon as any crew exited the vessel and exposed themselves to the void, 015 ceased all activity, approached the crew slowly, then fled backwards with extreme speed. All affected crew regained their autonomy, but have suffered long term psychological effects similar to extreme separation anxiety. All afflicted personnel were removed from survey duty.
INCIDENT F015-2: six former members of crew 023 breached protocols and boarded exploration vessel 44N on an unauthorized launch, severing all communication channels. It is presumed these personnel left in search of the same 015 from their previous encounter. A following survey mission retrieved several heavily damaged pieces of 44N's hull within 015's known territory.
Fauna 016: a point of bright, white light less than 1mm across, which moves along solid surfaces similarly to the light of a laser pointer. 016 moves at a rate of only 1/2 inch per second, but appears to be attracted to the sound of a living human heartbeat. No other organism, material, or even artificial replication of the appropriate sound has affected 016's trajectory. Contact with human skin causes an exponential breakdown of tissues until the subject is completely liquefied over the course of 72 hours, after which two new instances of 016 emerge from the remains. It is thus far impossible to contain 016 in any known material.
INCIDENT F016-1: two instances of 016 are believed to have been brought back unintentionally with the return of survey crew 034. The first instance was successfully returned to interspace while consuming a host.
ADDENDUM F016A: further experimentation with Fauna 016 has found that each subsequent generation of "offspring" exhibit a 2% increase in speed.
ADDENDUM F015B: field observation has determined that 016 can detect the nearest human "prey" within 643km.
UPDATE: links didn't work because I forgot they belong in a "patreon" rather than "digimon" directory! And I've been too sick for a few days so I didn't check up on it, whoops.
I was once commissioned by a biologist to realistically illustrate both a planarian and a mated pair of blood flukes as examples of Platyhelminthes (flatworms), which they used on a banner for a school event!
As direct illustrations of real creatures I don't have "creative notes" but here are various facts about these animals:
-Platyhelminthes are some of the simplest of all bilaterally symmetrical organisms, and one of the only animal groups with no internal body cavity. They are basically solid flesh consisting of several different cell types, with at most a thin network of fine digestive channels throughout.
-When a flatworm is cut apart, every piece can usually grow back into a whole animal. These pieces will actually consume some of their own tissues to form any anatomy they're missing, restructuring into a more complete but smaller worm.
-Many planarians have a pharynx, a tube or saclike structure that secretes digestive enzymes and can be pushed out of the body like an "external stomach."
-Some planarians live on land and prey on other organisms, especially insects, snails or earthworms, dissolving them in acid within seconds.
-Blood flukes are one of the most common and debilitating diseases in the world, though there are many species in the group that don't affect humans at all.
-The larger blood fluke is male, while the thinner one is female and spends her adult life protected by the male's body. He folds lengthwise like a taco shell to keep her safe!
-Sometimes several females will share a male, and sometimes a male blood fluke ends up pairing with another male, producing no eggs but still guarding each other.
-Sometimes a blood fluke pair will split up, but we don't actually know exactly why.
-Tapeworms are also Platyhelminthes, but even weirder in structure. Flatworms aren't normally segmented, but tapeworms sort of are because their long bodies have repetitive "seams" separating the body into segments called proglottids. These seams exist to let proglottids easily break off, like toilet paper, so they can pass out of the host.
-Flatworms get their most colorful in the ocean, as well as their largest. This includes tapeworms, the largest of which are of course mostly found in whales.
-Some flatworms swim by rippling their bodies, but all flatworms can glide around thanks to the millions of microscopic cilia on their surface.
I shared a number of these as older posts, but not nearly all of them; I once illustrated a load of monsters for the indie game Crystal Catacombs, and have gathered them up into two zip files. This includes high resolution images of a dozen monsters, their PSD files (converted from the original Sai files), and a text file explaining each creature along with a bit of backstory on the project.
The zip file should be in the attachments of this post!
Tomorrow at 4pm pacific time, I'll be streaming a read-along of the 1977 Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual. This will be my first public twitch stream after testing it out a few days prior with a small group!
If this goes well, future streams might include me drawing and working on other updates and who knows!
The origin of the "Museum of Impending Conflicts" is not known. Located *** miles North of ************ in the ********* desert, the facility is unconnected to any public road and shows no evidence of having ever been staffed or patronized. There are no records of its conception or construction. Powered by its own array of solar panels, the fully automated museum displays exhibits alleged by an introductory plaque to represent "Military innovations that will inevitably shape the remainder of you're[sic] history."
Each exhibit offers a beginning and ending date for each war, but provides no additional information.
EXHIBIT 1, 2128-2139:
A machine with two long, thin mechanical legs supporting a single gun turret, emitting a thin blue beam. An accompanying white, human shaped mannequin is riddled with thin holes.
EXHIBIT 2, 2138-2145:
A mannequin is posed clawing at its face and chest. Hundreds of tiny, metallic objects are clinging to its surface. An accompanying model enlarges one of these objects, an isopod-like biomimetic robot.
EXHIBIT 3, 2141-2141:
A full size exhibit of a triangular, jetlike aircraft only two meters in length and four meters from one wing tip to the other, each wing carrying what appears to be 16 small bomb shells. There is no cockpit, but a panel has been removed to display the machine's inner workings, which includes a network of what resembles organic tissue.
EXHIBIT 4, 2143-2147:
A small tank-like machine roughly four meters in length and three meters in height. Instead of a cannon, its turret bears a single metallic tentacle eight meters in length, ending in a blue spotlight. A mannequin is posed dragging itself away by its arms. Both of its legs are caught within the spotlight, modeled as though all soft tissue has been stripped from the bones.
EXHIBIT 5: 2149-2152:
A set of two white, humanoid mannequins. One mannequin appears to have had its left arm replaced with a mechanism that projects an unusually long humanoid arm with an oversized hand comprised entirely of dim, yellow light. This "hologram" arm is extending completely through a ragged hole in the chest of a second mannequin, clutching a model mass of viscera in its large fist. It is not known how the material is suspended within this hologram, as all other matter passes through it with ease, but no attempts to move the material "held" in the "fist" have been successful.
EXHIBIT 6, 2150-2151:
A four-legged machine approximately the size and shape of a horse, with a surface of rubbery, translucent brown material. Pink flames are pouring from the tubular "mouth" of the "head" but do not move, and appear to be a holographic "model" similar to the arm of Exhibit 5. A white human mannequin is posed engulfed in these flames. 50% of its body is encrusted with a pink crystalline material.
EXHIBIT 7, 2155-2162:
A machine similar in construction to the "horse" from the previous, but birdlike in shape, and only twelve inches in wingspan. Its "head" matches the spotlight weapon from Exhibit 4, but it is pursuing a mannequin model of a domestic cow riddled with large holes.
EXHIBIT 8: 2156-2160:
A small tangle of metal wiring and tubing hovers in the center of an amorphous mass of light matching that of the "hologram arm" from Exhibit 5. This mass is extending numerous long, thin limbs that branch into radiating clusters of small tentacles. Three of these appendages are posed tearing a mannequin into pieces.
EXHIBIT 9, 2157-2170:
A model of an enormous mass of unidentified, bright orange cacti similar to the genus Opuntia. Multiple mannequins are suspended in the mass, with cactus leaves growing directly through their bodies. All are posed contorted in pain and clutching at the plant biomass.
EXHIBIT 10, 2160-2162:
A translucent model of a luminous green cloud hovers four meters in the air, with a dense, luminous red orb in its center. The cloud is releasing a torrent of dull grey-green liquid also suspended in the air of the exhibit. The mannequin caught in this downpour is reaching out with a single hand, but the rest of its body is a featureless, lumpy and bloated mass.
EXHIBIT 11, 2165-2168:
What appears to be a silverback gorilla is impaling a second gorilla with a halberd-like transparent implement. Each gorilla's head appears to have been replaced with an artificial one. One resembles a canned drink of an unknown brand in an unrecognizable language. The other resembles a stylized blue cat with large eyes, winking and smiling.
EXHIBIT 12, 2170-2190:
A translucent, hollow mannequin is crouching, curled over with its head between its knees. The mannequin's back is torn open, and a model human skeleton is stepping out of this cavity.
EXHIBIT 13, 2210-2212:
No reason is given for the 110 year gap in the exhibits, but this exhibit consists of an object or organism resembling a giraffe-like animal covered in a material similar to thin, green-yellow latex. Its featureless head has a tubular "mouth" spraying forth a hologram model of blue-black vapor drifting to the floor and collecting into a thick layer of fog. The mannequin model appears to be "deflated" in a crumpled heap beneath this mist.
EXHIBIT 14, 2210-2225:
A mannequin is portrayed with unusual proportions; its body is much thicker and more muscular than modern humans, and its arms proportionately longer. This mannequin is pulling open its own stomach area with its left arm. Its right arm is feeding a length of its own model intestine into the mouth of a crawling, infant-like mannequin twice its size.
EXHIBIT 15, 2214-2600:
A model mannequin head is atop a long, thin pole or neck rising nine meters from the ground, with a wide open dark mouth. This is surrounded by over 100 sets of mannequin arms rising from the ground around its base, all reaching toward the head.
EXHIBIT 16, 2221-103:
The meaning of the provided dates remains unknown. The exhibit consists of a large, transparent object resembling an immense model of a polyhedral virus, hovering one meter from the ground. A human fetus is suspended in its center, larger than a full grown adult.
EXHIBIT 17, 2399-2450:
A white mannequin model shaped like a domestic dog is fleeing from a sphere approximately 12 meters in height, formed entirely from human mannequin arms and faces.
EXHIBIT 18, 3009-6070:
A translucent, yellow object resembling a long-limbed sea star is wrapped around an object resembling a white bird egg. Together this model is 12 meters in height. A square section of the egg shell is absent to display the wrinkled organic tissue within.
EXHIBIT 19, 14678:
From this point on, the exhibits appear to be in random chronological order, and they do not offer an "ending date." The meaning of either change is unknown. This exhibit consists of a white, branching, tree-like model. Several hairless, mole-like organisms are clinging to the trunk, each inserting a pink proboscis into its surface. The swollen, translucent stomachs of these animals are filled with red liquid.
EXHIBIT 20, 4044:
An organic, olive green sphere walks on five tubular, segmented legs. A tangle of red tendrils are erupting from a black slit along its upper surface. A model of a white pterosaur-like animal is caught in these tendrils.
EXHIBIT 21, 72394:
A model of the known solar system, missing Earth and Venus but with 16 identical instances of pluto. Between Uranus and Neptune is an unknown planet with green-brown oceans and scattered, bright red land masses. Tendrils of this planet's ocean material are reaching out and wrapping around Neptune, which is modeled in white.
EXHIBIT 22, 9121:
A crab-like metallic object is standing six meters off the ground on its long, jointed legs, pouring a thick reddish material from a hole in its underside. This material is enveloping and evidently dissolving a smaller mechanical "crab" portrayed in the white mannequin material. On close inspection, the pink substance is finely sculpted and textured as though comprised entirely of minute, tangled human bodies.
EXHIBIT 23, 81809:
At the center of an otherwise empty exhibit platform is a small patch of many tiny, varied mushroom-like growths.
EXHIBIT 24, 3984982121:
This exhibit is missing. The flooring appears to be partially dissolved in a trail precisely 35cm in width, leading from the exhibit platform to the fire exit.
EXHIBIT 25, 0000000000000000:
This exhibit consists of a normal, modern human mannequin curled on the floor with its eyes closed, smiling.
Monthly "list format" fiction - I was calling it "creepypasta" but not all of it is really going to be horror.
----Macrogastropoda of the Pacific Southeast----
The Pacific Southeast is a geographical region in eastern North America characterized by a narrow strip of mudforest spanning the coast from roughly the snow-capped mountains of Southern Florida down to the subtropics of Northern Utah. The dense sphagnum mats of the Greater Eastern saltbog separate the acidic waters of the shallow pacific sea from the freshwater oak swamps that characterize much of this region, while the glacial shelves of the Carolinas halt the encroachment of the Midwestern maize barrens and the kudzu of the Southern tanglesea. Thousands of species of flora and fauna are endemic to this unique habitat, dominated at all trophic levels by terrestrial molluscs.
DOCUMENTED SPECIES OF INTEREST:
"Drop Slug" (Ariolimax planata): Also known as the cave ray and gluemoth, this translucent, predatory mantleslug is roughly 60cm in length and 1.4 meters in width when fully outstretched, its wide kite-shaped body less than 3cm thick at its center. An ambush predator, it clings upside-down to surfaces waiting to release itself and drop on passing prey, secreting a large volume of slime that expands rapidly on contact with air into a glutinous froth. The slug is known to supplement its diet with toxic fungi, rendering frothy substance lethal to prey that is not outright asphyxiated. Drop slugs prefer to hunt where they can avoid light, but several subspecies camouflage their exposed surface with a layer of detritus.
"Vampire Slug" (Laevicaulus dracularia): This small (15-35cm) shell-less pulmonate has a broad, extremely flattened body known to mimic the shape and texture of a decaying leaf from over 12 species of endemic oak, evidently determined by the diet of herbivorous juveniles. By maturity, these slugs feed solely on the bodily fluids of larger animals through a thin, sharp proboscis that can extend up to 9x the length of the body, which itself may distend with up to half a liter of fluid in a single feeding. Vampire slugs form large colonies among the litter of host trees and obtain much of their diet from the blood of larger gastropod grazers, but are thought to be one of the primary reasons for the lack of warm blooded vertebrate fauna on the forest floor.
"Riverhog" (Aplysia amphibius): The largest of the river hares, this freshwater to brackish nudibranch reaches a maximum recorded length of 5 meters, though three meter specimens are more common. They are largely unaggressive, but as opportunistic omnivores they may pose a threat to injured, sick or trapped prey and have demonstrated an attraction to the smell of blood.
"Moss Nettle" (Limacicantha irritans): This medium sized (48cm) dome-shaped slug is thickly covered in soft, conical papillae housing smooth, calcerous needles thin enough to penetrate unprotected skin, introducing bacterial toxins known to trigger acute urticaria in human subjects or even anaphylactic shock and hemorrhaging in extreme cases. Seldom preyed upon, it spends most of its adult life nearly sedentary on its host tree, slowly rotating to graze on fast-growing epiphytic algae. Individuals exhibit warning coloration ranging from yellow to crimson with an intense orange being the most common, though an isolated population restricted to colder mountaintops is well camouflaged as a clump of moss. The larger white tree nettle or "dizzyslug," only recently identified as its own subspecies, lacks bacterial toxins of its own but concentrates the psilocybin of the endemic "bloody bones" fungus (Hydnellum cubensis), its sting consequently carrying a dangerously intense hallucinogenic effect.
"Tangleslug" (Melibe serpentia): A terrestrial leonid nudibranch reaching lengths of up to seven meters, though most of the serpentine body is under half a meter thick. Leaflike appendages line its body in pairs, each up to a meter in length, and the bulbous head is as much as 1.5 meters wide at rest. Its coloration and texture are indistinguishable to the naked eye from an oak branch dense with lichen, even its slime matching the coloration and density of epiphytic cyanobacteria. When the slug detects prey, its oral hood can expand to 600% its width, functioning as an adhesive net lined with a numbing toxic gel.
"Night Dagger" (Conus phantasma): This nocturnal, terrestrial conoid snail has a maximum shell length of 72cm, though this is concealed in living specimens by a thick black mantle covered in long, thin papillae. The snail moves slowly, but relies on stealth and ambush to hunt even significantly faster, stronger prey with its complex venom, a mix of over a hundred identified toxins injected via a harpoon-like radula. Envenomation is capable of paralyzing a mature bearsloth in under fourteen seconds, and instantaneous heart failure in human explorers. Once prey is incapacitated or dead the snail feeds at liesure and may continue scavenging a larger carcass for several days.
"Earthwinder" (Testacella vermiformis): this fossorial semislug has a narrow, almost serpenting body up to 6 meters in length, tapering to only 15 cm in width towards the anterior end and swelling to 42cm in width at its posterior, which is protected by a flat, rounded shell. Lacking eyes or pigmentation, it worms through soft soil and mud until it detects the vibrations of such common prey as stiltfowl, moss rats or elephants, erupting from the substrate and coiling around prey in a single powerul motion. Its adhesive slime makes escape difficult as it continues to coil around the victim, killing by asphyxiation.
"Giant Rotback" (Philomycus mephitidae): reaching up to three meters in length, this roughly dome shaped mantleslug is characterized by a veined, pale blue upper surface and a large dorsal cavity lined with bright red tissue. This cavity smells strongly of decaying meat, attracting scavenging insects and other corpse fauna. The purpose of this lure is not for the direct benefit of the slug itself, but to provide food for the social horsefly, Tabanus limacophilus, an obligate mutualist of P. mephitidae. Larvae of the fly are dependent on a diet of the slug's mucous secretions, while adults prey opportunistically on insects and the blood of larger animals. These insects respond aggressively to moving objects within a five meter radius of their "home slug" and will repeatedly bite regardless of dietary need until the agitator has retreated.
"Pit Slug" (Myxolima insidiae): This grey-green slug seldom exceeds 22cm in length and spends most of its development a solitary omnivore, but a mature slug will follow scent trails to join breeding colonies that may number in the thousands. These colonies form subsurface aggreggations camouflaged beneath as little as an inch of loose soil, and the buried mass maintains a hollow center. Prey as lightweight as swamp hares easily fall through the delicate roof of this "slug pit," suffocating quickly in the slimy mass of carnivorous molluscs.
"Glass Ghost" (Pterotrachea charybidis): A fully aquatic river snail reaching lengths of eight meters from the tip of its flexible, tubular trunk to its long, flattened tail. Its large, unstalked eyes are highly sophisticated, providing nocturnal binocular vision, and protrude just above the surface of the water as it hunts. Its transparent body is virtually invisible when submerged, its relatively tiny, white shell and opaque digestive tract easily mistaken for a small fish. The laterally flattened tail easily propels the animal at startling speeds even against the river's current, and a powerful sucker-like pad on the end of the trunk assists the finely barbed and powerful radula in ensnaring prey.
"Mud Fairy" (Clione candiru): Inhabiting murky, slow-moving waters, this freshwater Clionid is approximately 12cm in length and capable of swimming rapidly with its two flipper-like fins. Attacking larger prey such as riverhogs, glass ghosts and unsuspecting waders, a ring of muscular, barbed tentacles allow the animal to grip tissue surfaces while a set of highly adapted, almost jaw-like opposing radulae quickly carve out a circular plug of flesh, earning them the colloquial name "melon-baller slug."
UNCONFIRMED SPECIES:
"Titan Tree-mimic:" allegedly a predator capable of imitating a fully grown swamp oak, holding its body vertically aloft before bringing its "canopy" of oral tentacles down on passing prey. Its false leaves are said to imitate the bioluminescence of the local swamp oak glowworm, but that these lights blink in too uniform a pattern compared to the real insects in surrounding treetops. The alleged height of this gastropod would defy physical law without an internal skeletal structure.
"Alluring Oozemaiden:" audio recordings of a complex, fluting cry in the great trenches are widely known, but only one exploration team has returned alive from an alleged encounter with its source, describing an elongated, luminescent pink nudibranch with a crudely humanoid outline and a sweet fragrance, protruding from the center of a pool of unidentified purple liquid. Three of the team decided to keep their distance upon realizing the fragrance was making them feel strange, "like a few shots of alcohol," but were unable to convince the remaining four to turn back with them. These four allegedly waded into the purple fluid until fully submerged, after which the gastropod disappeared beneath the surface. Neither the explorers nor the mollusc reappeared before the surviving witnesses fled.
"Hangman's Head:" the first report of this animal describes a globular, pale blue-grey slug dangling from the boughs of a tree by a long, winding "tail," its anterior end pointed downward with a cluster of short, thin oral tentacles and four prominent eyestalks in constant motion. The body of this slug was reported to bear a perfect imitation of a human face, causing the witness to give it a wide berth. A second, similar report claimed that this face had a mouth and eyes indistinguishable from a genuine human head, which "looked" directly at the approaching team with a "panicked expression." The team avoided any further contact, but investigated the site the following morning. The unidentified slug was not found, but a human cadaver was found buried in leaf litter at the base of the same tree. The body's head was not found.
"Old Slugface:" the popular campfire legend has gained increasing scientific credibility in recent years with several brief video recordings of a dark, humanoid figure wading through the swamps. Typically claimed to be a large, fully bipedal gastropod with a pair of powerful upper "arms," the most recent eyewitness actually claims the figure to be comprised of many smaller sized Gastropoda of assorted species. As the witness pursued this figure, it allegedly "threw" slugs and snails at them until it began to dwindle in size, eventually leaving only a small pile of unremarkable molluscs.
"Shadowslick:" recent years have seen a steady exponential increase in reports of a "living shadow" or a "crawling hole;" a large, elongate organism between three and six meters in length with a surface that reflects absolutely no light. Its gastropodal nature is deduced from the presence of a slime trail and two whiplike anterior tentacles. This slug can evidently move with blinding speed, and its tentacles are said to "slice" through solid matter with impossible ease. No fatalities or disappearances have been directly associated with this entity, but it has been implicated in the obstruction of multiple efforts to map the deeper trenches. In the most recent and extreme case, a large expedition was forced to turn back when a young explorer fell behind and immediately lost both legs, cleanly severed just below the knees. The victim's subsequent claims have been attributed to blood loss, shock and delirium, but he remains adamant that the Shadowslick spoke to him, in plain Pacificese, well before inflicting the injuries. This is the first report of any slug exhibiting coherent speech, which was described as a deep, metallic voice with a "sorrowful" quality.
The slug is quoted as saying "If you knew what's down there, you'd thank me."
I originally came up with Professor Lexicovermus (literally "bookworm" in latin) as a minor side character and "gameplay feature" of Awful Hospital that would allow Fern to read any of the setting's spinoff writing materials chosen by the commenters.
Now that the storyline has visited the Professor's native library zone, we've built up to witnessing his temporary transformation into a gigantic monster.
Neither form is necessarily his "true" form, but both are simultaneously a glimpse of the same entity filtered through human perception. The little screeching caterpillar we're more familiar with is essentially his "customer service face," existing to interact with visitors and peacefully (if loudly) promote the magic of books across reality.
In defense mode, he reveals his full "combat" capabilities, a gigantic worm beast that exists to protect the library from all threats at all cost.
You could say the design has a bit of classic "worm monster," like the sandworms from Dune and so many others, but real world nematode worms also have elaborate flower-like mouths in every imaginable shape. In this case, the petaled mouth is based on the academic cap already worn by the bookworm (and most other cartoon bookworms), which ends up looking like a sinister rosebud when the cap is multiplied into five layers. Each of these also has the single gold "tassle" of these hats, but on Lex, these are also eyestalks that branch into multiple smaller tentacles.
The nature of the setting is such that these hats, the "bookworm" cartoon trope, and even libraries themselves only exist in our human civilization due to this entity's influence on reality. :)
The library can also be considered a part of Lexicovermus's brain, as hinted by the arrangement of the bookshelves in this scene, but that's technically true of all conceptual beings. The Hospital and Dr. Phage are also essentially one.
For patrons only, until I round these up and share them on bogleech.com later this year! Disqus comments have to be disabled on the review itself until then, but you can leave any thoughts here!
Savageland is a mockumentary about a fictional, horrific, paranormal event that befalls the population of a very tiny town....and the innocent, non-paranormal man who took the blame.
