Jefferson wrote: > I updated the Magical Creatures link on the Phoenyx site with a little > information about how I percieve the Celandran Cockatrice and Hippogriff. I > also put in a few entries without information for creatures I'm pretty sure > exist. When I get the time I'll eventually fill those out as well. Take a > look, tell me what you think, and feel free to add more. > > Jefferson (Exquaestio) > http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/rpg/Exq_Main.html > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net. > This may be quibbling excessively, but your description of a cockatrice is more like a basilisk. Since a cockatrice is traditionally created by taking an egg laid by a cockerel and then having a toad incubate the egg on a dung heap, there should be at least some reference in the creature's description to its chicken ancestry. I've always thought of a cockatrice as looking like a rooster, but with metallic, sharp-edged scales instead of feathers, and a serpent's tail with a sting instead of a rooster's tail. A basilisk, on the other hand, is just a big ugly lizard whose gaze happens to be petrifying. However, a lot of sources do in fact equate the basilisk with the cockatrice, for some reason. I also have to say that I don't really agree with the theory that all magical creatures are an 'essential' form of a base creature. If we adopt that theory, we'd have to address whether every 'base' creature has a 'magical' equivalent, or if it's possible for mutiple species of 'magical' creature to share a common 'base' creature. On top of that, you have the problem of explaining why some magical creatures occur naturally and breed true(dragons & unicorns) while others are sterile monstrosities created by the intervention of outside forces(cockatrices & chimeras) Now, it could be that some magical creatures are either exalted versions of a base creature (like unicorns & horses) or perverted versions of a base creature (like cockatrices & roosters), but this is not necessarily true of *all* magical creatures. I'm thinking particularly of dragons, in this case. One thing more on magical creatures: they're probably not all that common. If we assume that Qaiyore is similar in most important respects to Elyria, magical creatures will be most common in areas that have either been constantly exposed to moderate levels of magical energy for a long time or that have been exposed to extremely high levels of magic in rather less time. On Qaiyore, you'd probably see a lot of magical creatures on Mir, because of the Sorcerors and the proximity to the Dreaming Gate there. The Shadowlands where the Floating City flew would also probably have a lot of magical creatures, and Rian a'Avaerand's destruction by a spell gone horribly wrong is probably responsible for most of the sea monsters of Celandra. On Elyria, there was a forest known as the Candlewood. The region had been Ground Zero in a battle between wizards in the distant past; as a result, all the trees glowed in the dark. Andrew ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
