Your World: Fantasy Creatures | EelKat's Guide To World Building - The Squidoo Series



Does your world have fantasy creatures? If so what kind?

  • Does your world have dragons? If so, what type? How big? Do they talk? Are they friendly or fierce? scaly? Winged? Feathered? Where do they live?
  • Are there any water sprites? If so, what type? Mermaids? Merrows? Sirens? Kelpies? Sielkies? Greenwitches? Swampies? Are they good? Evil? Friendly or human eating? Freshwater, saltwater, or both?
  • Any little people? Gnomes? Elves? Dwarves? Leprechauns? Pixies? Flower Faeries? Brownies? Goblins? Are they good? Mean? Do they grant wishes?

I don't want horses, so...

Have you ever seen a forum post that starts out saying:

"So, I'm writing Fantasy, but I don't want horses. What else can my people ride on?"

No? Then you are new to writers forums.

The "I don't want horses because horses are boring" question gets asked on every single writer's forum, by every single newbie Fantasy writer, just about every single week.I don't think I've ever seen a question rear its head so often. And the funny thing is, every person who asks it, never thinks to look if someone else already asked it or not, because they are being SOOOO ORIGINALLY by NOT using horses that NOOOO BODY EVER thought to ask what to use instead of horses before.

*Rolls eyes.*

Okay, time to get snarky... because it should be obvious that if you want to be an author, you need to have a brain to think with first and if you have got enough of a brain to create a fantasy realm in the first place, you should also have enough brain to...oh, I don't know: THINK.

*sigh*

One doesn't have to look very far to learn that horses don't exist in very many locations of the word and therefore only a few places in the world use horses for transportation, meaning that the rest of the world obviously uses something else. Right?

Okay.

All you have to do is look to real world cultures. You will find both thousands of real animals and mythical animals that suit your purpose.

So you are writing fantasy, but your world doesn't have horses so what do you do? A lot depends on your type of fantasy... is it based on reality or complete fantasy? Do you want real animals or mythical beasts?


Here are some real animals you could consider:


  • camels
  • llamas
  • kangaroos
  • elephants
  • taper
  • tigers
  • lions
  • jaguar
  • wolves
  • oxen
  • sharks
  • crocodile
  • kamodo dragons
  • rhinos
  • hippos
  • zebra

Here are some mythical beasts they could use:

  • dragons
  • kelpies
  • hydra
  • unicorns
  • sea monsters
  • Cerberus (3 headed dogs)
  • roc/rook (giant eagles)
  • minotaur
  • basilisk
  • cockatrice
  • amphisbaena
  • phoenix
  • Phookas
  • griffins
  • hippogriffs
  • centaurs
  • sphinx
  • Pegasus
  • bunyip
  • phookas
  • kracken
  • frost giants
  • chimeras
  • hippocamps
  • manticore

If you are unfamiliar with any of these creatures, search for them by name on Google or Wikipedia and you'll find tons of info about each one.











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