#creaturedesign — Public Fediverse posts

"We had four charges left to place. It didn't whisper this time — it told us, plainly, to stop. My foreman laughed and primed the third charge anyway. The mountain answered before he could set it."

— Salvage crew survivor, eastern quarry line

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #KoFi

Another attempted bug-creature. I don't want to hear complaints about number of legs, because it only has 4. (I figure if you can add legs to made-up creatures, you can subtract legs too. And 6 legs + 2 antenna + 2 maxilla + 4 wings is a lot of appendages to draw.)

#Invertebrates #CreatureDesign

The unsettling part isn't the granite skin or the mica eyes. It's that it already knows why you're there before you've said it out loud. Travelers passing through get a warning. People actively harming the mountain get something closer to a verdict — and only one chance to walk it back. Do you take that chance for the better option, or do you risk it?

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #Folklore

It doesn't live on the mountain. It IS the mountain in every sense. One can find itwherever the ground is already unstable: fault lines, avalanche corridors, passes with a history of collapse. No two have ever been confirmed to belong to the same peak. It doesn't need to travel because it's already everywhere it needs to be.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign

Some mountains, when you damage them enough, grow something to speak with. This week's Outpost Log is The Stone-Blood Oracle — granite skin, mica eyes, and blood that's just the mountain shedding a piece of itself. It reads why you're there before you've said a word.

Field notes at https://ko-fi.com/cheshirege
The full mechanical breakdown lives at https://www.patreon.com/cw/ches_ge

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #Folklore

Another horse-creature sketch with foreshortening. Don't think the anatomy quite works, but, well, it's a sketch.

#HorseArt #UnicornArt #CreatureDesign

I almost gave Continuants a physical weakness — armor, a specific strike location, something combat-shaped. Cut it. The scarier version was removing combat as the solution entirely. If violence doesn't work, the only options left are patience, chemistry, or captivity — and that's a much worse position to be in.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #GameDesign #DesignIntent

"We shot him. He kept talking. That was the part nobody warned us about — not that it didn't work, but that he didn't even pause the sentence."
— Unattributed survivor account

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #KoFi

Standard damage doesn't apply here. A Continuant has no kill switch in the conventional sense — severed limbs keep acting on their own, and pain doesn't function as a survival cue. Only a small number of confirmed methods actually work, and none of them are quick.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #GameDesign #KoFi #Patreon

The unsettling part isn't the dismemberment. It's the patience. A Continuant doesn't need to win an argument today — they have no reason to ever stop coming back to the table. Indestructibility doesn't just remove risk. It removes urgency, and urgency is what usually keeps ambition in check.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #Folklore

Continuants aren't found in ruins or wilderness. They're found in boardrooms, courts, and the upper levels of institutions built to outlast a single lifetime. Positions of power, once taken, are rarely relinquished — and the ones who've held theirs longest are usually the ones nobody thinks to question.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign

Log #021 is live: The Continuant. Indestructible by any conventional means — and no one wants to be the one who explains why the usual solution doesn't work this time.

This week's log is part of an ongoing bestiary built one creature at a time.

Field notes at https://ko-fi.com/cheshirege
The full mechanical breakdown lives at https://www.patreon.com/cw/ches_ge

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #Folklore

10,000 rhino horn drawings later...(just kidding, it was only like 100 😭)

This is probably as far as I can push it. Making the lower horn "bulge" more makes it just look like it's positioned lower on the nose, which looks more wrong.

(Previous version https://sunny.garden/@BlueAppaloosa/116980313562076700 )

#CreatureDesign #HorseArt #UnicornArt

The hardest part of this variant wasn't making it violent — it was making sure it still read as the same creature underneath.

Every "aggressive" choice traces back to a specific loss: the thing that made the Elegant Variant patient is gone, so what's left just... doesn't stop. Same bones, no restraint.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #GameDesign #DesignIntent

"Clatter. Scraping. Wet dragging. Panicked breathing. It broke itself to get to me. It doesn't care if it falls apart."

— Unattributed survivor account

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #KoFi

The danger curve on this one runs backwards from what you'd expect — the more you hurt it, the more dangerous it gets. Shattered limbs don't slow it down, they regenerate into something worse. Resin tethers lock fast if you don't sever them in time.

This week's full breakdown covers the mechanic behind that escalation.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #GameDesign #KoFi #Patreon

The Elegant Variant studied you. This one doesn't bother.

It identifies the biggest threat in the room and closes distance immediately — no hesitation, no performance. It takes damage without slowing down, because every fracture just becomes a new edge. It doesn't disengage. It doesn't retreat. It fights until it's in pieces.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #Folklore

It doesn't stage tableaux in old theaters anymore. It hides where broken things get discarded and forgotten — derelict hospitals, storage cages beneath collapsed malls, condemned residential blocks, industrial sub-levels nobody logs anymore.

Dormant, it folds inward and reads as debris. You won't clock it until it moves.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign

This week's log tracks what's left of a creature that used to need an audience.

The Shattered Variant started as an Elegant Variant Porcelain Seer. Something broke — literally — and what came out the other side has no patience left for theater. It doesn't rehearse. It doesn't wait for cues. It just closes distance.

Field notes at https://ko-fi.com/cheshirege
The full mechanical breakdown lives at https://www.patreon.com/cw/ches_ge

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #Folklore

#ArtRepostJuly Day 27: Purple

I like horse-creatures and extreme foreshortening.

#HorseArt #CreatureDesign #DarkArt

If you were the first person in your campaign to try rehabilitating a Cockatrice Effigial instead of driving it off — what's the first thing you'd do differently than everyone before you?

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #Folklore #WorldBuilding

Better? Still not quite sure the horn foreshortening reads. Tell me if it works, or doesn't, for you.

#HorseArt #CreatureDesign

(Previous version
https://sunny.garden/@BlueAppaloosa/116974979982253061 )

"Everyone kept saying don't look at its eyes. So nobody looked at it long enough to notice it was just — standing there. Waiting to see what we were going to do. We threw a torch at it. That's when the eyes did the thing."

— Recovered account, settlement perimeter encounter

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #KoFi

I like epic foreshortening almost as much as I like horse-creatures. This didn't quite work the way I'd hoped, but maybe I'll get it right next time.

#HorseArt #CreatureDesign

Cornered. Critically damaged. No way out. That's the only condition under which its eyes do the thing everyone already assumed they'd do — and it costs the creature as much as it costs you.

Full breakdown of the gaze mechanic is up now.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #GameDesign #KoFi #Patreon

It strikes first. Not out of instinct — because striking second kept going worse for it. Every defensive habit it has was built by people who decided what it was before it did anything.

The myth wrote the behavior. Then the behavior confirmed the myth.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign #Folklore

Early sightings: town centers, market districts, places where people gathered. Current sightings: drainage corridors, condemned structures, the edges of territory nothing else wants.

It didn't choose the margins. It was pushed into them, encounter by encounter.

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieGameDev #WorldBuilding #CreatureDesign

Sketching a creature. The short legs where intentional, but probably need to be stockier to really work.

#CreatureDesign