Monsters
When magic builds up in an environment past what its made to handle, things begin to mutate. Animals are no exception. The mutation can happen in a night or over several generations, but once enough magic is flooded into a creatures system, a monster is born.
However, most people only consider aggressive or dangerous creatures monsters, and leave out magical creatures that bring no harm. Magically speaking, there is no true difference between friendly and unfriendly monsters, but the two are separated nonetheless.
Basic Information
Dietary Needs and Habits
All monsters are reliant on the presence of magic to some extent. As a result of the mutation, the monster's system is converted to process the excess magic. Its theorized that the violent nature of monsters is due to the lack of magic in their environment, and the monster needing to supplement the lack via the closest magic-rich prey: humans.
Outside of this magic-rich diet, monsters can eat anything and everything depending on what creature they evolved from, and what sort of mutations they received. Even solid metal isn't out of the question.
Outside of this magic-rich diet, monsters can eat anything and everything depending on what creature they evolved from, and what sort of mutations they received. Even solid metal isn't out of the question.
Biological Cycle
The transformation of into a monster depends on several factors: endurance of the animal, size, and amount of ambient magic. A sick or dying animal will have no resistance to the magic whatsoever, and will transform quickly. The resulting monster will be weak due to how little magic is present in their body, but the turn around time is fast enough that this can still be a threat. A healthy animal can stay in a certain level of ambient magic indefinitely with no threat, and depending on how successful further generations are, not even their children will transform. Young children, then, are weak enough, and the magic can easily take effect. However, their bodies are too weak, and generally die from Mana Poisoning rather than mutate.
Size is a further limitation, the more mass the magic has to cover, the harder it is to affect the animal. Most magic can only affect small to medium sized creatures, and a large animal, like a horse will be able to live without any issues. Magical disasters are thus traditionally classified by the largest monster present.
Finally, the amount of magic present will decide all else. Average or slightly elevated ambient magic will affect only the weakest and small animals, and the effect grows equivalently as more magic is poured in. With enough magic, magic achieve almost any effect, up to including producing monsters from nothing but magic.
The exception to this rule is anything with magic already present in their system. If a magic circulatory system is already present, then the excess magic will be cycled through it instead. If enough magic is present to overwhelm it, interesting things happen. Not enjoyable or predictable things, but interesting ones at least. The exact effect is currently under research by the Yiselxà Academia.
Size is a further limitation, the more mass the magic has to cover, the harder it is to affect the animal. Most magic can only affect small to medium sized creatures, and a large animal, like a horse will be able to live without any issues. Magical disasters are thus traditionally classified by the largest monster present.
Finally, the amount of magic present will decide all else. Average or slightly elevated ambient magic will affect only the weakest and small animals, and the effect grows equivalently as more magic is poured in. With enough magic, magic achieve almost any effect, up to including producing monsters from nothing but magic.
The exception to this rule is anything with magic already present in their system. If a magic circulatory system is already present, then the excess magic will be cycled through it instead. If enough magic is present to overwhelm it, interesting things happen. Not enjoyable or predictable things, but interesting ones at least. The exact effect is currently under research by the Yiselxà Academia.
Additional Information
Uses, Products & Exploitation
Monsters are the source of almost half of the resources used in enchanting and alchemy. Bones, poisons, scales, leather, if something can be harvested from a monster, someone is going to try and use it somehow.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Monsters can be found all throughout the Yatràpà Continent, but are concentrated in areas of higher ambient magic like the Mau̯humel Archipelago, or the Wastelands. The Wastelands are the source of 50-70 percent of all monsters on the continent. Border patrols have brought the numbers down in recent centuries, but many slip in every year.
Local terms
leshufe /leʃufɛ/From the old Rubefiàn word for monsters, the origin for this term is obvious.
deduche /ˈdɛdʊˈt͡ʃɛː/
From the Ivi word for magic and the root word for birth, chegi /ˈt͡ʃɛːgɪ/. Together the term roughly means magicborn.
kwuchiri auyoil /kwutˈʃiri auʎoil/
A formal phrase in Minyi meaning void's cursed.
vi /viː/
Informal Minyi term for monster.
I like that there's a sort of contextual device on the same kind of creatures. Both a docile and a dangerous critter are made the same, but only the dangerous one is considered a monster :)
Can an environment be rich enough in magic to cause mutations, but not enough to make sure they are fed? Do monsters hunt each other? (Seem like a closer prey than humans) This is a really cool thing. It reminds me of the threat classifications from OPM; Dragon, DEmon, Tiger, etc. Do they have any typical classifications they refer back to or do they look at whatever comes out and go with that? Do these creatures of pure magic still need to hunt others or can they just hang around where they are "born" and feed on that? Are there parasitic types? This would be an *awesome* place to insert some sort of crazy image :D Including armor and weapons? (also, there's a comma on the end there instead of a period :) ) This'd probably read smoother if you got rid of the ", in fact,". :) Overall, really cool idea!Creator of Araea, Megacorpolis, and many others.
Yes! Its a thought process that I can easily see happening. Plus, if you consider every magical creature a monster where does the line end?
That depends on what it is we're dealing with. An environment can turn maybe a few small birds into monsters, and with that expend most of the magical field. After that the monsters would have to fend for themselves, and yes, probably hunt each other.
On the other hand, if large creatures like I dunno, a bear, were mutated, there was probably enough magic to for them feed off afterwards. Its context specific.
And yeah, monsters can hunt each other, but once the others are gone, what do they do next?
Thank you! I hadn't thought of that, but now that you mention it, it really is similar to OPM's. I don't have any 'official' classification just yet, but once I get a better sense of what monsters exist I'd like to make some.
If there's enough magic for them to born of just that, then unsurprisingly, there's plenty for them to feed on. However, there's no telling what kind of personality that sort of monster will have so they might hunt anyways.
And there probably are a few parasitic types out there. I haven't written about any, but they exist for sure.
Definitely on the list of illustrations needed for this article.
Yup! Enchanting weapons and armor is a bit of a lost art nowadays, but magical materials make it a lot easier.
Thank you for pointing out those two mistakes! And thank you for favoriting my article!!