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calebcleveland — Creature Concept
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Published: 2008-09-15 07:18:01 +0000 UTC; Views: 4647; Favourites: 114; Downloads: 0
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Description
A fungal gladiator I designed for an all-ages fantasy MMORPG; one of the mobs you could expect to find in the depths of a dim forest. Dunno what kind of treasure he'd drop, but it would be yeasty to be sure. Don't ask what that glowing, moldy bit at the end of his arm's for, either.Related content
Comments: 15
An author called Jeff Vandermeer had a whole series of books taking place in a fictional city called Ambergris. It featured a race of beings that bred the local fungi into various weapons and devices such as pistols, security cameras, and so on. You might want to take a look at it.
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What a cool idea - I don't know when I'll honestly have the time, but I'll bookmark it for sure.
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There are three books in the series, but they can also be read as stand alone novels. The first book is called the City of Saints and Madmen, and is a collection of short stories featuring some of the odd things about Ambergris. It is never mentioned in the book in terms of where Ambergris is, or what time period it is in, but it appears to be a sort of frontier town bordered by jungle and swampland. It was originally founded by a group of whalers after they drove the native lifeforms (grey caps) underground. The humans in Ambergris appear to have technology around that of the late 1800s and early 1900s as they seem to have primitive cars and electricity.
The second book takes place several decades later, during the height of the wars between the two main corporate factions that control most of the city. The war is very bloody and politically disruptive, and aside from conventional weapons like bombs and automatic firearms, bizarre weapons based on fungal technology stolen from the grey caps start appearing as well. The grey caps take advantage of the chaos of the factional war to use the opportunity to rise up and control Ambergris.
The third book takes place some time after the uprising of the grey caps. The grey caps occupy and control Ambergris and have imposed a sort of martial law, and force much of the human population into work caps as forced labor, or have pushed them into the crumbling remains of the city dwellings. The grey caps have started creating analogs of human technology to equip their human agents and sympathizers with out of their own fungal technology, as the grey caps are not familiar with human technology, so they try to backwards engineer some of it in the medium that they are most familiar with.
I am sorry to put up such a long post, but this was an amazing series, and it was a refreshing change of pace from "Tolkienesque" fantasy. Ambegris does not take place in a medieval world, and there does not seem to be any magic present, so it is almost science fiction.
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Nice concept, straightforward and very well made. I can easily imagine it in-game, which too means you've done a good job.
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A well-constructed critique, thank you very much! Glad you liked it!
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looks like a grunt with a fungus, neat though
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May I hazard a guess at spore-cannon?
Cool design by the way.
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sweet look - something about his design reminds me of a some monsters on "Legend of Legaia", ever heard of it?
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Sounds vaguely familiar... glad you like it!
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"It would be yeasty"
I lol'd.
I like it. Especially the texture on the fingers/feet. That said, it looks more like it's made of wood than fungus, and it kind of reminds me of the Grunts from Halo.
Still, awesome.
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