Fantastic Beasts and How to Write Them
Some Jurassic examples of great monster-writing
Amazing Stories, January 1949, cover artist unknown, via Wikimedia Commons
Upon reaching the limits of civilised knowledge, the mapmakers of yore would resort to monsters. Hic Sunt Dracones – Here Be Dragons. In truth, cartographers almost never wrote this, but there’s a reason the phrase has endured. It conjures images of fabulous beasts prowling the margins of the world, of plumed leviathans coiled around galleons daring to cross seas uncharted. Here be not only dragons, but the eternal boundary between science and the wild unknown.
Fantasy writers and Dungeon Masters alike often take a similar top-down view of the secondary worlds they create and stage-manage. There’s a reason why so many fantasy novels open with a helpful map and why the bestiary might be the first section you turn to in a new RPG.
Your standard-issue, Lord of the Rings-derived medieval fantasy is usually dominated by peoples more or less civilised (humans, elves, dwarves, the magically inclined), or at least somewhat housetrained (orcs, goblins, migrant barbarians). You’ve also got your various revenants, demons and elementals, all regimented by the arcane laws of magic.
Then there’s the wildlife, those feral beasts, carnivorous critters and lonely titans born not of alchemy but the natural world, of the wilderness that awaits beyond the familiar bounds of city or farmstead. These are the dragons that dwell in regions uncharted, in dungeons drowned, in deserts unmappable, in jungles unbridled as the id. Here be the nesting hydra, the bellowing cyclops, the web-weaver the size of a Humvee, all hungry for a fresh bundle of bones to strew about their lair.
From The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons, illustration by Thomas Hawkins, 1840, via Wikimedia Commons
Such monsters are essentially animals and – unless they’re legends like Shelob or Moby Dick – they rarely come with a backstory. They’re fluent only in growls and bellows and have few interests beyond eating and lurking. The rest is a mystery. Wizards in these worlds seem to know more about raising the dead than they do about zoology…
