#Cecilverse

[tyrantisterrorart]

And reblogging to the art blog. MIDGAHEIM BESTIARY IS BACK, BABY!

After literal years of debating it with myself, I finally decided to make a compromise with my desires and find a sustainable way to continue the Midgaheim Bestiary - uncolored sketches. Sorry, carpal tunnel syndrome and my lack of funds to pay artists a proper wage for a shitload of work made it necessary, and I'd rather continue the project in some degree than let it die on the vine.

ANYWAY, Puff Dragons! A small group of greater drakes inspired by my nostalgia! Come learn about them, won't you?

[andpeanuts]

Fantasy Clement is a terrible business owner because he keeps giving free services to people...

[tyrantisterrorart]

I had so much fun drawing vampires last month that I decided to draw three of my own - Countess Daria, May Shade, and Madcap!  I actually have a BUNCH of vampire OCs (Madcap’s story is vampire-centric) that still need to be drawn, so this probably isn’t the last of me scratching the ol’ draw-vampires-itch.

[thesilkenlair]

Creature Appreciation: Cecilverse Serpents Part 1

Tentatively naming this as part 1, since the Cecilverse is still in progress and I’m sure there’s more stuff I might want to talk about later.

Anyway! The Cecilverse is a project in the works by non other than @tyrantisterror who you probably recognize if you’ve been here for any length of time. I’ve talked about his kaiju Tyrantis before, and reblog stuff from him all the time, so definitely go give him a follow. The Cecilverse is part of the same world as Tyrantis, but set in midievil times, with magic, dragons, and the other fantasy staples you’d expect. Tyrantisterror has put a lot of detail into how this world works, with a special amount of detail put into the various magical Serpents.

Serpents refer not just to snakes, but to the entire evolutionary tree that spawned snakes, including their originator, the Komodo dragonesque Ur Serpent. Descended from the Ur Serpent are Dragons, Basilisks, Hoogah, Horned Serpents, Amphisbaena, and several others, all of whom are going to be getting pages on his website Horror Flora. There’s a whole article dedicated to the Serpents already, which I highly recommend checking out.

The ones I’m focusing on right now are the most well known of the Serpents, the Dragon. Dragons in the Cecilverse follow specific rules, such as their wing structure, horns, tail spade, and their alignment with all four Elements. Having them be aligned with all four Elements was a great way of showing why and how Dragons are so wide spread, and the sheer amount of different kinds of Dragons is insane. It is a testament to Tyrantisterror’s love for dragons that he has done so much research and discovered so many different depictions of dragons that can fit snugly together in this world. He also has plenty of dragons from outside of mythology, from references to other media, to concepts submitted directly to him.

The way Tyrantisterror draws dragons is amazing, with the amount of different details he uses helping each individual to stand out. He also has a talent with coloring as well, using vibrant colors to aid each dragon in their individuality. The way he captures what me and other people live about reptiles is incredible, and he does it again and again without fail. This man really understands how reptiles work.

I feel I’ve rambled about the Serpents of the Cecilverse enough for now, but I know I’ll touch on them again, maybe sooner than later! The Dragons alone have more I could go into, but this is already a very long post, so I’ll leave it here for the time being.

[maplesamurai]

Why do I get the feeling @tyrantisterror will find a way to incorporate this into Midgaheim canon if he hasn't already?

I’ve been reading about werewolves on Wikipedia and I just have to say. “Werewolves are warriors that descend into hell to fight demons” kicks unbelievable amounts of ass as a concept

[armorbirdpress]

Cecilverse Concept: Apicamp

According to all known laws of biology, there is no way a bee and a fish should be able to breed. The bee's "compartment" is too small to allow the fish's "equipment" to fertilize it. This astounding hybrid, of course, exists anyways. Because wizards don’t care about what humans think is impossible.

Name: Apicamp (alternate names: merwasp, sea wasp)

Type: Chimera

Base Creatures: Any type of bee, hornet, or wasp + any type of magical fish, including leviathans(!)

Notes: A bizarre experiment in stretching the limits of animal hybridization, the apicamp was first created completely by accident, when a vial of leviathan blood was accidentally spilled near a nest of hornets. After the workers drank up the blood and fed it to their babies, some of these larvae began undergoing a bizarre transformation as they grew into adults, developing more fin-like wings, and more importantly, a long abdomen with translucent fins resembling the tail of a fish. These strange hybrids were largely ignored and seemingly vanished without a trace, until a hive-like structure made of mud was discovered in a nearby lake a few months later. These water-dwelling “sea wasps” turned out to be even more aggressive than regular hornets, not to mention a good deal larger, swarming and killing a fair number of monster slayers before their hive was finally destroyed by a squadron of knights with sting-impervious armor.

The word was out, however - after it was discovered that feeding the blood of any magically attuned fish to the colony of any species of bee or wasp would result in this weird combination, a number of enterprising wizards tried to create sea bees/wasps of their own, letting them establish hives in their castle moats to try and deter intruders. Bee-based apicamps were the most successful of these attempts, being relatively more docile - like mundane bees, their barbed stingers lodged in anything they impaled, forcing them to pull out part of their abdomens to escape and die later, so their stings were only used as a last resort. Wasp-based apicamps, of course, were a disaster in physical form, being able to sting repeatedly and unable to distinguish friend from foe. Sea wasps were thus phased out in favor of sea bees, which even became heraldic emblems in a few places.

Apicamps are able to swim like fish and fly like bees, but aren’t good at walking. They’re thus limited to areas near or in water like swamps, rivers, and coastlines. Without flowers or nectar, they can’t and don’t produce honey, and prefer to feed on plant juices and carrion residue instead, but their regurgitant is often touted as a useful potion enhancer. The venom of an apicamp, being magically enhanced, leaves an agonizing sensation for up to a week after being stung, and multiple apicamp stings in succession can lead to paralysis which can rarely be fatal; not only is it more beneficial for certain potions of harming than mundane bee venom, but being larger, apicamps naturally produce more per sting and can be brought under control more easily.

While apicamps can be encountered either above or below the water, their queens have to remain underwater at all times to spawn, typically within the confines of the hive. It is thus unknown how large they can grow, though given the immense size of leviathans in general, a fully-grown apicamp queen would be a terrifying sight indeed.

@tyrantisterror - Since two other people submitted Cecilverse concepts I might as well. The Sea-bee is a heraldic emblem listed on Wikipedia, but the article is a stub and only has one source that I can’t access online, and Google turns up some kinda Navy mascot or something. Um. ._.’

I imagine that such a thing existing could be a nod to the archaic belief that every land animal had an underwater counterpart, which is why we have merlions, hippocamps, etc.

[dragon-discourse]

Schrodinger's Dragon: A Look at the Cecilverse

Happy birthday @tyrantisterror

Something that can be both frustrating and intriguing when studying dragons is how the term can be applied both in and out of universe when it comes to fiction. A popular example of this would be Godzilla. Godzilla exists, within his own universe, as some sort of dinosaur or retrosaur creature, but he is never classified as a dragon. However, if one were to look at Godzilla, and the traits and tropes he embodies, they would find little reason to not classify him as a dragon outside of his world. And this is something that can be seen multiple times. Something which is not, due to in universe rules, a dragon can still fit the archetype, making it a dragon, yet also not. Schrodinger's Dragon, if you will.

Today, I would like to examine the works of Tyrantisterror, and see what sort of Schrodinger's Dragons he brings to the table.

I won't be looking at his Retrosaurs of ATOM, though they would be a great place to start. Like Godzilla, many of them fill the tropes required of dragons while still being distinct. However, today I would like to take a look at his Serpents.

In Cecilverse, Serpents are the group of creatures, evolved from Varanids, which include Dragons, Hoogahs, Basilisks, Snakes of both the magic and mundane varieties, and some other fantastical reptiles. Though they are all related to dragons, since dragons are classified among their ranks, they themselves are not dragons.

You see, in Cecilverse dragon has a very specific definition. Only Serpents on a specific branch of their family tree can be classified as such. Dragons include Drakes, both Lesser and Greater, Wyrms, Loong, Wyverns, and some others. They have key defining features, including but not limited to an affinity towards all four kinds of magic, beaked snouts, horns, and specific ear and wing types. Anything not within this branch of the Serpent tree cannot and is not classified as a dragon in universe.

But as I mentioned, there are related creatures which, when looked at with an outsider's POV, have little reason not to be considered dragons in the archetypal sense.

The first would be the Hoogahs, which is also the closest kin to Tyrantisterror's dragons. Created by a young TT, who was frustrated with how dragons in media and myth were almost unanimously evil, Hoogahs are the good, or at least more sociable, answer to Cevilverse's more stand offish dragons. There are both flightless and flighted varieties, and they have the ability to turn themselves to stone.

While not classified as dragons within the confines of the universe, to a outside observer they would appear to be rather obviously dragons. They are large, magical reptiles, with unique and clearly fantastical features which sets them apart. And they are, both in and out of universe, closely linked with dragons. They share a fairly close ancestor on the Serpent Tree, and their meta origin was an attempt to subvert the more popular, and less pleasant, dragon tropes.

Other Serpents in Cecilverse have more mythical origins, and here is where Schrodinger's Dragon truly comes into play. In Cecilverse creatures such as the Basilisk, Cockatrice, and Amphisbaena are all related to, yet distinct from, the dragons they share their world with. Yet when one looks at the creatures in mythology, it can become fuzzier as to whether or not they are dragons. Some people have a more narrow view, and would not consider them dragons. Others have a wider view, and would view them as dragons. Some would have a viewpoint that is more fluctuating, perhaps seeing one variant on the Amphisbaena as a snake while another would be a dragon. The term Dragon itself has such a flexible definition, being more a word to describe a collection of possible traits rather than a concrete creature, that it can be tricky figuring out which serpent deserves it and which doesn't.

Which brings us nicely to the final Schrodinger's Dragons I would like to discuss in Cevilverse, ones which aren't Serpents at all.

Leviathans are a group of fish where many members have evolved elongated, serpentine bodies, and draconic heads. These are one of the many sea serpent varieties, yet it would be hard for them to be further from dragons in terms of taxonomy.

Originally Leviathans were dragons, yet due to the harassment of others TT was forced to change them into fish. This is not uncommon in fiction. Despite the earliest dragons being water dwelling serpents, Sea Serpents are some of the most common Schrodinger's Dragons in media. They are draconic enough to fit the archetype, yet are so different from the modern perception of dragons that they are rarely classified as such by their creators.

Personally, I am looking forward to seeing how TT expands on his lore, and I look forward to reading and learning about all his dragons, Schrodinger or otherwise.

[awkwardexxodus]

for some reason tiktok thought i would like to see someone who looked JUST like me. i am terrified.

[theload]

A handy guide to tell what sort of Cecilverse Dragon you have.

@tyrantisterror

[ask-drakos]

Cecilverse Creature Concept: False Gryphon

[Note that the name isn’t final, I just couldn’t come up with something more interesting]

Like many high-profile chimeras, the False Gryphon as it is now known was created to be a sort of replacement for dragons, intended to improve upon them for the creator’s own purposes. However, unlike most, this hybrid wasn’t made to put the power of a dragon at their fingertips – it was made to put on a show.

Somewhere along the line in a point of history that refuses to make itself known, a P. T. Barnum-esque man who travelled the continent with his menagerie of creatures and performers gathered from the far corners of the world, decided that what would really put his show over the top was a dragon. He couldn’t have a real dragon, of course – that would put his audience in danger, not to mention his animal handlers, and you can’t have a show without an audience (and people to run it)! So, he thought, why not make his own?

On that unknown night, he decided to fuse together some of the creatures from his menagerie – A peacock, the beautiful fowl from the far-off continent of India, imbued with Air as a bird and, more indirectly with Fire as its connection to royalty – and the platypus, the odd mammalian creature from the distant Australia, a semi-aquatic burrower with venom in the spurs on its legs, giving it Water, Earth, and again Fire. These two creatures, when fused, balanced themselves near-perfectly, and the resulting hybrid, though in form resembling a gryphon, had the squat body and sinuous features that would let it be mistaken for a true dragon by the paying crowds of the world.

Though it greatly resembled a traditional gryphon in form – the bird’s head, neck, and tail, with the beast’s body and hind limbs – it was somewhat more evenly combined than that, its features beginning to meld together into a more equal mix. The head topping the peacock’s long, shimmering neck had a bill that was soft and fleshy except for the sharp nail a t the tip, filled with teeth and organs that could sense the electrical pulses of life while submerged. Its body was short and squat, and coated in dense waterproof fur, with sturdy fowl’s talons on the forelimbs and webbed hindlimbs bearing venomous spurs, as well as a peacock’s broad wings perched atop its back, and finally its long tail bore the magnificent plumes of a peacock, a long, brightly colored veil trailing behind it.

The man was greatly pleased with the result, and began showing off his ‘tame dragon’ on his soonest campaign, its rather benign components lending it a disposition that made it easy to handle, if stubborn and proud, as well as a tendency for showing off, which audiences adored. However, the ease of training made him too confident, and began pushing harder and harder  for more and more spectacular shows – until one day he found himself putting on a grand finale of his tour, bearing a shimmering, iridescent blue suit to match his prized creation, and the frustrated chimera mistook him for a competing male with all his strutting about and displaying for the crowd, leading to his unfortunate mauling on center stage.

Though the beast was not a true dragon, its inherited semi-aquatic nature allowed it to slip unseen into a nearby lake when the outraged carnival performers drove it out with intention to kill it, hiding in the swampy waters with stealth a reptilian beast could be proud of. The eventual clutch it laid led to a small population being established, and to this day on rare occasions a traveler will stop to drink at a riverbank and catch the most fleeting glimpse of a vaguely reptilian silhouette, shimmering blue and green before it disappears into the water, the lesson of avoiding humans passed down through the generations to all the gentle not-quite-drakes spread so thinly across the land.

@tyrantisterror

[tyrantisterror]

I decided to upload my Midgeheim Bestiary Master List to Google Docs so it could be a bit easier to search through (google docs has a pretty easy way to mark “chapters” that, to my knowledge, open office doesn’t have).  And since I know some of you love this kind of stuff, I’m sharing it with you.  It updates a lot and things get changed around as I go along, so don’t treat this as necessarily “canon” - it’s more of a rough plan for what the canon entries of the Bestiary will be.

[andpeanuts]

Saying lonely doesn't do his aching heart justice lol

[tyrantisterrorart]

I don’t particularly like advertising myself, but I also kinda want to make my monster drawing and writing skills, you know, useful, so...

HEY!  YOU!

Do you love my weird fantasy setting?��  Do you love it when I post great big sketch dumps of monster concepts?  Do you like art of weird monsters and animal people?  Do you like detailed fictional biology?

Then consider supporting my patreon!

Shown above are two samples of some new monster concepts for my Fantasy setting - a pixie on the left and an orc on the right.  There are several more sketches of each creature on my patreon RIGHT NOW, including a bunch of weird variants and some notes about their biology!

While eventually you will be able to see these beasties in full color glory on HorrorFlora.com, the website where I will be posting ALL of my Midgaheim Bestiary entries, it may be months or even years before the finished entries are up.  In fact, since HorrorFlora.com is funded by my patreon, the less funding it gets, the longer it will take!  By donating $3 a month to my patreon, you not only get early access to these sweet ass monster people concepts, but you hasten the finished product!

AND WOULDN’T THAT JUST BE THE BEE’S FUCKIN KNEES?

So here’s that link again!  Please consider donating!

And don’t worry if you can’t donate $3 a month - while you don’t get any prizes for smaller donations, you will still be helping out the site!

Also don’t worry if you can’t donate at all.  I know what it’s like to be broke.

[thesilkenlair]

Cecilverse Creature Concept: Flitterwurm

In the continued effort to create a tameable dragon after the disastrous failure of the Dracogriffs, a Wizard decided to try her own hand.

She believed that the Dracogriff wasn’t completely off, combining the necessary elements together as is required for a dragon. The problem was that the choice of animals were far too dangerous to begin with, and there was far too many of them in the chimera for there to be any hope of stability.

To rectify these mistakes, the Wizard imported a large group of monitor lizards, believing them to be the perfect animal for the base of her own chimera. The monitors had three of the four elements in perfect balance, Earth, Fire, and Water(being semi aquatic, venomous animals), and only needed Air added to complete it. Her chosen animal was a species of bat, the Greater noctule bat, one well known for it’s size and large fangs. Despite it’s size, being the largest species of natural bat available to her, she believed that while the bat would have a connection to Air, it would be a connection about on par with the monitors balanced connection to it’s own three elements. Their combination seemed to go off perfectly at first, though their chimera didn’t quite blend the two animals completely.

Named “Flitterwurm” the chimera’s resembled the monitor physically, with the addition of the bats wings, ears, fangs and patches of their fur. The Wizard lived long enough to brag to anyone who would listen that she had succeeded where Cockatrice and Dracogriffs had failed, and while her chimeras still needed a little work, she had been bitten by one of them, they were far less hostile than either of the others. Needless to say she died soon after.

It turns out that the Flitterwurms were a crafty bunch, as they had gained features of their halves, the poison of the monitor, and the echolocation of the bat, and combined them into a deadly hunting combination. They would hunt and bite their prey in the dark, injecting their magically enhanced venom, then merely wait for their prey to die or be too weak to fight back and finish them at their leisure. As with the other chimera before them, the Flitterwurm escaped and spread, becoming potent nocturnal predators.

[virovac]

I kinda would like to see somedaya short story/comic mix compilation dedicated to Pathogen

A story or multiple set in hell of various demons. or in the age of magic, and the undead curses that lay dormant in their cambion offspring.

Stories about the obtainment of various strains of reanimation virueses that were used in creating the Omega virus that would be cultured in the flesh cultures taken from The Terror. The exploration of tombs or investigation of reports of strange creatures by SPOOK agents.

(Maybe even mix that up by having a story of a vampire or other monster in the past, and end with a jumpforward where their remains are being excavated)

[A Bat Man from the Movie Latitude Zero , used here as a visual for a bestial vampire]

[A penanggalan , another spooky thing that flies through the woods and part of the great Pathogen’s lineage]

And finally a story about The Terror’s daily life before he met Tyranta or Tyrantis.

Events of demons, zombies, vampires and kaiju that led up to the ultimate monstrosity

[dragon-discourse]

Ur-Serpent

Name: Ur-Serpent

Type: Fictional

Region: America

Description: A monitor-like lizard with horns and webbing on its sides.

Myth: N/A

Facts:

The Ur-Serpent was created by @tyrantisterror as the ancestor for his fictional serpents.

Within the context of their world, Ur-Serpents are not technically dragons. They are the ancestors of dragons, yes, but they are also the ancestors of all serpents.

Serpents in Cecilverse includes the following groups:

Dragons

Hoogahs

Basilisks

Gliding Serpents

Amphisbaena

Horned Serpents

Snakes

Ur-Serpents evolved and existed before magic came into the world. As such, they are not aligned with any sort of magic (though if they were, they would presumably be connected to Fire and Earth).

However, one ask suggested that Reptodites may have surviving, domesticated Ur-Serpents. The creator declared it canon.

Of all their descendants, Lesser Drakes resemble Ur-Serpents the most.

Information on the Ur-Serpent and its descendants can be found here.