Dark Heresy - Creature names needed

[evisiron]

Hey.

A Dark Heresy game is starting, and my character is a bounty hunter type operative dumped on the likes of Death Worlds to hunt down people who are escaping capture or know too much. These assignments can take years, and so he has some colourful tales to tell, mainly about things that have tried to eat him.

I have started with a few, but would really appreciate some more 40k sounding creatures. Feel free to flesh them out a bit more if you feel like it.

Here are mine to start it off:

---Tad-beast: Think giant tadpole with teeth. Swallowed my characters prey whole at one point, character had to catch it to retrieve evidence of capture.

---Ripper leech - leeches that take a chunk of flesh with them when they detach.

---Spiderilla - 8 legged ape creature. Sinews are valued for making high quality bow strings.

Thanks for the help, should be fun to see what crops up. :smallbiggrin:

[Revlid]

Those aren't really very 40k. Ripper Leech is good, but Spiderilla (ugh) and Tad-Beast (not so bad) need work - they're much more D&D than DH, imo.

I'd recommend replacing Tad-Beast with something along the lines of "Ravenous Amphi-Spawn of *insert planet here*", depending on how giant it actually is.

Spiderilla could be changed to something along the lines of Octavi Primatus, or Hominidarachne, or something more arcane/chaosy than sciencey, like "The Ape-Children of the Silken Spider in Leaves".

Finally, have a look at this. (http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=creatures+anathema&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&fp=1b311284ac0b25f6)

[Zen Master]

Here are mine to start it off:

---Tad-beast: Think giant tadpole with teeth. Swallowed my characters prey whole at one point, character had to catch it to retrieve evidence of capture.

---Ripper leech - leeches that take a chunk of flesh with them when they detach.

---Spiderilla - 8 legged ape creature. Sinews are valued for making high quality bow strings.

Thanks for the help, should be fun to see what crops up. :smallbiggrin:

I like these. I was thinking you could have a good deal of fun with squigs from planets that are or have been xenotainted by the presence of the orks.

Dunno if you're familiar with squigs? Otherwise the net will likely enlighten you.

Otherwise starwars or maybe Buck Rogers has some fairly weird but useful fauna and wildlife.

[Fulkerin]

Dependingon how far you want to take it (and how familiar you are with the 40k universe...) the Catchan devil. If you dont know what it is, think centipede the size of a freight train... and possibly sentient.

Kraken (straight out of the 40k universe. Honest.) which is intelligent

Any tyranid synapse creature really. :smalltongue:

[Leeham]

Tad-beast = Synofian Silt-maw
Ripper leech = awesome

The great thing about 40k is the diversity of xenos out there. Seriously, even in the glory days of Rogue Trader there were some cheesy aliens floating about. Gyrinx anyone?

[UnChosenOne]

1. Avarage.

2.AWESOME.

3.Er, is this guy eascaped from bad b-movie???

And Leeham: Gyrinx? Wasn't it somesort of psychic cat?

[Wraith]

You can find plenty if you trawl your way through the Lexicanum website. A few I have are:

The Brainleaf (A tree that has semi-sentient leaves that can fly using wind currents. They latch onto peoples' nervous systems and are then controlled by the tree)
The Spiker (Shoots poisonous thorns into nearby people, who are then broken down and rebuilt on a cellular level to become another Spiker)
The Venus Mantrap (Speaks for itself, I think)
The Flying Swamp Mamba
The Coiling Death Cobra
The Catachan Black Viper (Various kinds of ridiculously poisonous snakes)
The Catachan Devil (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Catachan_Devil)
Catachan Barking Toad (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Catachan_Barking_Toad)
Ripper-Jacks (Kind of like Face-Huggers from the 'Aliens' movies, except that instead of laying eggs they are content to just eat your face)
Millasaur (4 foot long worms whose bite contains a paralysing poison)
Ambull (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ambull)

And of course, there's various kinds of Tyranids (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Species_of_Tyranid) that are so rare or otherwise unknown that they are sometimes considered to be 'naturally occuring' animsla by accident.

[Etcetera]

Somewhere on the GW US website there were a number of creatures made and modeled for 40k. You might still be able to find them online somewhere.

There's more animals in the necromunda pdf, available at the games workshop specialist games website.

Ambull is a walking bipedal insect like tunneler, taller than two men and also quite wide. It digs communal burrows under deserts and tastes like beef.

Hellwasps: Like wasps, but worse.

Then you can mutate a couple of ordinary animals to make them more scary.

In one of the Gaunt's Ghost's books there was a cactus like plant similar to the spiker which shot out poisoned spikes as hard as steel. It was triggered by sound...

If you don't understand anything that I'm talking about please tell me:smallsmile:

[bosssmiley]

The GW site used to have a couple of Creature Feature articles about the xenos of the 40K universe (they were mainly used as terrain threats in death world scenarios IIRC). That had some old fan favourites like the Ambull and Ptera-squirrels.

[Leeham]

And Leeham: Gyrinx? Wasn't it somesort of psychic cat?

Yes, yes it was.... -sigh-

[Lycan 01]

Not to mention that the Warp could always spill over through various points and mutate and/or corrupt stuff that was already in the area. What could be worse than a Catachan Devil? A Chaos Catachan Devil. :smallwink:

I also love the Ripper-Leeches. :smallbiggrin:

Hm...

Oh, oh! I got one... Two, actually.

One is just a big plant. It has large, beautiful flowers, which change color as you walk by them. They sense motion, and brighten in order to attract pollenators. Or so you'd think. Really, its a distraction... As you approach them, a feeler snakes along the ground, and rises up behind you. It then stabs a syringe-like barb into you, and instantly sucks every drop of blood from your body. It then takes several insanely agonizing seconds to die as your heart pumps nothing, your arteries and veins contract, your skin begins to flake off, and your brain starves for oxygen. Nasty way to go...

Another is a massive swarm of tiny mosquitos. From a few feet away, it just looks like a big puff of smoke. But when it hits you, thousands of tiny little mosquitos land on you and begin to bite you. They're so tiny that they can barely get to the capillaries at the surface of your skin, and they can't even drink your blood because its so thick. Instead, they drink the plasma out of your blood. So think about it - thousands of tiny little bigs you can barely see coating your body and draining your blood of its liquid component. Without the plasma, your blood thickens, becomes harder to pump, and puts massive strain on your heart and body. Sometimes the insect swarm can get so big, its like a fog bank. Should you get lost in that, you're doomed to a horrid fate - the mosquitos drain you of all your plasma, and your blood clots in its veins. Terrible fate...



Will that work? Sorry if I ruined anyone's appetite or day. :smallbiggrin:

[BigPapaSmurf]

I think it's a good idea to come up with the names you like, then figure out a good slang term or two for each one. Bounty Hunters are bound to use industry slang.

Here's my monster,
Boulder Dog,
A rhino like creature with powerful long front legs and grasping claws, with an unmatched sense of smell(hence Dog). As a Boulder Dog ages it's back skin secretes a film which attracts a particular microbe, the microbes leave layers of minerals on the creatures back and then create new layers on top of that, eventually a thick shell of reef like rock will grow to shroud the whole creature like an umbrella, eventually touching the ground, it carves out as much space under the shroud as its limbs can reach. As the Dog ages it gets progresivly slower and more blind, coming to rely on its sense of smell to find carrion. It uses it's bulky and nearly impenetrable shell to bully other predators on the corpse. It will use its long arms and claws to grab all or some of the carrion and pull it under the shell where it can eat while the other predators make useless attempts to retreive their food. Younger Dogs will use their underdeveloped shells to shield themselves. They are most adept at keeping their shield between themselves and other dangerous creatures. Juvenile Dogs use thier speed alone to hunt and scavenge before they become to slow to kill themselves. To the untrained an adult Dog may look like an unusual 10-12' mound of rock, these Dogs do get lucky occasionally if something is stupid enough to pass infront of the stone where the front claws are hidden.

Edit: Fully shrouded Dogs almost always die from complications with their own bulky prison of a shell within a few years. Stuck/flipped, too heavy/weak etc.

[Etcetera]

Good write-up, but imho Boulder Dog sounds a bit awkward.

[BigPapaSmurf]

Oh ya, very awkward, but it has parallells on Earth such as the boars whose tusks curve back and peirce their faces. Could be interesting trying to recover the body of a quarry who has been taken by one.