monsters from myths, legends and folklore

[TheThan]

OK so I’m building an RPG world based around the idea that all those creatures from myths, legends and folk tails we hear about are all real. The campaign is sort of a world of darkness style setting, where these monsters prey on mankind and things are very dismal. oh, I've also pulled some monsters from classic horror films (creature from the black lagoon, Frankenstein's monster etc).

Anyhow in order to fill out this world with monsters for the PCs to fight against, I’ve begun brainstorming a list of monsters to use and now I’ve come up a bit dry. So I was wondering if you all could help me to finish off this list, see anything I’ve forgotten? Or have an idea from folklore from your area that I could use? feel free to submit it. Now as I’m using BESM 3rd edition for this setting, I’m going to have to build everything from scratch, so wikipedia links would be nice. I’ve divided things up by region in order to help me get a feel as to what each place would feel like. So here’s the list:

the big list

Spoiler

Show

Europe

• Vampires
• Werewolves
• Succubus
• Frankenstein monsters
• Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hide creatures
• Warlocks
• Siren
• wyvern
• banshee
• basilisk
• Erlking
• Fachen
• gremlin
• hippogriff
• griffin
• questing beast
• redcaps
• trolls
  

Mediterranean

• medusa/gorgons
• harpy
• centar
• cyclops
• hippocamp
• hydra
• lamia

Asia

• Oni
• Tentical monsters
• Kitsune
• Yeti
• Hopping vampire
• Yuki-onna
• Naga
• Rakasha

Middle east

• Genies
• Mummy
• demons
• driders
• ghouls
• sphinx
• mantacore
• chimeera
• scorpion men
• cockatrice
• behemoth

Americas

• Headless horseman
• Witches
• Sasquatch
• wendigo
• Gillman (creature from the black lagoon)
• Chupacabras
• mothman
• Loogaroo
• witch doctors/zombies
• Jersey devil
• thunderbirds
• Jakalope

Australia/pacific islands/ oceans

• Drop bears
• kraken
• merefolk/ tritons
• leviathan
• scylla/charybdis
• Bunyip
• Mananaggal
• Kapre

World wide

• Dragons
• Giants
• phoenix
• goblins
• ghosts

edit
OK super big edit here. Added in world wide and Mediterranean areas. people might not have noticed but i intentionally added in classic movie monsters like the mummy and the gillman from the creature from the black lagoon. this campaign world was originally based off of the classic Capcom fighting game darkstalkers, but the idea has sort of evolved a bit as it stewed around in my head for a bit.

[Vitruviansquid]

Europe - Fairies can be a big one.

Also don't forget your Mediterranean monsters.

[Fax Celestis]

Phoenix, thunderbird, gremlins, kobolds (the real ones), griffins, rakshasa...

[comicshorse]

Japan: Kappa, I've always loved a monster you can defeat through politiness

Europe: Selkie, were-seals why not ?
Lots of big, supernatural, black dog stories where i grew up.
Water-horses

[AslanCross]

More from Asia:

Mananaggal (Vampiric creature with rather...unique weaknesses.)
Kapre (Chain-smoking, tree-dwelling ogre)
Bakunawa: Moon-eating leviathan.

[TheThan]

Oh, duh. How could I have forgotten about the kappa and rakashas , anyway I really like the Mananaggal and kapre. So I’m totally using them.


edit

ok some clarifications: I'm including the Philippines in with pacific islands/Australia, and India in with the middle east. they're sort of transitional paces anyway so if you're annoyed by this... too bad!

[Satyr]

Europe has several legends about drowned dead; either the Viking draugrs (and what's not to like about undead Vikings coming back from the sea?) or the ghosts of drowned women (often suicidal ones) who lure travelers into the water and drown them.

Then there are classic Christian demons, and their followers, especially witches. Incubi and Succubi are classic examples.

And of course, the Wolpertinger (actually a taxodermist joke).

Then there is the Bachkalb (literally "creek calf") which is a a large scaled, carnivorous calf which forces travellers (especially drunken ones) to carry it.

[JBento]

Also for Europe, the golem - though if you want to make him close to the myth one, it's clay only and he's vulnerable to critical hits (and, technically, ONLY to critical hits).

The Tarrasque is also European, though it reallllllly has nothing to do with it's D&D incarnation.

EDIT: I almost forgot: remember, your European (British) wizards' staves must have a knob on the end - and their hedgehog familiars cannot, in any circumstance, be buggered

[Fax Celestis]

Jackalopes!

[PretzelKing]

you could add dogman (werewolf/worg type?) to the americas! i saw it on TV, it has to be true!!

[JBento]

Aaaand... I just noticed no-one has brought in Greece (centaurs, nymphs, dryads, satyrs, hydrae, and... well... half the monster manuals?)

For Africa, we have the sphinx and the mummy from the top of my head.

[Mystic Muse]

Godzilla?
Flying spaghetti monster?

[Harris the Ford]

For Africa's you could look at Monsters of Legend (MM2 3.5e) and beef up some desert/Savannah animals.

[TheThan]

Ok, seeing as some might not have noticed (I even bolded it). I’m not going to be using dnd for this setting. Instead I’m using Big Eyes Small Mouth 3rd edition. Also sphinxes and mummies are already on the list, though I haven’t included them in Africa (face it most people think of Egypt as part of the Middle East, even though it is located in Africa).

So taking a creature, adding a template to it, then converting to another system in which i have to completely create the creature from scratch anyway, is sort of annoying to do. though legendary creatures are a cool idea.

plus Jakalope LOLZ.

[ScionoftheVoid]

Sirens, the manticore, the chimera, harpies, the Mothman, wyverns, dragons of all kinds, kraken, Aigaumcha (tiny African monsters with eyes on their feet, they consume human flesh), Al, banshees, cockatrices, basilisks, centaurs, cyclopes, the Erlking, the Fachen, the Ga-gorib (includes some other creatures, including the Aigamcha, above), the many, many forms of giant, goblins, the gorgons, gremlins, hippogryphs and hippocampi, tritons or icthyocentaurs, Ziz, Leviathan and Behemoth, the Lernean Hydra, Scylla and Charybdis, the Loogaroo, the Jersey Devil, the Ovda (a malevolent Finnish spirit that appears as a naked human with its feet backwards. It challenges its victims to dance before tickling them to death), the Ping Feng (a huge Chinese beast that appears as a boar with a head at each end), the Questing Beast, Redcaps, scorpion men, trolls and Lamia are all missing from your list (as I write this).

If there is no link to Wikipedia the information is from "The Big Book of Monsters", written and compiled by Guy Cambell and Mark Devins.

[Forte]

Australia - Bunyip

[MightyTim]

Ghosts, anyone? Or you can break them down in to sprits and poltergeists.

Also, I read a while ago a story about "The Rake"

I'm sure it was made up relatively recently, but pretty creepy nonetheless

http://www.creepypasta.com/the-rake/

Could make a good recurring villain in a game like that.

[MightyTim]

You could probably classify aliens as from legends or folklore as well, since there's been reported sightings of them for decades.

One more. Cthulhu.

[Zodiac]

This site's pretty awesome. To be fair some of the articles are pretty bare, but it gives a good around the world glance and is a good start.

I've also found this wikipedia article to be useful before.

[awa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...dary_creatures
this will help give you some African folklore creatures i personally liked the kishi.
I would point out that mummies are fictional not folklore no one ever thought they walked around attacking people.

edit like the mummy Cthulhu is fictional not a mythological or folklore monster their are tons of fictional monsters but im not sure that what you want

[Kiroth6]

Nucklevee - Scottish monster that looks like the skinless torso of a man growing out of the back of a one eyed horse with flippers.

Also Encyclopedia Mythica, has a decent listing of monsters. I used it for an old game of mine where I used the myth versions of monsters. You still have to research details on your own but its a pretty good starting point.

EDIT: It seems Zodiac beat me to it.

For other obscure monsters with a good creep factor there check out the malaysian vampires such as the penanggalan and the Soucouyant.

[TheThan]

Big edit at the top.

[iDM]

hmmmm... chupacabras? they'd be good if a PC had an animal companion or suchlike.

[Psyx]

Drop bears

I love you, man.


I'd go through the MM and try bunging a lot of the names into Google, as many are based on real creatures.

Japanese mythology has some great stuff.

Black Shuck?

[hamishspence]

D20 Modern Menace Manual had a few- as did D20 Past (had the siren and the hyena-ish ghoul).

[Avilan the Grey]

Must ask: What trolls?
Trolls are completely different depending on country, or even region. Trolls on the British Isles are part of the Fairy courts, for example (AFAIK), while the Fairy courts doesn't even exist in Swedish mythology.

So, if not specifying...
Trolls can be a kind of fairy, or not
Trolls can be small, human sized or giants
Trolls can be attractive or ugly
Trolls can post on forums or not

etc etc.

Yes I read too much about trolls.

[hamishspence]

All Trolls Are Different, indeed:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...lsAreDifferent

OoTS does mention this as well:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0273.html

[Avilan the Grey]

All Trolls Are Different, indeed:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...lsAreDifferent

OoTS does mention this as well:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0273.html

Indeed. Oh and let's not forget the Scandinavian archetype of the beautiful young (only a few hundred years old) female troll. Her dad is ugly, but she's really hot. With a tail, but hey.

[hamishspence]

Robert Asprin's dimension of Trollia in Myth Adventures plays on this.

[Avilan the Grey]

Robert Asprin's dimension of Trollia in Myth Adventures plays on this.

Okay, boys and girls: Story time. A traditional troll tale from Sweden!

"Once upon a time, a young farmboy and a young troll girl fell in love after he had spotted her swimming in a forest pond and dared to talk to her afterwards.. After some trouble getting their blessings from her father (his father had no problem with it, she was good looking, and trolls are rich so the human side of the family would have it made!) they got married in the church.

Soon, however, the husband turned into a sloth and a drunk; suddenly having too much money for his own good. He spent most weekends in a drunken stupor and went out with his friends during weekday nights as well. She stayed home as a loyal wife and cooked and cleaned.

One day he was extra drunk, and very upset because the horse had lost a shoe so he could not go into town and drink with his friends. When she tried to tell him to be quiet so he would not wake up the children, he tossed the horse shoe at her and it hit her in the face. However instead of saying anything, she quietly picked it up, straightened it out just using her hands and even snipping of a piece or two of cold iron from the shoe as if it had been made of clay.

The husband sobered up on the spot, realizing exactly how strong she must be. Stammering he tried to both ask for forgiveness and wonder why she had never done anything to him.

She replied that she had promised in front of God to be his loving wife, for better and worse, although it had been hard to keep the promise at times.

The husband stopped drinking that very day."