Design Your Fantasy Creature… with Science! - November 2011 -BS-C

Design Your Fantasy Creature… with Science!

Making believable beasts is part of your world-building—don't forget it!

By Trisha J. Wooldridge

Dragons, unicorns, basilisks, man-eating ürgoobliangans... are all friggin’ awesome!

But, really, what's the point?

No, really, what is the point of them besides being awesome?  What purpose do these creatures serve in the greater world?  Why do they exist?

If your answer is for the sole purpose of being awesome and making your characters' lives more difficult or easier, then you need to rethink them.  Don't fret, though. Building a good magical beast from the DNA up can be a lot of fun!

Part of Your World

N. K. Jemison does a great workshop on world-building, starting with designing a planet and environment, and that's where you should start.  When you design your world, what is the environment like? What sort of terrain do you have?  What temperatures, what plant life?

Where does your beast fit on the food chain?

If it eats plants, what plants are there?  Are there enough to sustain the population of this creature?  If it's a predator, what does it hunt?  Is there enough prey for the population to survive?  What hunts your creature?

In fact, let's go back in time.  Perhaps a deity or group of deities created the world.  What purpose did they give for the creature?  Deities would know they need to validate a creation with a purpose and find a way to fit the creature, however fabulous a creation that it is, into the existing biosystem.

Of course, you could also be writing science-fantasy and have a fantasy world that believes in evolution: even more reason to make sure your creature makes sense.

But a Mage/Wizard/God/Being of Great Power Created My Awesome Creature to [Insert Epic Task Here]…

Great; but unless said Being of Great Power is feeding the creature copious amounts of their own magic—likely exhausting themselves or using up their resources in the process—Awesome Creature with Epic Task probably still needs to eat, crap… possibly sleep, very likely breathe… requires sufficient room to move and live, and what if it gets loose?

Even if your creature is unnatural, it will have basic needs: even the undead need to eat. Though, I have yet to read or see anyone discussing the scat of the undead, which may be interesting at some point.

The more realistic you can make your fantasy creature, the stronger it is within your story, and the stronger your story is for having it.

The Building Blocks

While we don't have to become biologists and map our fantasy creature's DNA, we shouldn't forget about it.  After food, the drive to reproduce is the next biggest natural drive in any beast.  Both of those will affect your creature's behavior and their physique.

Both of those will depend on the answers to the world-building questions I asked above.  If you've got a sparse landscape, your creature will need to survive on available food.  Burros and goats, for example, have the right digestive systems, gut bacteria, and intestines to pull every possible nutrient from scrub grass or whatever they can find.  Snakes and some lizards have digestive systems that allow them to eat one big meal and digest it for days, as their food is sparse and meals can be few and far between. Canines, which adapt to many environments, have digestive systems that can handle scavenged and even vegetal food sources.  Felines, on the other hand, are obligate carnivores and naturally live in regions with a high number of prey animals because their digestive systems cannot handle grains or vegetable matter.  (Ever wonder why feline diabetes is such a problem? Check their food source!)

How they acquire their food affects their life styles.  Canines live in a pack to maximize food finding ability, and because their wider food possibilities can support a pack lifestyle.  Most wild felines will live in small numbers or solitary because their food supply is more limited.  Lions are an exception, however, because their environment produces megafauna—prey so big it is hard for a single animal to bring down or ingest before it starts to rot.

Prey animals will often live in groups, because movement in numbers is harder to hunt and herds will always have stronger and weaker members.  The weaker members get culled by predators, which promotes the overall survival of the strongest herd members.  However, food sources and reproductive ability affect the numbers of a herd. Limited food supply and slow reproduction are why you generally don't see massive herds of goats or wild burros, but, despite slow reproduction, wild horse herds can get quite large because they often find their way onto cattle farmers' rich grasslands.  Rabbits can eat a wide array of foods, and they reproduce quickly, so warrens often have many members.

Dissecting Dragons and Unicorns

Let's start with Dragons.

Dragons are usually flipping huge.  Only mountains or caverns or volcanoes can generally fit them.  It's told that they swoop down on poor villages and eat their livestock… and virgins.

Oh, and they like shiny stuff.

Shiny stuff aside (plenty of animals like shiny stuff), let’s look at what parts of Dragon Lore are believable.

They are solitary.  They kind of have to be based on their food source.  It also makes sense that they are territorial.  Diet is interesting, though.  Could the local small village produce enough livestock to support the dragon, if it's an obligate carnivore?

For the sake of simplicity, say the dragon is not ridiculously huge.  Let's make it proportionate to a cow in the same way a desert snake is proportional to a mouse.  A snake needs to average about one mouse a week to survive.  So, the small village would need to provide the meat-mass equivalent of one cow per week for this dragon.  The village would be out of cows pretty quickly.  Some extremely poor villages may only have 2-4 shared cows (or cow-like animals, like yaks or ox or [insert fantasy equivalent]).

The dragon would have to move onto other meat sources.  Perhaps horses; but horses are even more expensive and less likely to be in large numbers.  Those will be eaten up shortly, too.  Pigs?  A full sized pig each week might work… for as many pigs as the village had, because they, like the cows or horses, would not be able to reproduce and mature fast enough to be a sustainable food source.  Humans?  Well, cows, horses, and pigs all range between 800-1000 lbs.  A human adult averages between 130-220 lbs So, it would take 4-5 humans per week to sustain the dragon's need for food.

So, for the dragon to survive, his mountain/canyon/volcano home would have to encompass several villages and perhaps a good deal of grasslands so that it could eat.

Speaking of which, due to the massive size of the dragon, and in keeping with the common trope of it flying, it needs a lot of open space, not a lot of woodland area.  But, a lot of open space also means prey will know it’s coming.  A wise dragon might choose to live by the sea, likely on a migratory whale or dolphin path, to augment its diet.  Another option would be the plains of Africa, where there is a lot of space as well as megafauna.  Or the west and Midwest of North America, where you have plenty of cattle farms that could provide for dragons.

In any case, there ought to be some planning regarding food.  And scat.  One of my favorite dragon stories was in Ricasso Press's Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology, where someone tackled the literary mountain of dragon scat.  After all, the dragon has to go somewhere, and imagine if, like a bird, it just drops its load while in the air, regardless of what's under it!

Unicorns, on the other hand, pose their own problems.  They are often created in the image of horses, with a few authors turning to deer for inspiration.  Unicorns would most likely be prey animals, like either horses or deer, so they likely live in some type of herd. We won't get into the details about making them carnivorous and how that affects their biology and social structure; just know it does.  Unicorns would be competing with either deer or horses for food and territory, though, and if they have elevated sentience, as often written, they are likely more aggressive than either horses or deer to guard their territory.  Well, then their horns make sense!

Gold horns or hooves, however: no sense whatsoever.

Gold is far too soft to carry the creature's weight or be a weapon.  Its shiny-ness also messes with camouflage.  As does a pure white coat if they’re woodland creatures.  Make that horn and hooves of some magically enhanced material based on existing horns, antlers, and hooves. Then, perhaps, give them the equivalent of faery glamour to hide themselves.  That could be a fix—and also explain why they are so hard to find.

Do Your Research

Earth, in all its glory, is plenty full of weird creatures already.  One need only spend time on the Discovery Channel or watching nature shows to get inspired—to see the Awesome.  Further research on evolution can help writers create added levels of awesome that fit their world and story.

This article has only touched on behavior, too, which is a fascinating topic to me for both world-building and plot points.  Animal trainers and "whisperers" of all sorts have books out: Monty Roberts and Pat Parelli for horses, Cesar Millan for dogs, Jane Goodall for gorillas… and what fantasy writer worth her salt hasn't read at least one book on cat behavior?  Another great author resource is Temple Grandin, who has done a lot of research in animal communication and autism.

These books are fun to read. Taking the time to research your animals will not only make them believable, but add to the sense of wonder and awe you want them to inspire.

Trisha J. Wooldridge of Auburn, Massachusetts is a professional writer and editor, as well as the current president of Broad Universe.  She's included in the New England Horror Writers anthology, Epitaphs, from Shroud Publications (November 2011); the EPIC award-winning anthologies Bad-Ass Faeries 2: Just Plain Bad (2008) and Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In all Their Glory (2010) from DarkQuest books, several other poetry and non-fiction venues, and is an editor of the UnCONventional anthology from Spencer Hill Press, being released in January 2012. When not writing, she rides horses and tries to spend time with her Husband-of-Awesome. www.anovelfriend.com