Fluff-building: Mundane flora and fauna

[AtlasSniperman]

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and I know other people have as well. Most D&D campaigns and settings use all these fantastic races, magical items, spells and psionics... What's the farmer farming? Cows...

Basically, there is a severe lack of the mundane things: Food, drink, pets, livestock, plants and insects in fantasy worlds. So how about we just have a thread to create and dump some of these. I apologise if a thread like this exists, and none of these are meant for a specific setting. Here are a couple to start.


The Dorgany Pig: A blind species of pig bred by a group of Dwarves to live on mushrooms and be quite suitable to live underground. A resultant crossbreed of typical wild pigs and pigs with the "Shadow" template. Grows to just a little smaller than the average cow, yielding a large amount of somewhat tough pork-esc meat.

Toopu: A small amphibian creature with 6 ratlike legs and 4 eyes. With the exceptions of these it looks something like a cross between a mole and a spider. Considered a pest in some areas as they have a large appetite for plant roots that are grown in large farms

Savii Dile: A domesticated and specialty bred species of Crocodile, can simply be described as to a Crocodil as a Jack Russel is to a wolf.

Ioup: A high fibre, bread-esc food made using a species of Corn instead of Wheat.

Lorm: A plant that grows on the bark of trees down into the soil at the base of the tree, slowly eats the tree while giving off a sort of bioluminescence from its fruit. This light attracts herbivores to eat the fruit and spread the seed.

Malpsiori: A herbivorous, treedwelling creature with psionic power points but little if any serious thoughts.

[Sam113097]

In one of my settings, I have spider-crabs, giant, clawless, 8-legged crabs that are used for labor and food by seaside settlements.

Fantasy settings are usually based on medieval Europe, so I like to throw in livestock from other continents. So the farmer doesn't have cows, he has bison, emus, tapirs, gazelles, or pandas.

[Belac93]

Well, I DM'd a world once where the most common beast of burden were flying manta rays, and babies were often carried around on their stingray counterparts. However, that world was mostly flying islands, so there is that.

As a replacement for chickens, I like giant ants. The same size, they lay eggs, have tasty meat, and are bred to remove the hive mind.

[inuyasha]

I've always wanted to have trees with an edible and nutritious bark that can be scratched off, and eaten almost like beef jerky but with a much more bland flavor. I've also thought of it being mildly addictive, so there would be large areas with these trees covered in scratch marks, and groups of rangers/goblins/(insert wilderness encounter here) addicted to it.

[avr]

Can't find the writeup, but I once wrote up Eberron manifest zones as they affected the local minor wildlife. Aggressive frogs with sharp teeth in Shavarath manifest zones, gliding frogs in zones linked to Syrania, etc.

[Balyano]

I had a kingdom where people figured out how to mutate slimes/oozes/jellies and the like and using them for all sorts of purposes became common.

There were strains of ooze that are edible. They come in dozens of flavors. Strawberry flavored, peanut flavor, chocolate, beef, asparagus, bubblegum, grass, vomit, espresso, etc. People are always mutating them on the one in a hundred chance that a new flavor is produced. To make more you take a sample and feed it some organic waste.

You go into a persons house and you will find jars and jars of them.

One jar might contain an ooze than you let loose onto your naked body. It eats the grime from your flesh, eats your lice, moisturizes your skin, makes you hair shiny, deodorized your arm pits, and makes you smell like lilacs or tropical breeze or mountain pines. When you are finished you scrap them off and put them in their jar.

Another jar might contain a mint flavored ooze that likes to clean your teeth for you. Spit them back into the jar when your done.

And of course why do the dishes when that lemon scented ooze can get them squeaky clean in no time.

Let's not mention why these people don't use toilet paper.

[LordotTrinkets]

Let's not mention why these people don't use toilet paper.

Hey! Don't passively dismiss the Bidet Buddy like that! :small wink:

I made this sort of subterranean wooly caterpillar that is a popular food source for dwarves, dark elves, and other underdark creatures. The little critters live around natural vents and feed off of the little bacteria that live there, just like a yeti crab.

[KoyukiTei13]

Balyano
Re: Fluff-building: Mundane flora and fauna

I had a kingdom where people figured out how to mutate slimes/oozes/jellies and the like and using them for all sorts of purposes became common.
There were strains of ooze that are edible. They come in dozens of flavors. Strawberry flavored, peanut flavor, chocolate, beef, asparagus, bubblegum, grass, vomit, espresso, etc. People are always mutating them on the one in a hundred chance that a new flavor is produced. To make more you take a sample and feed it some organic waste.
You go into a persons house and you will find jars and jars of them.
One jar might contain an ooze than you let loose onto your naked body. It eats the grime from your flesh, eats your lice, moisturizes your skin, makes you hair shiny, deodorized your arm pits, and makes you smell like lilacs or tropical breeze or mountain pines. When you are finished you scrap them off and put them in their jar.
Another jar might contain a mint flavored ooze that likes to clean your teeth for you. Spit them back into the jar when your done.
And of course why do the dishes when that lemon scented ooze can get them squeaky clean in no time.
Let's not mention why these people don't use toilet paper

Oh, goodness, I absolutely adore that idea. Cute little slime lumps in little jars just bein' cute and colorful and useful!

I'd love to have an index of ideas like this to just pull from when I need something to distract PCs with for a moment. The homebrew index on the site seems to be severely lacking in these things.

How about flowers that glow during new moons? You could call it a 'Lanternbloom' or something. Specially bred fireflies could fill a lantern need, too. Different colors and such.
Or ivy that is as strong as iron and weaves through itself to be solid - you could use it as a building material or reinforce-r for natural disasters. Ironivy?

What else could be bred/domesticated to be useful? Big cats for those big rats that keep eating your crops? Mammoths? Alpacas?
I mean, what do people eat now that could be eaten in a fantasy setting?

Also, would dire creatures be eaten? What would they taste like? Would they differ from the normal variation?

How do you guys feel about magical farm creatures, like phoenixes or unicorns, or fruit-tree dryads?

[Belac93]

I had a kingdom where people figured out how to mutate slimes/oozes/jellies and the like and using them for all sorts of purposes became common.

There were strains of ooze that are edible. They come in dozens of flavors. Strawberry flavored, peanut flavor, chocolate, beef, asparagus, bubblegum, grass, vomit, espresso, etc. People are always mutating them on the one in a hundred chance that a new flavor is produced. To make more you take a sample and feed it some organic waste.

You go into a persons house and you will find jars and jars of them.

One jar might contain an ooze than you let loose onto your naked body. It eats the grime from your flesh, eats your lice, moisturizes your skin, makes you hair shiny, deodorized your arm pits, and makes you smell like lilacs or tropical breeze or mountain pines. When you are finished you scrap them off and put them in their jar.

Another jar might contain a mint flavored ooze that likes to clean your teeth for you. Spit them back into the jar when your done.

And of course why do the dishes when that lemon scented ooze can get them squeaky clean in no time.

Let's not mention why these people don't use toilet paper.

This is profoundly disturbing. But awesome.

I like psionic moles.

[Medival Wombat]

My players always asked me for details if they entered a new tavern, so I came up with a few drinks:

Elven Wine: Despite being called wine, this drink does not contain alcohol. It is a sweet liquid of a blue-ish colour, harvested from tropical flowers and fruits. Some of them are psychoactive, and create the feeling of being drunk, without the actual poisioning (and likewise without any kind of hangover). It is slightly addictive though...

Dwarven Ale: Mostly brewed out of fermented roots, mushrooms and rats, dwarven ale is if fact more of a soup than a beer. It was invented as a emergency ration, but due to his strong, smokey flavour, the cheap cost and the possibility to store it over 25 years, it became a common drink in the human realms.

Gaias Tears: A fancy and expensive green drink that smells like summer, made out of morning dew, herbs and the honey of emerald bees. They are served in very small glasses with a glaced emerald bee inside. Normally they remove the sting, but the thrill that they might not makes the drink so intresting (If you get stung by an emerald bee, you enter a dreamfilled coma- and sometimes you´ll never wake up again).

[Yora]

I just posted a few animals I've made two days ago.

[quinron]

Though I've never thought to use them in games, there are a lot of wild and wacky creatures in American tall tales. Pretty mundane, for the most part, and while most of them are presented as one-of-a-kind or at least incredibly rare, there's no reason they couldn't be everyday creatures in a fantasy world - small benign creatures like cactus cats and teakettlers can add a lot of flavor.

[Balyano]

Though I've never thought to use them in games, there are a lot of wild and wacky creatures in American tall tales. Pretty mundane, for the most part, and while most of them are presented as one-of-a-kind or at least incredibly rare, there's no reason they couldn't be everyday creatures in a fantasy world - small benign creatures like cactus cats and teakettlers can add a lot of flavor.

Don't forget the Hoopsnakes and Jackelopes.

[quinron]

I did create one interesting creature for the world of a novel I'm trying to write.

Razorcats are bog-dwelling felines, about the size of bobcats, with exceptionally long, back-curved claws (which is where they get their name). While they're definitely intimidating, they're overspecialized for swimming and snagging fish or lizards from the water - even sheathed, their claws are too ungainly to allow them to climb trees or even walk very quickly on land. They're smart enough, though, to break into the locals' storehouses and raid them for fish and meat, which makes them some of the most troublesome pests in the bogs.

[kraftcheese]

I always thought the way Morrowind handled mundane flora/fauna was great: the kwama egg mines, netch ranches, and general use of big invertebrate critters and reptiles as domesticated animals was loads of fun, and gave you a real sense that you were in a strange alien land.

(For those who don't know, kwama are gross eusocial...things that live in big burrow/hives and have their eggs harvested for food and netches are big gas-filled jellyfish kept for their leather.)

[Balyano]

Sometimes when I'm bored I like to pick animals and imagine if a mass extinction were to occur what they would evolve into to fill the niches. I tend not to name the animals though.

One animal after going through several stages involving both an aquatic and arboreal stage ended up looking like if a bear had a frogs proportions, canines the length of your hand and a beak. Had a highly developed larynx, keen ears, good memory, and a knack for imitating sounds like a mocking bird. Sometimes when you are in the forest you will hear a woman scream or a baby crying, or even someone yelling ''HELP!!!'' You rush to the rescue and then POUNCE! a quarter ton of muscle leaps onto you from the bushes a dozen paces away and bites your throat out.

[lsfreak]

I mostly like mixing up real-world counterparts when it comes to flora and fauna. Pick some crops from the Mediterranean, some from East Asia, and some from Mesoamerica, and forbid others from each: wheat and rice but no or oats or corn; peas, tomatoes, peppers, and spinach but no soy, potatoes, squash/melons/cucumbers, or Brassica cultivars; grapes, walnuts, and apples but no stone fruits (cherries, almonds, or peaches); and so on. Maybe throw in something that was never really domesticated or isn't widespread in our world, like lily, passionfruit, or camas. Or base foods off different ancestors, like a chicken based off a Himalayan monal rather than a red junglefowl.

[Yora]

I always thought the way Morrowind handled mundane flora/fauna was great: the kwama egg mines, netch ranches, and general use of big invertebrate critters and reptiles as domesticated animals was loads of fun, and gave you a real sense that you were in a strange alien land.

(For those who don't know, kwama are gross eusocial...things that live in big burrow/hives and have their eggs harvested for food and netches are big gas-filled jellyfish kept for their leather.)

Morrowind has had a huge impact on my worldbuilding. The whole agriculture and economy element is quite well done.

[Balyano]

I mostly like mixing up real-world counterparts when it comes to flora and fauna. Pick some crops from the Mediterranean, some from East Asia, and some from Mesoamerica, and forbid others from each: wheat and rice but no or oats or corn; peas, tomatoes, peppers, and spinach but no soy, potatoes, squash/melons/cucumbers, or Brassica cultivars; grapes, walnuts, and apples but no stone fruits (cherries, almonds, or peaches); and so on. Maybe throw in something that was never really domesticated or isn't widespread in our world, like lily, passionfruit, or camas. Or base foods off different ancestors, like a chicken based off a Himalayan monal rather than a red junglefowl.

Yes, this. Makes me think of a goblin culture I came up with that domesticated dandelions. They had varieties that had extra large seeds, like sunflowers. They had varieties where the flower stalk was as thick as celery and as tall as a grown goblin. The had some where the leaves grew in extra full and was used for salad. And some with extra thick roots for eating. Some with extra large flower buds that you eat like brussel sprouts. And some with extra sweet tasting flowers for desert. And for non-food purposes varieties that produced far greater quantities of latex for use as a type of rubber. They had other domesticated plants, but the dandelion filled a central role in their culture and was an important symbol of their civilization. Their art was full of them and in their heraldry those in the highest office (whether king, emperor, dictator, ect) took the dandelion as their crest. And dandelion leaves where popular in the heraldic symbols for lower nobles.

[Landis963]

This isn't mine, but the world of The Stormlight Archive series has been stated by the author to be based on tide pools and coral reefs - biomes which are normally inimitable to human life. So you have giant crustaceans (ranging from dog-sized "axehounds" on up), plants that are closer to coral structures than anything else (e.g. a "dendrolith" that looks cosmetically like the Joshua Tree of the Mojave Desert but is hard as rock except for the flowers and leaves on the very ends of its branches), and of course, waves (in the form of hurricane-strength "highstorms" that barrel through everything every few days).

[GorinichSerpant]

If I ever run a D&D campaign I'd have chameleons carry the dragon type. They wouldn't be more powerful or important, just a little detail. Mainly because they look somewhat dragon-like especially when they are of the horned variety and nifty biological features like telescopic eyes, color changing skin and special feet.

[Bohandas]

Sometimes when I'm bored I like to pick animals and imagine if a mass extinction were to occur what they would evolve into to fill the niches. I tend not to name the animals though.

That sounds pretty interesting.

[quinron]

After Man by Dougal Dixon is a great source for fantastical creatures to fill every ecological niche. As far as real-world evolutionary sciences are concerned, they're complete nonsense for the most part, but for a fantasy world, they're brilliant.

[kraftcheese]

After Man by Dougal Dixon is a great source for fantastical creatures to fill every ecological niche. As far as real-world evolutionary sciences are concerned, they're complete nonsense for the most part, but for a fantasy world, they're brilliant.

Ah, good 'ol Dougal; he's responsible for what is probably my favorite image in the world of speculative fiction.

Also, here's another goofy one and this one (as a warning, don't look at this one if you're squeamish/can't deal with body horror because it makes me feel a little bit ill...gross fleshy patterns) might be a cool monster idea...the upright one anyway.

[Balyano]

After Man by Dougal Dixon is a great source for fantastical creatures to fill every ecological niche. As far as real-world evolutionary sciences are concerned, they're complete nonsense for the most part, but for a fantasy world, they're brilliant.

Always one of my favorites. Another good one to remember is the Epona Project. Was introduced to it by a tv special ''anatomy of an alien'' (also known as ''natural history of an alien'')when i was a kid, there was also Greenworld, but I dont think I was ever able to find the stuff for it outside of the special. Planet Furaha is another great one.

[Bohandas]

Some ideas

-Desert dwelling versions of Non-desert animals that have evolved or been engineered to be able to use Create Water once per week

-Centimeter wide dire paramecium

-Carnivore-like beavers that feed on treants and similar creatures

-Carnivore-like bunnies that eat various animate plants

-mobile plants of animal intelligence (instead of the typical case of them either being non-intelligent or having human-like intelligence)

-Any of the crazy fruits and vegetables from the cartoon Chowder

-Animal and magical beast-only strains of spawn forming undead

-local fauna near magical academy pick up spell like abilities from magical radiation

-fire retaining underwater cacti

-sand/soil retaining(?) floating (ie. flying) cacti

-balloon-like underground cacti

-animal equivalents of tieflings

-dragon descended animals with sorcerer spellcasting ability despite retaining animal intelligence (and highest castable spell level at a given sorcerer level is effectively one lower as all spells require silent spell)

-Fluffy Ponies (look it up)

-There was a modding utility for dwarf fortress that generated plants with random names and properties. That might be useful. I'd go on their modding board and poke around for it but I got kicked off of their forum on trumped up charges.

[Knaight]

I tend not to use these for conventional fantasy, but I run a fair amount of space opera, which means alien ecosystems. Highlights have included massively overgrown eels used as draft animals to pull boats, rock burrowing beetles that used gold as a micronutrient and accumulated a lot of it in their shells (which had niche mining applications that would be a lot less niche if moved to a setting which didn't have asteroid mining), forests of leafy plants that were somewhere between trees and root vegetables, and low density floating grazing animals adapted to gas giants. All of these could be moved to a fantasy game, though some make the move more easily than others.

[Bohandas]

-Monotreme and marsupial lookalikes/analogs of all mammal species

-Placental playpi

-Snakelike mammals

-Elflike versions of standard forest animals (lower con, higher dex, no sleep)

-Dwarflike (stability and/or poison resist and/or darkvision) and gnomelike (prestidigitation dancing lights or ghost sound SLAs) versions of burrowing and cavedwelling animals

-Animal equivalents of merfolk, like a lion with a shark tail or a mouse or hamster with a goldfish tail

EDIT:
-Cabbage-based analogs of every fruit, vegetable, and spice in the world (Did you know that IRL cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower are all either different parts and/or different breeds of the same plant, and they're all closely related to both mustard, turnips, and canola)

EDIT:

-D&D has a lot of motile plants, so how about something in the opposite direction, a "forest" whose vegetation is more closely related to sponges and corals than to any plant

[Bohandas]

Going with fantasy logic, any creature steongly associated with one of the classical elements could have relatives or equivalents associated with a different classical element

-Birds, for example, are kind of associated with air, and so for water you could have a fully aquatic kind of penguin that never comes up on land, for fire you could have pheonixes or maybe some kind of bird that lives in the sun, and for earth you could something similar to Diggles (the emblematic burrowing bird creatures from the computer game Dungeons of Dredmor)

[Deepbluediver]

As a replacement for chickens, I like giant ants. The same size, they lay eggs, have tasty meat, and are bred to remove the hive mind.

That's...interesting.

I'd say that it would seem difficult to confine something with the mobility of an ant, but then I started thinking about all the other animals (and plants) we've drastically altered to domesticate them and it seemed more reasonable.