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I think we may be dealing with two similar words here...
For the record, the word used in The Hobbit is "Attercop". Move a couple of vowels around, drop the "o", and you have "Ettercap" -- which is totally not legally actionable, except that if you change a couple of letters around and use it yourself, TSR/WotC/Hasbro will totally sue your pants off.
Attorcroppe (alternate spelling "attercroppe") means "little venom head" and is described in multiple sources as a fairy that looks like a small snake with human arms and legs and walks upright.
If these are the same word, I don't know how to reconcile Tolkien's spiders with the snake-fairies.
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AND they are adorable, especially snakes. Anyway, I'm not sure this would count, but does the Ethergaunt have any kind of fictional precedent or mythological counterpart? They seem pretty original to me at least when it comes to physical appearance.
Warforged are an incredibly dumb idea that turned out to be amazingly great.
I wouldn't use them anywhere but in an Eberron game, but there they feel perfectly in place.
The word most probably is. The current word for corpse in modern standard german is "Leiche". (But it's pronounced very differently than it looks to English speakers.)
But the D&D monster is almost taken straight from a mythical sorcerer from Russia. Koschei the Deathless has been portrayed in images as an incredibly old man who looks almost like a walking skeleton, and he is some kind of sorcerer, and also immortal because he has a phylactery exactly as the D&D monster.
Koschei was also described in Frazer's The Golden Bough, which is still one of the ultimate introductory works on mythology. And I think Gygax even included it in some "Further Reading" lists in the back of some of his D&D books.
They really don't resemble Phyrexians much at all other than being mechanical. Phyrexians are nightmarish fusions of metal and flesh which worship brutal efficiency as the ultimate form of perfection and want to convert all other life into themselves in painful and horrific ways. Warforged kinda fall short of that bar.
The cult of the Lord of Blades kinda matches up with that, though they're more about exterminating non-warforged than conversion.
Personally though I've never been too fond of the Lord of Blades, he seems like an old sci-fi cliche (robots that become sentient will instantly want to wipe out humanity) for no reason other than "Well, a lot of boring, uncreative DMs will come up with this plot anyway, so we might as well include hooks for it in the setting." At least they sortof avoid the cliche by making the cult an extremist minority rather than something every Warforged automatically is a part of.
I always assumed that that is just what people think the Lord of Blades is about. With Eberron, it should be a lot more complicated and not so much about Destroy all Humans but more about a well defended warforged nation.
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I always assumed that that is just what people think the Lord of Blades is about. With Eberron, it should be a lot more complicated and not so much about Destroy all Humans but more about a well defended warforged nation.
Five Nations (though I believe Dragon Magazine had it first) has stats and other information on the Lord of Blades and his actual base of operations. If him being misunderstood was really the intention, you'd think they'd include that information there. You would also think his clergy (as detailed in Faiths of Eberron) would also be clued in on this.
I do agree though, the Lord of Blades being such a simple and shallow villain is a real disappointment considering part of where Eberron shines is in subverting these stereotypes.
Last edited by Craft (Cheese) : 10-02-2012 at 02:15 AM.
If it helps, I imagine that the Lord of Blades probably saw a lot of bad things happen to Warforged because their makers saw them as "expendable." It's a cliche in and of itself, but its fairly easy to give him a reason behind his madness.
Of course, if I ever made a D&D setting, Warforged would by and large be separated into an extremist sect following that setting's version of the LOB, while most Warforged would live in what amount to monasteries - not so much like the D&D Monk, but more like real monks. They'd still have their own martial arts form, but they'd be less "Arrogant Kung Fu Guy" and more like, I'unno, the Air Nomads from Avatar, but as a genderless race of robots seeking harmony with the earth they were built from.
I thought your description of the Githyanki was cool right up until the part where you said they keep red dragons as pets (Because really, it should be the other way round.)
and as for a unique D&D invented creature, the humble mimic, and the huge variety of similar beings that disguise themselves as objects deserve a mention.
Nope, Tiamat made Red Dragons serve Githyanki because Tiamat wanted a deal with Disapater so Gith (the legendary hero) was imprisoned at Dis (that Hell-ish city) as a deal. Gith's powerful soul empowers Disapter.
Red Dragons don't get a say. If they tried to repel, Tiatmat has 100% ownership of Red Dragons can just destroy the rebels. Not like Bahamut is gonna advocate for them.
Also, I really like the 3e Nerra just because it's so cool to see something based on one of the more obscure monsters out there, in this case Borges' "Fish in the Mirror"
Also, speaking of Borges, did you know that the Peryton was not from actual Greek myth, but was likely invented by Borges? Its first recorded appearance was in Borges' "Book of Imaginary Beings," and while he talks about getting his information on it from several different sources, note that all those sources seem to have "mysteriously" vanished or been destroyed. And if you know anything about Borges, you know he loved describing works of fiction that didn't exist...
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Re: Best D&D original monsters out there?
