So, getting my Beholder this morning made me do some more research into RPG creatures, and it's an amazingly inbred bunch. Most RPGs steal from D&D, and D&D stole a lot from Tolkien and the rest from just about fucking everything else. Displacer Beasts, for example, were stolen from van Vogt's
Voyage of the Space Beagle.
Anyways, it got me wondering, since we're a totally nerdy bunch here - what fantasy creature (or alien race, we don't discrihate here at EB) do you feel has been criminally underused, and you'd love to see enter the "pantheon" of well known fantasy creatures?
For me, it would be the alzabo, from Gene Wolfe's
Book of the New Sun.
The red orbs of the alzabo were something more, neither the intelligence of humankind nor the the innocence of the brutes. So a fiend might look, I thought, when it had at last struggled up from the pit of some dark star.
The alzabo is a bear-like creature that consumes its victims, taking their memories and knowledge into itself. More than that; their personalities: after consuming a victim, the alzabo is able to speak as they would speak, in their voice, to others. It's unclear whether the alzabo is a perfect mimic, or if its victims' personas live on within it, somehow unaware of their horrific fate. They are creepy as all hell!
