God Slayer (creature)

God Slayers are a species of absolutely gigantic insectoid carnivore, divided into two sub-species; the standard predator-sized Lesser variety, and the mountainous Greater species. They appeared in Felarya only a few years ago and settled in the colder areas of the continent. They're strange in that they very rarely bother attacking small creatures like humans and nekos, and instead actively hunt other, smaller predators or large herbivores, both sentient and bestial. They are a threat to small prey as well, due to their sheer mass. While they normally stay confined to the colder areas of Felarya, every now and then one will wander into the jungles and plains. Their sudden appearance makes it clear that they came from another world. So far as anyone knows, there's only two Greater God Slayers and around ten Lesser ones currently in Felarya, but that's been enough to notably impact the food chain.

GENERAL APPEARANCE
God Slayers resemble six-legged spiders with bulky bodies and very thick limbs. Their heads are especially large, with mandibles that can stretch open to swallow prey. The mandibles act as fingers that stab into the prey's flesh and push it further and further down the God Slayer's maw, until it's in far enough that the mandibles can close behind it and seal it in. On the end of its legs are hand-like appendages, its "feet", used to grab onto surfaces to help it balance and move. Its head is wide and triangular, with four beady eyes situated in the center of its forehead.

GREATER GOD SLAYER
Size: 400 feet tall at the shoulder, 800 feet long (on average)
Threat Level: Critical
Habitat: Frost Peaks
Appearance: The Greater God Slayer is covered in thick white hair with milky bluish eyes. Its feet are very wide, with a thick membrane in between the four fingers. Due to the sheer bulk of its body, its head cannot articulate; to compensate, it has a very long prehensile tongue that it deploys to feel around and ensnare and drag in prey.
Hunting Habits: The Greater God Slayers are simply too big to rely on speed or stealth; they move at a snail's pace and a several-hundred-foot-tall mound of hair doesn't fit in anywhere, even in Felarya. Instead, they shoot out their tongues at lightening speed, ensnaring their prey and dragging it in to be swallowed whole. Should the victim manage to get out of the tongue's reach, a jet of scald liquid is shot from its tip, which incapacitates prey long enough for the God Slayer to get close enough to devour it.

They feed primarily on Ice Kensha Beasts and Snow Tigers (they've been known to wipe out entire packs in a single feeding frenzy), but there has been one occasion where one was seen devouring a smaller Ice Wyrm. They're so huge that they can crush small buildings beneath thier feet without even being aware the structure was there, making them very dangerous to the Miratans as well. Again, it cannot be stressed enough how fortunate it is that there only seems to be two of these behemoths in all of Felarya.

LESSER GOD SLAYER
Size: 120 feet tall at the shoulder, 400 feet long (on average)
Threat Level: Very High
Habitat: Imoreith Tundra, Elifga Valley
Appearance: The Lesser God Slayer has a much longer and thinner body than the Greater variety, its body covered with a thick layer of pale brown hair. Its six small black eyes are arranged on a circle on its forehead. Its feet consist of six long, clawed fingers, and its thin and light enough that it can pounce on prey and grab it with its feet.
Hunting Habits: The Lesser God Slayer is lesser about the relentless and overpowering assault of the Greater ones and more about surprise and stealth. Unlike the Greater God Slayers, which seem to totally unaware that small beings like humans even exist, Lesser God Slayers are very aware of humans- they like to capture adventurers and use them as bait to lure in Nopsids, Bereffs, and small Jotuns and Elves, crippling the bait and putting them somewhere out in the open where their cries will lure the victim while the God Slayer quietly hides nearby. Once the victim is close enough, the God Slayer suddenly pounces out and bites down, violently thrashing the prey around and breaking their bones before swallowing them. The God Slayer then leaves the bait there to die. If it can't find bait, the Slayer will find a good hunting spot, dig itself in, and ambush whatever comes by. They're also known to feed on Taranei, but will not feed on human-sized prey unless desperate. They are fast, but not very quit or graceful once they get running, and just the sight of a predator bigger than themselves will send them running the other way.

THE ISSUE OF BREEDING
God Slayers seem to avoid each other- each individual seems to wander wherever they think food might be, and if they run into each other, they'll go around each other without any interaction and carry on their way. Since they're an alien species and since they're so dangerous, little research has been able to be done on their breeding habits. However, they must reproduce somehow. Unless the dozen or so now roaming Felarya are all the same gender (which is incredibly unlikely), surely they'll breed eventually, although no signs of sexual dimorphism have yet been documented. If they do, how long will the gestation period be? How many young will be produced? How quickly will they grow? It's a genuinely pressing concern of the Miratans that the two Greater ones might breed.

Another concern is the intelligence displayed by the Lesser species. Right now, they're kept in check by their fear of giant Jotuns and Elves, because surely a lone Lesser Slayer would stand little chance against a small group of those. But say they realized the only thing keeping them from a totally safe hunting ground with no shortage of food are a few predators bigger than them; what if they were to join forces? A cornered individual has been observed to ward off as many of three attacking Jotuns by swiping at them with its feet, which can inflict deep gashes. Now if five or six were to launch a sneak attack on a Jotun or Elf clan in the night...

INSPIRATION (Fourth Wall Breaking Powers ACTIVATED)
Ever seen The Mist? You know that giant tentacled spider thing that walks over the car at the end? I based the look of the God Slayers on that. Then there's my love of insectoid aliens barging in and messing everything up, like the Zerg from Starcraft. Finally, correct me if I'm wrong, but Felarya seems to me to be a place where no matter how big you think you are, there's always something out there bigger than you- it's an unpredictable and ruthless world where nothing is on top. The Greater God Slayers are the epitome of this- you know those giant worm monsters that can swallow buildings whole (Ice Wyrms)? Yeah, Greater God Slayers eat those. The Lesser ones use humans as bait to lure in 80 foot trolls, which they then eat. I think they really kind of epitomize the savageness and strangeness of Felarya's food chain.

Okay, I know I'm missing some things here. What do you guys think? I think I've come up with something pretty cool, but then I about shit my pants with excitement when I saw Troll 2 was on Blu-Ray, so you're best off taking what I think with a grain of salt. Opinions?

Hmmm...
Well first, you really do need a different name. Change it as soon as possible. A name like that is not good.

Quote :

GREATER GOD SLAYER

I'd say that these would be too much, but apparently there are only two... If they're dying out then I don't have a problem with them, but if there are more then I'm against this, especially when it comes to thinks like the following:

Quote :

They feed primarily on Ice Kensha Beasts and Snow Tigers (they've been known to wipe out entire packs in a single feeding frenzy)

That kind of thing really puts a dent in the population. I don't think it's sustainable.

Quote :

LESSER GOD SLAYER

These are far better. I think you've got a good solid base concept here, but there are problems.

Quote :

Unlike the Greater God Slayers, which seem to totally unaware that small beings like humans even exist, Lesser God Slayers are very aware of humans- they like to capture adventurers and use them as bait to lure in Nopsids, Bereffs, and small Jotuns and Elves, crippling the bait and putting them somewhere out in the open where their cries will lure the victim while the God Slayer quietly hides nearby. Once the victim is close enough, the God Slayer suddenly pounces out and bites down, violently thrashing the prey around and breaking their bones before swallowing them. The God Slayer then leaves the bait there to die.

This is problematic because it depends on the following false assumptions:

• Humans are stupid
  
• Giants are stupid

That kind of trap isn't going to work on intelligent prey because a lone screaming human sitting in the middle of a clearing is highly suspicious. Giants are not stupid. Well, the ones that survive aren't.

A human in the position of bait isn't really going to comply either. They know that crying out is going to doom them, so they won't do it. Chances are the lesser god slayer will ambush the giant after he/she has eaten the bait.

That aside, I do like how you have made them fearful of groups of Jotun (by the way one Jotun, two Jotun). That makes sense, in a large group Jotun could take them on. You;'ve desribed them pretty well. This certainly is a dangerous creature that is not to be fooled with.

So in conclusion: You've got a nice idea in the lesser ones, just tweak them a bit and change the name.

Sean Okotami wrote:

gt500x wrote:

Well first, the name God Slayer is appropriate but only as a nickname. Second, I just don't see much creativity here. You don't win cool points by scaling things up and adding a lot of "cause for concern." Personally, I don't like that approach.

Is this for your own use or the community's use? If it's for your own, I'd say "whatever, go for it." But if it's for the community I'd say, "Who would want anything to do with these monsters?" I think you need to tone it down if you want people to use your creations.

I hope you think this is a fair assessment.

Edit: Crap, AJ beat me to it.

There's nothing wrong about saying the same thing that the person above said. It's not a contest of "who can post a critique first".

What I meant by that was, there was no need for my post when I was only saying similar things that AJ had. It's redundant and can make the OP feel like we're piling on him/her.

gt500x wrote:

Well first, the name God Slayer is appropriate but only as a nickname. Second, I just don't see much creativity here. You don't win cool points by scaling things up and adding a lot of "cause for concern." Personally, I don't like that approach.

Is this for your own use or the community's use? If it's for your own, I'd say "whatever, go for it." But if it's for the community I'd say, "Who would want anything to do with these monsters?" I think you need to tone it down if you want people to use your creations.

I hope you think this is a fair assessment.

Edit: Crap, AJ beat me to it.

There's nothing wrong about saying the same thing that the person above said. It's not a contest of "who can post a critique first".

Personally I like them. But I agree with everyone else when they say change the name. I would like to voice any helpful critiques but AJ seems to have already voiced several of the questionable areas already. So I shall dig threw...

Quote :

Should the victim manage to get out of the tongue's reach, a jet of scald liquid is shot from its tip, which incapacitates prey long enough for the God Slayer to get close enough to devour it.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't it be more beneficial to these predators to simply spray them with the liquid before hand so that the prey doesn't have a chance to escape? And As of the liquid what is it and what would its properties be? From what I've read it would seem to have a sort of paralytic quality to it in addition to the heat which I assume (I know when you assume you make an ass of you and me) is either from the predators own body heat of from some chemical mixture that happens instead.

Alright that's one issue which could stand to be answered or left alone. So I'll leave that to you to decide. But I really think you should change the name. It's asking for trouble in my opinion which isn't much.

Quote :

Finally, correct me if I'm wrong, but Felarya seems to me to be a place where no matter how big you think you are, there's always something out there bigger than you- it's an unpredictable and ruthless world where nothing is on top.

Yes. Yes it is and there will always be something bigger then these specimens somewhere in Felarya that has yet to be discovered. Which is a truly beautiful thought when you think about the possibilities... Ah but I'm rambling next person?

Loads of thanks to everyone who replied; see, I knew I was missing something. You've pointed out loads of problems with these things that I'd hardly even considered. I've got some major fixing to do here...

First of all, the name; in retrospect, it really isn't a good name at all, is it? I wanted something dramatic, but "God Slayer" is certainly pushing it. I can't think of anything else right now, though... Does anyone have any ideas? I'd really appreciate it.

First and foremost, while I planned to have the big ones be the antagonist in a story I was going to write, I really can't see anyone else wanting to use either of them. I'm considering bringing them in just for that one story, in which they're the "villains", and them killing them all off over the course of it so that there's none left to screw with the food chain any more.

First, the Greater ones. The whole point of them was to scale them up to ridiculous size not for coolness but to throw a wrench into the food chain, but there's enough glaring flaws with them that I'm actually considering not only dropping the "God Slayer" name but also dropping the number down to one and scaling them down a bit in size and appetite. I think one of these things stomping around MIGHT be sustainable, but two is, now that I think about it, definitely overkill; there'd be nothing left after a couple of months or so of them on the warpath. It would be a better plan for the Greater to spray first and drag in with tongue next, thanks walkingbymyself, and as for its properties I'm thinking some sort of superheated paralytic venom created from a chemical reaction.

Next, the Lesser ones. It seems I need to reconsider their entire hunting strategy, maybe ditching the live bait aspect for just hiding somewhere and ambushing prey. But even that wouldn't work in the tundra, and would there even be enough food on the tundra to support even one? Furthermore, now that I think about it, the idea that they all might gang up on the Jotuns and Elves is actually really stupid. They're animals, and solitary animals at that- no matter how smart they are, they're not going to suddenly abandon their very life style to pick a fight with something they're all afraid of. I've just realized I'm scaremongering- I hate scaremongering. So so so sorry for the hypocrisy. I'm dropping that whole concept and overhauling their hunting habits.

Like I said, I've got a lot of fixing to do here. This is like that one really cheap character in every fighting game that all the players complain about that the developers never do anything to balance, only the developers caught onto the the problem before the game's release. Again, thanks for the input. Any other glaring problems I somehow missed?

Well I actually like the Lesser ones using humans as bait, but agree that simply capturing them isn't realistic.

Perhaps, like their Greater brethren, they can also spit a venom, which contains some sort of hallucinogen or other such substance that would cause their bait to become delusional?