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I go back and forth on the idea of evil animals. On one hand, fantasy is full of evil animals - bats, ravens, wolves, spiders, etc. I like the iconic nature of the vampire and his wolf companion. On the other hand, I know that a wolf is no more evil than any other creature and that the idea of evil wolves is a result of bad experiences by farmers and woodsmen. Same with ravens, they're all black and creepy, but that's a very Western idea; to some Native American the raven is hero. And why aren't lions evil? They eat people? Besides, in game terms, animals aren't intelligent enough to be anything other that Neutral.
So here's what my wife and I came up with on our last road trip ...
We started with the idea that most of the "evil" animals are carrion eaters. What if, when a creature dies and the positive energy that gives it life slowly seeps out of the body, a certain amount of negative energy flows in to fill the void. Not enough negative energy to raise the creature as undead (although it could be a similar, just lesser, process), but enough to taint the body. When a carrion-eating animal eats the body, it picks up the taint. The more dead things the animal eats, the more tainted it grows (like birds that eat mercury-contaminated fish).
The more taint an animal picks up, the more dire the consequences. Low levels of taint might just make the animal meaner and more likely to attack people. It might have a creepy aura that spooks horses and other animals. It might be more easily charmed or influenced by evil people. Most "bad" animals would probably never get past this point.
At higher levels of taint, though, the animal might become corrupted and seek to harm other creatures for no reason. It might seek out evil people to become their companion. It might get physically deformed too.
Fresh kills would have to be safe (otherwise everyone would have to be a vegetarian!). A lion or wolf that kills a deer to eat clearly isn't evil.
All this has some interesting implications for humanoid societies as well. Blessing the dead might be more common to prevent the bodies from becoming tainted. Meat packing! Once you get past a hunting society, you need a way to preserve meat. If meat becomes "evil" the older it gets, spells like Bless and Gentle Repose might become part of the butchering process, almost like the way Kosher meat is prepared.
Anyway, the idea of negative energy seeping into dead bodies sparked a whole bunch of other ideas, so I thought it would be fun to share. And most of all, it gave us a possible answer for why some animals are more evil than others. Enjoy.
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Well, under that logic of negative energy seeping into the bodies and tainting whatever eats it, it seems to me that they would eventually be considered more of a magical beast than an animal, due to a supernatural force affecting them. Animals are never good or evil, mainly because they do what they need to to survive. A vulture eats carrion because it lacks the means to kill, or at least not as good as whatever it follows around. For an animal to be evil, it must be self-aware, which means it must be more intelligent than an average animal, which usually means it's a magical beast or an outsider. You could say that after so much taint, it's type changes to that of magical beast or outsider.
How does the taint affect vermin? Wouldn't this process make most of the monsterous vermin "evil" and rats would have no hope of not being "evil". It's a neat idea. I would almost go the other way that if you want evil animals have them in areas of decay and have eaten the flesh of destroyed undead. But that's just me.
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How does the taint affect vermin? Wouldn't this process make most of the monsterous vermin "evil" and rats would have no hope of not being "evil".
In the wild, that's probably true (although grain eating rats and bug eating rats would be safe). Most sewer rats and maggots and vultures, etc. would certainly be tainted with negative energy, making them somewhat evil, but that's the feel I'm going for. In so much of myth and fantasy, they are Evil; I'm just trying to figure out a reason why. And by tying it to eating dead flesh rather than a species-wide trait you can still say that babies are born innocent and a particular creature, raised in a non-dead-flesh-eating environment, wouldn't grow up to be evil. [It's their environment - the poor things didn't stand a chance ...]
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well, yes, they may not have a chance, BUT it is their particular niche in the environment, it is the way they evolved. Plus, I don't really think of any animal as evil. The vulture eats carrion because it's stomach can handle it and other animal's can't, making it a commodity for them. The tiger or crocodile that attacks a person is most likely either hungry or defending it's territory. It all boils down to instincts of the particular animal in question.
Here's a question:
If man says something is evil, does it make it so? Can you call a lion evil for eating your child when you were the one that invaded it's land to make your home?
You mentioned about animals being attracted to evil people, when the people are probably attracted to having that animal. The evil warlord has viscous dogs because they are intimidating. Animals are never evil by nature, but they can be made to do evil things, or used to fufill evil deeds. A viscous dog may be that way because it is starved and has been treated bad by humans, and because of that it may distrust and attack humans on sight. It's all situational, but you could easily justify it by saying that after consuming so much negative energy their type changes, but it shouldn't be something that the animal does on it's own anyways. Maybe if a wolf was forced to kill and eat the rest of it's pack, then it would have that effect.
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Animals are never good or evil, mainly because they do what they need to to survive ... For an animal to be evil, it must be self-aware, which means it must be more intelligent than an average animal
This is exactly what I'm trying to work around. I'm looking for a way to have animals that are pretty much just animals, but also a little bit evil.
under that logic of negative energy seeping into the bodies and tainting whatever eats it, it seems to me that they would eventually be considered more of a magical beast than an animal, due to a supernatural force affecting them ... You could say that after so much taint, it's type changes to that of magical beast ...
This makes a lot of sense. I envision most animals that eat the occasional dead thing would pick up some taint, maybe have a few side effects, but more just general malaise. This would cover most real world animals in most "normal" situations. Unusual situations like vultures gorging themselves on dead bodies after a huge battle or wolves picking apart the bodies after a whole town is wiped out by a plague, those animals might bump up a notch and actually become corrupted or warped, maybe a template that changes them to magical beasts and adds +1 to CR. But I still wouldn't want them to become unusually intelligent. Meaner, maybe more cunning, but not intelligent.
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Smite the evil ones. O YEAH!
a evil template would be best add a few abilities depending upon creature enviorment maybe through together a organization template, for grouping and call it a day..
you dont nessesarly have to change their stats when you call them evil just personality and choice selections. make them more prone to attack to the death were most animals would rather value their life when in a critical situation.
another idea add an ability all of your own ... like an evil rage. mimic rage, then tone it down a litttttle, and you got an interesting template.
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Just design a template that can be added to animals and call it "tainted". It may give them some abilities, make them always neutral evil, maybe even increase their stats. Maybe slightly more intelligent, like by one or two points. Describe the usual behavior and how the template becomes added. It might be through what you said, or maybe certain areas are tainted by ancient, powerful magic that after something has been dead for so long, the negative energy of the corruption seeps into the bodies and anything that eats it would inherit that energy, corrupting them as well. You could even design a spell that is specifically made for corrupting areas like this, like a high level cleric spell, and then also design one that is the complete opposite.
Just some thoughts
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Here's a question:
If man says something is evil, does it make it so? Can you call a lion evil for eating your child when you were the one that invaded it's land to make your home?
In the real world, I totally agree. No animal is evil (except maybe the occasion Homo sapien), they just do what they do to survive.
But in game, I'm looking to figure out and re-create that fantasy archetype of certain animals being evil. Even then, I don't want them to be born that way, so I thought the build up of negative energy might work.
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I don't see any problem with just ruling that some animals are "usually evil" (rats, maybe wolves, definitely pigeons), "usually good" (rabbits?, sheep?), "always chaotic" (cats), or whatever. Malevolent nature* is a common element of many sorts of fantasy. Just make sure you mention the possibility to your players, since you aren't using the default that they might be counting on.
* Evil storms or good rains (for instance) might also be possible, depending on your world design.
Well, under that logic of negative energy seeping into the bodies and tainting whatever eats it, it seems to me that they would eventually be considered more of a magical beast than an animal, due to a supernatural force affecting them. Animals are never good or evil, mainly because they do what they need to to survive. A vulture eats carrion because it lacks the means to kill, or at least not as good as whatever it follows around. For an animal to be evil, it must be self-aware, which means it must be more intelligent than an average animal, which usually means it's a magical beast or an outsider. You could say that after so much taint, it's type changes to that of magical beast or outsider.
Wouldn't it be abberation?
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Wouldn't it be abberation?
Why? Because it's kind of a negative energy mutant?
My first thought would be to keep it as a magical creature because, if this is the way the world works, with negative energy seeping into dead bodies, then it's not really an abberation, just the way things works. Maybe a lot of magical beast were normal animals that, individually or as a species, came in contact with something (positive or negative energy, strong elemental forces, etc.) that changed them. I guess that is kind of an abberation, but the creature type abberation makes me think more of Lovecraft and the Far Realm, with bizarre anatomy and slime.
I suppose. I can't remember, are carrion crawlers abberations?
Something you might find interesting is the idea of "the Devil's creation". I can't remember where I heard this (probably from my wife, who used to be an occult-study nut), but basically there's this theory that goes like this:
After the Creation of all the birds, animals, fish, HD DVD players, etc, the Devil saw what God had done and decided to copy them, but all the creatures he made were flawed, evil copies.
EG:
GOD ---------- DEVIL
Sheep------------Goat
Frog-------------Toad
Dog--------------Wolf (though some people might put those around the other way)
Eagle------------Vulture
Things like that.
It might make for an interesting dualistic game, where you have some animals that are inherently 'unfriendly' or 'unholy', while not necessarily being evil themselves. Maybe only good druids can have your 'good' animals, while if you see a druid with a vulture perched on his shoulder... well, you probably figured he'd be a bad guy anyway.
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After the Creation of all the birds, animals, fish, HD DVD players, etc, the Devil saw what God had done and decided to copy them, but all the creatures he made were flawed, evil copies.
But what's the flawed evil copy of the HD DVD player? An Xbox or a PS3?
Anywho, I read a similar story in an old Tanith Lee novel. The creator made the dog, and it was the most popular thing ever, and the evil dude got depressed and decided to make his own cute furry pet. Starting with a snake, he gave it legs and fur and whiskers like a dog, and ended up with the cat. :)
Man, I just realized that the carrion-eater paradigm means that in the fantasy world using it, hyenas (who sometimes eat carrion, although 80% of their diet is stuff they hunted down) will be evil and lions will be neutral, unlike in the real world, where lion prides about the evilest critter that ever eviled, roaming around killing baby cheetahs and hyenas to eliminate the competition and stealing kills from other hunting species...
The HD-DVD's evil twin is definitely the PS3. But as for evil animals, why not just advance their HD so that their tougher than the average bear, add some nasty scars, and let the bard make a bardic knowladge check to learn the ledgend of "Ripsnarl, the Man-Cruncher"? Maybe the evil animals have been tainted by feeding on evil spellcasters or outsiders? It says in the handle animal description that animals will not regularly attack undead or abberations. I think that evil animals should be the exception rather than the rule. That doesn't make them any less creepy, though; flocks of ravens following the PCs can evoke an atmosphere of menace, or foreshadow a coming battle or slaughter. (They do feed on corpses.)
This idea has real potential for an evil (non carrion-eating) DM...
I enjoy sometimes playing against type (Good Spiders, Evil Eagles, Good Ghouls, Evil Elf Maidens etc.) but the idea of accumulated evil potential has merit. In order to make it less predictable, perhaps some normally "tainted" creatures instead have the "purifier" template: Carrion animals supernaturally empowered to draw off the negative energies from the dead and harmlessly discharge them.
"Ugh! What are those birds on the body?"
"Those be the Pale Ravens of Talchot, lad. The gods send them down to watch over the remains of their most holy champions."
"But... But they're eating him!"
"A bird's got to eat, laddie."
Now I have the ravens from Resident Evil: Apocalypse in my mind.
What's creepier than a zombie? A zombie with crows eating him as he shambles towards you.
What's creepier than that? The matte white sheen in the crows' eyes as the zombie gets closer.
Have you heard of Quoth. As he says he is "in it for the eyes". (some scrolling necessary).
And Eddie Izzard gives a pretty good turn on the evil dog.
Of course it was the evil giraffe that had me spitting leaves through my nose.
Just design a template that can be added to animals and call it ...
Frickin Lasers.
just a thought O:)
Now I have the ravens from Resident Evil: Apocalypse in my mind.
What's creepier than a zombie? A zombie with crows eating him as he shambles towards you.
What's creepier than that? The matte white sheen in the crows' eyes as the zombie gets closer.
I never saw RE: Apolcypse. Was it any good? Aagh... sudden memory of those stupid dogs from RE 4. For those that dont know, they have haste, improved trip, and reach.
Thats a good idea, though... I might make a template "Carrion Crow Corpse". They would get natural armor, and every time you attacked, you would drive away more crows as you removed HP so by the end you have an empty skeleton and a swarm of necromanticaly charged crows looking for THE FLESH OF THE LIVING. Undead are so much fun...
Hey whatever floats your boat but the idea of certain animals being inherently evil or at least closer to evil bugs me. One reason is that the same animal gets viewed in somewhat different ways by different people or even the same people at times. Cats, for example, were the only animals monks in early Christian monasteries could keep in the monastery (rat catchers are always welcome around granaries, which was a not inconsiderable function of early monasteries) Then in the late middle ages cats became associated with witches and vampires (the bat and vampire association was limited to nonexistent before Dracula was published, and cats and wolves were the alternate forms of vampires in many pre Dracula vampire stories) Then the early colonists in North America started having problems with the brown rat and cats rose in respect once again and nowadays are more popular as pets than dogs in a number of places. Also cats have been seen by some Buddhist groups as the repository of the soul of a person who in their previous life attained the highest state of spiritual awareness and when the cat died the soul entered Paradise and in fact, in the coronation ceremony of King Prajadhipok of what was then Siam, now Thailand in the early 20th century, a cat was the representative of the previous king, although some other Buddhists felt cats were cursed because they didn’t weep at the Buddha’s passing and in Islam cats were well regarded because Mohammed had a beloved cat named Muezza who was mentioned in the Koran (or Quran). To finish up with cats in many places a black cat crossing your path is seen as bad luck but I have heard that it is regarded as good luck in some parts of the British Isles. On other animals: Bats have been seen by the Chinese as bringers of good luck (and eat quite a large number of mosquitoes and various types of flies which you'd think would be a mark in their favour everywhere), wolves were widely respected in many places (and of course were the ancestors of domestic dogs) and even snakes, rats and vultures have earned respect in different cultures (plus don’t forget if the carrion eaters don’t get to a corpse, bacteria will, creating risks for disease outbreaks or epidemics or we’d be up to our eyeballs in carcasses if nothing got rid of them) and the list of mythological interpretations goes on but animals are to me neutral and shouldn’t be inclined towards any alignment other than true Neutral.
That's terrific. One of the reasons I like it is the taint has nothing to do with the deities. Unlike "the jackal is the chosen pet of the God of Decay", it's not arbitrary. It might make carrion crawlers a lot scarier, and crocodiles less so.
Except that crocodiles don't mind eating carcasses that have been dead for a while so they'd probably be contaminated using this idea
After the Creation of all the birds, animals, fish, HD DVD players, etc, the Devil saw what God had done and decided to copy them, but all the creatures he made were flawed, evil copies.
But what's the flawed evil copy of the HD DVD player? An Xbox or a PS3?
Anywho, I read a similar story in an old Tanith Lee novel. The creator made the dog, and it was the most popular thing ever, and the evil dude got depressed and decided to make his own cute furry pet. Starting with a snake, he gave it legs and fur and whiskers like a dog, and ended up with the cat. :)
Man, I just realized that the carrion-eater paradigm means that in the fantasy world using it, hyenas (who sometimes eat carrion, although 80% of their diet is stuff they hunted down) will be evil and lions will be neutral, unlike in the real world, where lion prides about the evilest critter that ever eviled, roaming around killing baby cheetahs and hyenas to eliminate the competition and stealing kills from other hunting species...
Lions do a fair amount of hunting and ALL predatory species kill young of competitor species if they can find them: hyenas kill lion cubs, leopard cubs etc. Bears, wolves, pumas, lions, hyenas, coyotes, leopards, tigers, wolverines all kill the young of species that compete with them. Heck this sort of behaviour is practiced against the offspring of rival males within the same species by all of the above and by babbons, lemurs, and even chimps too. So lions aren't anything special there and can't be used as proof of evil since by that logic so many species would be evil that the plane would be massively tilted to the lower planes
Actually this also gets to another element that bugs me alignment wise: lycanthropes. To me lycanthropes should be able to be of any alignment so werewolf paladin is entirely possible (sort of the dragon alignments in Eberron idea-no racial inclination to any alignment) Yeah mythology starts to play into it but there are a great many things in D&D that deviate significantly from traditional ideas. But that's just me YMMV
Actually had a thought about this while I was walking the pups. A lot of stories involve the original animal to be punished for some misdeed. All their offspring were then cursed for this deed (ie Arachne was turned into a spider for being vain (and good at weaving)). So from a story point of view, you can have 'evil' critters because of their ancestor's association with evil beings or deeds.
I know there are a number of these stories, but i can not remember any right now. Know any other cursed critter stories?
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If it's dangerous, it's not the kind of creature good people are going to be around, they're likely to kill it or scare it off.
Where as an evil person is likely to keep something that's dangerous because they want to feed you to it. :)
Hence...
Predators and parasites = evil pets.
Fluffy and useless = good pets.
Actually had a thought about this while I was walking the pups. A lot of stories involve the original animal to be punished for some misdeed. All their offspring were then cursed for this deed (ie Arachne was turned into a spider for being vain (and good at weaving))...
Actually, I think that Athena was mad because Arachne said that she was a better at weaving than Athena, so Athena went and ripped up Arachne's special tapestry. Arachne felt bad and killed herself, and, feeling guilty, Athena brought her back to life as a spider.
Fluffy and useless = good pets.
This reminds me of Denis Leary's routine on animals...
"What are you?"
"I'm an otter. I do cute human things with my hands."
"...You can go."
"What are you?"
"I'm a cow -"
"Get on the truck! You're a hamburger and a baseball glove!"
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Actually had a thought about this while I was walking the pups. A lot of stories involve the original animal to be punished for some misdeed. All their offspring were then cursed for this deed (ie Arachne was turned into a spider for being vain (and good at weaving)). So from a story point of view, you can have 'evil' critters because of their ancestor's association with evil beings or deeds.
I know there are a number of these stories, but i can not remember any right now. Know any other cursed critter stories?
Snakes, cursed to crawl on their belly eating dust. From ye Olde Testament.
Buddhists have a legend about cats, but I'm not sure if they're considered cursed or just not terribly nice.
I'm sure legends for critters like vultures could be invented whole cloth. 'The hooded eagle, famous for it's bright and majestic crest of feathers, cursed for abandoning the god of justice on the fields of battle and flying away to feed, had it's noble crown stripped away, leaving its head bare and naked flesh, and cursed never again to feast on anything other than the battlefield dead...'
Same deal for crows or ravens, the legend saying that they used to be brightly colored and resplendent, with feathers that shone with their own light and the power of speech and song, created by the gods as guides to the dead to lead them to the afterlife, but when they forsook that duty and stood around gabbing while souls wandered free and become lost and trapped between worlds, their feathers were stained with the blackness of their lying tongues, their light extinguished and their power of speech replaced with racous cries that held no meaning.
My brain locked up before I came up with one for rats.
There's actually a story where ravens used to be beautiful, but when they stole fire for the humans their plumage was singed, becoming black. But that's more like a 'Prometheus' curse than a 'vulture' curse.
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Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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It's not a "cursed critter" exactly, but a cool story anyway:
The Moon, Spider, and Hare
Moon was sad. She had spent many years looking at the people on Earth and she saw that they were afraid. They were afraid of dying. To make them feel better she decided to call on her friend Spider to take a message to them.
"Spider", She said, "The people of Earth are afraid of dying and that makes me very sad. Please tell them that they will all die sooner or later but it is nothing to be scared of."
So Spider slowly made his way back to Earth, carefully picking his way down on moonbeams and sunbeams. On his way he met Hare.
"Where are you going Spider?", said Hare.
"I am going to give the people of Earth a message from Moon.", he said.
"Oh, you'll be far too long. Tell me the message and I'll take it there for
you", replied Hare.
"OK! Moon wants the people of Earth to know that they will all die......",
Spider started.
"Right! Tell the people of Earth that they will all die", said Hare. And
with that, Hare disappeared off to Earth.
Spider gloomily made his way back to Moon and told Her what had happened. Moon was very cross with Hare and when he came back to tell them that he had given them the message, she hit him on the nose! And that is why to this day, the Hare has a split lip.
"You had better take the message yourself", said Moon to Spider.
And to this day, Spider is still carefully carrying Moon's message and
spinning the web in the corner of our rooms - but how many of us listen?
woot excellent stories all.