(Comm) Chimeria - A Teaser

Our universe, great as it may be, is but one of many in the twisting network of lines of space and time. Many worlds have been and many more will be, all with their own distinct settings and histories. But what if there were times when universes came together? What if these universes combined?
Imagine, if you will, a single realm composed of many, the outcome of several separate worlds finding themselves combined and meshed into each other. In many cases they could not differ more in their current time period, regional aesthetics, and certainly not the life forms that populate them. And yet, here they are, side by side, banded together by a twist of fate... and combined into a single united whole, populated by a great many combinations of beings great and small.
This is the World of Worlds. This is... Chimeria.
If there’s any word that can be used to describe the realm of Chimeria, ‘mismatched’ is probably the most fitting. The landscapes and continents look like they were assembled haphazardly from different landmasses when viewed from above; irradiated city ruins and fey realms can be separated by just a few dozen miles, and medieval peasants rub shoulders with alien races, magical beings straight out of mythology, and hyper-advanced robots light years ahead of our own modern science. All of these bizarre mismatched beings and places coexist here, but they are far from static themselves - this diaspora has produced some truly bizarre cultures as people separated by thousands or even millions of miles, centuries of time, or even the border between science fiction and enchantment come together and mingle into something entirely new. And nowhere is this hybridization more prevalent than in the monsters that stalk the world in all of their myriads of shapes and forms; while more conventional creatures do exist, almost every beast to inhabit Chimeria is a strange hybrid between two vastly different creatures, from deadly dragons and fickle fey to mysterious aliens and prehistoric beasts.
How did this happen; how could such a patchwork realm come to be? The answer seems to lie in the Twenty Great Gods - immensely powerful beasts said to be the very pinnacle of their respective breeds. While the specifics of the tale vary from telling to telling, the legend goes that these twenty beings forged Chimeria from errant scraps of all manner of other worlds, piecing them together before peopling the land with their mortal kin - as these twenty gods interacted with one another, however, so to did their lesser descendants, giving rise to the countless hybrids we see today. Whether or not there’s any truth to these legends, of course, remains to be seen - however this strange world came to be, it and its mishmashed inhabitants here to stay in all of their bizarre glory.

Ogre/Unicorn: Cycerr
Height: 20-25 feet tall
Length: n/a
Weight: Up to 12 tons
Setting: Fantasy
Danger Rating: 7/10
Attacks & Abilities: Incredible strength, goring charge, tool use, regeneration
One of many primal aberrations born in the laboratories of Matia Island before its collapse, cycerr are enormous modified ogres that were originally bred for use as living siege engines, imbued with strength eclipsing even their more mundane kin at the cost of their already rather simple intellects. Now they sit near the top of the island's food chain, devouring just about anything they please - only the largest dinosaurs and the fiercest predators are able to oppose them.
Standing well over 25 feet tall and weighing more than twice as much as an elephant in the very largest individuals, the chimeric origins of the cycerr are plain for anybody to see - their hindquarters and legs are those of an enormous ungulate, complete with cloven hooves in the place of feet and a covering of thick matted fur coming in a variety of browns and grays, while the enormous burly upper body is covered in thick leathery dark grey skin that creases into pleated folds like that of a rhinoceros. The massively-built arms reach almost to the ground and sport thick but blunt claws on each of its three-fingered hands, while the head is brutish and monstrous, only vaguely humanoid and with horse-like ears, a squashed ape-like nose, prognathous jaws with a significant underbite and sharp almost boar-like tusks, and most famously a single glaring eye set in the middle of the forehead, just underneath a large, sharp rhinoceros-like horn that can measure over a meter long.
Solitary brutes, cycerr tend to migrate between the mountains and the coastlines of Matia Island, combing the latter habitat for washed-up marine life and foraging in the former for vegetation and for large animals to feed upon, not to mention smaller predators that they can bully away from their kills; while they can subsist fairly well on browse thanks to extensive digestive pipework, the one-eyed brutes greatly prefer meat, be it freshly killed or half-rotten, and are equally comfortable with hunting for themselves or just scaring smaller predators away from their kills. The powerful arms and the sharp horn are the cycerr's primary weapons - the beast tends to attack by throwing rocks, utilizing tree trunks as clubs, or just beating its prey to death, but another favored tactic with larger prey is to lower its head and charge forward with surprising speed, letting its mass and momentum drive its lethal horn deep into its prey's body as it impacts with tremendous force before causing even more damage by ripping said horn out of the victim's body. With significantly smaller prey, its strategy is decidedly simpler; grab and smash against whatever hard object is in reach until the unlucky foe stops moving and/or the cycerr gets bored and decides to do something else with its new toy. Their armored skin is quite difficult for most weapons to get through, and those blows that do manage to cause injuries don't tend to leave much of an impact - like certain salamanders, cycer exhibit powerful regenerative capabilities, recovering from wounds at an accelerated rate and even regrowing lost extremities within just a few weeks. And yet even these hulking brutes are not the rulers of Matia Island...

ROUS/Bloodsucker: Nosfrat
Height: n/a
Length: Up to 12 in
Weight: 5 - 18 oz
Setting: Fantasy, Modern
Danger Rating: /10
Attacks & Abilities: Numbing venom, iron teeth, natal infection
The underground city of Grymskrypt is often called 'The City of the Dead,' and not without reason - while most of its population is made up of the various races that call Chimeria's subterranean world home, it is also home to the world's largest concentration of free-willed undead, from vampires and zombies to even rarer strains like penggalangans and manananggals. For the most part, these undead citizens have integrated quite well into urban life, free from the danger of the burning sun with a roof of stone over their heads and able to satiate their hunger in the same way as the rest of Grymskrypt's more monstrous inhabitants, but their presence also brings its own share of problems with them, not the least of which being the accidental arrival of nosfrats.
Peculiar vermin hailing from Lugosilvania, nosfrats arrived in Grymskrypt by way of stowing away in the belongings of traveling vampires that quickly adapted to their new home and bred to near-plague proportions - completely blind and shunning warmer temperatures, the cool darkness of Grymskrypt is a perfect habitat for them. In terms of general appearance, these animals most closely resemble the mundane shrew, but are many times larger at about the size of a large rat and lack tails - their fur is a pale silvery-grey, bordering on colorless in some individuals, and it isn't odd to see bald ones either. Like their smaller kin, the head takes up a considerable portion of the total body length, up to a third in the most extreme cases, and it is here that the more monstrous aspects of the nosfrat are most obvious: the eyes are totally absent, with just smooth skin over the sockets where they would be, while the ears are large and bat-like in order to compensate for its lack of eyesight and the snout ends in a short 'trunk' like that of an elephant shrew. The nosfrat's mouth, meanwhile, nearly bisects its entire head and is filled to the brim with dozens of razor-sharp shark-like triangular teeth, colored the reddish-brown of dried blood and constantly scraping against one another as the mouth opens and closes to keep them sharp. While they don't have canines to speak of, their teeth are constantly growing, getting lost, and being replaced - teeth that remain in the maw for long eventually grow and thin into long slightly hooked 'fangs' almost like the teeth of a sand tiger shark, giving the illusion of vampire-like fangs.
As their fearsome dentition would imply, nosfrats are pure carnivores, and are just as gluttonous as their tinier cousins; their keen senses of smell and hearing zero in on virtually any small creature unlucky enough to be in the immediate area and guide the shrew to uncover and devour its quarry, even if it's buried under several inches of rock and dirt. Nothing is too small for a nosfrat's appetite, from the tiniest insect to animals nearly twice its own size - all are merely flesh for the little beast to sink its metallic teeth into and inject its paralytic venom to keep its prey from running too far while it eats. In larger numbers, however, these mini-monsters grow much bolder, swarming livestock and sapients alike and biting off chunks of flesh from legs, hands, ankles, whatever they can reach - their venom isn't really effective on human-sized targets, but it can induce localized numbness that allows nosfrats to feed upon sleeping prey without their target even knowing what's going on until they're waking up with small bloody bite marks all over. Even undead, normally avoided by most predators, aren't immune to the appetite of a nosfrat; back in Lugosilvania, vampires without a secure spot to spend the day would often find themselves swarmed by blood-hungry nosfrats that tore open their veins to steal their hard-drained blood for themselves. Needless to say, they're a nuisance at best and a threat to public safety at worst, and Grymskrypt natives have long employed practically every method they can think of to cull the shrews' numbers from poison and traps to trained teams armed with fire magic to burn out nests and even attempting to engineer a predator that can efficiently dispose of them. Nevertheless, nosfrats stubbornly refuse to die out, giving birth to large litters and growing up almost supernaturally fast to replace any of their number that are killed off. In fact, they don't even really need a partner to reproduce - while they aren't vampiric themselves and reproduce sexually, nosfrats can further bolster their numbers by parasitizing other small creatures through their bites. Female rats, mice, and other such vermin that are gravid with pups when they are bitten will suffer under what can only really be described as a gruesome derivative of vampirism, where their developing pups will rapidly grow into new nosfrats and promptly eat their way out of their surrogate mother's womb, typically killing the host in the process.

Living Ooze/Megafauna: Glacial Hulk
Height: Up to 20 feet tall
Diameter: Up to 80 feet across, although larger and smaller specimens have both been recorded
Weight: Many hundreds of tons
Setting: Fantasy, Lost Land
Danger Rating: 7/10
Attacks & Abilities: Virtually invulnerable save for the core, stationary ambush, bull rush, snow cover creation
One of the more peculiar forms of undead in Chimeria, a glacial hulk is created when vengeful mortals die out in the frozen tundras and taigas, their spirits lingering even as their bodies are buried under feet of snow and ice. Rather than rising as a typical ghost, however, the spirit diffuses into the environment itself, travelling for miles if necessary until it finds a suitable vessel in the form of a large animal carcass that had been similarly buried in the snow (Some claim to have found shamans that knowingly create these creatures through a ritual sacrifice, but these rumors have little concrete evidence behind them). The most common hosts are mammoths, woolly rhinos, and other primal beasts, although smaller animals like deer are also possible candidates, but the exact species matters little to the spirit - as it possesses the carcass, its body bloats with supernatural power as it becomes one with the surrounding ice, and the entire snowdrift bursts free as a newly created glacial hulk, imbued with a cold hatred of all who would intrude upon its frigid realm.
When staying still, little can distinguish a glacial hulk from just a big mound of snow, but when in motion, it resembles nothing less than a living miniature avalanche of muddy snow, slush, and chunks of ice that simply thunders forward with no regard for whatever may be in its way - every so often, a bit of frostbitten furry flesh may be seen peeking out from the mass, but the entire animal core is never fully revealed. Indeed, the majority of this undead's body is just magically-animated snow and slush that cannot be very easily harmed, with blown-off or cut off pieces simply slithering back to reattach to the glacial hulk's greater whole again. Indeed, the enormous creature seems to be fully aware of its nigh-invulnerability and cares relatively little about attempts to fight back against it save for swatting aside those that get too close to its fleshy core for comfort, just continually rushing onwards as it single-mindedly bulldozes any intruders that disturb its perceived territory, which can range for up to several hundred miles of otherwise empty tundra. When tracking these interlopers, the undead creature can be surprisingly clever, utilizing its mass to erase their footprints, laying in wait for them to pass by it before ambushing them, and even detaching flurries of snow from its bulk to shroud the area in a cloak of near-whiteout conditions to split up groups of foes and conceal its enormous bulk. The only real weakness of a glacial hulk is the frozen megafauna that serves as the nexus for the energies keeping its body together - destroying the core will lay the spirit within to rest. Of course, actually getting through the mass of snow is easier said than done, with fire magic and explosives being the best bet to clear away the hulk's exterior and get to the core.

Feathered Fiend/Alien: Shannagaster
Height: 12-15 feet tall at the shoulder
Length: 25-30 feet
Wingspan: 50 feet
Weight: Roughly 2 tons
Setting: Modern, Fantasy, Off-Planet
Danger Rating: 6/10
Attacks & Abilities: Ripping beak, grasping talons, carrying off, ear-piercing screech, glowing wings, interstellar flight, telescoping eyes
Bizarre alien avians found scattered all over the world, shannagasters are curious flying beasts that bear a passing resemblance to the pterosaurs of Chimeria's ancient lands, but there is no mistaking them for anything other than otherworldly beings, despite their avian body plans. 
While the creature's wings are definitely like those of a bird or a pterosaur in shape and are similarly supported by a bony arm, they differ considerably in structure - rather than feathers or a fibrous membrane of skin, shannagaster wings are composed of thick layers of flesh and skin like the fins of a great manta ray. In the air, these wing muscles provide extra lift through 'rippling' motions even as the creature simply soars, and flex and tense as the beast flaps its wings to curve or straighten the wing to better direct the flow of air; when on the ground, they are folded and held much like the wings of a bird as the shannagaster struts on the ground upon a pair of powerfully-muscled theropod-like hind legs, with each foot sporting a large thick central digit like the big toe of an ostrich but tipped with a hooked claw that's kept on the ground and two considerably smaller opposed outer toes that flank the middle one, kept off the ground and each sporting similarly shaped but even sharper claws. This peculiar toe arrangement aids the shannagaster in perching and in carrying off prey like a massive alien version of an owl or an eagle.
The torso itself is thick and robust, with a deep chest to support the powerful muscles of the wings and a row of blunt backswept bony projections like visible vertebrae along the spine that peter out at the base of the tail - said tail is fairly long and thick, tapering towards the end, and splits into three near the base, with another thick scalloped membrane extending between all three tailtips and being used to further steer the shannagaster as it flies.
The head is perched at the end of a long stooped vulturine neck and is shaped somewhat like a horse's head, but with skin pulled tight over the bone, no mane or external ears, and the lips and cheeks of a normal horse being replaced by a sharp beak with a wickedly sharp hook on the tip like that of a vulture, as well as sharp knife-like teeth in the actual jaws. The bulging red-rimmed eyes seemingly look in two different directions at once, and can actually extend a few inches on snail-like eyestalks to get a better view of the shannagaster's environment. The alien's tongue is extremely long and dexterous, and splits into nearly a dozen extra tongues just above the base that further aid in fine manipulation - with all of the tongues extended at once, it looks like the shannagaster's mouth is full of slimy grey-green tentacles. In terms of coloration, the beak is steely metallic grey while the eyes are a dull watery yellow; the skin over the head and neck is colored a raw-looking red, while the body itself is a silvery-purple with lighter whites, blues, and greens along the undersides of its wings and a light grey underside; when the creature is excited, its wings flare with bioluminescent golden flecks along the edges of the membrane. In terms of sheer size, meanwhile, they are absolutely enormous, with the average shannagaster sporting a wingspan greater than 50 feet and standing over 15 feet tall while on the ground.
Able to live and thrive in virtually all but the hottest of environments, shannagasters are opportunists, just as happy to feed on a cart full of fruit as they are with raiding livestock pens or snatching up large aquatic prey. They're considerably smarter than their somewhat goofy appearance would indicate, and are known to figure out how to get into even locked barns and chicken coops if given time to think - some shannagasters have even figured out how to use sticks and rocks as crude tools in the same manner as crows. Most famously, though, these alien flyers greatly enjoy alcohol, and breweries in spots where a shannagaster has made its home will find themselves the subject of frequent attacks by the thirsty beast. Some towns have managed to use this fondness for booze to their advantage, and have formed a sort of partnership with their local shannagasters - they leave out regular offerings of spirits, and in exchange the alien leaves the populace alone and instead targets other local animals that could otherwise harm the locals.
Capable of not only surviving but flying through the vacuum of space, shannagasters are also found upon both of the Patchwork Planet's moons, and are occasionally tamed and mounted by brave souls to traverse the enormous distance between these moons and Chimeria's surface - of course, special precautions must be taken to make sure that the shannagaster's passengers don't simply suffocate as soon as the 'bird' leaves the atmosphere.

Sea Monster/Kaijusaur: Ketosaur
Height: Up to 50 feet tall when on the ground and with head held high.
Length: 140 feet
Weight: 120 tons
Setting: Lost Land, Modern
Danger Rating: 9/10
Attacks & Abilities: Swallow whole, shearing jaws, scalding steam, coil, tail smash, headbutt, breaching, claws, grappling
Descended from true dinosaurs that took to the sea many millions of years ago, the ketosaur is easily among the largest known species of Chimeria's dinosaurs, with most measuring well over a hundred feet long and even larger specimens not being uncommon. Few are the sea monsters that would challenge these prehistoric brutes, and many are the ships that they have sent to the bottom of the sea.
Generally speaking, ketosaurs look less like dinosaurs and more like a massive upscaled version of a Basilosaurus. The body is thick, elongated, and almost serpentine, tapering slightly towards the similarly long, serpentine, and tapering tail, which is tipped with a diamond-shaped vertically-aligned fin. The hind legs are totally gone, shrunken into tiny bones that can only be seen when examining the monster's skeleton, but the front limbs are still very much present in the form of a powerfully-muscled pair of arms, each ending in a three-fingered webbed hand adorned with vicious meathook-like claws - the sail found in most spinosaurs is gone, save for a row of small fins down the back and tail like the tiny dorsal fins of the great rorqual whales. The chest and torso are broad and deep to accommodate the necessary muscle power for these mighty arms, while the neck is shaped like that of a typical spinosaur's but far thicker and meatier, the better to support the enormous head - it can be held out of the water in a typical sea serpent-like pose, but when swimming it is held straight to streamline the beast's body as it swims. Said head still has the elongated crocodilian jaws of its more terrestrial ancestors, but it is much thicker and far more massive, built more like the head of a pliosaur or a mosasaur or Basilosaurus itself - it even has a similar setup to the pliosaurs on the roof of its mouth that allows it to smell for underwater prey. The beast's nostrils are mounted between the high-set crocodilian eyes in the same fashion as a whale or a phytosaur, while the long thick lipless jaws are lined with massive curved teeth longer than machetes. The skin is actually smooth like that of a whale to reduce drag with tiny, tiny scales covering it that can't really be felt unless one deliberately rubs their hand against the grain, although bumpy bone ridges do still exist over the eyes; in terms of coloration, it's a deep ocean blue or sea green with silvery flecks, with the underside being paler to provide countershading camouflage.
Cruising through warm prey-filled waters, everything is on the menu for a ketosaur - they'll inhale schools of fish through suction feeding, stalk pods of whales, dive deep in search of giant squid and other abyssal treats, and most famously hunt down other sea monsters that can often grow to be just as large as they are. Their massive jaws are less suited for the grab-and-pull bite of their terrestrial cousins and more like a pair of giant shears, crushing and cutting through its prey to shear off massive chunks of flesh and even slicing smaller prey in half from the sheer power behind its bite. With larger animals, the ketosaur barrels forward with incredible speed and brings its powerful arms into play to wrestle with its victim, burying its lethal talons into the target's flesh to hold steady as it inflicts bite after terrible bite and even coils and squeezes with its mighty tail - it can even exhale a superheated blast of steam from either its nostrils or its mouth, scalding and cooking its prey alive. Ships don't fare much better as the enormous saurian batters vessels with its tail, boils sailors alive with steam, and gouges the hull with its massive jaws and claws; some accounts even state that the ketosaur will try to clamber onto the ship itself, using its sheer mass to topple the vessel into the water. Individual human swimmers are thankfully too small for the saurian to really bother with chasing them down one by one - as such, the survivors of ketosaur attacks tend to be fairly safe from the monster itself, although the smaller predators that frequently trail behind it in hopes of feeding on the scraps generally aren't so picky.
While they primarily spend their lives out at sea, ketosaurs can and will haul out onto dry land to bask or to raid colonies of seals and other such animals; they're typically solitary, and only come together to breed and give birth at bays and the mouths of rivers, baring litters of well-developed, more serpentine young each the size of a crocodile that immediately proceed to swim upriver into freshwater ecosystems to mature in a comparatively safer environment than the ocean proper. Juveniles take about a decade to reach maturity and ready themselves for their trek back to saltwater when they are roughly a third of their full size, but until then they are formidable predators in their own right - many riverside communities have been plagued by their predations on livestock and the occasional sapient child, as even though they aren't too mobile on dry land, they can still haul themselves along like mudskippers with surprising speed in pursuit of choice prey, though in most cases they're content with simply lunging out of the water's edge and dragging startled victims to their doom.