For those who don't know what Mimics are, Mimic are dungeon monsters that mimic a piece of furniture or a prop. The iconic mimic is a treasure chest, but they can be a book, a chair, a door. They turn into something that humanoid adventurers might want to pick up or handle.
They will then use their sticky secretions to hold the target in place and either bludgeon the target death, bite the target to death, or maybe barf acid on their target.
I cannot get this out of my head. I think I fought one or two Mimicks as a player but I never felt like throwing one at the players when I was the DM.
I never did a a lot of dungeons. I tended to prefer wilderness adventures. I was far more into Dragons than Dungeons.
But anyway, Mimics have an ancient history having been created by Gary Gygax himself. Gary Gygax freaking loved dungeons. He liked traps and monsters and a Mimic is essentially a hybrid of a trap and a monster. This basic concept has been copied or
mimicked in many video and computer games.
Mimics have gone through a wide variety of evolution and a lot of source books have alternate forms of mimics.
There is a lot of material on mimics. Maybe I'm overly biased but I can see a pattern.
Phase One: Bro this is a cool monster!
Phase Two: Bro this is unrealistic even in a fantasy setting, but I have a lengthy explanation that can make them make more sense.
Phase Three: Bro, you're over thinking it. It's a monster to surprise the player with. It doesn't need a lengthy backstory. Just roll with it.
(repeat Phase One)
My biggest beef with most Mimic lore is that Mimics need to eat a quantity of meat equal to a human being every week or two. I don't think a Mimic could keep this up very long in a populated area before they get wise. If you have a Mimic in a dungeon, they are likely to go months or years at a time before they have prey to eat. At least in
my dungeons.
Mimics are cool but I just have trouble wrapping my head around something of animal intelligence trapping and killing at least two human beings a month.
So I'm thinking if I want to include Mimics, I am going to lean more towards fantasy and away from sci-fi which is what D&D Mimics are.
Here is short and entertaining overview on the evolution of Mimics.
I kind of want to have everything in Scarterra and I kind of want everything in Scarterra to have a backstory, though it needn't be an elaborate backstory. For instances, Scarterran pegasi were created because Korus wanted his favored mortals to have flying steeds to help them fighting demons during the Second Unmaking. That's about 20 words of explanation.
Meta Reason: Mimics are a cool monster for dungeons.
Story Reason: Why do they exist in Scarterra?
I believe the official D&D backstory. Is "Who cares get off my back! Oh wait it's
mysterious."
Dark Souls has about a
three and a half minute backstory for Mimics.
My two standard origins for dungeon monsters are
(1) Greymoria created this because she likes to watch monsters eat people or
(2) a wizard created this monster because he wanted unorthodox guards of his lair and then the monster got loose and went feral and starting breeding.
Just to mix it up, sometimes one of the Nine
other than Greymoria creates a random creature but Greymoria creates about as many new monsters as the other eight deities combined.
Likewise, occasionally a mortal other than a wizard creates a monster. In Scarterra, cockatrices were created by a farmer hating druid that thought it was funny to turn a chicken into deadly destroyer.
I'm thinking that Scarterran Mimics are a type of sprite. For a recap, sprites are to Fair Folk what animals are to humans.
Making them a sprite gives them a simple origin story, and it explains away my realism problem of them not being able to feed themselves. Fae creatures don't need as much as food as material plane creatures.
Anyway, not all of my Fair Folk shapeshift, but shapeshifting is far from uncommon in Fae Home.
My thought is as the beasts of Fae Home evolved into proper sprites, some of the creatures tried to copy the Fair Folk's shapeshifting ability.
My thought is that to a Fair Folk, Mimics are almost cute. Sure they can bite, but Fair Folk are so used to shape changing that Mimics are blatantly obvious to them.
A lot of Mimics are wandering the wilderness but sometimes Fair Folk keep Mimics as pets and sometimes get them to mimic certain things for fun or aesthetics.
It's when Mimics enter the material plane that they become dangerous. Also, most Mimics that make it into the Material Plane are older and more experienced at mimicking things.
The fact that humans and other mortals get fooled by Mimics and occasionally killed or injured by them is amusing to the Fair Folk. The primitive humans actually rely on their
eyes and
ears, they have practically no mystical senses at all.
Also, Fair Folk and by extension sprites, kind of indirectly feed on psychic energy from mortals. Sure a Mimic can catch a deer by pretending to be a salt lick, but they get more nourishment from a mortal because they feed on their fear and surprise, not just their flesh.
There you go, that is an example of how my thought process works when it's time to add a new monster.
That's the basic concept. I haven't statted them out yet.
I'm keeping the Mimic's ability to shape change into things people (and to a lesser extant animals) want to touch but I'm not sure if I want to give them sticky tongue like pseudopods or some other form of movement and attack.
Speaking of adapting 5th edition D&D.
@Bowser talked about making a 5th edition Scarterran adventure campaign.
I thought about dipping my toe in the water and figure out which domains are eligible to what clerics then my job hit the floor at the sheer number of domains that now exist in 5th edition, so I thought screw that!
While I have only have nine gods (and the option to be a pantheon caster) the Nine are multifaceted enough that most domains can probably apply to several of them. For instance, Oracular domain could apply to everyone.
Though I'm sure I'm such a control freak that I will disagree with something Bowser comes up with, but I guess some media adaptation is required.
Among other things, my system of D&D10 has a different advancement scheme.
The more PCs advance, the more multi-faceted characters become and gradually player characters become more political the farther they advance.
In D&D, the stronger monsters you can fight until around 20th level you can punch a god in the face. In D&D10, the most powerful things are roughly equivalent to a 9th or 10th level challenge, nothing above it really.
So a Scarterra with high level characters is bound to diverge from my Scarterra, but I guess I should be ready to roll with the punches and see what someone else comes up with. Especially since I am big on the public domain being expanded.
