monsters

'Á Bao A Qu is a Malayan legend described in Jorge Luis Borges's 1967 Book of Imaginary Beings. Borges claimed that he had found the legend in the book On Malay Witchcraft (1937), by C.C. Iturvuru.

The Á Bao A Qu lived in the Tower of Victory in Chitor. The Tower of Victory consisted of many spiraling steps, from the top of which one can see the most beautiful landscape in the world. The Á Bao A Qu waits on the first step for a man brave enough to try to climb up. Until that point, it lies sleeping, a translucent blob, until someone passes. Then, when a man starts climbing, the creature wakes, and follows close behind. As it progresses further and further up, it begins to become clearer and more colorful. It gives off a blue light which increases as it ascends. When the climber ascends halfway up the Tower, the Á Bao A Qu's tentacles become visible. But it only reaches perfection when the climber reaches the top, and achieves Nirvana, so his acts don't cast any shadows. But almost all the time, the climber cannot reach the top, for they are not perfect. When the Á Bao A Qu realizes this, it hangs back, losing color and visibility, and tumbles back down the staircase until it reaches the bottom, once more a colorless, dormant blob. In doing so, it gives a small cry, so soft that it sounds similar to the rustling of silk. The creature has no eyes, but can see with its entire body. When touched, it feels like the fuzz on the skin of a peach. Only once in its everlasting life has the Á Bao A Qu reached its destination at the top of the tower.'


It is not normal to spend all night sitting in one's room with no food making up monsters. But that's what I just did.

A Gwickling is a seven-to-eight-foot-tall, troll-like being from the island of Brog. A Gwickling’s features are covered in a film of pink gloop which is produced by their pores and is said to repel the huge insects which their native land is infested with. They have three nostrils, from one of which a peach-coloured slime continually drips. Their single eye is usual placed high in what serves as their face, and consists of a heavily lidded black orb, generally surprisingly small for the large expanse of flesh it seems to float in, rather like an egg yolk in a fried egg. Their mouths have thick, rubbery rims, and open in all directions at once rather than simply up and down as usual mouths do – this is due to an umbrella-type arrangement in their large jaws, which allows them to swallow their prey whole (including hooves and antlers). They have two very long arms which end in two (per arm) fleshy, pincer-type appendages rather than hands. They have short, fat, hairy legs on which the pink goop tends to congeal, often crusting over around the bottom, which creates a protective, elastic encasing, which helps create the huge bouncing leaps with which they move. Their thought patterns are known to be minimal, although their instincts are keen and shrewd. A Gwickling will eat almost any living thing, although they are known to be partial to mushrooms. They tend to travel alone, although they do have tribal gatherings in order to combat large numbers of threats.

Gwickling have the following traits and abilities:

1. They have poison arrows.
2. They can create sand at will, which they use as a weapon.
3. They control strange shadow creatures which are believed to be the souls of those they have killed.
4. They tend to kidnap children rather than killing them.




The Nalim (or, Nahleem) are creatures which are supposedly the offspring of a piranha and a hyena. The early monk Gwen Lin wrote this description in his legendary work, ‘Beyond the Gates of Oden’:

‘Like a piranha, it has a huge and terrifying jaw and a slim, finned body, the rest of it being in all ways equipped as that of a hyena, including fur and legs armed with claws. On the ground, they have a distinctively bear-like gait, but usual they prefer to use their magical gifts to swim through the air, much like their fishy ancestors. They are distinguishable by their spotted fur coats, from which we derive their name: 'nah', meaning furred, '-lim', meaning fish.’

Nalim tend to travel in groups of over twenty or so individuals, and if one somehow finds itself alone it will swiftly go mad, turning its frustration at being isolated in on itself, eventually chewing itself to pieces. They have short front legs and longer back ones, like hyenas, which trail below them when they fly, as they are propelled as fish, partially by magic and partially by the movements of their bodies, and thus have little use for them. Their plentiful teeth are more like those of a hyena in individual shape, but are arranged like those of a piranha - by organising their teeth so that the bone-crushing premolars do not interfere with the meat-slicing carnassials to the rear, nalim can crush bone without blunting the carnassials' blades. They are inexplicably given to chewing off only small portions of their prey, but their practice of travelling as a group means that this can be effective and lethal to even large groups of people. They are opportunistic feeders like hyenas, with the ability to process and obtain nutrients even from skin and bone. As a group they are notable for their patterns of dominance, co-dependence and submission. Their general appearance is like that of a shoal of misshapen fish, except that they are in the air. They have two magical abilities: the first is being able to fly, the second is to control their size, and so, although they are usually quite small, about the size of one’s hand, which is the smallest they can go, they can grow to be the size of a large dog. To defend oneself it is necessary to wear heavy, tough amour, shield oneself effectively, or take arms against them – it is also rumoured that they are put off by the scent of lavender.




Borogoves: Small creatures resembling sea urchins which run on extendable legs, their feet being rather like flamingos. Their natural habitats are beaches. Their spines are poisonous and hard, sharp as needles and projectile. They come in all colours, on beaches they tend to be yellow, beige, or brown, but once taken from their natural habitats they often become brightly coloured, particularly pinks and blues. In their natural habitats they generally have their numbers kept down by freak storms or by each other, but once taken away from beaches their natural cannibalism stops and they breed hugely, often overrunning areas until everything on them is consumed and they start to resemble beaches. No features or markings apart from their spines and extendable legs and feet are noticeable, so it is impossible to tell their gender or individuals apart, aside from by their colour. It is also hard to discover any sort of mouth, so it is hard to tell how they consume, anything, although digestive juices have been known to be squirted from them onto their victims. The only noise they make is squeaking, which they emit generally from their center.


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Can you imagine meeting one, though?! Why do I do things like this? Why couldn't I just write a nice story about some kid going on holiday and jumping off a cliff? Maybe I can write some sort of myth about the Nalim eating some wizards. Fucks sake. The scent of lavander?? Doesn't even make any sense biologically.