My Fantasy Bestiary:Dire Vermin

My Fantasy Bestiary: Dire Vermin

Dire Vermin are a magically augmented animal commonly found in a city’s less well regulated areas, they are the size of a medium dog, have the head and front feet and tail of a rat, the ears of a rabbit, the body and legs of a hare, and porcupine like quills on their head neck and shoulders.

Dire Vermin exhibit many powerful features, they can with effort fit through any hole large enough for their head, are very resistant to falls, and they have nearly unmatched resilience against poison and corrosion.

Mother Dire Vermin were long mistaken for being aggressively cannibalistic towards their young, this is in fact a very advanced use of their abilities, the mother instead isn’t consuming them but carrying them in her stomach relying on their resilience to protect them from her digestive fluids, which not only allows her to cary the entire litter safely and warmly, but also uses her stomach acid to clean them.

Dire Vermin are demi social animals, they have little territorial instinct and will easily cohabitate but lack a hierarchy, beyond joining into a swarm to attack intruders or prey, they are surprisingly intelligent, older females will instead of vomiting acid onto their young who have out grown stomach baths simply vomit into their mouth coating their tongue in acid and licking the youths to clean them.

Dire Vermin are often used as guard animals by gangs who will use chemicals to keep them trapped in cages until releasing them onto intruders or for pit fights.

Dire vermin are the Apex companion for Backstreet Rangers, providing them with a smart dexterous agile and sneaky partner, capable of learning to do amazing feats like untie knots or use keys, at the expense of their quills making belly rubs the only method of properly explaining that they are in fact the goodest boy or girl.

I may or may not have created this as a tribute to @oyeedraw

Jacques: Now listen here i may be a neglectful abusive asshole but none of my kids got offed by a disease we beat 100 years ago, i’m a terrible person not a monster.

Marcus Black: I am a monster and even i got my kid vaxed,

Raven: Tai and me had Yang’s vaccinations scheduled before she was even born.

Tyrion: Wait! there are people who don’t get their children vaccinated? what are they crazy or something?

i bet jaques is anti vax

these folks done good,

Ex-villains taking the same skills and character traits that made them effective villains and using them for good.

This is so under utilized, 99% of reformed villains instantly become normal heroes instead of keeping their old personality and get nerfed into the ground

Things I love about the “villain turns good” trope:

Ex-villains graduating to “weird uncle” status.

Ex-villains and hero(es) turning the events of previous battles into bizarre inside jokes.

Ex-villains embracing the power of friendship and love.

Ex-villains putting up walls and keeping to themselves until the heroes teach them what it means to trust someone.

Ex-villains messing up and being forgiven because redemption is a process, not an endgame.

Ex-villains being shy and uncertain about their new place as a hero.

Bonus: Ex-villains hiding behind their hero friends during moments of shyness and uncertainty.

Ex-villains being tempted back to the dark side only to realize how much their newfound friendships mean to them.

Ex-villains pretending to return to the dark side, and using their villain cred to be a mole/saboteur on the heroes’ behalf.

Ex-villains taking the same skills and character traits that made them effective villains and using them for good.

Ex-villains defeating current villains by being better at those skills and traits than they are.

Ex-villains being rejected by almost everyone except the very few willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Ex-villains being ferociously protective of those few.

Ex-villains convincing old allies and friends to follow them to the light side.

Ex-villains helping their hero friends through guilt and self-doubt by reminding them that your mistakes don’t make you and it’s never too late to turn things around.

Ex-villains receiving unconditional trust and affection from someone small and innocent, and having no idea what they’re supposed to do with that.

Ex-villains reuniting with heroic loved ones that they don’t have to fight against anymore.

Ex-villains looking around at their new friends and their new home and having to sit down and ride out a sudden wave of powerful emotion because they can’t remember the last time they felt content.

We don’t talk enough about poor Summer Rose Court Blake during her path, like Ruby’s already a flustered lil disaster who just wants to smooch her Cat GF, but poor Blake actually has a clue what to do with a woman so she’s  got to be feeling it way harder, but the whole damn world is just built on keeping her from macking on her precious Flower Wife,

Gen:lock prediction

The team is informed they have a new batch of candidates coming in, one of them turns out to be Driana, her and Julian see each other and are just silent before calling out “Your ALIVE!” Driana then rushes to embrace him but passes right through his hologram, and instead glomps Cammie whose just like “Shite i’m gay!”