Building Monsters, the basics

(note: After consideration, I decided to not send out the Think-tank to anyone, and would rather simply continue with what I am doing in revealing to you all little by little. I pray you understand.)

Over the past few days I have been intensively enjoying a piece of my 'teenagerdom', the nintendo strategy game series Fire Emblem, namely the gamecube classic Path of Radiance and the subsequent Wii sequel Radiant Dawn. I see, very easily, why I enjoyed them so much, the storyline is pretty classical, nothing too new, but the strategic elements, the different styles of speech depending on region, some of the more interesting characters, and so forth, it all works well to the way I think. 

When I beat Path of Radiance recently, the epilogue mostly has the main character talking to each of the various people that he interacted with and fought alongside. It wasn't much to see overall, but I noticed something interesting, just how alike many of the characters are. Some of the guys, such as one archer and one beast man in the form of a raven, had near exact personalities. I thought 'how can they get away with that? Won't everyone notice and be all like, 'that's cheap' and such?' But I realized they had their differences, different motivations, and whatnot, and I've owned the game for 5 years and I still don't care about the fact that they're alike. 

Now you may be asking where I'm going with this, but after a sort of writer's epiphany I had, I realized something. Dark Hours, my kaiju universe (or kaijuverse to the ones on my blog unaware of the lingo) was built with, unintentionally, the same formula as the Fire Emblem games. Depending on the time period, the faces change but the roles don't, I still have:

A. A main character, going about doing his business. As Fire Emblem has shown me, this isn't always heroic world saving business.

B. New faces at every turn. One of my favorite aspects of Fire Emblem is the 'recruitment' feature, where your army grows frequently, usually from people on the enemy's side or from random interlopers that stumble upon the scene. In my verse, namely Ragido's time to shine, that is EXACTLY what I did without thinking. There's always a new monster he 'brands' under his service wherever he goes, much like most FE stages.

C. Enemies, big and small: Not much need to explain that one, most 'verses have it.

And many, many more. Best part is, I had no idea I was doing it. 

This also helped me realize I can have two monsters of similar archetypes in the same 'verse without it looking crowded, it really just all depends on role and placement.


If anyone feels they wish to build a monster universe, it doesn't take terribly much work as one might think, depending on how much originality you wish to implement. I've seen many cases and approaches, some doing a bang up job without much any drawings, and some going into such insane detail it was enough to make your head spin.


For those new to monster universes (this mostly goes to my blog readers, my DA friends are the experts on this topic.) there are a few things to expect, both from established, movie/tv monster universes and fan made ones. I researched across the board for these, so don't be surprised if you're featured, friends. 


1. A main monster

This type could have a entry completely devoted to itself. The main monster of a 'verse is really as varied as the tastes of the people making them. Even in the movies, which are the prototypical 'verses, you can have heroic saviors of mankind like Gamera, anti-heroic 'do my own thang' types like Godzilla, and so forth. In the fan 'verses, the variety is sheer insanity there are so many. 

They cover forms and personalities innumerable, from giant antimatter ravens to undead grim reaper snakes to alien mutations to random creatures of happenstance. Their roles are just as varied, from ancient god like guardians to mutations of mankind's doing to beings from space. I technically don't have a 'main monster' that is constantly at the forefront at all times, but I have some that fit many of these categories. There's Ragido, a crocodile warrior that is a fragment of a greater whole once broken, in search of himself while still trying to do his job in the first place despite lack of power and memory. There's Unum, a techno organic scorpion that fights for mankind, born of man's cleverness and lots of innovative technology. Lona, a skinwalker that tries to win a war he doesn't know how to, and Paul Gregory, a human caught up in a lot of different struggles while in need of solving his own.

I'll go into more details on building a main monster in a future entry.


2. A 'big baddie.' Everyone loves a good villain, and typically these can be found in any 'verse. They take different forms, such as King Ghidorah the three headed golden space dragon, to the Legion queen in Gamera 2, and even more obscure, Bagan, a mutated Chinese dragon found only in a Super Nintendo Godzilla game. Usually they pose a threat to the entire world. In 'verses of fan making, they differ greatly, from giant eagles from ancient civilizations to zombie giants spawned of the main monster's dna. I use the dragon motif myself, in the form of the ancient destroyer Megidda, and another even more powerful than that that I won't reveal just yet. Big baddies usually take entire swarms of monsters to bring down, the classic case being the immortalized Godzilla film Destroy all monsters, where almost all the monsters in the Toho line up gang up on King Ghidorah and beat him into the ground with little resistance. 


3. A supporting cast. There are a million ways to go with this, but since I'm short on time I'll simply go into a little detail and cover it later. As a friend of mine once said, 'main characters are great, but its the supporting cast that separates the good from the great.' As in any tale, a story with good, memorable side characters is the one we remember the most fondly, and this applies here in this genre as well. They can be tough and gruff, humorous, benevolent, good or bad, but they need to be memorable. In my case, I have pretty widespread supporting cast, meant to cover all aspects of where a brawl might be, another Fire Emblem homage I didn't realize I had.  This aspect is where the true measure of your creativity will be.

A helpful tip to leave you with is that a good, no, great monster universe has a fair share of human interaction in it. This isn't easy, the creatures are often too big to really interact with small humans, but trust me, there are ways. One friend of mine makes it where the creatures have human avatars so to speak, people they bond with and give a small measure of their power too, that communicate and do battle alongside them in a manner not far from Digimon sometimes  Another simply has humans as researchers and/or mad scientists that give reports. Typically this is needed no matter what your monsters do. I myself have it all over the board, from monster chasers to mecha pilots to entrepreneurs in the monster making business. 

I will go into more detail in future posts about the individual kaiju archetypes, but right now I have work to go do, so until next time, blog and DA readers.