So. Apparently "chaos hybrid" tisn't good enough for you, eh? How about "visual pun"? Here are the (rather thin, in some cases) origins of these critters for ye, Loren:
WALKTAPI: chaos hybrid monster. Since its origin, spread far and wide by its alarming habit of regenerating after being torn in bits. Since the Walktapus is unintelligent, it has no stories of whence it came. Because of the combined ocean/land interface, I'd check out the Rightarm Islands as one possible origin. Or maybe the salt water marshes along the coasts of the chaos Wastes.
MANTICORES: Frankenstein monsters, manufactured by God Learners, EWFers, False Dragon Ringlets, or Six Legged Empire dudes. I don't think anyone claims _these_ particular beastmen to be degenerate hsunchen, which is possible to claim for some of the other types.
GARGOYLES: Some people think they're connected to the dwarfs. I don't, not really. However, the fact that they live and thrive in the Stone Forest is perhaps an interesting connection. Survivors of a Gloranthan "stone age"? The existence of the primal earth spell GNOME-TO-GARGOYLE also may point to an origin. Pam C. mentioned that Genert is supposed to have made a bunch -- he's a pretty primal earth-type deity.
WIND CHILDREN: spawn of a blasphemous union between storm spirits and humans. Sez so right in DRAGON PASS. Presumably the Kolati are to blame.
PAMALTELAN GULPER: alas, Sandy is primarily to blame. The Gulper is, of course, based on the real-world Black Swallower.
Donald Walli:
>anyone know who created (RW author) the Humakt cult and its related
>myths?
Greg. The original CoP cult writeup I think was at least half done by Steve Perrin, but Humakt is one of the earliest gods Greg thunk up.
R. Andrew Bean
>I've noticed everybody tends to take the European colonist point of
>view that bushfires are bad things.
No doubt mostly folks who don't live in southern California or Utah, where it's pretty obvious the uses of such fires.
Peter M. in response to my suggestion that the timinit islands or the
Jrusteli isles be the home of the Australian fauna
>The trouble with this idea is that Kangeroos as I understand evolved
>the hopping mechanism as an efficient means of transportation over
>long distances over a flat terrain.
Except the roos don't actually live all over the Great Western Desert, do they? I thought that the big flat middle of Oz was pretty much non-grazeland. Having been raised in a desert, I don't make the mistake of thinking that it's necessarily desolate, but I picture kangaroos as veldt/savannah/prairie beasties, not desert. Am I wrong?
>during the Dinosaur years the largest mammalian-like creature, I
>think, is rat sized.
They got bigger than rats -- bigger than beavers in some cases, but still obviously smallish critters. Note, however, that this is true only for Jurassic/Cretaceous times. In the Triassic, there were mammals (at least, mammal-ancestors/cousins/parallels) as big as or bigger than the dinosaurs of the time. Triassic therapsids (mammaloids) included rather alarming critters such as gorgonopsids - -- sort of a cross between an iguana, a wolverine, and a food processor. There were also hippo-sized herbivores with bone-encrusted heads and a wide range of others. These large mammalian beasts vied for dominance with the early primitive dinosaurs. They lost. Most of the mammal lines died out, but a few survived, finding an important niche in the ecosystem by growing small. Rodentlike mammals were as common in the dinosaur days as they are now.
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