Guide on Novels and Games - FANTASY - MONSTERS

Monsters are another common trait of the fantasy but the word is used for various type of enemies that we can found in other genre like the horror and the sci-fi ones.

About monster, the first thing we need to decide is their "origin":

* Artificial, mean that they are something created by someone, for example some monsters can "born" thanks to the idiocy of someone or as side effect of some type of experiment.
* Natural – Native, this type is composed by all the monsters that are native of that world, mean that they are naturally born there and were not transported from another place, and that evolved in the world of the story.
* Natural – Alien, they are beings that evolved naturally but then come from another world, an example of this are monsters that come from another dimension.

NOTE: monsters born in another dimensions/worlds, moved into another and then mutated for adapt the new world are to be considered as something that is of alien origin BUT natural to for their evolution in the new environment.

Despite all you'll see here and in other works I want to point something important that is that not all the monsters are evil beings... and I'm not the only one that think this since various authors used this concept in various ways too... if you don't believe me than do your own research, given the danger of copyright infringment I can't give name and titles of works.

Putting aside the origin, the monsters are divide into different types that are

* jelly
* spirits
* undead
* plant
* animal
* material
* demon

GENERAL TRAITS

Monsters usually act like animals making their own terriories, fight for it and eventually they run away from powerfull predators but despite this way of act we have to remember 2 factors:

* Despite they act as animals don't mean that they are not smart enough for use magic but this don't apply to all since is possible that some of them are able to use it only by instinct and not because their mind work good enough for cast a spell. All of this don't take under consideration eventual environment where a game like system is used and so both monsters and races have skills
* If they attack settlements or different type work together is possible that a smart monster is ruling or manipulating the group (like a monster with telepathic abilities), kill that monster can result into the monsters that disperd or go out of control.

During the birth methods for spirits and golems I talked about "energy in the environment" that condensate and form souls and so on... since I'm sure that some people will not understand what I mean here, I need to make some basis but keep in mind that all of this are my opinions, if someone already said something about it is possible that I don't know so don't start saying things like that I stole the concept of other people and so on, if I use something of someone else I ALWAYS say the source of it or say that I saw it somewhere else.

The basis for my explanation are:

* Sometimes monsters are just dangerous animals.
* Animals have souls, a "proof" of this are certain cultures and the fact that is possible found animal's ghosts and spirits around, if they hadn't a soul the existence of that type of ghost and spirit it will be impossible so this fact is "confirmed" by various fantasy stories and real cultures.
* Who have a soul have aura too, one of the definitions of aura is "an energy field that is held to emanate from a living being" but let me explain it with a simple comparison between a flame and a soul: "while the soul (fire) stay in the body, the aura (irradiated heat from the flame) is spread around".
* There is energy in the environment, in fantasy stories there are things called "dragon veins" that are flows of magical energy that move underground, thanks to this flows there are places that are rich of this energy but the energy don't simply stay there but is dispersed in the environment too, a confirm of this is the fact that in various novel is possible absorb magic from the environment and use it as one wish.

Now, with this basis I can explain how, in my opinion, monsters originate.

We start with the evolution of normal animals, while some of them continue their normal evolution others are influenced by the energy in the environment and mutate into other variations, this way we have monsters and animals with variations.

In the time the monster release their aura in the environment that mix itself with the environmental energy causing the birth of other type of monsters and so on.

My "base" of this way of think is the principle that matter can interfere with energy and viceversa, and just in case I want to say that this principle is not something invented by me but is a scientific one.

After said how I belive monsters originate in a natural way, putting aside eventual fantasy myth like "the gods created them as punishment for the arrogance of the races" and similar thing, I think is the moment of talk about their "spawn".

As said before monsters are, in a certain way, animals and act like them but how they appears in the places? Well this depend by various factors:

* Monsters have high reproduction ability, so for "clean" a zone is need to kill all of them, if a couple of monsters are left then they'll reproduce and increase the population again but despite this they need time for it.
* Monsters migrate so if an area is "clean", migrant monsters will repopulate that place.
* Monsters can be summoned by magicians or other monsters.
* In some novels and mangas are present some kind of artifact, black hole thing or flying mass of energy that generate monsters, once destroyed this "source" is possible that the monsters disappear or at least they stop to contiune to appear... I already saw this used in a manga where lizardmen where summoned from a black orb in a cave.
* Inside dungeons the monsters are continuously created by the "systems" of the dungeon but I'll talk more about it in the Dungeon section.

Since this is a guide about both games and novels so now I'll explain how monsters appears in games.

In games there are mainly 3 methods for monsters to appear:

* Trigger, they are "situation" where the monster appear and this "situation" are:
	+ *Location Point*, the monster is generated when a character reach a cerrtain point in the map, for example the character walk in a mountain track and once reaching a certain point on the map start an "ambush". Usually this type of spawn is one time only.
	+ *Action*, the monster is generated when the character do a certain action like interact with a switch or open a chest and the monster come out.
* Walking, with this I refer with the games where monsters roam the maps, in this cases when there is a contact between the character and the monster, a fight will start, the type of battle depend from the designer of the project (real time, arena, etc.).
* Random Encounter, in this cases on the map there are no monsters and the fights with them happen randomly, when doing this is better think the combination of enemies that will appear, for make an example let's use 3 common monsters that are a slime, a giant wasp and a giant spider, using them I have the following combination: 3 of a kind, pairs and 1 of a different type, only a pair of the same kind, 2 different, only 1, 3 different... all of them make a total of 19 different combination of monster and the randomization simply take one of this troops and make the player fight them... this at least happen in a program for make rpg that I own, if this work for other games too I personally not aware of that.
* Story, this spawn basically happen with event connected to the story, they can seems similar to the Trigger Location Point but in this case is a little different because while the TLP take a random point of the maps that are not crucial, the Story ones are strictly connected to specific points, an example of this are the boss battle of any main story.

As last note about monster I want to talk about the "behemots".

This name originated from the "Book of Job" that is part of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), in the document is described as a land creature that is big, eat grass, have a tail and have a massive and strong body.

In the time the name started to be used for indicate extremely large or powerful entity and most of the times they were monsters.

In various works the term Behemot were used for indicate mutated monsters that increased their size and power to the point of being a serious danger for anything