Help on thinking up an ancient creature race.

[Davachido]

I am running a campaign in a desert setting based somewhat close to that of ancient Egypt. I have plots set up for the necromancers and the liches that make the place their home, and as per typical fashion they are trying to turn the whole world under undead dominion. There is a special type of house ruled magic in the old civilization that has been lost under the sands of the desert based on hieroglyphs.

The players will be able to find out things about this old civilization through exploration (its a large scale exploration campaign). However connected to these glyphs are an ancient race of creatures that have taught the old civilization how to use the glyphs for magical purposes. This ancient race are connected to the gods of the desert and were blessed with the knowledge of the glyphs. I have planned a boneyard that the PCs can find that will have the skeletons of this ancient creature race.

The only problem I've got now is I have no idea what creature to choose. The desert is part of a larger world run by other DMs so there are some restrictions on what kind of creature I can choose. In this predetermined setting dragons were never part of the plane and sphinxes are a more common occurance and are more like the lions of the desert as opposed to an ancient magic race. So does anyone know of some Mythological Egyptian creatures or some desert themed creatures that seem to fit feasibly a magic casting creature race that they can point me to?

One last stipulation the race can't be humanoid.

 

[Twichyboy]

I don't know if you have the 3.5 sandstorm book but in the book there is an evil race called the Mirluka or something to that effect that are basically Anubis like dog people, but the Anubis dog theme sticks with the eygptian god Anubis


Or maybe a race of sentient cats? It may sound silly but cats were revered in Ancient eygptain culture

 

[Davachido]

I do have sandstorm, I'll check there. Anubis Dog people are already in the setting as basically berserkers so can't use them unfortunately. I will check out sandstorm to see if there's any creatures there though. Giant sentient cats could work too.

 

[Gilladian]

How about some sort of bird-people. Hawks were very important in Egyptian culture, and so was the ibis.

You could always go with a dinosaurian like the pterodactyl, as well.

Or, I remember reading an article or book once that proposed the idea that legends of hippogriffs were caused by people seeing ancient fossil bone beds and trying to decide what creature had made them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This sounds like a cool setting. The first image that popped in my head after reading your description was the mystics from dark crystal (maybe because they look vaguely camel-shaped to me).

 

[frankthedm]

How non humaniod?

Avoral :: d20srd.org
Leonal :: d20srd.org

 

[Davachido]

Reskinning an Avoral with a bit more Ibis features I think will work, and make them between large to huge depending on age. Thanks guys for the pointers, given me some ideas for some other things to happen in this desert now aside from this race.

 

[brewdus]

Maybe the Anubis-dog barbarians are merely a degenerate descendant race of more advanced ancient Anubis-dog people.

 

[Davachido]

Not quite, the anubis are basically an experiment gone wrong. The old civilization decided to try and harness glyph magic by using blood of people instead of normal magical components. The results were a very unstable being that lost their memories, still humanoid and full with biological function however were rabid. The old civilization thus used gaes's to control them and place them in their own faction of the military called the anubis guard. Since this damaged the people that it was used on the old civilization decided to only use it on volunteers and prisoners sentence to death (might as well use them). Then other things happened but that's the long and short of it.

 

[brewdus]

Serpent people are always a good choice! Ala Lovecraft and Howard. They are statted in Pathfinder and Freeport for 3e and True20. Mutants and Masterminds, too! I think Green Ronin even has a 4e conversion on their website!