Skull Spider

[DnDChick]

True, true - I never said they were the same creature, just that they were remarkable similar in shape, and I was just wondering if this was just a case of "brilliant minds thinking alike" or if Erica's might have been patterned after mine.

Maybe a little of both! A skull scooting around in jointed spider legs is a chilling thought! And in the 27 year history of DnD, its only naturaly that some overlap of ideas would happen eventually.

Kind of like I wonder if the "sea drake" that Scott and/or Erica designed for Mongoose's "Seas of Blood" was a case of spontaneous independent creativity, or if it was possibly patterned after the silislithus, or sea drake, that appeared in the first "Greater Drakes" article in Dragon Magazine #260. (The fact that the sea drake in "Seas of Blood" has an attack form based on a throat bladder of all things, really makes me wonder, as throat bladder-based "breath weapons" were a major part of what makes greater drakes different from the standard dragon. Sure, their sea drake's got a slightly different throat bladder attack than mine, and their sea drake doesn't have wings, but it still makes me wonder.)

Note that I'm not necessarily upset over this; just more curious than anything. (Hey, I've got access to several frowny face icons if I felt I needed them!)

Johnathan M. Richards

The story behind the Sea Drake is kinda funny. Scott did that one. It is based on what he called the Salt Drake, which he made up long before Mongoose contacted us to do monsters for SoB. We were working on making up the critters for the book, and I was looking thru my files and saw "salt drake" and thought...hey...salt...ocean...salt water! So I shot it off to Mongoose without really looking at it.

Turns out that Scotts original Salt Drake was a desert creature, that stored alkili salts in its throat for its breath weapon. I didnt read the monster and wound up sending something to Mongoose that was way out of its element (literally!) for an ocean-based supplement. Matt Sprange sent back a kindly-worded letter saying that although the salt drake was a great monster, it didnt really suit the purpose of the book. LOL

So I told Scott what I had done and he re-worked the salt drake into the SEA drake, and we sent it back. We still have the salt drake on file, and you never know when or where it might turn up! Since it was sent to Mongoose, they might decide to use it anyway in a future book.

 

[Grazzt]

Any resemblance between the Sea Drake, the Sea Drake of said article, and the Salt Drake is well.......magical.

Erica nailed the story of our Salt/Sea drake on the head. It was actually a desert monster from my campaign world that I shot her to look at. Somehow it ended up going to Mongoose

Anyway- I reworked it as the Sea Drake and *poof*, there ya go.


Actually- great minds apparently do think alike.

 

[Richards]

(Using my best Paul Harvey voice): "And now you know...the rest of the story!"

Seriously, thanks for indulging my curiosity. And my mind asked me to thank you for including it in the same category as yours and Erica's.