OMNYBUS

@omnybus / omnybus.tumblr.com

Anthro/Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Horror Artist He/Him Here you can find my sketches, doodles, and other scribblings, along with any art I've previously posted on Patreon, deviantART, and FurAffinity. Contents include fantasy, sci-fi, fanart (including ponies), and anthro art. Pictures involving violence and/or nudity are tagged for your convenience. ALL MY ART | SKETCHES | COLORED WORKS | FANART COMMISSION INFO | COMMISSION SLOTS | PATREON | KO-FI | OTHER LINKS
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Game design exercise: You've been tasked with creating a non-trademark-infringing version of the beholder. The design brief specifies that your version should have ten creepy eyestalks with ten distinct magic powers, like the standard beholder, but these powers must not overlap with even one of the standard beholder powers.

For the purpose of this exercise, assume that the forbidden list consists of exactly the ten magic eyeball powers that are present in the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Monster Manual. (i.e., you don't need to research every magic eyeball power that's ever been attributed to a beholder in every iteration of D&D ever published.)

For reference, these ten powers are:

  1. Controls your mind
  2. Paralyses you
  3. Makes you afraid
  4. Slows you down
  5. Makes you weak
  6. General purpose telekinesis
  7. Puts you to sleep
  8. Turns you to stone
  9. Disintegration ray
  10. Just fucking kills you

These are all off limits.

So:

What ten magic eyeball powers do you give your legally-not-a-beholder?

Hmm, I think to make this hypothetical multi-eyed monster a bit more distinct, I’m going to focus more on the theme of sight/eyes in general. Here’s my ideas:

Farsight: Clearly sees things that are extremely far away.

Smallsight: Magnifies their vision to see things that are extremely tiny.

Nightsight: Sees clearly even in total darkness/obscuring stuff like thick fog or deep water

Clearsight: Sees through solid matter in an x-ray-like fashion

Spysight: Allows the being to see through the eyes of other creatures (if they have eyes).

Stealsight: Renders targets blind.

Madsight: Causes targets to see vivid, realistic illusions.

Mindsight: Peers through someone’s memories, basically mind-reading.

Truesight: Sees through illusions, disguises, and secret things like hidden traps and passages.

Blightsight: Causes countless clusters of lidless, bulging eyeballs to grow uncontrollably all over the flesh of their victims. They’re fully functional and feel pain just as natural eyes do.

And as long as I’m still on this ADHD-fueled creativity rush, I’m gonna go ahead and name this creature “Sightseer”, and whip up a sketch of what it might look like:

I was originally going to make it look like a pair of giant hands with eyeballs on the fingers, but I felt that “hands with eyes” was a bit overplayed in fantasy monster designs, so I flipped it around and made it look like a pair of giant eyeballed feet instead. I think it fits the “sightseer” name, since a sightseer typically walks around everywhere, and it makes it look all the more weird and freaky, perfect for an extra-dimensional abomination.

(and now I’ve written the word “sight” so many times it doesn’t look like a real word anymore)

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I need some good name ideas for what to call sapient A.I. for a setting  

I should specifc I meant like, Sapient Computers as collective people, since saying “AI’ is not specific enough in universe.

Individual A.I. Characters are going to have various names like Lamar, The Supreme Port Master, and Goose

Well, here's a few ideas you can throw at the wall and see what sticks:

"Asimovs": After Issac Asimov of course. Might be a bit on the nose

"Synths": probably short for "synthetic intelligence" or whatever

"Sacoms": short for Sapient Computer

"Biros": Bio-organic Robots (forgive me if the A.I. in question doesn't have biological components)

"Autos": Probably short for "autonomous"

"Mechs": a simple but effective word that differentiates them from non-sentient robots and other machines

That's all the ones I could come up with.

I can't remember if I came up with this concept or if I read it somewhere, but one "reason" given for why wizards and other magic users tended to go for long, flowing clothes and hair (robes, hoods, beards, braids, etc) is because it acts like a sort of magical Faraday cage, allowing magic to flow around them without harming themselves.

With that sort of "magic = electricity" mindset, would that mean pointy hats are like lightning rods? Are curly shoes akin to grounding wires?

When I used to play Skyrim, I almost always ended up using potions exclusively for healing, always selling or discarding any food or drink I found.

That said, it makes me wonder: in a D&D setting or similar, what would be the side effects of a regular person subsisting entirely on magic potions for sustenance? Would they develop an addiction? Would their skin and hair change color or texture? Would it only alleviate the damage from starvation/dehydration, but not rid them of the ache of hunger and thirst? Would their bodily fluids become saturated with raw magic energy, causing them to transform horribly or unleash a chaotic surge of random magic effects? Or would they just get violent multicolored diarrhea?

Discuss!

I don’t know much about Tolkien’s fantasy world, nor have much interest in Lord of the Rings in general, but for some reason I had a random thought: what is the sewerage like in Middle-Earth? Do Hobbit-holes have indoor plumbing? Do the Dwarves have sophisticated flush-toilets and waste treatment to keep sewage from stinking and flooding their mines? Do the elves, for all their pomp and elegance, do little more than shit in a bucket? It’s something that hardly anyone ever addresses specifically in fantasy worldbuilding.

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