#mounder

Mounder in his human past.

     I agree. I initially wasn’t too thrilled with the Arduff’s redesign. Especially comparing it to the other manga exclusive animals such as the Mounders and Rakkida who have gone unchanged. Just drawn in a more realistic style to fit the universe better. My friends and I ( @juliejewel24 specifically ) have come up with a theory that they may have combined, or misinterpreted Whouf with the Arduff that SkekLach has. Since it’s body shape and face look very similar to Whouf’s! But in a feircer style to reflect the Arduff’s nature. But I agree it is weird how they made an entirely new design when the old one is solid, and again, the Mounder and Rakkida were left unchanged.

     Good news for folks like us who have liked these guys since the begging, the bestiary Arduff are said to come from the Crystal desert, and the Manga ones are native to The Endless Forest and the Spriton plains (Or at least the manga’s equivalent of it.) So our antlered moose-doggos are still completely valid to have in Thra! These are animals after all, and they’re is so much variety within the real world that I think that it’s 100% okay to have both! Heck, when I was working on my species sheet for these guys back in april, I was thinking of the possibility of regional variants! So that’s how I’m viewing them.

     In my opinion, the bestiary is hit and miss. There’s a lot of really good content in there!! But there’s some other things that are both major and minor retcons and contradictions that I’m not too thrilled about. Ultimately this is supplemental material. It’s not 100% canon but it does help us get a broader sense of the world of Thra. So with that, it’s completely fair to pick and choose whatever bits you want to view as canon. Although I may dissagree or critique the bestiary a little, it’s a fantastic book!

With the Arduff situation, I was initially kinda sad and angry about it. I thought I would have to throw all of my creature design and character vulding out the window. Like I thought I had to do with my version of UrSen once the canon one came out. That’s my own problem I have since I’m much too critical on myself. But think of it this way, we now have two Arduff Subspecies like you said earlier!

My best friend @kaijukian put it in a funny way. Using a meme about worrying who’s cake was made better. We don’t need to fret about who’s cake is better, There’s two cakes!! More content to enjoy! And just because you don’t like a certain direction things went doesn’t mean your opinion is invalid!

I’m also a huge Manga!Arduff fan, and Lach’s main Arduff pack will still be of that kind for me. I’m gonna incorporate some of the new ones in there for variety, but ultimately the originals will always be the true ones in my heart.

Well, then I changed it a bit. I wanted the villain to be more real, more grounded, more personal than just an Abomination of Moander, which is a terrifying pile of flesh, but just a pile nonetheless. The villian became Mounder. He used to be a human, a very talented young wizard that had a privilege to study arcane arts in Myth Drannor. Although having friends and family there, he desperately tried to prove himself worthy of his talent. He tried to invent a new type of material - a very sturdy type of moss, spreading quickly and easily, that was able to grow on magical fields, such as Mythal covering the whole city, to strengthen it. But the moss brought disease, and Mounder became sick and then more and more obsessed with his project by the day, dying himself.

His maddened mind, his obsession, his corruption led to his demise. His friends tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. His nature took central stage, as he drew his last breath, it transformed him to a terrible creature, a black dragon, that then destroyed the area in his desperation.

Centuries later, his presence affected the area, turning it into a monstrous swamp filled with deformed creatures, as he grew stronger underground, deformed himself, physically and mentally, as the rot does.