@Shalvenay Thanks! I think I'll post it now...

Oh, wait, I need a title and tags...

hey there @Emrakul

how're things going?

good to hear,they're OK here as well, although my brain sometimes thinks of strange things, such as ways to (ab)use Wild Shape

in particular, I have a thread of thought going about what a Druid who Wild Shapes into some sort of parasitic lifeform could do to someone...

yeah, that's pretty obvious (avoid the killer toad!). I'm more talking about a druid wildshaping into a parasitic worm, hitching a ride on the BBEGs food (lousy medieval sanitation FTW?), and then causing havoc, either in the form of said parasite, or simply by unshaping within the target's abdominal cavity (if you interpret unshaping in insufficient space by analogy to the drowning rules, that is) in a chest-burster-esque scene

@Emrakul -- indeed, but it would be quite weird to have a medieval-ish setting where parasitic worms weren't known!

at least some apparently were known even in the medieval era

probably a bit squicky for some tables, but still pretty cool nonetheless.

also, mind helping me workshop a question re: deity design? draft is chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/23919993#23919993 and the next two posts down -- what would be particularly appreciated are ways to focus the question more, as well as ways to distinguish such a deity from Lolth imagery-wise

Worms in medieval bestiaries.

The thought was that they were generated from flesh and other substances, such as wood or the ground, rather than reproducing. They were definitely known, though.

@Shalvenay Well, I've never gotten as far as deities in my worldbuilding, but have you chosen one or more domains for your good-aligned spider goddess? That seems like a reasonable place to start...

@Shalvenay If that's the case, you should specify more strongly in the question that you want to distinguish the deity from Lolth.

You want to avoid "just rework Lolth" answers, I assume.

At heart the question is about the process of creating a deity from scratch but making them work with an existing pantheon and an existing culture (or so it seems to me).

@Shalvenay Also, do you need help mechanically, or is this just about flavor? Do you envision an answer being 5e specific (beyond the need to blend in with Greyhawk) and talking about mechanics?

@Pixie fascinating!

@doppelgreener Bestiaries are fun.

Recently we were talking about how some among our Pathfinder party may only have this level of knowledge, having had either no formal education or only a very poor one. It will be hilarious, especially when one asks the other to explain animals to her, because he is very well read... in very incorrect texts.

The entry for cat is fun to read, except for the bits that are horrifying (thankfully the minority).

@Pixie Hahaha!

That does sound like a fun thing to roll with.

@doppelgreener Ah, yes. There is also some rather accurate cat art out there...

I suspect whomever described the Yale just learned from someone who saw a bunch of goats with irregular horns milling about and got confused.

It's one of those that came from Pliny. Ahh, Pliny.

@Pixie No illustrations barred. I thought this was going to be a spectacular result of only ever hearing about one from verbal description but nope, now people will know exactly what animal that's illustrating.

@doppelgreener Cats were around, so they had them down. Things that weren't often, however... wanna know what a giraffe looks like?

If they hadn't seen it, they tended to piece it together between descriptions and animals they did know, to hilarious results.

An elephant fighting a dragon (and many more here, some more accurate than others). Notice the elephant is basically a boar with a trunk.

@Pixie I think that was not a giraffe, but that's cute still.

@Pixie those were funny. and yeah, basically a boar c(:

@doppelgreener Nope, it's definitely a giraffe, which they thought looked like a camel with spots.

... oh. That was not what I wanted to link. xD

@Pixie No I mean, you linked to the wrong thing xD

Yes

You are correct: that is not a giraffe (but I love it).

This is the giraffe. Yes.

@Pixie That is definitely a result of loose word of mouth.

One of my college art history classes spent a couple days on learning how to describe things accurately. It's hard! Helped a lot with my GMing, though.

It is hard.

That sounds like a good kind of lesson

one of the dragons is disqulified for an illegal tail spike when the elephant is twice his size?

and another is considered too unfair because the dragon is to big

this contest is rigged for the elephants

stupid cheating elephants

@trogdor one wonders who created the regulations that put tail spikes off limits...

one wonders why it is fair for an elephant to be bigger than a dragon and not the other way around

someone has their ideas screwed in wrong

I will be investigating/BURNINATING at the next dragon vs elephant tournament

if this cheating against dragons continues we will just BURNINATE all the referees and elephants and move on

if they want to actually play fair next time we can talk XD

@doppelgreener also, if your tail is naturally spiked that shouldn't be some kind of disqualification, I agree XD

if the elephants can't win without trying to cheat maybe they should be fighting something other than dragons

@trogdor gorilla vs shark v2: dragon vs elephant