If someone wanted to create an oc for Here There Be Monsters, what guidelines would you give?
Oooooh, you’re making me curious about why you want to know this... OwO Basic guidelines/universe rules incoming!
The first thing to determine is what species your character is going to be. You have three (kind of four???) options— Creature, Mage, Artificial, or regular human. Mage and human are kind of the same thing, but there’s the distinction of magic! If your character is a Creature or Artificial, you can go on to decide sub-species, and if you choose a Mage, the next step is magic type. Any being in HTbM universe will fall under one of those four types, save for very rare exceptions like Soma and Red Sky who are kind of ??? and considered highly unusual.
2. Magic Type/Sub-species
For Mages, you have to decide a magic type. The main seven— Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and Brown— are really your best options, but Black and White magic are also available for more fucked up characters. Keep in mind that Black and White magic are outlawed and highly frowned upon, so a character won’t be openly using either without a very good reason. Magic type, as will be explained in a later post, usually corresponds with personality to some degree, and it also determines a lot about a character’s history, abilities, and methods of training/combat. Mages are defined heavily by what type of magic they use.
As for Creatures, sub-species is the next step. This is the more “traditional” species, and you can really pick any mythological creature— even with alterations. So far in the story, some of the species used are Navka, Manticore, Rakshasi, Dodomeki, Puca, Unicorn, Djinn, Vampire, Merman, Fae, and Onryou. Basically anything works, honestly, and you can take whatever creative liberties you want with the species and what it entails. Feel free to change the lore as you see fit!
With Artificials, species is a little more closed. Familiars are your general go-to, but you can use other man-made beings as well. For example, Coulson has a “personal servant” Golem named Lacey. You want to pick something that was made by a person and couldn’t have existed on its own.
When it comes to this matter, your best bet for plot-relevance is having the character be somehow associated with the Organization. Be they a Mage willingly working for it (or somehow forced in!) or a Creature “employed” by it, that’s the main place for character interaction and things happening. The things to note here are that working for the Organization is permanent (there’s no quitting until you’ve been dismissed), there are plenty of roles and jobs to do, and that a Mage is usually partnered with one or more Creatures, and a Familiar/other Artificial, if they have one. As for Creature characters, they can either be “employed” or free-operating, in which case an easy option for interaction is to have them cross paths with the Organization and potentially get roped into their business.
Finally, I’ll list off some assorted, universe-specific rules/guidelines for characters. These are just random things, but relevant!
Soma, Red Sky, and Cybele, in that order, are the heights of power. You won’t have characters stronger than them.
A Mage can only use one type of magic without some seriously fucked up stuff going on. Stick to one type, generally.
Creatures working for the Organization are usually not there by their own choice.
There’s a dress code in the Organization. I’ll post art for it later, but Mages all wear black suits with white dress shirts and a tie that matches their magic color. Creatures wear customized gray and black uniforms with unique styles and minimal accessories.
Creatures have magic too, but it’s far more scattered and doesn’t follow as many rules as human magic does.
You can do characters from all kinds of geographical origins. The Organization is a worldwide deal, so characters from basically anywhere make sense.
Magic is studied, not innately powerful. A Mage isn’t going to be massively skilled without a lot of hard work.
The Organization is a place of strict rules and regulations. Breaking them doesn’t end well for anyone. Rebellious characters won’t get far without some heavy consequences.
That’s the main stuff I can think of, but feel free to ask any questions! :D I’d love to explain anything and everything!
