(Alternative title: Creatures of the Four Kingdoms.)
What follows is a brief overview of creatures I either created, or modified for usage in the Sagaland Chronicle books.
A lot has gone into the character creation of The World According to Dragons.
One of the things I wanted to do was use other mythological creatures not often used in fantasy fiction and lump them in with yokai. Some of these are named in the series, others are not.
I’ll start with some of the bad yokai because they feature prominently into the story, mostly because of its setting in the northern kingdom of Icenor.
If you need to see a map, it’s featured on a blog post here.
Rake
I first learned about the creature known as rake online. I do not remember where, but a Google search told me that the earliest mention of these creatures was in the 1600s. To make them fiercer, I gave them two sets of teeth and added a barking sound. This plays an important role in the prologue of the first book and chapter ten as well (which redoes the prologue but in a more active, less cinematic way).
While you can find out about rake online. I used Midjourney to create a version for The World According to Dragons and the overall Sagaland Chronicles. Creepy!
Myling
Another creature I came across in Sweden, which is part of Scandic lore, is the myling. While there is the potential for ghosts later in The World According to Dragons likely through a yokai known as goryu (which I used in Pilgrim 6), I didn’t want to make these creatures phantasmal for this world.
Instead, I wanted to make them relatives of the yokai known as gaki. I envisioned them as humanoid creatures that traveled on all fours, viscous with sharpened teeth and hair in their faces. They aren’t as prominent as rake, but they are certainly featured in a scene in northern Icenor, in the elven necropolis known as the City of the Dead.
Here’s a picture of their description from a museum in Gothenburg, Sweden about the Myling. No, I can’t remember which museum. I visited too many museums and will try to keep better track!
Being in the straw dress
Again, I’m terrible at remembering museums and apparently the artists that took part in my inspiration. I’ll get better at that going forward. Anyway, at an art museum in Oslo (of which there are several), I saw this. It was large. Larger than me. And I wanted the being in the straw dress to take part in the story somehow, not as a yokai, but the guardian of a ziggurat.
Baumundas
At the same museum in Oslo, I encountered hand drawn sketches from Norwegian artist Theodor Severin Kittelsen. At the same time, I was reading a book on Iceland and came across a horde known as baumundas. It felt like a name for a giant, and I used Theodor’s art for inspiration, namely this piece:
The World According to Dragons contains different stylings in some of its chapters. There are the chapters that take place presently, limited usage of flashbacks (and only done so with a purpose that plays into the narrative), and then there are a pair of chapters known as ‘Tales of a Relic Hunter’ which detail the main character’s earlier plights to obtain certain relics. When I switch to these chapter, I generally stop calling the character by his name (Twillo) and call him ‘the relic hunter,’ which gives it a cinematic feel in my mind as you are pushed just a little further away from the character while you observe the challenges he’s had to overcome. In one such chapter, he goes after the Enkiro Ring of Animation in a giant’s den, the giant named Baumundas and fashioned as above.
Kitsune
I suppose it is safe to say one of my books wouldn’t be complete without kitsune and or bakeneko. For this first series in the Sagaland, a male kitsune named Katashi plays a prominent role, even if his initial appearance makes it seem like he’s just a character in passing. One of the things that makes Katashi an interesting character his sword training, which is revealed later on. I’m not going to say that the Four Kingdoms of the Sagaland have a Diyu Brotherhood (shout out Pilgrim), but they do have something similar, something that I will write about later on…
Wolvencree
A giant red wolf the size of a school bus that lives in caves in an expansive volcanic desert? Now we’re talking! This particular yokai is entirely of my own creation. I wanted something big enough to fight a dragon, and big enough to be able to rip a person into two pieces with a single bite.
Ashinagatenaga
In my quest for interesting yokai that were actually usable as characters for this world, I came across ashinagatenaga. Rather than make the a pair of beings—one with long legs, the other with long arms—I combined them into beings with both long arms and long legs and made a family of them. The first appearance of this yokai is in one of the ‘Tales of a Relic Hunter’ stories, which details the discovery of the Tongue of Ravenna Megren.
Basan
The fire chicken, perhaps my favorite yokai, one I’ve already used in the Pilgrim series. I had to use it again for this world, but I wanted to add a twist. Sadly, basan no longer exist. Like the dodo, they’re extinct, but people still trade a certain part of them, that when powderized, creates a fire that looks hot and produces light, yet contains no heat.
Here’s what I came up with on Midjourney for ‘chicken that spits fire.’
I guess that’s a good place to leave you, with some of the creatures of the first book in The World According to Dragons.
I’ve already written an overview of the world here.
You can learn more about the Twillo the relic hunter and main character here.
And finally, here is the link to The World According to Dragons on Amazon.