How to Make a Monster Part 2: The Primal Predator

Last week I talked about the 4 Monster Archetypes I am using the Primal Predator, the Twisted Reflections, the Corrupted Humanity, and the Divine Enforcers.

This week I want to break down the Primal predator and see if we can build some of our own.

Primal Predator Examples: Xenomorph, Jason Vorhees, Jaws, Demogorgon, Graboids

Common features:

• Physically Superior either by natural ability, supernatural benefit, or mastery of it’s environment (an environment where we are disadvantaged.)
  • Natural Advantages: Hypermetabolism, Great Strength, Natural Carapace (usually bulletproof of course), Dense Bones, Acidic Blood/Spit, Regeneration, Thermal Vision, Claws and Teeth, Voice Mimicry, Heightened Senses, Tentacles, Venom, Quills, Symbiosis
  • Supernatural Powers: Immortal, Undead, Pyrokinesis, Telekinesis, Time Travel, Revenge Curse, Hypnotic Gaze, Weather Control, Invisibility, Teleportation, Travel through Mirrors, Dreamwalking
  • Environmental Mastery: Underwater, Space, Frozen Wastes, Radioactivity, Flying, Darkness, Arboreal, Camouflage, Tunneling, Fire-Proof, Cave-Dwelling, Jungle, Volcanic, Lunar Surface, Alien World, Neighboring Dimension
• Primitive Strategies (Multiple maybe employed by the same monster)
  • Pursuit Predator: Slow but relentless, lets prey exhaust themselves
  • Chase Predator: Hunts down prey with superior, speed and/or agility, and/or environmental mobility.
  • Ambush Predator: Attacks when you least expect it, from camouflage, disguise, or unseen direction (drop from above, underwater, or a literal dimensional wall)
• Mindless and Merciless
  • Animal Mind: Hunts for food, territoriality, or in cases like the Xenomorph, some twisted parasitic reproduction.
  • Broken Human: This is possibly the most problematic. It is how many characters like slashers are defined early on as basically mentally deficient, criminally insane sociopaths, or somehow sub-human. One has to be careful to avoid spreading and continuing ableist bullshit.
  • Force of Nature: Totally unempathetic, impossible to really understand or comprehend, just exists to destroy and has no other discernable purpose. Many in the Broken Human category somehow become this or are portrayed this way in sequels when their returns are no longer logically explainable.
  • Assigned Purpose: Quest for revenge, punishment, or to meet some need, may be as much unwilling as the victims, but bound by magic.

Blending Archetypes

Between the archetypes there is always some crossover. In most cases where there is a crossover with the Primal Predator, there is a philosophical purpose given by the other archetype, but it results in a primal predator-like monster.

Blended with Twisted Reflections: They may be better in our own home environments than we are, or simply physically superior life forms that are better prepared, so are able to hunt us down like animals.
For Example: The Predator acts as a big-game hunter, much like we do, and then uses physical and technological superiority to ambush, and pursue.

Blended with Corrupted Humanity: This is extremely common when you look at the actual form of the corrupted humanity. For Example: I think specifically of Werewolves and Wendigos as being definite predators and masters of their environments with, generally, fairly simple carnivorous goals.

Lets Make a Slasher

I’ve always wanted to come up with a decent Slasher like Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees, but it is hard to just come up with something so iconic on the fly. So lets see if we can’t break this down and come up with our own.

Human Origin (Lets avoid starting with an actual medical condition). Yet somehow the slasher is no longer human. Maybe they are possessed, maybe they were experimented on, were mutated somehow, or were perhaps magically cursed. I do kind of like the idea of a possession, but maybe THROUGH an item. If we’re talking about a movie franchise, the item is nice because it means you don’t even need to hold on to the same actors, it could just be the different times this item surfaced.

Costume and Props: When it comes to iconic slasher items, I think of… well everyone usually HAS a weapon they are best known for, like Jason’s Machete, Michael Myers’ Chainsaw, The Gaffhook from IKWTDLS, or Freddie’s Claw Glove. That can easily define a slasher, though I think they kill in a myriad of ways to keep the movie interesting.

There might also be some connected item that summons or awakens them or triggers their revenge, like a gold piece from Leprechaun, or the puzzlebox from Hellraiser.

But the thing that speaks most to me regarding a slasher is the mask. So for the possessing item, maybe it should be that. But what kind?

I’ve been really liking the old plague-doctor’s mask lately. (Can’t think why…) and it does a good job of disguising the face and even calling into doubt the humanity of what is underneath. Also bears the added fear of the suggestion of infectiousness.

The Look: So If we imagine that there is a plague doctor mask that it, itself is infectious and warps the mind. So that whoever puts it on or touches it is driven to put it on and kill. I would pair that with a good duster for that old world plague doctor feeling that still cuts a menacing figure. Then maybe a hood or a hat, but the killers hair would fall out, so at some point you could see rotten flesh and weeping sores beneath the straps. I’m not sure about the weapon yet, so we’ll skip that for the moment.

The Story: The look is nothing much without the story behind it. I’ve already started that with the idea that the mask is infected by a plague. A plague that somehow drives the infectee to continue the same very specific behavior patterns as the previously infected.

Okay, but do I want the slasher going around actually spreading disease? I’m thinking not, so plague is the wrong word. What if it is actually the cure?

Okay, so a doctor from the dark ages, looking to CURe the plague built something into this mask to protect himself but it had unintended consequences. It protected him from the plague but turned him into a killing machine. How and Why?

Why… maybe it drives him to cure the sick and saw humanity as the disease? That is pretty old-hat I think. Okay, so viruses often do a kind of a genetic transfer with their hosts. We can actually track bloodlines back tens of thousands of years by looking at commonly shared viral segments found in human DNA. Okay, so maybe the doctor intended the mask-wearer to wipe out those infected, but when the virus went away, and many people who had been immune began passing an altered genetic code down through the generations, then when the mask was once more activated it was keyed in to track down the virus and found what it was looking for in a large segment of the population.

Now whenever the mask is activated, there are those whom it targets, usually along family lines, and those whom it ignores, seeing them as “pure” human.

The Weapon: Now that I know the purpose and goals of the mask, I can conjecture more to his weapon. What would one use to kill plague victims? I’m thinking fire. That isn’t quite as iconic, and it is pretty campy and contrived to imagine the medieval slasher finding his way to a flamethrower. Maybe the mask makes a long-burning pitch-like secretion that he can use to coat whatever weapon he gets ahold of, so it could be anything, a knife, a pitchfork, a flagpole? Then the mask-wearer catches it on fire, maybe even spits the pitch into the target to make them burn up, leaving only charred piles of ash.

The Implausible Explanation: I need to decide how the mask does what it does. I’ve been thinking that the “cure” slowly infects the mind of the host, so that after being exposed to it, they may black out going into killing rampages and then coming back with no memory, so the killer would not even know they were the killer at first. But how does the mask itself function? What can possibly explain that behavior?

I’m seeing two possibilities: Biochemistry, where there is some kind of spray or a “cure” virus that lies dormant in the mask until it is awakened by breath when someone puts it on, in which case the behavioral explanation might be, genetic memory implanted by the cure virus… or maybe the virus is simply taking over the mind and displaying territoriality against the virus it was intended to destroy? This is interesting because it leaves room for an evolving purpose, and adaptive behaviors. And since each person infected is being infected by the same colony of viruses, and dies with the mask on, exhaling those viruses back into the colony, if they were somehow able to maintain previous hosts memories, that would explain the consistent behavior.

Another possible explanation is through old world Alchemy. This has the advantage of being at home in it’s time (it would feel anachronistic to say a middle-ages doctor created/found that specific of virus with no knowledge of even what DNA was). Alchemy is mostly disproved pseudo-science, but also has some astrological and even demonology elements that give it a good “what-if” factor almost as potent as the common conception of “voodoo”. It has the advantage of being slightly less racist, too, lol. So lets say maybe there is a philosophers stone, that contains the essence of the doctor and his mission to purge the world of the disease in fire. So people who wear it are being possessed by a very limited piece of the doctors mind, lacking all actual reason or mercy. The doctor would have had to strip those things out in order to do what needed to be done, after all.

I’m actually not sure which of those ideas I like better. Luckily, I don’t actually have to decide since I’m not making this movie 🙂 Maybe it is simply left ambiguous. But the behavior it inspires remains the same.

The Name: This is a bit harder. The first thought was The Black Death, but that seems both obvious, and in my own works I’m kind of trying to avoid the whole “Black=Evil” connotation. A friend of mine ran a game and had a mad scientist who experimented on children, who was named Doctor Crow which I think would be suitable, but I think it lacks punch for a slasher. It also suggests more personality than I think the mask will have. There are a few versions of something like this I thought up for another project, the best of which was the Grimmgeier… the Grim Vulture in very (VERY) rough German. The Dark Doctor. The Beak. That’s not bad.

One other concern I have is that I already HAVE a character I am planning on writing about who isn’t evil, but uses a plague doctor mask. I can’t really change them, and nothing much else would make sense with THIS monster. So if I were to pursue both projects, I’d have to either change one or the other, or find a way to make them extremely distinctive from one another.

Conclusion

I am liking the Beak. I could definitely see a series of movies with this kind of a monster, and I think there is a lot of groundwork for the monster evolving and coming back through different people in different ways. If it actually did become a plague so a whole city started going on slasher rampages in beak-masks? Almost a zombie apocalypse right there. We’ll call that “Beak 5: City of Murder”. Get it? Like a murder of crows?

Are there any other monster types you want to see? Maybe a natural animal in it’s environment that would make a good monster, or perhaps an alien force like the xenomorph or the mind-flayer.

Next week I’ll do another deep dive into the Twisted Reflections, and we’ll see if we can’t come up with someone to invade our little planet.

I’ll see you next world!

—Charles