Suggestion for new Oceana units - Page 13

TheMenacer · #**121** August 1st, 2008, 12:59 AM

And Hank Azaria is well known for having gills...

JimMorrison · #**122** August 1st, 2008, 01:20 AM

This whole line of reasoning sounds a bit fishy to me.

HoneyBadger · #**123** August 1st, 2008, 01:24 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilosaurus

Here, you fish lovers!

I'd hate to be scuba diving and run into one of these.

Tifone · #**124** August 1st, 2008, 03:30 AM

Oh, and next summer choose the mountain ^

HoneyBadger · #**125** August 3rd, 2008, 11:20 PM

Here's a great link for TheMenacer, and anyone else interested in old woodcut monsters:

http://www.strangescience.net/stsea2.htm

Contains tons of neat illustrations-all open source, because they're so old-depicting the natural world from the viewpoint of past centuries' scientists and naturalists.

Wrana · #**126** August 14th, 2008, 02:31 PM

Basilosaurus is fine, but some Mesosoan creatures would probably be better still. And Plesiosaurus-kin is believed to be able to crawl on land, seal-like...

HoneyBadger · #**127** August 14th, 2008, 03:19 PM

Well...the largest mosasaur reached a length of 17.5 meters. That's pretty respectable. They would probably work fine in the game, as amphibious predators, since they looked something like streamlined monitor lizards.

Plesiosaurs ought to be in the game, if only that they're generally considered a "best guess" for the identity of the Loch Ness Monster. Generally speaking, the largest plesiosaur got (verifiably) 15+ meters long. Still respectable, but the fun part is that the BBC reported Liopleurodon Ferox as 25 meters in length and up to 150 tons. It most likely wasn't that big, but it gives enough precedence-as folklore-to give it a justified place in the game. Also, Plesiosaurs were much larger than T-Rex, and better adapted for powerful biting. According to my information, they could have picked up a modern car, and then bitten it clean in half.

Ichthyosaurs were a lot smaller, between 2-4 meters, but they're extremely interesting, as lizards that evolved to resemble fishes, almost exactly.

Their relative, Shonisaurus sikanniensis, is the largest ever discovered marine reptile, at a gargantuan 21 meters. That's 70 feet long!

Wrana · #**128** August 14th, 2008, 04:35 PM

Agree, except on Tyrannosaurus point - most Plesiosauri had iirc quite small teeth, optimised for fish-catching, not biting clean through something large and/or armored. While Tyrannosaurus/Tarbosaurus had teeth very good for just such task. Of course, it was smaller - it's land carnivore, after all.
And I can repeat that if we go to mammals than Mobi Dick makes very fine Oceania summon/hero (!) indeed.

HoneyBadger · #**129** August 14th, 2008, 05:18 PM

I suggested adding a grey whale to Haida Gwaii as a Pretender, but apparently, you can't have aquatic-only creatures on a land province. Although, now that I think about it...maybe a whale totem that had a waterform grey whale? You'd have to teleport it, ofcourse, but that would be a nice balance for an otherwise very powerful SC chassis.

HoneyBadger · #**130** August 14th, 2008, 07:58 PM

I also don't know much about plesiosauri teeth, I'm just going based on what my few minutes' research is saying. So if you want to look into that and see what you come up with, I'd love to know more

And-for sea mammals-I think the Narwhal ought to find a place in the game, as should human/dolphin transformers-or just dolphins.

As an aside: If/when we get the ability to edit the first post in a given thread, I'm planning on presenting a middle-era Aboleths nation based on real-world Mamluk culture. Alongside it, I'll be offering a list of spells for EA Aboleth prehistoric marine creature national summons.