We Love Megafauna

Question: I saw a while back that if someone with Animal (Lizard) stunted well enough, you might allow them to create a dragon. What about prehistoric animals that are related to the lizard (Liopleurodon, Megalania, Mosasaurus, Pliosaurus, etc.)?

We did say that a while back, and we stand by it. It's not a matter of Animal (Lizard) branching out into dragons as much as it's a matter of defining what a dragon is.

When you're using Create Nemean Animal or Nemean Scroll (regular old Create Animal and Paper Tiger won't cut it, since those will just get you a pile of normal lizards), you're bringing into being a creature that mostly resembles your original animal but is much more monstrous in size/scope/attributes/etc. Nemean animals, as a general rule, are larger, more monstrous and more terrible than their normal counterparts, because that's what makes them Legendary and special as opposed to just being normal beasts of the field. And if you take a lizard and make it weigh six tons and have claws the size of butcher knives, you've kind of basically created a dragon; I mean, what is a dragon but a particularly monstrous lizard-like thing of great size and dangerousness? You could give it special features based on your stunting and make it particularly snouty, scaly, spiny or anything else you'd like that lizards could normally be, and your end result would probably resemble a dragon much more than it did the original lizards you were working with as a Hero.

However, your new giant Nemean lizard, dragonish though it may be, is still limited by its lizard base. It probably can't do some things that dragons generally can in folklore, like breathing fire or having acidic blood, because it's not really a dragon, just a jazzed-up magical lizard. When we say you can create dragons with Animal (Lizard) - or Animal (Snake), if you like the more serpentine dragons like coatls - we're not lying; you can, but only dragons that are very lizard-like or snake-like. They won't have nine legs or twelve heads or breathe fire or be able to turn their victims to stone, because lizards can't do those things and you're just creating a very fancy lizard (after all, the guy with Animal [Bear] also can't create fire-breathing bears!). If you want them to have magical non-lizard powers, that's what experimentation and Hybrid Chimera is for; if you want them to be as wise as the dragon lords of the east, you're going to need to Epic Enhance their brains up.

So, back to the original question: extinct, lizard-related megafauna. In general, I would say that you could use Animal (Lizard) to create some extinct critters, but with the same limitations - they could only be critters who were very lizardlike. The megalania is an excellent choice, because it really is just a giant prehistoric lizard, and we're always willing to let Scions use extinct versions of their animal if it's a close enough fit (for another example, I see no reason a Scion with the highly underrated Animal [Sloth] couldn't create and mess around with the extinct giant sloth just as much as with the normal modern ones). A Scion with Animal (Lizard) should be able to create a megalania as easily as any other kind of lizard; the fact that it died out some time ago doesn't make it any less obviously a lizardy thing.

The other creatures in your question, however, we probably wouldn't allow; things like pliosaurs are obviously different creatures from lizards - visually, functionally and representationally - and the fact that they're scientifically related to them isn't going to make them the same any more than the fact that the bluejay is technically a corvid should make people with Animal (Crow) able to control them. Pliosaurs and mosasaurs have much more in common as totem animals with crocodiles or sharks; while they're prehistoric and therefore don't have mythic representations per se, they're obviously not lizards in spite of their evolutionary path and should therefore belong to the realm of a different Animal.

Man. Looking at pictures of pliosaurs all morning has given me a wicked urge to fill Cronus' streams and rivers with the exceptionally nasty ones totally named after his own nastiness.