In which I talk about the creepiest monsters to be found in my high fantasy novel-in-progress, The Pirates of Sissa. The kahlaqrab is a scary beast to come upon in the middle of the Black Desert, and with good reason. Learn more about it in this episode!
You can read my short story "The Legend of the Five Thousand Shells" over on my blog (hybaiswriting.blogspot.com).
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"This creature was first inspired by the sandwalker, which is a cryptid that apparently originates in Arabian mythology, though I haven't personally heard of any such creature in my lifetime, nor has anyone I've been able to ask about this sandwalker. I do wonder where the source material for this creature comes from. Nevertheless, it was a cool fantasy creature, if somewhat terrifying, and I knew from the start that I wanted to do something with it. You'll actually notice that a lot of the creatures that I mention in my fantasy novels are going to come from legendary or mythological creatures, usually from Arabian or Islamic stories. It's one of the ways that I would like to represent my culture in my writing. So, I decided to adapt the sandwalker for my book by using it as a basis for the creation of the monsters called 'kahlaqrabs' in my fantasy world.
The sources I found online about sandwalkers was very limited, and mostly referred to one entry in a book that I've never seen. All I had to go with was what it apparently looks like and what it eats. But that led me down a rabbit-hole in my mind. I found myself considering whether the myth might have originated from the sighting of a fossil left over from the Cretaceous period, where I believe that area was submerged underwater, if I've done my research right. I conducted a little bit of research online and found some prehistoric creatures I had no idea existed - creatures whose fossilized remains might actually give someone cause to think there was some kind of giant shelled monster roaming the desert - and they most definitely gave me some cool ideas for the kahlaqrabs in my book!
I also considered that the desert has a lot of scorpions, and they're nasty creatures that you really need to look out for when you're out there, so it also stands to reason that many desert-travelers would be terrified of the idea of giant scorpion-like creatures. This, too, might have given rise to the idea of the sandwalker as more of a scary tale rather than anything else.
From there, I took things several steps further and got into the nitty gritty details of how the monsters in my book, the kahlaqrabs, are born, how they live, what they eat, how they hunt, how they look, and so much more, making my final kahlaqrab concept very different, in my opinion, and very unique when compared to what was available online about this sandwalker creature. I really enjoyed figuring out their behaviour as animals, their reproductive processes, their habits and routines, and so on and so forth. It's actually a lot of fun to compile all of this different information that you can find online about a variety of real-world creatures and use them to imagine something else completely..."
See full transcript on my blog.
