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entoma vasilissa zeta (overlord) drawn by oxykoma

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    Entoma❤

    Thanks to So-bin sensei and Maruyama sensei for coming up with such a wonderful character.

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    Garrus
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    OMGkillitwithfire said:

    Especially when you know that she's actually a full arachnid.

    That's adorable.

    She's a whole goddamn colony of different arthropod monsters acting as one. She's like some kind of girl shaped Portuguese Man O' War of horror.

    9 Reply
    cd young
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    Garrus said:

    That's adorable.

    She's a whole goddamn colony of different arthropod monsters acting as one. She's like some kind of girl shaped Portuguese Man O' War of horror.

    face is a beetle, hair is a centipede, arms are spiders...

    3 Reply
    NWSiaCB
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    Valentine322 said:

    One shudder to think what kind of things are in Genjiro's mind when he created Entoma.

    To give a further "what was he thinking", she actually has one of the highest alignments among the Pleiades (neutral), because she "only" enjoys eating humans (preferring male human arms because they're lower in fat) when she's hungry, and is perfectly fine leaving humans alone when she doesn't have some reason to tear them apart. This is in comparison to most of her "sisters" basically being psycopathic sadists who enjoy things like swallowing humans whole and giving them air holes so they can be digested while still alive... (Hi there, Vore fetishists!)

    Basically, I think it's better to consider Overlord a horror story told from the perspective of the monsters. The only reason many of the characters have any humanoid or even slightly redeeming traits at all is to keep the reader invested that maybe the latest humanoid might have a chance of survival because the monsters occasionally take pity on a humanoid. The Invaders of the Tomb arc in particular is just one giant Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story because you know from the title of the arc that they're all going to die, and they're all new characters that basically scream "we're total redshirts!" (The guy who got the neuronist treatment doesn't even have a name!) The only characters with a prayer of survival are the (also unnamed) slaves, which get forgotten in the story halfway through, and only get mentioned again several volumes later.

    Beyond that, in playing D&D and other games, I've created giant (often shapeshifting) spider race characters (like Aranea) before. I just tend to play humanoid-friendly ones because I find it way more amusing to have a happy friendly giant spider that gives people sipder-hugs than making a big scary monster act like a big scary monster. I was personally enthralled with the nature of Entoma's design when I first saw it, and subsequently disappointed that, like so many of Nazrick's monsters, there just wasn't anything else to her but being another flesh-eating monster with a really cool character design.

    3 Reply
    NNescio
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    Garrus said:

    That's adorable.

    She's a whole goddamn colony of different arthropod monsters acting as one. She's like some kind of girl shaped Portuguese Man O' War of horror.

    Valentine322 said:

    One shudder to think what kind of things are in Genjiro's mind when he created Entoma.

    Dungeons & Dragons, Monster Manual. Worm that Walks, but using other arthropods instead ('vanilla' insect swarms are also common enemies in D&D, and variants exist with hive intelligence, but the whole 'form into a humanoid shape' is definitely inspired by the Worm). Which itself is likely inspired by the Crawling One in the Cthulhu Mythos, which might have been inspired by Arabic or Slavic mythology.

    But yeah, Genjiro cribbed a lot of things (especially the spell names) from AD&D.

    2 Reply
    NWSiaCB
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    NNescio said:

    Dungeons & Dragons, Monster Manual. Worm that Walks, but using other arthropods instead ('vanilla' insect swarms are also common enemies in D&D, and variants exist with hive intelligence, but the whole 'form into a humanoid shape' is definitely inspired by the Worm). Which itself is likely inspired by the Crawling One in the Cthulhu Mythos, which might have been inspired by Arabic or Slavic mythology.

    But yeah, Genjiro cribbed a lot of things (especially the spell names) from AD&D.

    Overlord supposedly started because he couldn't run any more D&D campaigns since all his friends were too busy. Everything from the monsters to the magic system are CLEARLY just D&D with a fresh coat of paint. The whole notion of "heroic level" is just epic level.

    In fact, in one of the drama CDs, Satoru Suzuki, in a brand-new depth of meta, finds a "Hack and Slash Adventure" (D&D) rulebook in the library, and decides to role-play an undead overlord ordering his demonic minions to play a game of D&D with him as the DM in order to try to get them to reevaluate humans by getting them to role-play as human adventurers. (Albedo starts off the quest by murdering the elder of the village who was going to give them the quest on sight in order to steal his house rather than go through the hassle of negotiating for a place to stay.)

    That said, Entoma isn't a Worm that Walks. She's not so much a hive-minded swarm as she is just the giant spider who has a magical/psychic link to subservient insect kin. She's more like an Aranea with really specialized vermin-specific druid magic that she uses to graft other vermin-type creatures onto her body and mentally dominate into being extensions of her own body.

    3 Reply