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Rygama... where do I even begin...

Long, long ago, when I was just a wee little grub, I began a creative writing project about an alien kaiju who befriends an earthly family, then has that family murdered in front of her by her lifelong arch enemy, and in her violent rage to avenge them, accidentally destroyed much of Sydney, causing humanity to view her as a proven threat. Thus, the story would chronicle her wandering the Earth, encountering other kaiju, stepping into one outrageous storyline after another.

It was my first serious creative writing project that I was able to see any success with. And even with its written-by-a-teenager roughness, it had a spark of charm that I could never let go of.

I would experiment with all sorts of other ideas, including a secondary series where she awakens from hibernation to a world ruled by a despot and his army of genetically engineered monsters, and winds up becoming a symbol of hope for the rebellion against him.

I would sit on her for a few years, occasionally dusting her off to experiment a little bit, but never really committed to anything long term.

When I hosted a D&D one-shot set in Heckville, I dropped Rygama in as a cameo, having a cat-like relationship with the town in the sense that she would sleep on the roads in order to irritate traffic. But as is inevitable in tabletop roleplaying, my players immediately latched onto her, and wound up roping her into the mystery of the plot. They found she was rather lonely, as no one ever really took the time to speak to her - with her menacing appearance and lack of expression, she was difficult to approach. But she protected the town from threats just the same, and on some level, the town was aware of this fact.

Later on, when I got to play in a one-shot, I decided to join the ranks of friends who had made shrunken-down versions of their main kaiju into PCs, and statted her up as a barbarian using lizardfolk stats. Being smaller, and therefor considered a "humanoid", she would be expected to be a bit more articulate than the hulk-speaking nerd from the one-shot. In a world where dragonborn are a thing, who's going to think twice about a lizardwoman with extra eyes and an exoskeleton? So I decided to take a page from 's work, and give her a thick southern drawl.

Of course, taking a brawny, socially straightforward, good-natured, hard-working good ole' girl and giving her a southern accent revealed to me something that has always been hovering around the character, but which I have been blind to for all these years. When she gets to talk? Turns out, Rygama is Applejack.

Description

Rygama... where do I even begin...

Long, long ago, when I was just a wee little grub, I began a creative writing project about an alien kaiju who befriends an earthly family, then has that family murdered in front of her by her lifelong arch enemy, and in her violent rage to avenge them, accidentally destroyed much of Sydney, causing humanity to view her as a proven threat. Thus, the story would chronicle her wandering the Earth, encountering other kaiju, stepping into one outrageous storyline after another.

It was my first serious creative writing project that I was able to see any success with. And even with its written-by-a-teenager roughness, it had a spark of charm that I could never let go of.

I would experiment with all sorts of other ideas, including a secondary series where she awakens from hibernation to a world ruled by a despot and his army of genetically engineered monsters, and winds up becoming a symbol of hope for the rebellion against him.

I would sit on her for a few years, occasionally dusting her off to experiment a little bit, but never really committed to anything long term.

When I hosted a D&D one-shot set in Heckville, I dropped Rygama in as a cameo, having a cat-like relationship with the town in the sense that she would sleep on the roads in order to irritate traffic. But as is inevitable in tabletop roleplaying, my players immediately latched onto her, and wound up roping her into the mystery of the plot. They found she was rather lonely, as no one ever really took the time to speak to her - with her menacing appearance and lack of expression, she was difficult to approach. But she protected the town from threats just the same, and on some level, the town was aware of this fact.

Later on, when I got to play in a one-shot, I decided to join the ranks of friends who had made shrunken-down versions of their main kaiju into PCs, and statted her up as a barbarian using lizardfolk stats. Being smaller, and therefor considered a "humanoid", she would be expected to be a bit more articulate than the hulk-speaking nerd from the one-shot. In a world where dragonborn are a thing, who's going to think twice about a lizardwoman with extra eyes and an exoskeleton? So I decided to take a page from 's work, and give her a thick southern drawl.

Of course, taking a brawny, socially straightforward, good-natured, hard-working good ole' girl and giving her a southern accent revealed to me something that has always been hovering around the character, but which I have been blind to for all these years. When she gets to talk? Turns out, Rygama is Applejack.