Trapdoor Alligator
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Basic Information

The Trapdoor Alligator was invented by R. K. Millholland for the webcomic Something Positive. It is an otherwise ordinary alligator which lurks behind trapdoors similar to trapdoor spiders and suddenly attacks and eats people who wander nearby. Those trapdoors can appear in the strangest places, such as near the Canadian-American border[1], or in the ceiling of an office building in Texas[2]. This seems to suggest that it can create trapdoors pretty much anywhere it wants, and isn't restricted to particular climates.

Sources

Game and Story Use

  • While this creature is probably too silly for most gritty campaigns, it could work in settings where creatures aren't part of a "normal" ecosystem, but are made out of the stuff of dreams and nightmares.
    • It might work well as an extradimensional predator like a phase spider or hound of tindalos - something that can simply spawn a portal out of nowhere, lunge through it and grap a victim. Nasty.
    • This would seem to give them something in common with puddle sharks…
  • If the alligator confined itself to alligatory places … somewhat more like a trapdoor spider … and was just a reptilian ambush predator it would be a perfectly sensible monster.
    • Although to be honest, regular gators, or at least crocs, do actually hunt with sudden lunges from a place of concealment (which is why you are absolutely not safe on the bank) so we're most of the way there already. Giving the job to a varanid or somesuch and calling it a trapdoor gator would probably work…
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