Deviation Actions
Literature Text
When Skull Island sank beneath the waves, hundreds of species of prehistoric beasts were left without a home. Many managed to swim to nearby islands, where they were promptly found and brought to Monster Island. Strangely enough, many of the island’s animals resemble outdated tail-dragging restorations of dinosaurs; how and why they evolved to look this way remains a mystery.
Of course, Skull Island is perhaps the most famous for being home to several different kaiju, including one of the very, very few beings to have gone toe to toe against Godzilla and come out victorious.
Fauna:
The species of ape known as Megaprimatus kong stands over 30 feet tall at the shoulder, but can reach 40 feet when standing fully upright. They somewhat resemble the gorillas of Africa in their facial features, but far more exaggerated, with heavy brow ridges setting the eyes into a permanent glare and much larger, sharper teeth, more suited for a generalistic diet than the purely herbivorous one of the gorilla. In addition, Kongs are considerably more svelte than a gorilla of their size would be, and the hind legs are a bit longer in proportion to their body. Indeed, unlike gorillas, Kongs can and will walk on their hind legs for extended periods of time, with only the slight stoop in their posture and the coal black fur covering their bodies distinguishing them from a gigantic human when viewed at a distance.
For years, it was presumed that Kong was the last of his kind, but although this wasn’t entirely true, it wasn’t far off; Kongs were rare even before Skull Island sank, travelling in small troops throughout the entire island and rarely actually encountering one another. Thanks to generous donations from both Anne Darrow and Carl Denham, about three dozen of the giant apes were recovered from Skull Island, and since their arrival on Monster Island, where they have moved into the jungles of the isle, they’ve increased in numbers by another half dozen. They’re still quite scarce, but their numbers are recovering: the great apes are strong enough to fight off and even kill fully-grown Vastatosaurus rex and Indominus, and they have a higher power looking over their shoulder…
Skull Island Tyrant: One of the biggest and meanest of Skull Island’s predators, the Skull Island tyrant looks like it stepped right off the pages of a Charles R. Knight illustration, and it earns its name of ‘tyrant king’. Standing over 40 feet tall and measuring more than 65 feet in length, this titanic predator looks very much like its tyrannosaur ancestors, but it is considerably burlier than a normal T-rex of its size would be, with slightly longer arms in proportion to its body and three clawed fingers on each hand. Its skin is covered in mottled grey, brown, and green pebbly scaled skin, and its long, thick tail drags along on the ground behind it as it stands mostly upright on two long, powerfully-built hind legs. When the island sank, over two dozen of these ancient beasts managed to escape, causing their fair share of trouble on the Pacific islands that they made landfall on. On Monster Island, they are somewhat lower on the food chain than they were before, thanks to the presence of creatures like Indominus Rex, Vastatosaurus, and various kaiju (The former two compete with the dinosaurs for food while the latter outright prey on them), but they are nonetheless perfectly capable predators, bringing down all manner of dinosaurs and large mammals with their massive jaws, stomping taloned feet, and bludgeoning tails.
Brontosaurus kongi: Not all of Skull Island’s sauropods are herbivores. Brontosaurus kongi is an amphibious terror of the island’s waterways and swamps, slightly smaller than its ancestors at about 60 feet long and considerably sleeker, with smooth brown leathery skin, five-clawed webbed feet instead of the pillar-like ones of a typical sauropod, a deeper tail, legs set in a half-sprawl, and a considerably shorter, thicker neck with a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. Normally, these creatures are fish eaters, opening their mouths swiftly enough to suck whole schools of fleeing prey into their gaping mouths, which can unhinge like those of a snake for exactly this purpose, but they aren’t averse to snatching a pterosaur or bird flying overhead or a human from a boat; they’ve even been known to drag smaller hadrosaurs into the water in the same manner as crocodilians.
Styracosaurus denhamii: These surly herbivores have gone relatively unchanged from their prehistoric ancestors, but changed they have. For one thing, they’re much bigger and bulkier, rivalling Triceratops in sheer size and with slightly splayed legs; second, they’ve got thick armored skin studded with sharp pebbly osteoderms; and third, the gaps in their frill have sealed to form a solid sheet of bone, a perfect defense against predators, while the downcurved spikes around the edges have straightened and thickened, further discouraging meat-eaters from trying anything. They’re largely solitary jungle herbivores, but they are by no means peaceful, often charging at humans and other herbivores on sight if they get too close.
Skull Island Cave Bear: One of the relatively few large mammals to be found on Skull Island, these ‘cave bears’ actually aren’t cave bears at all; ironically, their closest living relative is the Malaysian sun bar, the smallest bear on the planet. Almost twice as large as the long-extinct giant short-faced bear, these coal-black creatures are largely carnivorous, living up in Monster Island’s foothills and preying on virtually anything that they can catch, but they are known to occasionally feed on fruit and fungi. Roughly half a dozen of these gigantic ursines managed to escape Skull Island, including a particularly old, large male dubbed ‘Growls’ with scars that match the blows of a young member of Kong’s species - it seem that he is the very same bear that tangled with the son of Kong decades ago. Evidently, its scuffle wasn’t nearly as fatal as Denham had believed.
Stegosaurus driscolli: One of the older species to be found on Skull Island, it’s unsure as to exactly how this Jurassic relic managed to get to the island at all, let alone survive with V-rexes and Venatosaurus as predators and competition like Ligocristus and Ferrucutus. Regardless of how they survived through the eons, Stegosaurus driscolli has changed quite a bit from the dimwitted herbivores it evolved from. No longer is its stance erect; instead, its legs are set in a sprawl like that of a crocodile and its tail drags behind it, presumably to keep the dinosaur’s body lower to the ground to avoid being flipped over by a predator. It is also more heavily armored, with thick greyish-green pebbly scales covering its body, and the alternating row of plates of its Jurassic ancestor have hardened, sharpened, and narrowed somewhat into a double row of vicious blades. Completing this relic of the past’s arsenal are its sharp beak, which is now equipped with fairly sharp teeth, and its long, powerful tail, which sports six pairs of long, sharp blade-like spikes that jut backwards diagonally, then curve up halfway down their length. Despite their relatively slow gait, these 35-foot-long titans can swing their tails in reaction to threats with truly incredible speed, thanks to an optimized nervous system similar in structure to that of the closely related ankylosaurs. Omnivorous, these 35-foot-long titans are perfectly happy spending their days feeding on the ferns and cycads of Monster Island’s jungles, but they certainly won’t object to eating carrion, insects, and small to midsized animals - a size range that includes humans.
Great Skull Vulture: A gigantic species of carrion bird tall enough to look a man squarely in the eye and with a wingspan as wide across as a hang glider, these dark brown birds’ wing and tailtips are decorated with horizontal bars of lighter brown, while their heads and long necks are totally bare, exposing leathery pinkish-red hide. Given their ability to fly great distances, the great skull vultures easily survived the sinking of their island; in fact, some of them were able to get as far west as Malaysia before finally being captured and brought to Monster Island.
Top-tier scavengers, great skull vultures are found all across the island and are typically among the first to arrive at the site of a kill, plunging their heads into the flesh and ripping free great lengths of flesh with their cruel scythe-like beaks. However, they aren’t just carrion-eaters; the great vultures have been observed snatching fish from rivers like ospreys and even carrying off smaller creatures like antelope and mountain goats to dash their bodies against the rocks and feast on the animals’ broken bodies.
Darrowdactylus: The largest pterosaur of Skull Island closely resembles the famous Pteranodon of North America, but it is actually descended from stock similar in appearance to the Ludodactylus of Cretaceous Brazil. Unlike either pterosaur, however, Darrowdactylus is no fish-eater; instead, it is a monstrous predator of all manner of terrestrial prey. Unlike most pterosaurs, it stands almost totally upright at nearly eleven feet tall, scrambling about on the ground with hind legs and the hands on its wings; said hind legs are long and strong, almost like those of a theropod dinosaur in structure and with four grasping toes equipped with razor-sharp curved talons on each foot. The body is compact and muscular, very similar to that of a human in general shape, and the wings are long and strong, measuring almost 33 feet across, with three-fingered grasping hands armed with vicious hooked claws. The head, meanwhile, is held on a crooked neck like that of a vulture, and is equipped with an upwards-curving crest and a narrow downcurved beak shaped like the blade of a scythe and lined with serrated knife-like teeth. Darrowdactylus prefer to nest in the mountains of Monster Island, but they primarily hunt within the jungles and fern plains of the island, swooping down like eagles upon water buffalo, midsized dinosaurs, antelope, deer, and other such animals, either carrying them off to dash their bodies upon rocks or setting upon them with their teeth, talons, and stabbing beaks.
Terapusmordax: Competing with pterosaurs for aerial domination of Skull Island were the Terapusmordax, a variety of extremely strange basal mammal-like reptile that had developed the ability to fly. With a naked hairless body the size of a Great Dane’s, large batlike wings stretching to about 10 feet across, a long, thin batlike tail, strong hind legs structured like a theropod dinosaur’s with five wickedly sharp hooked talons on each, a thin ratlike tail, and a short neck with a head like a cross between a bulldog’s and a naked mole rat’s attached to the end (The latter feature led to the belief that they were literally flying rats until skeletons of the creatures were more closely examined), the creature looks like something that flew out of a nightmare, and indeed, it’s incredibly aggressive; on its home island, they were among the most feared predators there, mobbing even creatures as big as Kong himself in a frenzied attempt to feed. On Monster Island, however, these flying beasts are far from the apex predators - not when they have all manner of pterosaurs, giant bats, and kaiju to compete with. Indeed, many large fliers have taken to snatching Terapusmordax on the wing, and several aquatic creatures lunge from the water’s surface to drag the rats under as well.
Sker Buffalo: One of the largest mammals on Skull Island, the sker buffalo is a colossal relative of the Asian water buffalo that stands almost 35 feet tall at the shoulder, with a massive bulky body, a prodigious hump between its shoulders, two immense multi-pronged horns growing from its head that can each measure almost 15 feet in length, and masses of plant life growing from its back. This symbiotic plant life provides the bovid with not only camouflage, but a secondary food source; a semi-aquatic animal by nature, sker buffalo often submerge themselves with only their backs above the water, using the vegetation to absorb oxygen from the air in order to keep itself hidden for a tremendous amount of time and to conduct photosynthesis to supplement its diet of vegetation.
Skull Island Gaur: Besides its menagerie of prehistoric fauna, Skull Island was also home to its own subspecies of gaur, a type of immense Asian bovid. About 15% larger than their cousins on the mainland, these gaur were relatively recent arrivals to the island, only being present for roughly a thousand years before the island began to sink, and were hypothesized to be domesticates that had been brought to Skull Island by the same mysterious civilization that had left immense ruins around the area. Regardless of where they came from, though, the gaur have done well in Monster Island’s jungles; formerly solitary, they now move in small herds of ten to twelve, using their great size and large horns to fend off predators, although they are still hunted by creatures like deathrunners and raptors.
Elasmosaurus serpentes: The waters around Skull Island were just as deadly as the island itself; one of the longest monsters that swam near the island’s shores was Elasmosaurus serpentes, an immense species of extremely strange plesiosaur. Unlike its Mesozoic cousins, this creature’s body and tail were just as long and serpentine as its neck, with hind flippers considerably smaller than the front ones and an extremely flexible neck that could be held clear out of the water. Covered in smooth, tough sea green hide, these vicious creatures measure nearly 80 feet long in particularly old specimens, and have established themselves in both Monster Island’s inland sea and around its shoreline, where they feed upon fish, other marine reptiles, and whatever flying or land-dwelling creatures that they can drag underneath the water. The plesiosaurs’ teeth are adapted not to hold, but to slice and tear, almost like the teeth of a tiger shark or maybe a carcharodontosaur, and their incredibly flexible bodies allow the creatures to constrict prey in the manner of gargantuan snakes - a useful tactic when hunting underwater, as the plesiosaurs can simply squeeze the air out of the lungs of their prey to easily immobilize them.
Skull Python: One of the largest snakes on the planet, the skull python was an enormous mottled green and brown snake of the island’s darkest jungles, measuring almost 60 feet in fully-grown animals and continuing to grow until they died and preying upon giants like Ligocristus, young brontosaurs, and even Kongs, squeezing the life out of their prey before devouring them whole like a typical python. In their new home of Monster Island’s jungles, though, they’re far from the top of the food chain - while they have a much wider range of menu options from ceratopsians to giant rats, the immense snakes are also now subject to the predations of not only kaiju, but Indominus rexes, which are smart enough to figure out how to trap and pin the pythons in order to more easily consume them.
Nefundusaurus: A blue-grey rauisuchian with a light colored underbelly, a deep robust skull with crushing jaws, and crocodile-like osteoderms covering its back, neck, and tail that measures over 30 feet in length and stands 4 feet tall at the shoulder, the Nefundusaurus is a prehistoric eating machine that once made its home in the estuaries of Skull Island, but now inhabits the river deltas and riverbanks of Monster Island, feasting on carrion that it takes from other predators and bringing down live prey through ambush, including human beings.
Tartarusaurus: An immense relative to Nefundusaurus that measures nearly 35 feet in length, with a much bigger, bulkier body covered in rhinoceros-like hide, larger forequarters than hindquarters that set its back in a slope like a hyena, stockier legs set in a half-sprawl with a massive hooked talon on the first toe of each front foot, and bony horns growing above its eyes. A coastal predator, these immense solitary beasts hunt virtually anything that they can find along the coastlines of Skull Island, from limusaurs to seals to dead sharks and whales that wash up on shore, defending their territory viciously from other Tartarusaurus. Several of the great reptiles have set up shop around the lairs of amphibious kaiju such as the cove that Ogra has claimed as her own and the cave that Titanosaurus and her mate Taro share, having learned that they can make a decent living stealing the scraps of the great monsters’ kills.
Psychovulture: A bigger, badder cousin to the infamous Terapusmordax, the psychovulture is an enormous flying synapsid with a wingspan of almost 25 feet across, as well as a bigger, bulkier body than that of its smaller relative with a shorter, thicker neck, no tail, and a boxier skull with a blunter snout and more robust jaws. Vicious predators, psychovultures were the other main reason why most ships and planes never reached either Skull Island besides the perpetual storm system raging around them; soaring over the waters around the island in swarms of dozens and feasting upon fish and large sea creatures, they would attack anything that tried to get close to the island with the frenzied rage that gave them their name, tearing into it with claws and jaws and with their unique ability - a blast of lightning fired from the jaws. Nearly totally blind, psychovultures mainly navigate with a combination of scent, echolocation, and thermal vision like a pit viper, useful adaptation for the constant bad weather that they lived within and for the dark waters that they often plunged into in pursuit of fish, squid, and other aquatic vertebrates. After Skull Island sank, the storm system around it dissipated, allowing the psychovultures to escape and quickly spread across the Pacific Ocean, making a massive nuisance out of themselves and getting most of themselves killed by a combination of military resistance and larger kaiju before the survivors were rounded up and brought to Monster Island. Here, the massive synapsids continue to live along the coasts, but they have taken up a more peaceful existence, diving after fish and marine reptiles like great bald gannetbirds. Unlike gannets, however, the psychovultures have learned to use their lightning breath to fry the considerably tougher prey items that they now hunt, leaving their victims either roasted or paralyzed and easy prey either way.
Mire Squid: One of the largest non-kaiju creatures to be found on Skull Island, the mire squid is a relative to the equally-enormous ocean-going Oodako, and is unique in that it is one of the very few cephalopods that can tolerate freshwater. With tentacles that can stretch to over 110 feet long at the maximum size (Although most individuals are only about the same size as a Piranhadon), these colossal creatures are ambush predators, lunging out from the murky rivers where they live and dragging under large creatures like hadrosaurs, V-rexes, and even sauropods which it then proceeds to dispatch with its car-sized serrated beak, which are situated within a complex bed of muscles that allows them to whirl about like fan blades, which has the side effect of creating a whirlpool-like vortex that sucks in prey that try to swim away. When faced with equally-sized predators, the titanic creature can vomit out a cloud of ink that’s superheated with the aid of its furnace-like body heat, giving it time to escape. However, this adaptation does not stop it from being a common prey item of a wide range of kaiju predators, from Rexy to Gorosaurus to Kong himself.
Pugiodorsus: One of the smaller creatures on the island, the Pugiodorsus is an ornithopod dinosaur that stands about shoulder height to a human and measures nearly twelve feet in length, almost half of that being its tail. It stands on two long hind legs with three toes on each foot, and its arms are quite long and are equipped with five-fingered grasping hands, and is colored slate grey with a pale sandy yellow-brown underside. Unusually for an ornithopod, it doesn’t have any trace of a beak, instead having a relatively blunt lizard-like skull with rounded teeth suitable for grinding up the plant matter that it feasts upon. But the real distinguishing feature of this little dinosaur is its armor: scutes and plates like those of a crocodile run down the spine from the back of the head all the way down to the tip of the tail, and two long sharp horns like those of a bull’s grow from the shoulders, jutting backwards before curving forward about halfway down their lengths. Flighty creatures that travel through Monster Island’s savannas and forests in herds of up to six dozen, Pugiodorsus are fast, agile animals that can put gazelles to shame in their ability to outrun and outmaneuver predators, but they are nonetheless preyed upon by most of the predatory species that they share their environment with, from raptors to Foetodon. Fortunately, their high rate of reproduction keeps their numbers high, as does their armor and sharp spines; interbreeding between these Skull Island relics and several species of Ingen’s various ornithopod dinosaurs has also been observed.
Skull Island Sea Serpent: Originally only found around Skull Island’s coasts, the Skull Island sea serpent is a gigantic species of sea snake that can grow to over 90 feet in length, and is colored a dark bluish-green with a pale underbelly. Unlike their tiny relatives, they aren’t actually venomous, instead opting to simply swallow whole their prey of seals, dolphins, and sharks by opening up their mouths fast enough to create a vortex of water rushing into their waiting maws, sucking prey into their jaws. They are now found in the bays and inlets around Monster Island, preying upon seals, dolphins, and sharks as they normally did, but they now also feast upon marine reptiles like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, as well as giant squid and mutated fish.
Gladiodon: A mountain-dwelling gorgonopsid growing up to 18 feet long with an elongated slinky body, half-sprawled legs equipped with vicious hooked claws, light grey scaly skin with red stripes, particularly large saber teeth, and a crest of long red cartilage spines on the upper back that can be raised and lifted, the Gladiodon is a large, powerful predator that lurks in the mountains of Monster Island. While it will take down herbivores like Bifurcatops and Chaly-tops, its real specialty is hunting and eating other carnivores, from gorgonopsids to theropod dinosaurs to even smaller members of its own kind. Males are distinguished from females by their longer, more colorful back spines, which are used to display to potential mates as they strut about like roosters, yawning wide to reveal their massive saber teeth. They are occasionally preyed upon by still-larger predators, but overall, these immense mammal-like reptiles enjoy a position near the top of Monster Island’s mountain food chain.
Chaly-tops: Roughly in between the Ferrucutus and Bifurcatops in size, this massive beast about half again as large as an African elephant that has grey-brown scaly skin studded with small osteoderms and spikes, with a row of larger, sharper spines running down its back. Unlike Ferrucutus, it sports three horns upon its head, two relatively small ones above the eyes and one long curved blade-like one on the nose; additionally, its frill is considerably taller and is composed of solid bone, much like Triceratops. These big, burly animals live where the jungles of Monster Island first give way to the alpine scree of the mountains, feeding on the tough vegetation there and using their immense horned heads and armored hide to fend off would-be predators. Fights in between male Chaly-tops as they battle over the rights to small harems of females and choice territory are among the most violent known among horned dinosaurs, with fatalities being frequent. Most bulls bear scars or broken horns from these confrontations, and scavenging animals often observe these bouts from the sidelines in the hopes of eating the loser or setting upon the victor if he is too tired to fight back. Regardless of the violence of their courting behavior, though, Chaly-tops are a fairly common denizen of Monster Island’s mountains, and their sheer strength keeps them off the menu for most local carnivores.
Hebeosaurus: An immense notosuchian herbivore of Skull Island’s jungles, the Hebeosaurus is a 30-foot-long titan with a burly rhinoceros-like body covered in light grey-green scaly skin, four stout legs held directly underneath the body and ending in four-clawed feet, a long crocodile-like tail, crocodilian scutes and armor running down from the back of its neck to the tip of its tail, and a short thick neck ending in a large head with robust elongated jaws lined with blunt herbivorous teeth. Weighing in at about as much as a Stegosaurus, this largely solitary herbivore makes its home in Monster Island’s steaming jungles, feeding primarily on low-level vegetation but also occasionally treating itself to grubs, eggs, and smaller animals. As a response to the deadly predators that it evolved with, from Carvers to Venatosaurus, the skin of the Hebeosaurus is incredibly thick, nearly eight inches in some places, and the windpipe is reinforced with cartilage ‘ribs’ to protect against bites to the throat. While they are occasionally still hunted by various species of large predators, the crocodilian’s heavy tail can be used as a weapon to defend itself with, and it tends to take a very long time to kill.
Bifurcatops: A large, lightly built species of protoceratopsian the size of a small horse with long thin legs, grey-green scaly skin, and a streamlined frill, the Bifurcatops is one of the smallest of Skull Island’s resident horned dinosaurs, living in the highlands of the mountains both on their home island and on Monster Island today. As surefooted as any ibex, the ceratopsians feed mostly on tough mountain-dwelling vegetation, but they won’t pass up additional protein in the form of small animals and insects. Frequently hunted by the mammal-like reptiles of their home island that were also brought here, these agile dinosaurs are fully capable of outmaneuvering their hunters, leaping distances of up to 15 feet and nearly four feet in the air and running at full tilt up near-vertical rock faces.
Malamagnus: A massive species of notosuchian crocodile, the Malamagnus is a large herbivore that made its home in the massive marshlands of Skull Island, and has adapted well to the very similar swamplands of Monster Island. Roughly 30 feet long and weighing about twice as much as a bull African elephant, these immense creatures have large bulky bodies like that of a hippopotamus, but covered in dark green scaly skin and held up off the ground by four stocky pillar-like legs with four broad clawed toes on each foot. The tail is relatively short and deep, good for swimming, and the head is fairly large for an animal of its size, attached to a short, thick neck and equipped with heavy elongated jaws that bristle with large sharp tusks. Moving in herds of up to a dozen, Malamagnus are strict herbivores, despite their fearsome appearance, feasting upon water plants and on terrestrial vegetation in the same manner as a hippo would on the African savanna. Also like hippos, however, these ancient creatures can be highly territorial, aggressively chasing after and attacking predators that get too close for comfort to their hatchlings, and their jaws are nothing to laugh at - Malamagnus bulls have been observed biting fully-grown caimans in half with their terrible tusked jaws.
Carver: Massive synapsids measuring over 20 feet long with crocodilian armor, streamlined bodies and midlength tails with a series of keratinous spikes running down the spine, blunt robust skulls with powerful jaws and large canines on the upper jaw, and long powerfully built limbs held directly beneath the body with razor-sharp claws on the hands and feet. Solitary predators of the jungles of Skull Island, carvers were among the most dangerous predators of the rainforests, taking down animals nearly as large as themselves with their incredible strength, keen senses, and crushing jaws. On Monster Island, however, they’re decidedly lower on the food chain - creatures like Indominus Rex, T-rex, and Ceratosaurus are capable of bringing them down with ease. However, they’re still quite formidable predators, taking down buffalo, large dinosaurs, and giant arthropods with little to no difficulty.
Diablosaurus: One of the weirder beasts to be found on Skull Island, the Diablosaurus looks like a gigantic reptilian rhinoceros the size of a Columbian mammoth, with thick dark grey scaly hide studded with osteoderms, a relatively short tail, sturdy pillar-like legs, and a large red-colored head with two massive 5-foot-long recurved horns on its snout, but it isn’t a ceratopsian dinosaur - it’s actually a very, very weird species of sauropod dinosaur that adapted for the cramped forests of Skull Island. Found nowadays in Monster Island’s jungles, these big 30-foot beasts aren’t bothered by too many creatures, thanks to their massive horns, armored hides, and surly tempers, but they are occasionally targeted by tyrannosaurs and other superpredators.
Ambulaquasaurus: A native of the fast-running mountain streams of Monster Island, the Ambulaquasaurus is a 15-foot-long species of dromaeosaur that is closely related to the feared Venatosaurus, but it has evolved to pursue a spinosaur-like fishing lifestyle. It sports elongated crocodile-like or spinosaur-like jaws, smooth steel-grey scaly skin with black bars down the long, deep tail, long arms with curved claws on the hands, webbed hind feet that lack the sickle claw of its ancestors, and orange crests of feathers on the back of its head and on the back for use in displays. It lives alongside the highland streams of Monster Island, wading through the cold, fast-flowing water and waiting for a fish to pass by, then snapping it up with its conical piercing fangs, its somewhat extendable throat allowing it to swallow considerably larger prey.
Monstrutalpus: A massive blue-green tapinocephalian with a body the size of a short-faced bear’s and a long, thick tail that gives the entire animal a length of over 15 feet, the Monstrutalpus earns its name from its burrowing habits, made possible by its long, powerful forelimbs and the great curved claws on them. It roots around on the forest floor of Monster Island’s jungles, using its keen sense of smell, strong enough to put a truffle pig’s to shame, to sniff out the underground tubers and fungi that it primarily feeds on, then uses its claws to dig them up. Its jaws, which look almost like those of a rauisuchian in general shape, are massively built and sport flattened spatula-like teeth in the front for digging through soil and cutting through thick roots, with great flattened molars being located in the back to chew up even the toughest of plant matter. Predators ranging from gorgonopsids to dinosaurs are known to hunt Monstrutalpus, but the beasts will not go down without a fight - their strong jaws can deliver a very powerful bite, and their claws can rip through flesh just as easily as they rip through dirt.
Bear-Croc: This immense 25-foot-long notosuchian is well-named - it sports a massively built body with a barrel-like chest and considerably larger forequarters then hindquarters, with equally burly front limbs that end in vicious curved talons. The hind legs are a bit shorter than the front legs are, and end in plantigrade four-toed feet, while a long, thick, muscular tail drags along on the ground behind it. The head is attached to a short, thick neck, and looks like a cross between a rauisuchian’s and a V-rex’s in general shape, and the jaws are lined with about 75 fairly short, thick teeth that are equally well-suited for crushing bones or mashing up vegetation. Found along the highlands of Monster Island, you will hear a bear-croc long before you see one - the great crocodilians broadcast their presence to others of their kind with bone-shakingly loud calls that sound like a cross between a bellowing alligator and a tremendous belch, made possible with reverberating chambers connected to its windpipe. These calls can be heard for miles and serve to minimize competition between individual bear-crocs: each animal needs a very large territory to keep itself fed, where it gorges upon virtually anything that it can find, from fallen fruit to small dinosaurs to water buffalo. When it’s confronted by a rival or a would-be predator, however, bear-crocs are fully capable of fending for themselves - they throw their four-ton weight around easily, fighting like hell with their immense bone-crushing jaws, bludgeoning tails, and massive claws, and have proven themselves capable of bringing down even the giant bears that they shared Skull Island with in the past.
Arsatris: A strange eight-foot-long light brown mountain-dwelling dromaeosaur with darker brown stripes on its back, the Arsatris is actually fully quadrupedal to grant itself greater stability as it runs through its rocky habitat. The killing claw of its ancestors has been repurposed into a sort of big toe, used to steady the dinosaur’s grip as it climbs; the front feet, on the other hand, now sport a massive curved claw on the innermost finger that looks almost identical to the sickle claw of a typical dromaeosaur, and is held up off the ground in the same fashion. This thumb claw is mainly used to hold onto struggling prey, which is killed cat-like with a bite to the throat.
Death Jackal: Not a jackal or even a mammal at all, but a titanic cousin to the Arsatris, death jackals are incredibly vicious jungle predators that average at around 15 feet long and colored a mottled green-grey; they are partially quadrupedal like their mountain-dwelling cousins, but they are still capable of running on all fours, and lack the ‘thumb toe’ of the Arsatris, although they do have an enlarged ‘thumb claw’ like the smaller dinosaurs do. Running from the back of the head down to the small of the back is a mane of sharpened greenish-black feathers - each plume is as rough and abrasive as steel wool. With powerful jaws that can exert as much force as those of a great white shark, death jackals put the ‘hyper’ in hypercarnivore - they seem to exist in a permanent state of starving, near-rabid ferocity, with metabolisms that rival those of shrews. Death jackals rarely sleep, constantly on the hunt for more food, and are capable of consuming over twice their weight in meat in a single sitting; if they can’t find prey, they will also readily kill and consume their own kind, even gnawing off their own limbs in fits of hunger. Fortunately for the dinosaurs, however, their increased metabolism also grants them regenerative abilities on par with a fully-grown kaiju, allowing them to actually regrow torn-off body parts and extremities like a lizard or an octopus. Thankfully for the ecosystem of Monster Island, death jackals don’t reproduce often, and their cannibalistic natures further serve to keep their populations low; if that wasn’t enough, they’re also often targeted by the jungles other predators, from V-rexes to Indominus rex, all of which serve to keep their numbers at sustainable levels.
KAIJU:
King Kong: For decades, it was presumed that Kong, the king of Skull Island, had died thousands of miles away from home at the hands of humanity, but later expeditions to the island found that the natives there were still actively worshipping their immense god, this time offering sacrifices of alcoholic berry juice during terrible thunderstorms instead of women. At first, observers of the ritual, representatives from a pharmaceutical company that were hoping to use the legend of Kong as part of a publicity stunt, assumed that the natives thought that the thunder crashing overhead was being interpreted as the beating chest of Kong himself… until an immense shape loomed over the treeline, and the true King Kong stomped towards the natives.
And the rest, they say, is history.
Somehow, the company managed to capture the colossal ape and transport him to Japan, where he clashed with none other than the King of the Monsters himself, and seemingly won before swimming back to Skull Island. After returning to his island home, the gigantic ape was rarely bothered, save for the odd mad scientist attempting to take control of him to mine rare minerals, but with the help of copious amounts of berry juice, he was eventually transported to Monster Island… where he promptly made a beeline towards Godzilla and roared out a challenge, which the atomic saurian gladly returned. It seemed that the two titans had a score to settle.
Kong stands at a massive 95 meters tall, towering over smaller hillsides, but despite his comparatively smaller size, the gigantic ape has proven capable of lifting the King of Monsters himself over his head and throwing him, and that’s just at his normal strength. True to the Skull Islanders’ legends, Kong has a special affinity with electricity, especially lightning; electrical shocks don’t hurt him, instead just increasing his already-insane physical strength, and he can channel this electricity into his opponents through his physical attacks. Unlike the Kongs that he is named after, though, King Kong is a strict biped, looking more like the legendary Sasquatch than anything else, although his head looks more like that of a gorilla.
Nowadays, Kong lairs deep in the heart of Monster Island’s jungles, feeding on fruits, giant insects, vegetation, and occasionally on gigantic aquatic creatures like the mire squid of his home island. Strangely enough, despite King Kong not being closely related to the smaller Kongs at all (Genetic testing puts the former closer to chimpanzees and humans than was previously thought, while the latter are more closely related to gibbons than anything else alive today), the ape god seems to have something of a soft spot for them, guarding the giant primates from the predations of other kaiju and occasionally bringing them rare bits of food such as mire squid tentacles and fresh gaur.
Gaw and the Death-Runners: However, Kong was not the only god on his island; while the giant ape laired up in the mountains, the deepest darkest jungles housed a rival deity - the massive theropod dinosaur known as Gaw. According to the Skull Islanders, Kong and the vicious dinosaur have been mortal enemies for as long as they have been present on the island, causing major schisms within the islanders’ culture as different factions dedicated themselves to worshipping either Gaw or Kong and warring with one another. According to these legends, Kong was once much closer to Gaw in size, making the fights evenly matched; approximately 40 years ago, however, something happened to the ape, and he grew to the titanic size he is today - incidentally, right about the same time that nuclear testing went on dangerously close to Skull Island. With this increase in size and power, Kong easily defeated Gaw once and for all, sending her fleeing back into the jungles where she made her home, seemingly never to return again… until Skull Island sank beneath the waves, and the terror of Skull Island made herself known once more as she rampaged through several Indonesian islands, followed closely by her most loyal subjects, the deadly dinosaurs known as the Death-Runners.
Standing nearly 55 meters tall and measuring 70 meters long, Gaw looks very similar to the much smaller dinosaur known as the Venatosaurus upon first glance, but a closer look reveals that she is a very different beast. For the most part, she lacks feathers, instead being covered in dark red lizard-like scales with a cream-tan underbelly and jagged crocodile-like scutes running down her spine; however, she does sport a fan of coppery orange plumes on the tip of her long flexible tail, as well as a ‘crown’ of similarly-colored feathers on the back of her head. Her skull is another unusual feature; it doesn’t look like the skull of any dromaeosaur in the fossil record, instead looking more like that of the long-extinct Allosaurus or Saurophaganax, complete with a small pair of horn-like bone growths above her eyes, while her teeth are snaggled and jagged, halfway in between the narrow blade-like implements of a carnosaur and the stout bone-crushing fangs of creatures like Tyrannosaurus rex; her tongue is incredibly long and flexible, and is forked like a snake - the appendage is actually strong enough to wrap around a grown man and effortlessly pick him up off the ground. Her arms are long and powerfully muscled, with flexible wrists that allow Gaw to swivel her hands to roughly the same extent as a human being; each of her hands sports three fingers and a semi-opposable ‘thumb,’ all of which are equipped with large curved talons. Her hind legs are fairly similar to those of a dromaeosaur, complete with a raised sickle claw on the first toe of each foot, but unlike those dinosaurs, Gaw can shift her stance from a more typical horizontal stance to a partially upright one, ideal for getting a higher viewpoint of an area or for bringing her powerful arms to bear against her opponents. The dinosaur goddess’ slit-pupiled eyes face forwards, granting her binocular vision, and seem to glow pale yellow with almost tangible malice.
Gaw has no human subjects these days, but she is by no means without worshippers: her subjects are the Death-Runners, gigantic dromaeosaur dinosaurs that rank among the most deadly inhabitants of Monster Island. Measuring over 25 feet in length and standing roughly 9 feet tall, these huge raptors are covered in blood red scales striped with black, without any trace of integument anywhere on their bodies. Like Gaw, they have carnosaur-like heads with small horns on the brows and long powerful arms; unlike her, however, each hand of a Death-Runner has four fingers and a ‘thumb,’ with claws more suited for grasping than for tearing flesh. Exactly how smart these dinosaurs are is up for debate, but the Death-Runners are far from stupid; they’ve been observed fashioning primitive tools out of sticks, rocks, and bones, using complex pack-hunting tactics that rival and in some areas even exceed those of Ingen’s raptors and Venatosaurus in ingenuity, and communicating with each other using a complex system of barking calls, hisses, and body postures.
According to accounts from Skull Islanders, Gaw and her Death Runners were once the terrors of Skull Island; everything from Kongs to V-rexes to Venatosaurus steered clear of the Death-Runners’ territory, and Gaw herself sent even Brontosaurus herds running with her mere presence. Now, however, it seems that Gaw and her flock have lost that aura of fear - they may have been the ultimate predators of Skull Island, but here on Monster Island, they are far from the top of the food chain. When she was first relocated to the island, Gaw was one of the most vicious kaiju kept in containment, seemingly furious that she had been whisked away from her home. She immediately charged forth towards the first kaiju that she came across, snarling and snapping at the air in preparation to reassert herself as the terror of this new land.
Unfortunately for her, that monster was none other Gorosaurus himself, one of the very few kaiju with the sheer physical might to knock King Ghidorah flat on his ass. The resulting battle lasted only a few minutes, and was described by observers as one of the most hilariously one-sided matches that they had ever seen - Gaw was lucky to limp away with ‘just’ several dozen broken bones and nearly an eighth of her flesh ripped off by Gorosaurus’ vicious fangs. Since then, the primal monster has tried multiple times to reclaim her lost honor through combat with a level of determination rivalling even Anguirus, and has had her scaly tail handed to her almost every single time; through each beatdown, though, Gaw has begun to learn the hierarchy of Monster Island:
- Gorosaurus and Rexy are regarded at least some measure of grudging respect - the former’s sheer physical might and the latter’s experience with battling creatures like her have made the pair of saurians particularly well-suited to bringing the former deity down a peg or dozen.
- Kong is viewed with a combination of fear and absolute hatred, but Gaw oddly doesn’t attack him; the giant ape ended their rivalry long ago, and they both know it.
- Anguirus was initially thought to simply be a witless prey animal and was attacked upon first meeting him - a notion that the armored titan completely and utterly shattered within about ten seconds. Now, Gaw knows better than to get in Anguirus’ face.
- And finally, Godzilla scares the absolute shit out of Gaw; the atomic saurian is king here, and he has defended that title from beings much bigger and much nastier than the demonic dinosaur could ever hope to be, and she knows it.
Skull Crawlers: If Kong and Gaw were the gods of Skull Island, then the Skull Crawlers were the devils. Measuring anywhere from 13 to 24 meters long, these creatures are descendants of the mosasaurs of the Late Cretaceous, hiding away in subterranean caves deep beneath the earth and becoming terrestrial once again as their ancestors perished upon the surface. Their bodies are much the same in general shape as their ancient ancestors, but are much slimmer and more serpentine, with no trace of hind legs whatsoever and a long flexible tail without any trace of flukes; their front limbs, by contrast, have developed into long, gangly arms each ending in three sharp curved claws, held in the same manner as a pterosaur walking on land. The head is long and narrow, colored a dull bone white in contrast to the green-grey scales that cover the rest of its body, and has two sets of holes in the skull that mimic the openings of a real skull - a pair of false eye sockets in front of the gaping sockets that the real eyes are located within. The jaws sport three rows of razor-sharp backwards-curving teeth, with thousands of sharp spines like those of a sea turtle filling the throat, and the tongue is incredibly long and tipped with three flexible points, capable of extending out several meters to snag fleeing prey. According to the Skull Islanders’ legends, these massive creatures originally lived within caverns located deep beneath the island itself, with a few occasionally coming up to the surface every few decades only to be beaten back by either the local wildlife, Kong, or even Gaw. When the island sank underneath the waves, however, there was nothing stopping these ravenous beasts from escaping into the outside world. Fast, vicious, and perpetually ravenous, the kaiju acted much like land-bound versions of the Gyaos, devouring almost everything in their path when they made landfall in East Asia, and much like the Gyaos, they had a queen: Ramarak, a colossal brute that measured over 95 meters in total length. Vicious beyond belief and impossibly old, Ramarak lead her monstrous brood on a rampage through a good portion of southeastern China, shrugging off most military retaliation and overwhelming the attacks that did do something to them with sheer numbers and raw agility. It was only when Kong himself arrived on the scene, released from Monster Island alongside Gorosaurus and Rexy, that the reptilian tide was turned - Ramarak herself was beaten into the ground and pummeled by all three giants, culminating in Kong personally disemboweling her. Only five Skull Crawlers were left alive, none of whom were larger than 20 meters long, and all of them were immediately transported to Monster Island.
Only three of those original five Skull Crawlers are alive today; one was dragged underwater by Titanosaurus when it tried to eat Taro, and the other one was stupid enough to try and attack Godzilla and was promptly incinerated for its troubles. However, the surviving three still managed to reproduce, and the population of Skull Crawlers on Monster Island is now almost two dozen individuals, with most lurking in the island’s cave systems and others living in the jungles and swamps. Like almost all of the monsters stationed here, the Skull Crawlers took a fair amount of time to realize that they weren’t at the top of the food chain anymore; here, they’re small fry compared to the other resident kaiju, and most of those kaiju have developed a taste for the mosasaurs. The serpentine beasts prey upon virtually anything that they can find, their high metabolism forcing them to eat extremely large amounts of flesh even for creatures their size, and frequently lay large clutches of eggs that soon hatch into up to two dozen orca-sized hatchlings; most of these hatchlings, however, get eaten by everything from V-rexes to Indominus to other kaiju.
Cave Dragon: During the second expedition to Skull Island, the albino ape known affectionately as ‘Kiko’ was seen battling and eventually defeating a gargantuan 50-foot-long cave-dwelling reptile that could only be described as a wingless dragon, extremely similar in appearance to the beast known as Taro that would be unearthed decades later. The beast was presumed killed by Kiko, and when Skull Island finally sank beneath the waves, the body was presumed lost forever.
We presumed wrong.
Not only did the beast known as the ‘cave dragon’ survive its battle with Kiko, it apparently became mutated by the same atomic tests that caused Kong to grow to his current size. When Skull Island sank and its menagerie of monsters were let loose upon the world, the cave dragon made itself known when it came ashore in northern Australia, wandering about and extremely confused by this new environment, having never seen sunlight before in its life; it was soon captured and transported to Monster Island with minimal fuss. Medical tests performed upon the kaiju would later confirm that the creature is female.
Measuring a little over 25 meters long, the Cave Dragon closely resembles a much larger version of Taro in her anatomy, but there are quite a few differences. For one, she’s considerably more heavily built: the body is a bit longer in regards of proportions, but it’s still considerably brawnier, with the same going for the tail and the neck. Also unlike Taro, she sports armor in lieu of spikes or horns: crocodilian armored scutes studded with dozens of sharp osteoderms like those of a titanosaur run down her neck, back, and tail, the latter of which is flattened like an alligator’s for use in swimming. The head is also considerably larger, more crocodilian than lizard-like, and sports powerful jaws lined with hundreds of razor-sharp fangs that seem like they’re crowding the mouth. And finally, the limbs are a bit longer in proportion to the body than they are on Taro, are held in a slightly more erect stance, and sport both webbing in between the toes and vicious curved talons on each hand.
Despite her name, the Cave Dragon doesn’t live within Monster Island’s expansive cavern system: instead, she seems to rather enjoy this new thing called sunlight, and has made her lair along the island’s coast, feeding on large sea creatures and often following Taro and Titanosaurus. It seems that the Skull Island kaiju sees the other two kaiju as others of her kind; she often sunbathes next to the saurians, and appears to greatly enjoy their company. Whether or not the Cave Dragon is capable of crossbreeding with Taro, or even of laying eggs, remains to be seen, but if she is, Titanosaurus might have some serious competition…
Instead of looking to just one film, I looked to every single film in the Kong franchise, from the very first to the one that was released this year, and did my best to integrate them all into one universe.
Gaw and her death runners are from a novelization of King Kong's early life; essentially, she was worshipped before Kong was born and killed the then-young ape's parents, driving Kong to kill her out of revenge when he grew to his full size. As you can see, I decided to give her a bit of an upgrade; however, that upgrade still isn't enough to make her a match against the King Kong that I've made for this universe.
I took quite a bit of inspiration from
's combined Skull Island for this, particularly in how Kong and Gaw are handled; I think that I did pretty well with it, all things considered. The Skull Crawlers I'm also quite proud of - it was quite fun to translate them into Monster Island.As the title implies, this isn't the last you'll see of Skull Island's menagerie - the file I made was too big for dA to handle, so I'll post the smaller creatures later.
King Kong is the property of Legendary Pictures, RKO, and the various other studios that have used his likeness over the years.
is property of 
Terapusmordax was actually a type of rodent