Mimics in Modules

I mentioned a little while back some things I dislike about Torchlight. But one thing I kind of liked was the inclusion of mimics. I started thinking about using mimics more… and, by coincidence, Noisms wrote something about them that further piqued my interest. What if excessive magic, especially persistent non-mobile enchantments, cranks up evolution a billionfold? Mimics have developed the ability to mimic because they are evolving in a matter of months instead of of millions of years.

About a year ago, I wrote up my own version of the mimic and sort of merged it with the doppelganger and kelpie. And I speculated about an entire doppelkingdom as a possible legendary locale. More recently, I’d been wanting to do an entire multi-level module, instead of just the occasional one-page dungeon… but I was thinking, “What could I do that was different?” Everyone does dragons, humanoids, and undead. What’s underutilized?

Duh, doppelkind.

Here’s a question for you German speakers, though: if “doppelganger” is a “walking double” of someone, what would be a good German name for the animal equivalent (what I called the kelpie) and the “inanimate” object equivalent (the mimic?) I was tempted to just say “doppelbeast” and “doppelthing”, but I suppose those would be objectionable. Actually maybe I need “doppelflesh”, “doppelstone”, “doppelmetal”, and “doppelliquid”. And something for the big slablike doppelkind that becomes trappers and lurkers above.