Alternate History, Alternate Beast

[Hibou]

As some of you have heard over IRC and whatnot, I'm slowly working on a new setting, and the idea is to take Earth at the dawn of civilization, add magic, and have everything go absolutely haywire. Many people from history will still appear with different backgrounds and roles for fun. However, As for supernatural creatures, the only ones I've decided to include are demons, angels, and undead. I've reached a roadblock, though: because of the alternate history, I can't decide if I should create entirely new types of undead based on the new history or still include some classics. Different archetypes would still exist, just not in traditional forms in the former case (i.e. there'd be a creature or three whose myth states it sucks the life force out of people through various means, although vampires wouldn't exist as known). What do you guys think I should do: have a new roster, retain the old ones, or pull a mix?

I've already got some unique ones that I can use which were originally modified for Haveneast such as the doedkler.

[Steerpike]

A good tactic is to use the names of traditional creatures with vague folkloric/mythic definitions and do what you like with them.

[SamuraiChicken]

You could make new creatures, or disguise traditional ones to look like something new. This way, the world seems fresh and new instead of "oh look, another vampire." Even though your world's equivalent of a vampire is more or less the same, your players won't think of them as vampires (and they wouldn't have a bias towards what their abilities should or should not be).

[Hibou]

The thing is that it's a new history, so I guess what I'm looking for input on is whether or not I should throw in new creation stories for all of the traditional undead to explain how they're still around, or just let the history "flow" into all-new breeds.

[Kindling]

If your historical point of divergence is so far back in time, how close is the modern (as in in-game modern) world to ours? I'm guessing not very. At all. If this is the case, then I wonder why you're thinking of it as an alternate-history Earth at all, and not just a world with some similarities? Not a criticism, of course, just me wondering about your line of reasoning.

[Hibou]

It'll be using the map of Earth, and while the magic is there as far back as the day fire was discovered, the divergence really starts to take place in the earliest days of Mesopotamian civilization. Also, I want to play around with the idea of having historical figures still appear, usually around the equivalent dates in history, but have them be significantly altered. The actual time period I'm going to write the current date for in the eventual material will be about 3500-4000 years after the divergence.

[Hibou]

I guess I will do the disguise/changing of definition method. Thanks for the input guys.

[Xeviat]

If you haven't made your decision yet, I vote for "don't call a duck a horse". If you use the word "vampire", make them identifiably vampires and not super-humans who sparkle in the sun.

Disguising things but leaving in some recognizable traits will probably the most emotionally impactful. Creating entirely new things will be difficult, but it will also be the most rewarding I think. I do like the idea of only having demons, angels, and undead, but I think that if people have learned to use magic it would be fairly safe to say that some of the natural flora and fauna would have some capability with it as well. Stuff like actual flaming salamanders and the like would be nifty, even if you don't have full fledged dragons.