fauna palettes

From Yoon-Suin, pg 222: "The Amethyst Medusa. A woman with hair composed of living, moving centipedes, whose vision transforms her victims into pillars of pure amethyst. She lives on an island on a lake on an island on a lake. Her stats are as a standard medusa."

A trick for populating a foreign land in a hurry: swapping out the components of a familiar chimeric creature with their indigenous equivalents. This goes back almost as far as using Google Translate to come up with renames

This seems like an ideal mix of old and new - the familiar shape of a fantastic beast combined with local flavor in an easy to comprehend form.

An example: fantasy Yucatan

MtG Resplendent Griffin

Some local animals: Macaw, Mosquito, Jaguar, Bird of Paradise, Spider Monkey, Tree Frog, Python, Puma, Iguana, Quetzal, Hummingbird

Chimeric animals from the MM (some similar ones ignored): centaur, chimera, gnoll, griffon, harpy, hippocampus, hippogriff, jackalwere, leucrotta, lycanthrope, manticore, medusa, merman, mind flayer, naga, owlbear, pegasus, rakshasa, satyr, sphinx

Some are cuter than others too

With a minute's work we quickly have mosquito-headed mind flayers, were-iguanas, and a sphinx with features of a jaguar and quetzal bird - and none particularly need re-statted or -conceived.