25 June 4706 - Becoming a Polycrypt

As a wandering Dungeon Master, I need to keep a large array of imaginary monsters in my head, each with peculiar traits and abilities that keep adventurers guessing as to how to overcome each one. For help on this, I turned to real life imaginary monsters from a field of speculative study called cryptozoology. The study aims to examine the history and characteristics of cryptids, animals thought to possibly exist or animals of lore and legend. Cryptozoology puts dragons in the same category as thunderbirds, skyfish, yetis, and the Beast of Exmoor.
So what is one to do with a huge list of cryptids? Well reading through the list is rather entertaining for one, but for me it wasn't long until I wanted to start making up my own.
And posting them to the wiki.
And essentially pranking people who buy into all this hokum.

I mean, what are they really going to do? Prove my made-up creatures don't exist? Quad erat demonstrandum, ducky. The only valid way to remove my cryptids from the list is to prove that they do exist. And good luck with that.

What it really opened me up to, though, was other areas of speculative study. Cryptohistory rates a sub-entry in wikipedia as well, but what would other speculative studies be like? Well...

Cryptomathematics or Improved Complex Algebra - This is the study of the mathematics of speculative numbers. The improved part of ICA is the addition of a third classification of number to complex numbers: the speculative number.
All complex numbers consist of a non-zero component in both the real and imaginary classification. This is denoted as a+bi, where a and b are coefficients, and i is the unit imaginary number (the squareroot of negative 1). An improved complex number would be denoted as a+bi+c? where ? is the unit speculative number.
Presumably, the unit speculative number has identity properties on the speculative plane. One could craft a 3d map of an improved complex function by having the abscissa be the real number axis and the ordinate be the imaginary number axis as usual and have the speculative plane perpendicular to both on the sustulio. An improved complex number system has all three components, and subsets of that system go by different names. For example, a by itself is called a "real number", bi is called an "imaginary number" and a+bi is called a "complex number". With the addition of the third category, we now have three more constructions. The c? by itself is called a "speculative number," a+c? is called an "elaborate number," and bi+c? is known as a "dread number."

But the fun doesn't have to stop there. Why not have a speculative study of all things? Like polymathism, but for crypto-studies. This is the nature of the polycrypt, one who studies all things speculative, or one who speculates on all things.
This would naturally lead to the speculative study of the speculative study of things, which itself would be cryptocryptopolymathism, and one such student thought to exist would be a cryptopolycrypt. Maybe that's a little too far gone.
Do have a fun time deciding what other speculative disciplines ought to exist, and I'll be doing the same. I'll leave you with a few ideas for speculative study that border on legitimacy:

Cryptohistoriography: the speculative history of the history of the world. Ordinary historiographers use contextual clues, documents, and historical records to construct what former societies thought about history, and how the history that humans kept has changed over the ages. A cryptohistoriographer spends his time theorizing what former historians may have kept as evidence of their accounts, or what theories of history may or may not have existed in ancient cultures, or what cultures may or may have have existed who thought about and kept history.
Cryptopalaeontology: the speculative study of extinct ecosystems. It is foolhardy to expect that every single species of dinosaur died in such a way that at least one representative became a fossil that we can dig up today. Especially in the cases of those species whose corpses auto-combusted in funeral pyres or who turned into neutrons after discovering atomic lava. This is where cryptopalaeontology comes in. A cryptopalaeontologist tries to reconstruct ancient ecosystems using features we already know and fills in the blanks with speculative monsters and plants of his own imagining, or of common myth or rumor.
Cryptopathology: the speculative study of unknown things that could harm or kill you. This is more of an offshoot of pathogenics, where a particularly hard to nail down pathogen (which itself means unknown cause of known harmful effects) gets the upgrade to cryptopathogen. This includes diseases and toxin forms that have yet to be discovered, including self-replicating lipids, hybrid sporzoan-bacterium, nanoviruses, and "smart molecules." A cryptopathogen could also be the toxin or venom of a cryptid.
Cryptosociology: the speculative study of human group nature. Sadly, this is an existing discipline, and in the modern scientific community goes by the name "Sociology."

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