[Antiga]

Yes, it is randomized.. But not completely. When running around Land of Death, and picking up a scroll the chance of getting some useless precision or haste scroll is rather small. The further you get, the better the 'random' stuff is. My point is it's not 100% random, it's selected randomly from pool of pre-specified stuff.

When I played the demo, I remember the menagerie always having either this set of units, or that set of units. One set would include royal snakes, and the other wouldn't. Thing is, I started a new game(and finished) in demo for at least a dozen times, and each time each of the 'sets' in the menagerie was the exact same. If it was the royal snake set, it would have all the other creatures the exact same as last time when it also had the royal snake set. Now I cannot be sure if this last example is due to it being the demo and thus being simplified somehow, or wether it's like that troughout the game.
Hope this helps shed some light on some subjects.