Checkerboard Worm Lizard(Trogonophis Wiegmanni), Family Trogonophidae, Northern Morocco

Checkerboard Worm Lizard (Trogonophis wiegmanni), family Trogonophidae, northern Morocco

Legless lizard.

photograph by Kristian Stengaard Munkholm

just normal orc stuff

So, what you're telling me here, is 'basilisk' is the latin term for Short King, right...? ;)

This was another interesting one... As you note, when I think of Basilisks, I always think of something much closer to this;

...which always reads very scorpion-like to me (the multip legs, beak that could easily be translated as claws, and long tail), though minus the legs I can also see it being a reference to a cobra.

It's also amusing to me that in Pliny's account, the weasel/hreksong kills the basilisk due to its own smell...

This also feels doubly relevant to me after finding out about 'rooster's eggs' having listened to the @maniculum podcast episode about the Tournament of Tottenham (again, more relevant for the cockatrice, but as you say, these two beasts seem hopelessly entangled...)

Bestiaryposting Results: Gaersnae

This one seems to be flying under the radar, identification-wise, much more than I expected, which is a pleasant surprise. I don't have anything else to add at the beginning of this post. The entry people are working from is here:

And if you don't know what this "bestiaryposting" business is, you can find an explanation and all previous posts at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

Now, art in roughly chronological order:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has made the entirely logical decision that the "king of crawling things" should be whichever creature has the most legs, and drawn us a millipede large enough to fight a weasel. I think this is a good and sensible direction, and that's a quality depiction of a millipede/weasel fight right there.

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) has gone in a more rodent-y direction, with the interesting detail that, as a result of living in caves, its legs are gradually becoming vestigial. I think this is also quite clever, and the rat is pretty cute.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) decided that the "king of crawling things" should have no legs, as maximum crawling happens when one is flat on one's belly. Hence our crowned snake -- complete with a bird going down in flames near the top of the drawing, and a weasel/Hreksong invading the burrows near the bottom. I think the "crown" works really well, and it's always nice to see a callback to previous beasts. As usual, CheapSweets has provided an interesting and informative explanation of their design in the linked post -- I particularly liked the phrase "pelvic spur for extra rizz".

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) is running with the idea of a creature that kills with its scent (and has white stripes), so we have this amazing picture of a skunk zapping an owl out of the sky. The medieval skunk is excellent -- I think if they had skunks in medieval Europe, that's probably how they would have drawn them -- and the scribbly owl is just delightful. Check the linked post for additional observations and a link to a short but informative source about medieval owls.

@pomrania (link to post here) also has some skunk inspiration going on here, though their version has some extra legs and a kind of boar-like face. A very informative series of drawings about how this thing can kill you -- I particularly like the one with the little scroll reading "deadly!!"

@strixcattus (link to post here) has contributed an invertebrate, which I think makes this one of the only entries that's gotten more than one of those. And that's a solid drawing of an arthropod -- I also like the lettering at the bottom right there. As usual, I implore you to read the write-up in the linked post, where the animal is re-imagined from the perspective of a modern naturalist.

Okay, Aberdeen Bestiary:

So this is actually a case of the artist's preconceptions making them mess it up a bit. You may notice that it does not fit the description. It also sticks out a bit in the context of the bestiary, because it's in the "snake" section of the manuscript.

What's happened here is that this is the entry for the basilisk, but the artist has drawn a cockatrice. This is not actually unusual, as the two mythical beasts are hopelessly entangled in the tradition; I looked into it a bit, and it seems like there's actually some confusion about where the cockatrice even comes from. Probably the reason the two creatures have similar powers attributed to them is because the cockatrice kind of inherited that aspect from the basilisk.

(See, e.g., Breiner, Laurence A. "The Career of the Cockatrice." Isis, vol. 70, no. 1, 1979, pp. 30–47.)

Anyway, the basilisk is so called because it is the king of snakes -- basileus is Greek for "king", and -iskos is a diminutive. Little king.

(The translation provided by the University of Aberdeen, "king of crawling things," is unusual -- the Latin reads "rex serpentium". It's possible this translation choice is because of the flexibility of the term "serpent".)

This is a creature originally described by classical authors and then passed along through medieval European sources. It has white stripes, often some sort of "crown" on its head, is venomous, and is sometimes said to distinguish itself from other snakes by holding the front part of its body regally upright... yeah, it's obviously a cobra that's been telephoned and exaggerated into being ludicrously deadly. Just swap out "weasel" for "mongoose" -- I think that's pretty clearly a case of some author who distantly predated scientific taxonomy just going, "looks like a weasel to me".

Also, this entry ends with:

The creature called sibilus is the same as the regulus, or basilisk; for it kills with its hiss before it bites or burns.

I am not aware of any creature called sibilus.

"then are pursued by a vicious creature with the head of a dugong and the body of a sea elephant,"

🤨

This script sounds absolutely wild (and is not convincing me that most of the interesting stuff from OG D&D wasn't from Dave Arneson...).

Also, very much feels like the whole 'modern people being isekai'd into a fantasy world' concept was pipped by Gordon R. Dickson's 1976 novel 'The Dragon and the George' (rather good, if you ever get the chance to read it) - which was adapted into the Rankin Bass animated film 'The Flight of Dragons' (which we can only surmise Gygax was also not a fan of... :p)

Also, going back to Conan for a moment, if we're completely honest Thulsa Doom is totally a cooler name for a villain than Thoth-Amon...

Gary Gygax panned Conan the Barbarian and The Sword & the Sorcerer, slightly preferring the latter (Dragon magazine #63, July 1982). He noted that Conan had very little of Howard's Conan in it*, but couldn't resist some petty nerd rage about hair color.

Fantasy films as a genre had earned a poor reputation in the late 1970s and early 80s, compared to some of the classics of sci-fi and pulp adventure being released at the same time. Gygax promised they were carefully taking their time making their Dungeons & Dragons movie planned for 1984 or 85, aiming for the high standards of Star Wars and Raiders.

That film never was made, but judging from the script that eventually resurfaced in Brian Blume's collection it could have been worse than the 2000 effort and its sequels. Jon Peterson wrote about that 1980s script in 2015, summarizing a story of ordinary people from our world being pulled into a fantasy realm -- an idea left over from Andre Norton's 1979 novel Quag Keep, which was recycled into the 1983-85 Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. There are tired themes of a Chosen One and a capital "C" Child destined to inherit great power, main characters who accomplish little by themselves and repeatedly need saving by more powerful NPCs, and almost all of the monsters are new creations, showing no attempt to represent familiar creatures and spells from the game. We would have to wait 40 years for a movie that dodged those pitfalls.

(*Slight edit here, as while I was one of many viewers baffled by Conan facing the wrong villain, who had the wrong appearance for that name, I enjoyed the movie more than GG did and thought the character and world felt enough like Conan for me.)

Deep Sea Animal Paperclips, by Colorata.