Favourite DM Creature?

[Ameena]

Yeah they do hurt a bit. Also, I don't think there's only one of them...there's two or three I thought. Meh, can't remember...
Oh and about the Jabberwock - http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabb ... wocky.html
Ooh it's by Lewis Carroll! That explains why it's in Alice.
And about skinny dragons - look up Chinese dragons. As far as I know, they're all serpentine and wingless, usually with a moustache thingy. Despite having no wings, they do still fly.
And as to me being a dragon expert...well, since I've read so many books and seen tons of films featuring dragons and all manner of other such creatures (griffins, hippogryphs, hippocampi, hydras, chimeras, minotaurs, you name it...), you'd expect, really, that I'd know a fair bit about different visualisations of such creatures. No-one is "right" in what dragons and things look like - if you think it's cool, good enough .

[beowuuf]

Funny, the film wasnt' a Monty Python film - it was a Terry Gilliam film (based on the lewis carrol nonesense poem, of course) and he just so happened to rope a few python people like Michael Pail into appearing (just liek Time Bandits)

[zoom]

@Ameena:
hippocampi is supposed to be a joke, isn´t it?!!:shock:
If not, could you please explain what that should be? A Hippopotamus - centaur?!

saw that site before! .. google-ing for "Vorpal blade" yielded it.

@beowuuf: I did not know! Seemed logical that it was a Monty Python´s, though!

[ADDF_Toxic]

Well, we're talking about dragons and other monsters here...including Nessie, which I did a report on, I've said that somewhere before...I got it back today though. 92%

[beowuuf]

You did indeed, and congratulations

[Ameena]

Lol Zoooom. "Hippo" means "horse"...I think "Hippopotamus" means "water horse" or something...perhaps it's "river horse". I have heard it before, I just can't remember what it is. A hippocampus has the forequarters of a hrose (head, neck, forelegs) and the tail of a fish. Actually, part of the brain is also called the hippocampus. It's near the back and I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what it's for but don't get it confuzzled with the hypothalamus (the bit responsible for controlling homeostasis).
And in case you're wondering, a hippogryph has the head, hind legs, and wings of an eagle, and the forelegs of a horse. Erm...I would think it has the tail of a hrose too. Basically it's a griffin but the leonine parts are equine instead.

[ADDF_Toxic]

Thanks beo. And then to Ms. Monster, Ameeana. That is interesting about hippo meaning horse, so that means when we use the abreviated form of hippopotamaus, we are actually saying horse! I heard that a hypogryth was a mix of many creatures. There is a hypogryth in Harry Potter III. What I understood from the special features is a hypogryth is any mix of any creatures, so a cat with horse legs and bird beak would be a hypogryth too, but that would make centaurs hypogryths!

[Ameena]

It's GryPH, not GryTH. Yes, there is a Hippogryph in HP3. There's four, actually, but only one features for more than a few pages (well, in the film, the other three don't even exist ). His name is Buckbeak, and he's in the next two books after Azkaban too. Whether or not he'll be in the last two books remains to be seen.
But anyway, I've never heard that a hippogryph can be any combo creature, only that it's an eagle/horse combo.
Aha, I was right! River horse it is!http://www.yptenc.org.uk/docs/factsheet ... tamus.html
Scroll down to the little section underneath "Food".

[ADDF_Toxic]

Agh! Yes, I have only seen the film, not read the books. I don't know, I didn't research, J.K. Rowling did all that research. And that link needs correction, You need to put a space before it for it to turn into a link.

[Ameena]

Okay yeah thanks for pointing that out...
http://www.yptenc.org.uk/docs/factsheet ... tamus.html
If you haven't read the HP books...do so. The films are erm...rather different...especially Azkaban...arrrgh...I suppose they have to be different from the books a BIT, but...haroom I won't start about that one anyway...
I don't think I've ever come across a time when a film of something was better than the book (even if the film came first and the book was based on it), but maybe I'm just more book-inclined or something. They certainly encourage you to use more imagination anyway .

[ADDF_Toxic]

Yourwelcome. I don't know why I haven't read any of the HP books, my sister has. I have read my books, have you? Lol. Yes I wrote a book, some when I was younger too. I want to be an authour when I grow up.

[Ameena]

I've written a few stories...well I've STARTED writing quite a few stories. I just haven't finished most of them. That was during spare time at school, like break/lunchtime, and free periods once I got to Sixth Form. The ones I did/started in like, Year 7 or 8 are REALLY pants. They kind of get, ever so slightly less crappy as they come to more recent ones. I got an A- for the three I did in English. Well actually the one that was for my GCSE folder was I think an A. I wrote "The Lion King" as a story and I started on "Dinosaur" and also "Brother Bear". Not got far with those two though...
As for poems, at least all of those are finished, hehe. They're a lot quicker to write though, like half an hour rather than like, a year lol.

[ADDF_Toxic]

I started my 217 page book 2 years ago. I started lots of other stories when I was younger, only finished one I think. I am typing my 217 page for editing, then I'll rewrite it, add a bunch of stuff like my characters aren't described very good, get it edited, and write it again. Maybe that will be the last time. A project in french class helped me plan my characters.

[Ameena]

The longest story of the ones I finished was TLK, that was 51 pages. The second-longest after that was a really crappy one I started in Year 7, which made it to about 46 pages I think.

[Zyx]

The hippocampus, or sea horse, is actually a real animal:
http://www.chariho.k12.ri.us/cms/librar ... rectus.jpg
http://www.dcsp.org/images/Hippocampus%200erectus3.jpg
http://www.starfish.ch/photos/fishes-Fi ... strix4.jpg

I think the greeks imagined another kind of hippocampus, the size of a horse, with legs, used by Posseidon. AD&D made it a classic monster.
http://home.att.net/~Sniper.7R/ACV/reso ... campus.jpg
http://www.poost.nl/seahorse/picts/medi ... campus.jpg

As for hippogryphs, gryphons, centaurs, chimeras, manticores: greeks had precise definitions of them, and modern RPGs took them. In the time between, christianty went through an oscurantist era where all these monsters were vaguely defined:
A hippogryph was half horse/half eagle but could have some other animal parts like dog legs - while a pegasus is a winged horse -.
A gryphon was half lion-half eagle (the most stable version since it was used in heraldic -, sometimes winged, sometimes not.
A centaure was any half-man, half-4 legged animal.
A chimera was any mix of creature (greek one was 1/3 goat, 1/3 lion and 1/3 serpent, I think).
A manticore was a lion with a scorpion tail, sometimes winged, sometimes with a human face.

In The name of the rose by Umberto Eco, there are dozens of other forgotten creatures.

[zoom]

@ Zyx: Do you refer to the book or the film of "the name of the rose"?
I have only seen the film , and never read the book, so I think you must mean the book?!
And Dozens of others , that´s at least 24 brand new-forgotten creatures!

I´ll look for "obscurist era", maybe there is sth. interesting.
Thanks for the hint.

ONe "addition" to famous monsters would be Midgard the world snake out of "viking myths".

@ameena:
If you really want to read a book that´s worse than a film then read the star wars books- the third one is just crap. But normally, books are better than the film.

[Zyx]

The film is good but I was talking about the book. The book is better, but unlike the usual cases where i's just better because it is more detailed and has more depth, this one has something more: it is elegantly written and describes hundreds of things like monsters or medicinal herbs that are interesting per se.
If there were no story at all, the book would still be interesting and worth it.

As for the viking snake, I think its name is Jormungandr.

From the mythology, there are other dragons:

- Cetus, killed by Perseus to save Andromeda (the girl chained to a rock on the sea to save the city, you know)
- Ladon, killed by Atlas for Herakles (great son of Perseus by the way), guardian of the garden of the Golden Apples.
- Python, where the Oracle of Delphi was built after its death.

- Fafnir, killed by Siegfried, guardian of the Ring of the Nibbelungs.
- There's another dragon eating in vain the roots of the tree of life Yggdrasil, I don't remember its name.

- Tiamat, babylonian dragon god, who spawned lots of of lesser dragons (well known by Ad&D players)

- The dragon of Saint-George (which represents all the previous pagan monsters and hydras... in particular the drakons, wise immortal guardians of treasures according to the greek myths)

- The Tarasque from Tarascon.

- The Tewelche, giant men from Patagonia, were believed to fight against dragons.

I'm sure there are hundreds more!

[ADDF_Toxic]

Yggdrasil? What is that? There is a hero in a game I play but not normally, because it's funner on the internet and that place is so mean, named Yggdrasil. It's actually interesting because there is a unit called the hydralisk, which has nothing to do with the hydra, unless I'm missing something. People often shorten it to hydra. The company must have done alot of research to get these names. It's very futuristic.

[beowuuf]

The first HP films weren't too bad, but I missed the subtlety of the third book (the investigation and revelations were a little better)

[zoom]

@ Ameena: what´s TLK ?

@ Beowuuf: HP stands for?

@Zyx : who ate all the dragon steaks?
really can´t add much here...

[beowuuf]

Harry Potter (replying to further up the post)

[Ameena]

TLK = The Lion King.

[Trantor]

Actually, I thought the third Harry Potter movie was a LOT better than the first two ones. The first two movies tried to squeeze everything that is in the books into themselves, and felt very rushed and overblown. The movies had no rhythm, speed or real development. The third movie was a lot better in my book because it abandoned much from the book and concentrated on the aspects that would make a film work in itself. I think the third movie is also easier to understand in all aspects for those who haven't read the books. Still, I prefer reading the books - at least the first three ones and partly the fourth one. Order of the Phoenix was a huge disappointment to me.

[zoom]

J.K.Rowling said sth. like she liked the third movie/book best, too!
..
What I liked about the film(3rd one) was all the detail for atmossphere.
More character detail and more CGI/effects. THe griffon for instance was quite good to see; they should really have put the dragon into the first movie!!
But then again, that´s the advantage of reading the books.

btw, have only read the first book..was not bad, reminded me a bit of Lord of the rings or the hobbit...in style of writing. Hard to explain.

[Ameena]

Dragon? You mean Norbert? He is in it, just in the one scene where he hatches. As for the third film...even if you hadn't read the books, there's still loads of stuff left unexplained. I can't think of much off the top of my head, but an example is "Who are Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs?". Unless you can work it out yourself, it's never explained in the film. They took important bits out and added bits in which didn't need to be there (what was with those talking shrunken head things...), and moved stuff around (the Firebolt!?) and arrrgh. I'm gonna see the fourth film just to see what they've done wrong with THAT. I've seen a trailer for it now, and seeing as the book of GoF is at least double the size of PoA, there's gonna be a hell of a lot of stuff different...

[ADDF_Toxic]

I actually have started to "read" HP 1, I was doing a book report in grade 3, the teacher was reading it to the whole class. And where is a dragon in 3? I forget. And unless I missed it, I never got an answer about Yggdrasil yet. But, then again, he hasn't even replied to anything here, I thought he did because there were so many replies.

[Ameena]

There is no dragon in the third story. Zoooom said "...they should really have put the dragon into the first movie!!". The only dragon in any of the books/films up as far as Azkaban is Norbert. He's only in the first book, albeit not tfor too long but certainly much longer than the brief scene he gets during the film. I always do think, though, that if it's a book, leave it as a book - films can just spoil it and miss stuff out and change it etc, and in some cases might change it so far beyond recognition that it loses the point of the story or whatever. Plus if every book gets made into a film, no-one's gonna bother reading books 'cause they're "boring" or whatever, apparently, and the enjoyment of reading them is "sad".

[ADDF_Toxic]

I didn't think there was a dragon in 3! And good point. I think the films made me not want to read the books maybe, because I just don't feel like reading the books.

[Ameena]

Put it this way - if you don't read the books, you might be happy enough with the films, but you're missing a hell of a lot of the story. Don't you want to know why Harry's biggie Patronus at the end came out looking like a stag?

[PaulH]

Am I the only one who can't stand Harry Potter?!!!