Literary Origins of D&D Monsters

[Algolei]

Hey, DnDChick!

Remember me asking about this before: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=9783?

Are those old archives available at all anywhere or are they gone forever? :\

 

[DnDChick]

I think they are gone for good.

 

[DnDChick]

The site that Tav_Behemoth already linked -- http://www.geocities.com/rgfdfaq/sources.html -- is one of the best sources to answer some questions about the origins of D&D monsters and magic.

 

[DnDChick]

Tolkien gave us other things as well, besides the Orc, by taking real folklore and adding his own twist to it.

"Wraith" is just another word for "Ghost," but the wraith as we know it in D&D -- a shadowy thing with red glowing eyes that makes you weak if it touches you, etc. -- is clearly inspired by the Ringwraiths.

"Wight" is just another word for "Man," that sometime along in history got the connotation of "Man with something supernatural or eerie about him." Wight is also spelled WICHT, and the etymological origins to "witch" is clear enough. Again, the Wights we know in D&D -- which live in grave mounds and have a chilling touch -- are quite similar to the Barrow Wights of Tolklien.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

The interview in which Charles Stross talks about the creation of the githyanki, githzerai, and slaadi isn't available at Planewalker.com any more, as far as I can tell, which is a shame!

In there, he says that the idea of telepathic mind flayers raising the gith as slave races was inspired by Larry Niven's World of Ptaavs, and suggests that Gygax's creation of the mind flayer was inspired by Niven as well. Niven's Thrint, or Slavers, are powerful telepaths & mind-controllers with tentacled faces (see Wayne Barlowe's interpretation); it's a safe bet that Gygax was reading just about all SF & fantasy published in the '60s, since there was so little of it coming out that fans could & did read everything they could get their hands on, and some evidence linking Niven and D&D comes from a cool old Erol Otus booklet of creatures and magic items that featured a Slaver disintegration rifle.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Geez, I so do love being able to get things straight from the Man himself:

No need to speculate, for I can set forth the process in a few words. Larry Niven's writing had nothing to do with the creation of the Illithid race for the AD&D game.

I happened to be thinking of devising a new terrible race if creatures inimical to humans, and my eye fell upon a paperback book authored by Brian Lumley, The Burrowers Beneath. The cover illustration was of a bipedal monster with a head resembling a squid or an octopus. Voila!


That was a perfect model for an underground-dwelling race of fiendish predators on humankins, and thus the mind flayer was born.

I made up all the details of the race, of course, they being a form of AD&D monster.

BTW, the drow were inspired by no more than a dictionaly listing for the name as "dark elves," and i made up the kuo-toa out of whole cloth so as to have another underground race on distinctly non-human sort.

 

[DnDChick]

Drow = variation of a race of Scottish dark faeries called Trowes = variation of the Nordic Troll.

 

[TurlinBlackwind]

Drow = variation of a race of Scottish dark faeries called Trowes = variation of the Nordic Troll.

Thats nice to know, I'm facinated by the Drow.

Trowes reminds me of the Trow from The Bards Tale if anyone here has played that. Funny game and you'll love the ending... and the middle.... and the, hell the whole damned thing. Though trow aren't like dark faeries or trolls... more like little goblin/orc things. The big ones are warriors and the little ones sing and sell stuff.

I recently found out that Lamassu were carvings from Mesopotamia like the shinx of Egypt. They were winged lions or bulls with the heads of men. Often they were carved with 5 or 6 legs so you can see all four no matter where you stood.

 

[Krishnath]

A-ha! I knew there was a Mythos connection with the mindflayers.

(Brian Lumley was a penpal of H.P. Lovecraft and a contributor to the Cthulhu Mythos).

 

[DnDChick]

Trowes reminds me of the Trow from The Bards Tale if anyone here has played that. Funny game and you'll love the ending... and the middle.... and the, hell the whole damned thing. Though trow aren't like dark faeries or trolls... more like little goblin/orc things. The big ones are warriors and the little ones sing and sell stuff.

And once I found out about the "trowes" of Scottish folklore, it settled the "how do you pronounce drow like cow or like slow" quandry -- for me at least. You can pronounce it however you like, but I pronounce it with a long "o" like slow ... and "troll", its lingquistic and folkloric origin.