Pathfinder 1E Race of snake cats for D&D. is true?

[Voadam]

It has a slightly different spelling Tazelwurm and there is a Pathfinder conversion for it (like all of the Tome of Horrors monsters) by Frog God Games in Tome of Horrors Complete.

The emergent creature looks like a long serpent with grayish scales and a leonine head resembling female lion with grayish-tan fur. Two long, powerful humanoid arms protrude from its serpentine body, each ending in vicious-looking, slender talons.

 

[manche]

If you have it care to post a picture of the creature?

 

[gamerprinter]

It seems like fair treatment, to me. I mean, salamanders are also real, but not quite like their D&D representation.

Yes, but there is a historical relationship to what real salamanders are and the fantastical fire dwelling salamanders - there was an actual belief that salamanders were beings of the fire element. I cannot point to the origin, but I do know that during medieval English history, one particular earl had fallen logs brought into a fireplace in the castle. When the fire was started, a salamander living inside the bark of the log was smoked out and crawled out and on top of the log furthest from the fire. The lord noticed this salamander and made the mental jump that the fire somehow summoned the salamander to the fireplace.

Furthermore, in alchemistry tradition, the four elements were represented by elemental beings: gnomes for earth, nerieds for water, sylphs for air, and salamanders for fire (with the above origin story defining why salamanders were thought to represent fire).

So while I agree that salamanders having some true relationship to fire is actually silly in our modern sensibilities, there is realworld historical/folkloric source that make the D&D representation accurate.

The snake fox concept is modern - post 1940 anime movie industry Japan, and in no way having a historical/folkloric source for the concept.

As the concept creator and developer for the Rite Publishing Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG), one of my major goals is to maintain and emphasize historical/folkloric resources for every aspect of my setting. (I know this is not every developers goal, so I don't mean to impose my development goals as representing every Asian RPG setting, I just want to indicate where and why my opinions are the way they are). I borrow heavily from Japanese medieval folklore and ghost story tradtion which is primarily 19th century and previous - the very rich and older Japanese mythic tradition. I don't need nor want modern (20th century anime) concepts muddying up the real folklore, so I'm very much personally against doing so.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The snake fox concept is modern - post 1940 anime movie industry Japan, and in no way having a historical/folkloric source for the concept.

That doesn't sound right. I mean, if it's true, then it might seem out of place since the lore is so new, but 1940 isn't that much newer than any of the Lovecraft stuff that makes its way into every setting. In any case, Paizo wasn't responsible for the concept. The attribution of magical powers to a creature with this name is way older than Pathfinder or the vast majority of its players, so that makes it fair game.

Although, to be honest, I can't find anything on the internet to suggest that the kanko exists in the real world, as you describe it. I don't suppose you have a link or a picture or something? If I can't find anything about it on Google, then I certainly can't blame Paizo for not knowing about it when they wrote their book.

A better example of the grievance you put forth (giving a real-world name to a wholly new, mythical creature) would be in Monster Rancher, with its Tiger monster (that is actually a blue wolf with lightning powers). That one always seemed odd to me.

 

[gamerprinter]

Although, to be honest, I can't find anything on the internet to suggest that the kanko exists in the real world, as you describe it. I don't suppose you have a link or a picture or something? If I can't find anything about it on Google, then I certainly can't blame Paizo for not knowing about it when they wrote their book.

Look at Wikipedia - a kuda-kitsune or a kanko are two alternate names for the real world "pipe fox" (Google search "pipe fox" to find this - there's even a hand-drawn illustration of the real world animal on that listing - I am pretty sure the actual pipe fox is extinct, though it was a real animal). Note, although kitsune is used to describe a folkloric, talking, magical fox, the word kitsune literally means "fox", the same word applied to a real fox. This is true for many folkloric beings based on real world animals. Nezumi, for example, to Legend of the Five Rings, is a mythical, humanoid rat. However, the word nezumi is the word for the common rodent called rat, in addition to any mythical rat beings.

I'm not "blaming" anyone, including Paizo, for design decisions regarding the creation of any monster, including a snake version of a pipe fox. I agree and understand that someone outside of the RPG industry, mainly anime film makers have created this trope - its not any RPG publishers fault that they carried such a concept forward.

However, going back to my development goals of building a more authentic Japan analog setting... since the first conception of Oriental Adventures, developments of Kara-Tur, even the development of Rokugan by AE Games, there are literally dozens of misinterpretations, misrepresentations, misspellings, and concepts taken out of context that have been used in oriental settings in attempts to replicate Japanese mythology and folklore. To an amateur historian who is half Japanese and very informed regarding all things Japanese at least regarding history, culture, language, folklore and ghost story tradition these issues stand out as blatant errors. Most "westerners" lack much of the background information where the concepts are sourced from - so I can understand how such mistakes could have easily been created.

As an aside, Paizo Publishing commissioned me to create the original hand-drawn map of the City of Kasai, as well as the City of Kasai Gazetteer for The Empty Throne module of the Jade Regent Adventure Path, and I am credited (and paid) as a contributing author for that, because Paizo recognizes both my cartography and Japanese cultural expertise.

While in Kaidan, for example, the Onmyoji is an archetype we created for the wizard class based on my Japanese knowledge. However, Interjection Games created Onmyoji: A Japanese Occult Diviner which has a very authentic version of the onmyoji - with concepts based on Paizo's Occult book (my onmyoji was created 2 years ago, before the Occult concepts could be borrowed for its development). Now I have no connection to Interjection Games as a freelancer, and have earned no payments for helping its development, however, because I had interest I had looked at what Interjection Games were doing in their development of the onmyoji. I noticed that there was a goal to incorporate the historical aspects of the onmyoji regarding creating the annual calendar for the empire, they wanted to include this aspect, but they didn't understand what the relationship actually was - and many online descriptions of this ability wasn't described clearly.

I revealed to Interjection Games that as astrologers, one of the historic onmyoji's tasks were to define the next years cycle of lucky and unlucky days. Throughout the orient, not just Japan, there is believed to be a cycle of 6 days, with some days considered lucky days all day long, and a counterpart unlucky day all day long, however in between there are days that are lucky in the morning and unlucky in the afternoon and vice-versa. It is still practiced today. On the unlucky days, most marriages are avoided to occur on those days. Business meetings avoid unlucky days, and unlucky times of the day on other days. During the medieval period of Japan, the onmyoji was responsible for determining which day the cycle begins, so that all official events are properly scheduled on the most opportune (and lucky) days. With that explanation, Interjection Games incorporated the calendar tasks of onmyoji in their development with a clear undrestanding of why and what should be included in its development. Even though their product was nothing of mine, I wanted to help them get it right, so they did as I suggested.

Lovecraft's work is completely fictional, without an historic nor folklore base as source material. While Cthulhu is definitely a great literary inclusion and concept to bring to RPG games (I am in no way knocking Lovecraft's work), even though it was created in the 1920's and 30's (not the 40's), being relatively young compared to much older, cultural mythological traditions is completely meaningless as a comparison. Cthulhu is literary fiction invented by the author. One cannot borrow older concepts for its development, simply because the concepts never existed until Lovecraft invented them. I think its a poor comparison to say "look Lovecraft's work is from the 20th century, so other fantastical tropes of the 20th century is fair game". Its not, the primary difference is the mythology was believed to be true by some populations of the historic past and has its own specific cultural baggage in its concept.

Being that its based on a belief system gives more weight and context on how such concepts are actively incorporated in RPG game settings - so more effort needs to be made in order to more authentically bring in folklore to RPG concepts. If you leave something major out of the development of any folklore monsters/beings, you're inventing something new (nothing wrong with doing so), but unless you inform your audience of this, presenting the "pipe fox" (for example) and getting it culturally wrong, simply means the creators didn't take the time to properly research and I believe its a diservice to misrepresent mythology and folklore, especially if that is the source of where your material is coming from.