Thursday, March 27, 2014

Vegepygmies


The vegepygmy was introduced in Dungeon Module S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. They are presented to the adventurers in the illustration booklet that came with the module as shown above. Apparently they grow from the bodies of humanoids killed by exposure to russet mold spores, but I don't remember ever discovering this fact when playing the module back in the day.

Despite developing from molds, some of them are described as being "splotched with patches of green chlorophyll", which I guess justifies their being vegepygmies, though in some later edition incarnations, they are known simply as "mold men".

There are not really many options as far as miniatures go for this obscure monster. Below, from left to right, there is the D&D CMG Thorn (Angelfire #25), a Ral Partha Moldman (AD&D Monsters 11-511), and two Citadel Runners from the Humanoids & Aldryami boxed set.


I'm not famiilar with the Thorn at all, but when I first saw the miniature, my first thought was that it was a vegepygmy. The moldman is (I believe) just the vegepygmy as it was known under 2nd Edition AD&D. The Runners are Runequest creatures, and while these miniatures look more like baby bugbears, Runners are actually relatives of Gloranthan "elves", and akin to humanoid shrubs and bushes.

All of the miniatures with the exception of the Thorn are very difficult to find in my experience, so it will probably be hard to assemble a big group of these creatures as encountered in the module.


2 comments:

Sean said...

Ah yes the barrier peaks. All I really remember is pissing off security robots and getting killed.

EY said...

I get the feeling that getting killed by the security robots is a pretty common theme. That is what happened to me as well.