Invasion of the Pod People

Somehow I like the Russian DVD cover
more than the cover of the domestic version.

The doppelgänger is often described as a supernatural double that heralds some sort of misfortune for the person whose form it takes. In this context, the doppelgänger does not necessarily have a physical body, and is often only a vision or spirit.

The D&D monster is rather different in that it is more like an evil twin that seeks to steal your identity for its own nefarious purposes (NSFW). In this respect, they are very similar to the pod people from the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

In fact, when I first saw the miniature of the Horrorclix Pod People (Nightmares #019), I thought that it would be perfect as a D&D doppelgänger.

Even though the monster is entirely too big for use with 1/72 scale figures, I picked up a few of the models just for the pods.

The pods are much larger that the ones depicted in the movies, but that's fine, since I'm not really concerned about having doppelgängers be identical to pod people.

Doppelgängers haven't been particularly well characterized, so capitalizing on their similarities with the pod people allows me to give them a relatable background with a provenance from pop culture.

One of the clix pods I had was broken, so I turned it into an overturned pod. The ground cover looks pretty sad, so I'll need to do some Google image searching to do a better job of representing forest detrius.

I also have some Kubrick ovomorphs which can be used as seed pods. They have a pebbly texture to the surface rather than the veined leafy appearance of the clix pods, but they could pass as an alternate type of seed pod.

I think that Minimates also makes some similarly sized ovomorphs, but they don't look very good. I'm pretty sure that they are hollow with an open bottom, and made of soft rubbery plastic.

Now that I have the pods, I'll probably need to create some doppelgängers. I'm not sure what I'd use as a base figure though, so that's another project for the back burner.

!!!