Chalawan

Chalawan (ชาละวัน) is a crocodile spirit from the Thai folktale Kraithong (ไกรทอง). The story was adapted into a lakhon nok play credited to King Rama II, and has received a number of film adaptations over the years.

The story is so popular, that there is even a Thai craft beer named after Chalawan.

Anyone think their logo looks familiar?

In the story, Chalawan lives in a cave containing a magical crystal that gives all the crocodiles within human form. Outside of the cave however, he appears as an enormous crocodile. On occasion, Chalawan is also depicted as being half-man, half-crocodile.

A Cambodian take on the story can be seen in the film Kropeu Charavan (ក្រពើឆារ៉ាវ៉ាន់) aka The Crocodile Men. In this film, Chalawan (Charavan) is fully human, but knows a spell to transform into a crocodile.

The spell is very reminiscent of legends about the Indonesian power of tiang maleh rupa that allows people to change into crocodiles, or crocodiles to change into humans. And in fact, these legends are often credited as being the source for werecrocodiles in RPGs. In the Indonesian horror movies based on these legends, these creatures always seem to be albino crocodiles (buaya putih).

For more inspiration on magical crocodiles, I turned to the first issue of the zine A Thousand Thousand Islands, by Zedeck Siew, with art by Mun Kao.

MR-KR-GR describes a land of crocodiles and their human subjects. The zine introduces us to the Place of Crocodiles, but does not delve deeply into detail so I'm not sure I can characterize it as a gazetteer. The setting is painted with broad strokes, yet is evocative and tantalizes the reader with bits and pieces of the wondrous and grotesque.

Zedeck doesn't have any plans to make a comprehensive guide for his setting since he prefers the open-ended feel of the different locales introduced in his zines, but I personally would want to do a lot of research into the culture and mythology of Southeast Asia to do justice to the setting. Nevertheless, there are many people who can take off running with it just fine, so it is certainly not a hindrance to not have any sort of detailed background.

I'm not sure if there is currently any stock of the latest printings of the zine, but you can always contact Zedeck to check on availability.

Anyway, on to miniatures. There are several companies that make crocodile-men, including Privateer Press (Gatormen) and Crocodile Games (Sebeki), but the only series of miniatures that are close in size to 1/72 scale figures are the old C19 and RR11 Lizardmen from Citadel.

Grenadier also made the Caroc (Monster Manuscript Vol.II 1502, MM10) which I think matches well with the Citadel miniatures.

For regular crocodiles there are a lot of different plastic toys that can be used, but most of them are probably too large for use with 1/72 scale figures.

I only have the Airfix crocodile from the Tarzan figure set (01733), while all my other figures are actually alligators. The adult and baby alligators are from the Airfix Zoo Animals No. 1 set (01724). Next is a Galoob alligator from the National Geographic Collection Swamp Adventure set, and at the end is the Marx alligator from the Noah's Ark playset.

Last but not least is the D&D Icons of the Realms Crocodile (Waterdeep Dragon Heist #30), which can be used as a large saltwater crocodile.