The mysterious light-fearing grue is a monster that hails from the days of the
green-screen monitor, and appeared in
Zork and other interactive fiction
games made by the now defunct Infocom.
The creature was created by Dave Lebling (as the equivalent of a bottomless pit)
to limit the ability of a player to progress in the game without first solving
puzzles related to getting a light source with which to see.
The name was taken from
The Eyes of the Overworld, in which Jack Vance
provides little information outside of one cryptic line of text.
Well...hmmm. Here is a statement, somewhat less explicit than others, in which
he analyzes the half-men, little more than a brief set of notes:
'Gid: hybrid of man, gargoyle, whorl, leaping insect.
Deodand: wolverine, basilisk, man.
Erb: bear, man, lank-lizard, demon.
Grue: man, ocular bat, the unusual hoon
Leucomorph: unknown
Bazil: felindore, man, (wasp?).'
- The Eyes of the Overworld
The descriptions found in
Zork are not clear either, and often
conflicting since grues are never actually seen. In one game a grue is said to
have a scaly gray arm, but in another, a grue is described as being covered in
fur. Various pictures of the grue (found in
The Zork Library)
have shown the creature as scaly and reptilian.
As far as miniatures go, you can probably use any type of monster to represent
grues. My own choice was to use 6th ed. GW Chaos Furies minus their wings.
Kneadatite was used to fill in the slots for their wings, and sculpted to match
the fur on the miniature.
The Furies are somewhat bat-like, have variable numbers of eyes, and suitably
fanged and clawed.
A couple of the Furies are holding skulls, which I'm going to say are
grue-lanterns. These lanterns project the equivalent of a Sphere of Darkness
that give the grue some degree of protection and vision in the presence of
light.
Startled adventurers may see the eyes in the lanterns and mistake them as being
part of the grue's hand, but this is just their minds playing tricks on them due
to the stress of seeing a grue.
Another monster which reminds me of the grue is the ghast. I don't know if the
Infocom grues were influenced by ghasts, but both creatures live in the darkness
and are harmed by light.
Ghasts are described in some detail in
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,
and are said to tear at victims with their teeth and maul them with their sharp
hooves in a manner similar to descriptions of grues with their fangs and claws.
They are also described as having eyes that are colored similarly to those of
the grue.
"...there glowed in the gloom of that great cavern's mouth first one pair of
yellowish-red eyes and then another ... After a moment something about the
size of a small horse hopped out into the grey twilight, and Carter turned
sick at the aspect of that scabrous and unwholesome beast, whose face is so
curiously human despite the absence of a nose, a forehead, and other important
particulars."
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
Many artists draw ghasts with a tail, while others depict ghasts as being more
human-like. I lean toward the more human-like interpretation since it aligns
with the AD&D assertion that ghasts are practically indistinguishable from
ghouls, but I think tailed ghasts can look quite horrifying as well.
The only ghast miniatures that I have are made by RAFM (Call of Cthulhu
2942).
They are massive compared to the Grenadier ghouls (being closer to the size of a
large 1/72 horse), and their legs don't really have the kangaroo-like
appearance described by Lovecraft, but I think Bob Murch did a great job with
the face.
I also plan on making a tailed ghast using the RAFM war newt (Reptiliads
RAF03010).
I cut the head off of the war newt and was going to attach a random kroot head that I had lying around, but now that I need it I can't seem to find it anymore.
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| Ummm... Now what? |
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Rock paper scissors
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