La Tarasque

There was that time upon the river of Rhone, in a certain wood between Aries and Avignon, a great dragon, half beast and half fish, greater than an ox, longer than an horse, having teeth sharp as a sword, and horned on either side, head like a lion, tail like a serpent, and defended him with two wings on either side... He came thither by sea from Galicia, and was engendered of Leviathan, which is a serpent of the water and is much wood, and of a beast called Bonacho, that is engendered in Galicia.

– The Golden Legend

In legend, the Tarasque is a dragon-like creature tamed by Martha of Bethany, and killed by the townsfolk of Nerluc after it was rendered docile. The locals were subsequently converted to Christianity by Martha, and renamed the town Tarascon in remembrance of the slain dragon.

In the 15th century, a festival incorporating an effigy of the Tarasque was celebrated to retell the tale of Martha and the dragon, and to exorcise the dragon's influence which was blamed for flooding in the region.

Tarasque effigy flanked by Tarascaires

A similar dragon effigy is used in Corpus Christi festivals in Spain, though the roles of Martha and the dragon seem to be somehow conflated, with the title La Tarasca being commonly used to refer to the female figure riding atop the dragon.

The age-old question...

The appearance of the Tarasque seems to have varied a bit, but the most common form showed a creature with six legs, a turtle-like shell, and a leonine face. A pair of feet usually are shown dangling out of its mouth.

Other paintings of the Tarasque show it as a regular dragon, albeit with the usual pair of feet sticking out of its mouth.

Very few depictions of the Tarasque show it as having wings, despite being mentioned in the legend.

St. Martha Tramples the Dragon

One image shows the Tarasque looking similar to how whales were portrayed at the time.

German whales

The D&D version of the monster is the Tarrasque, but it is only loosely based on the mythological beast, being vastly larger and with only four limbs.

In later editions, the Tarrasque lost the turtle-like shell and became more dinosaur-like.

In fact, the design reminds me a lot of American Godzilla.

Most miniatures of the Tarasque tend to be colossal as far as size goes, but I was interested in getting something a little more modest in size, and hopefully more faithful in appearance to the mythological creature.

The only model that was close in size to what I wanted comes from Time of Legends: Joan of Arc by Mythic Games. I didn't back their Kickstarter campaign because their miniatures were 15mm, but they do have some very nice sculpts.

The Mythic Tarasque resembles an ankylosaurus or glyptodont, with a paddle-like tail similar to a sea scorpion, and a shark-like head. It is not modeled after any existing depiction of the Tarasque, but it does have six legs and a shell.

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.

!!!

New Dark Alliance Figures

I just received the latest figures from the Dark Alliance line, consisting of one set of Mummies and two sets of Corsairs.

The Mummies are the first set of Egyptian undead in plastic that are actually the size of average humans.

The figures are well sculpted, with nice thin limbs and emaciated faces. Unfortunately, several figures had weapons that were short shot. In any event, the figures can easily be used as other types of undead like [well coordinated] zombies, skeletons, or Mrur.

I'm sure these will be a welcome addition for those who play Warhammer in 1/72 scale and have been waiting to assemble a Tomb Kings army.

The next two sets of figures are what I assume to be Corsairs of Umbar from The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is said to have modeled the Corsairs after the Barbary corsairs of the 16th century. In the lore of Middle Earth, they are the descendants of Númenóreans who were corrupted after Sauron played on the hubris of their kings.

The Corsairs in the Peter Jackson adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy look (to me) like a cross between OG and TNG Klingons from Star Trek.

Corsairs of Umbar

Klingons: TOS

Klingons: TNG

The Dark Alliance Corsairs are clearly modeled after the designs from the movie. Set 1 consists of melee weapon troops, which include corsairs armed with swords, axes and polearms, and nautical themed weapons.

Set 2 consists of missile weapon troops. The first image is of archers, with a Haradrim archer from the War of the Rings boardgame thrown in at the far right for comparison.

The next image is of crossbowmen, with the last two figures on the right being the crew of the ballistas included with the set.

If you don't do Middle Earth or fantasy gaming, I think that the figures (outside of the archers and the swordsman with the weird shield) could easily be used as generic 16th-17th century pirates if you are not too picky.