We didn’t know that it came from an old folktale of a shelled dragon that supposedly terrorized the south of France in the first millennium, or that it was driven off by a saint called Martha. We pronounced it Tara-skew at the time, because we didn’t know the name was actually French (it’s pronounced Ta-rask). Instead, he turned to a page bearing the name Tarasque and an illustration of a fearsome, Godzilla-like monster. I, of course, immediately enquired of our DM what the strongest monster was, expecting something familiar to me like a dragon or a lich. It was both humbling and terribly exciting. I had thought the Skeleton Lord we just fought (and barely defeated) was a worthy foe now I was reading about beasts the size of houses, fiends that could petrify with a glance, tentacled horrors that would devour their prey mind, body, and soul. It induced in me a sort of narrative vertigo-making it starkly clear that the portion of the game world that we (a party of perhaps level 1 or 2) had experienced was but one tiny part of a cosmos of creatures that spanned whole dimensions. This document-shiny and hardback, but decorated as if it were a leathery old tome-not only contained illustrations and descriptions for the four or five creatures we had faced, but dozens of others as well. It’s safe to say that my ten-year-old mind was completely blown. The campaign was short-lived-we fought some orcs and some kind of small dragon, I think-but one memory that really sticks in my head was being permitted by our Dungeon Master to peruse the so-called Monster Manual, one of several books in which the game’s labyrinthine rules were supposedly contained. I’ll spare you the details of my character, except to say he was a hybrid of warrior and wizard (a new concept that I found unspeakably cool) and wielded a bastard sword (mostly picked for the transgressive thrill of saying its name). My first experience actually playing a fantasy tabletop role-playing game was when I was around ten years old. For information, please e-mail the Andrews McMeel Publishing Special Sales Department: Table of Contents Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938984Īndrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.ġ130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106 Copyright © 2019 by Blanca Martínez de Rituerto & Joe Sparrow. Dungeons and Drawings: An Illustrated Compendium of Creatures.

Homunculus by Joe Sparrow