The sa'ir, a forgotten monster

The sa'ir is a weird monster that appeared only briefly in 2e as part of the lamia’s ridiculously convoluted ecology (ridiculously convoluted ecologies were extremely common in the days of AD&D). It is a lion with a goat's hooves and horns. It was never referenced again, and 3e seemingly introduced male lamia which rendered its existence superfluous. That has not stopped conversions to 5e, however.

The name immediately stood out to me because I recognized it as probably derived from the biblical sa`iyr (also sâʻîyr, sâʻir). As an adjective the word means "shaggy," as a noun "he-goat." By analogy, the word is translated as "faun" or "satyr."

In Isaiah 34:14, the sa'ir ("wild goat") is mentioned alongside the lilith ("screech owl") as one of the many beasts inhabiting the desert and night. As Lilith is the name of a night-haunting demon in Mesopotamian myths that fulfills the same archetype as the lamia of Greek myth, I suspect this is where the game's writer got the idea to introduce the sa'ir as a monster related to the lamia/lilith.

Otherwise, the sa'ir appears to be an invention of the game's writer, derived from the biblical verse plus the lamia as described by Topsell and depicted in Tudor heraldry. However, there are a couple of heraldic and artistic monsters that loosely resemble it and might have influenced its design:

• The chatloup (French for "cat-wolf") is a fantastic beast with the face of a cat, the body of a wolf, and the horns of an antelope. 
• The theow (also thoye, thos) is a fantastic beast with the body of a mastiff or wolf, cloven hooves and a bovine muzzle and tail. Dragonlore #71 speculates that it was the result of careless copying transforming depictions of normal wolves into bovine beasts.
• The homeric Chimera was described as having the body of a goat, the head of a lion, and the tail of a dragon/snake. Further variations on this design might add horns to the lion's head.

I do not really see a reason to revive it as a relative of the lamia. At least in my campaign setting, the lamia are the transformed souls of scorned lovers in loose accordance with their mythological origins and not a self-reproducing race that arbitrarily serves a demon lord. Even in the biblical verse, it was only intended as one of the creatures inhabiting the same environment as the she-demons, not a relative.

I can imagine reviving it in other capacities, however. Maybe it is a mad wizard's experiment, as lazy game's writers are wont to resort to for explanation? Maybe it is a variant of the aberrant beasts spawned by the chimera? Maybe it is the male counterpart to the female chimera? Maybe it is a liocorno related to the bicorn and unicorn? Maybe it is related to the chatloup and theow, just another fantastic beast that is natural to fantasyland? Maybe, as its name suggests, it is a relative of the satyrs?

There are any number of possibilities.

Chimera part 2: fantasy gaming

As established in part 1, chimeras have appeared in a variety of body plans. Fantasy games have tried to incorporate these variations as distinct monsters of their own.

In Dungeons & Dragons

The chimera was typed as a "dragon-kin" in the Rules Cyclopedia, but its relation to dragons remains questionable across editions as it was never again typed as a dragon.

The standard D&D chimera uses a "Society" body plan with dragon's wings. The dragon head is a red dragon by default. Oddly enough, the chimera cannot have another color for said head. Instead, that is restricted to a different species related to chimera known as a dracimera. The dracimera is either a different species, a crossbreed of a chimera and another dragon, or a different species descended from crossbreeding. (Pathfinder removed this distinction, allowing chimeras to have variable colored dragon heads.)

There were also other variants of the chimera. The gorgimera replaces the goat head with a gorgon and gains the ability to exhale petrifying gas.

3e introduced a “chimerical creature” template that allowed GMs to replace the lion portion with another creature. For example, the mantimera replaces the lion with a manticore and gains the manticore's spiked tail attack.

The thessalmera appeared in the entry on thessalmonsters, being a combination of thessalhydra and chimera. It replaced the goat's head with a giant maw and gained a mane of thessalhydra heads.

Mantimera, Shining South ©Wizards of the Coast

In third party products

Monster Encyclopaedia II featured a family of monsters called the chimae, with its members includinv the lion chimae and ram chimae. They were giant snakes with the head of a lion and a ram, respectively. Their name suggested a relation the chimera, but this was never explained in the fluff.

Notes of the Wandering Alchemist included a post on re-skinning chimeras for environmental variants: "Re-skinning Monsters: Chimera Proof Of Concept."

Nerdarchy included articles on randomized chimeras and metallic chimeras.

Pathfinder

Pathfinder Bestiary includes the chimera by default and allows them to have any chromatic dragon head. It also mentions that the manticore is able to crossbreed with lions, lamias, chimeras and sphinxes. A half-manticore chimera, lamia or sphinx gains the manticore's spiked tail attack, but is otherwise identical to their standard versions.

Classic Monsters Revisited provided some simple guidelines for chimera's environmental variants, replacing the goat and lion portions with animals from the current environment while leaving the statblock largely unchanged (aka reskinning). It featured the "legendary" chimera (modeled after the Hesiodic version) and "orthos" as more detailed chimera variants.

"EN World TRAILseeker #19: Chimeric Fusion" provided guidelines for creating tripartite chimeras from any three creatures. Twenty example aspects are provided, including "yeti, aboleth, spider, golem, and cobra."

Other

Mazes & Minotaurs introduces the "aberrant beast," which is the offspring of a chimera and another creature. In that game the standard chimera is the three-headed Hesiodic variety, whereas the aberrant beast resembles the single-headed Homeric variety.

13th Age featured the classic Lycian chimera, but specified that the chimera’s appearance fluctuated. Its body parts moved around daily and included bits of additional animals beyond the traditional lion, goat, and dragon. This allows its game traits to fluctuate, making it less predictable.

The OSR game Blood & Treasure introduced a set of tables for GMs to randomly generate their own chimeras.

Octopus Carnival included posts on "chimerae" and "snake-maned lion" for GURPS.

In video gaming

The Final Fantasy series of games features a huge variety of chimeras. Not only the classical lion-goat-dragon chimera, but chimeras including snakes, eagles, bulls, and more!

In future posts I'd like to explore the chimera variants in more detail...

Chimera part 1: mythology and art history

This will be the first part in a series of posts regarding the Chimera, a monster taken from Greek myth. In this part, I will briefly recount the etymology, mythology and historical art concerning the chimera.

Etymology of the dracolion, dragonne, dragony, and lion-dragon

The dragonne, a monster appearing in some monster manuals and the Tome of Horrors, is not a unique invention of the game. Its name actually originates from medieval heraldry...

Distinguishing leonine monsters: chimeras, lamias, manticores and sphinxes

D&D has introduced a number of leonine monsters which look like they could be related. In my cosmology, this is merely an artifact of the morphic fields underlying spontaneous generation. UPDATED 10/24/2017

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