The D&D "gorgon" is probably not based on the Greek bronze bull

I've seen a few articles, blogs, and vlogs claiming that the the D&D "gorgon" is based on the mythological "khalkotaur." This is complete bunk, in several ways. I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.

Firstly, the D&D "gorgon" is clearly based on the catoblepas by way of Edward Topsell, who infamously confused the catoblepas with the gorgon Medusa in his 1607 bestiary The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes and propagated further in works like Curious Creatures in Zoology.

Secondly, there's no such mythological monster as a "khalkotaur." That name is fakelore propagated by Wikipedia. There are the Tauroi Khalkeoi, or Bronze Bulls in English. (Not to be confused with the similarly named torture device, which itself may be mythical too.)

Thirdly, we have no evidence whatsoever that the D&D gorgon was inspired by the bronze bulls. They look and attack completely different: the former has iron scales and breathes petrifying fumes, the latter is made of bronze and breathes fire. Any similarities (i.e. both are metal bulls with breath weapons) appear to be pure coincidence.

Fun fact: Hacklopedia of Beasts includes an entry for the D&D gorgon, which not only gives it bat-like wings in contrast to typical depictions, but mentions that the monster is also known as "burakog" and "khalkotaur." And all this time I've just been calling it an iron bull.

The origins of D&D monsters?

The monsters (and planes) of D&D are often drawn from myth, folklore, or literature. I keep finding myself trying to refer back to such sources, so I've decided to keep a list of them. If anyone is reading this, then you might also find this useful.

• https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=60560
• http://www.hahnlibrary.net/rpgs/sources.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20180810053344/http://rpg.crg4.com/origins.html
• https://www.scrollforinitiative.com/2021/02/01/where-do-dd-monsters-come-from/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/969gcc/the_mythological_folkloric_or_literary_source_of/
• http://www.superdan.net/gaming/dnd3/dndmisc/outer_planes.html

Horcruxes and voldemorts

In past posts I lamented how archaic words like lich and phylactery have had their previously versatile meanings changed and shrunk by the vagaries of Gygax and his imitators. This means that I can no longer use them in their original meanings without confusing people who grew up on a diet of iterative fantasy. Not that it will actually stop me from using those words in their original capacities, as other authors have done before me, but it is annoying that my readers won't understand my meaning.

I recently discovered that voldemort is now a word. It derives from French vol de mort, meaning (roughly) "flight/theft of/from death." According to French speakers, this is grammatically sound but more appropriate for the technical speech of a police report (e.g. "theft of corpse"). A less stilted phrase would be Le Vol de la Mort, meaning either "the theft of death" or "the flight of death." Flight as in the flight of a bird or plane, not fleeing.

I would like to thank J.K. Rowling for coining this word. Prior to this, the fantasy genre didn't actually have a word for an evil wizard who cheats death. The word lich was used for this purpose due to Gygax's popularization, but as I have said before I consider that usage to be clunky and parochial. The benefit of voldemort is that its literal meaning relates to cheating death, and it's a well known fantasy word in the popular imagination.

The same goes for horcrux, also coined by Rowling. I've seen it used in NOS4A2 to refer to objects created to contain souls other than those of evil wizards, so its meaning is thankfully versatile. Prior to this, we only had phrases like "soul jar" and "zombie bottle" that weren't well known in the popular imagination.

These new words, voldemort and horcrux, are versatile. They can refer to Koschei and his hidden heart, Sauron and his cursed ring, Voldemort and his horcruxes, Arthas and his vampiric runeblade, etc. I should like to use them in my own writings from now on.

There are two types of zombies in folklore

During my research into zombies and zombie folklore (research links provided below), I discovered that there are actually two types of zombies in folklore. The process for creating a zombie splits the body and soul into two linked entities, the zombie cadaver and the zombie astral. The zombie cadaver is the stereotypical zombie slave, whereas the zombie astral is the captured soul of the zombie. It is kept in a vessel called a "zombie bottle," which will release the zombie astral if broken. The zombie astral may be compelled to perform tasks for the bokor who captured it. The zombie bottle may also be sold as a good luck charm.

The more you know!

Druids, dryads, and hamadryads

So I wanted to touch on dryads in this post. Two things: the etymological relationship between druids and dryads, and the mythological relationship between dryads and hamadryads.

In the past the word dryad was used to mean druidess, i.e. a female druid. By virtue of the transitive property, one could argue that a druid therefore could be a male wood nymph or nymphus. I've never seen anyone ever do this, but if you want a male dryad that isn't a satyr and care about the inflection of Greco-Latin loanwords then druid might fit the bill.

In Greek myth, a hamadryad is a type of dryad whose life is bound to a specific tree. If the tree dies, then so does the hamadryad. In fantasy tabletop games, this unique of hamadryads has been folded into dryads in general. This results in attempts to integrate hamadryads to rely on distinguishing them from dryads through any number of arbitrary means that have nothing to do with the original myths.

I generally have little interest in any of these modern distinctions, except for one I found in homebrew. One homebrew page I read introduced a fascinating distinction between dryads and hamadryads for gaming that reflects the original myths. Here the hamadryad arose as the personified soul of a tree, as in myth and the dryad of the Monster Manual. Meanwhile, the dryad was the child of a hamadryad and a father of another race such as human, elf, fairy, or satyr. A dryad could choose to live as adventurer like her father's race or could bind to a tree and live identically to a hamadryad in a manner consistent with the MM's dryad. I like this idea and would like to use it in my own worldbuilding sometime.

© 音楽ナスカ

Resource links:

• https://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphaiHamadryades.html
• https://www.1d4chan.org/wiki/Hamadryad
• https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/8773/
• https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/8774/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190923154852/http://www.chqhost.com/LairFiles/races/dryad.html
• http://aidanem.com/word-family-tree.html
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/druid#English
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dryad#English
• https://www.google.com/books/edition/Druids/9yITDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=dryad+druidess&pg=PT27&printsec=frontcover

What is ichor?

 In Greek mythology, ichor is the blood of the gods. It is sometimes said to come from the ambrosia and nectar they consume, a feature of several Proto-Indo-European-descended religions, which they must continue to consume or else lose their immortality (or alternately their ability to function). Although in the case of the Greek gods specifically this was less than clear cut.

Ichor has gone on to have additional meanings beyond the Greek origin. In now archaic medical usage it refers to "watery discharge from a wound."

In the video game series Command & Conquer, "ichor" is the Scrin's name for Tiberium. You can probably guess why.

In some urban fantasy fiction, "ichor" is a term for the blood of vampires. This may be seen in Marvel's take on vampires and elsewhere online.

Sometimes authors who don't know any better use it as a synonym for blood, especially the blood of demons and Lovecraftian monsters. Author Ursula K. Le Guin, in her essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," calls the term "the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate."

And sometimes ichor is the urine of the gods. I think I'm gonna be sick...

Research books on vampires

Since I like to research vampires and related creatures sometimes, I have collected a list of useful research books. Rather than keep it to myself, I have now decided to share it with anyone interested. 

Bane, Theresa. Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology. McFarland, 2010.

Bunson, Matthew. The Vampire Encyclopedia. Random House International, 2001.

Curran, Bob. Encyclopedia of the Undead: a Field Guide to Creatures That Cannot Rest in Peace. New Page Books, 2006.

Guiley, Rosemary. The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters. Checkmark Books, 2005.

Hallab, Mary Y. Vampire God: the Allure of the Undead in Western Culture. SUNY Press, 2009.

Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Visible Ink Press, 2010.

Regan, Sally. The Vampire Book. DK Pub., 2009.

Most of these should be available as ebooks on Amazon, Apple, or Google. Isn't technology great?

What I find interesting about these books is that they include references to vampire-like creatures from across world mythology, including creatures you might not ordinarily associate with vampires like the Chinese húlijīng or "fox fairy".

The grootslang is not an elephant/snake hybrid

Addendum 9/3/2021: You can read an academic style write-up about the grootslang at A Book of Creatures.

So I learned of another legendary creature, the grootslang from Dahomey. Its name literally translates to "great snake" and it basically behaves like the traditional treasure hoarding dragon. Some things never change, even across continents. Several explorers claimed sightings of it over the centuries.

Of course, the internet misinformation machine had to screw it up. It's commonly depicted as an elephant/snake hybrid in modern art, even though I couldn't find any primary sources describing it as such. There's also a story circulating about its origins as the ancestor of snakes and elephants, which I could not find in any primary source either; in fact, I suspect this story originates from the Pathfinder RPG directly. Some sources claim the grootslang has a red gem or diamond in its forehead, or even that it has such gems for eyes and/or bewitching powers over onlookers. These are similar to some other stories of dragons, particularly the French vouivre I blogged about before.

There's a bunch of other misinformation floating around too that I can't source either. I suspect the artistic depiction of an elephant/snake hybrid originated as a misunderstanding of it being "elephant-sized." Somewhere along the line an artist or writer misunderstood this as "elephant-shaped" and we got our modern elephant-headed snake. Again, I wonder if Pathfinder originated this too, as I can't find any older art on Deviantart.

Funnily enough, Final Fantasy depicts it as a generic giant snake.

Basically, it's a very typical example of the terrifying treasure-guarding dragons. One detail that is often omitted is that grootslang is the Afrikaans name for the creature and may be more description than actual name. Other accounts call it "Kiman."

Sober accounts tell of a great snake called Kiman cruising the remote canyons between Augrabies and the Richtersveld, preying on stock. The colourful ones claim the snake has a diamond embedded in its forehead, that it entices young girls into the water and knocks men down with its breath. (p258. Dicey, William. Borderline. South Africa, Kwela Books, 2004.)

At Groot Derm I first learnt of the Groot Slang, the Big Snake of the Orange River. The Hottentots believed this snake had a diamond in its head which scintillated in the moonlight, and was brilliantly visible for long distances during the day. (p127. SWA Annual: SWA Jaarboek. SWA Jahrbuch. Namibia, South West Africa Publications, Limited, 1973.)

Enticing girls? Yeah, that's obviously omitted by a lot of the elephant hybrid stories. As you might have noticed by the "colourful" appellation, stories of the great snake are subject to embellishment. Learning more about the actual accounts is very difficult because they're in books that aren't freely available on Google Books. Darn copyright laws.

So Kiman is a very typical dragon all things considered: giant snake, lives in water, hoards treasure, hunts livestock, seduces women, terrifies men, beautiful gem in its forehead, etc.

Minotaurs and minotrices

So I was reading Masters and Minions Horde Book 2: Maze of the Minotaur when I came across the nonce word "minotrices," which the book called female minotaurs. I found this rather interesting, since while it looks like a Latin word it isn't real Latin and doesn't follow the standard rules for inventing Latin words.

The Latin word for Minotaur is Minotaurus. This is a masculine proper noun for which no feminine inflection exists because the name is a compound of Minos (the historical king of Crete, whose name itself became a royal title) and taurus (a bull), thus meaning "the bull of Minos" or "the king's bull" (and which could be further shortened in English to kingsbull, by analogy to kingsman). The Latin word for a cow is vacca and so the feminine counterpart would logically be the Minovacca rather than, say, the Minotaura. (Compare with my prior post on incubus/incuba and succubus/succuba.)

Yet the nonce word "minotrices" doesn't follow this pattern. The suffix -trices is the plural form of the Latin suffix -trix. This suffix is the feminine form of -tor, which indicates an agent noun (e.g. executor, executrix). Even stranger: the book writes the singular form as "minotrice," which is ungrammatical as -trice is in the ablative case and not the nominative.

Apparently the author of the book misinterpreted the English word Minotaur as a Latin agent noun based on superficial phonetic similarity and went from there. While this may seem nonsensical, you may perhaps contrive a functional meaning by delving further into the etymology of Minos. While in Cretan it means "king," it may descent from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "ascetic" (although such a reading is debated). So as an agent noun (albeit redundant, unless one is aiming for wordplay), it would mean one who lives ascetically e.g. in caves or mazes.

Or you could just call a female minotaur by "minotauress," a neologism dating back as far as at least 1916.

More folklore accurate names for the genie tribes

While reading Legends of the Fire Spirits by Robert Lebling, I learned than Tunisian folklore tells of genies associated with the air, the sea, and the land. (This is also repeated in Between Sand & Sea for Ars Magica, if you want game-ready details for a "medieval authentic" game.) This inspired me to assign new names to some tribes of genies in the OGL rules, as an optional rule for those who prefer folklore authentic jargon rather than the inventions of Gygax and co.

In the OGL rules, the five tribes of genies are Djinn (air), Efreet (fire), Marid (water), Shaitan (earth), and Jann (n/a). Under this option, the Djinn, Marid, and Shaitan would be renamed Leriah (الرياح), Baharia (بحرية), and Siadna (سيادنا), respectively.

My pet peeve: alseids, cecaelia, alacorns, *taurs, and other misused and invented monster names

So a common pet peeve of mine is when Pathfinder bestiaries get etymology and mythology wrong, because this tends to bleed over into discussions of actual mythology and result in tons of misinformation being spread.

Here are a few examples:

• In Greek myth, the alseides are the dryads of groves, who liked pranking travelers. They were not deer-centaurs, that's WarCraft's dryads.
• The cecaelia, an octopus-mermaid, is not a mythological creature. 
• The alacorn, a winged unicorn, is not a mythological creature either. However, the "Ethiopian Pegasus" was a breed of winged horned horse recounted in the natural histories of Pliny.
• The centaurs are self-explanatory, though the term itself is used more freely in Greek myth to refer to more than just the horse/men hybrids. Weirdly, the word taur (literally "bull" in Latin) is used to describes centaurs with non-equine lower halves, even though the word centaur already served that role in Greek myth. E.g. horse-centaur, fish-centaur, bull-centaur, etc.

I don't know why, but I really don't like it when people invent nonsense names when they could just use regular words like "deer-centaur," "octopus-mermaid," "winged unicorn," etc.

Sorry for the repetitive and probably pointless posting. I'll try to do better next time.

Demonic ogres and ogre mages

In folklore and anthropology, an ogre is any man-eating giant. They are not a race: any giant who eats men may be labelled an ogre. Folklore and fairy tales have never distinguished them as a distinct race. Based on tales like Puss in Boots, D&D bestiaries introduced the "ogre mage" and later spun it off into an entire family of "oni" very loosely based on Japanese folklore. As would be expected, the writers often misunderstood the original myths.

Dwarfs in Norse myth were dwarfish trolls and dark elves

The modern stereotype of the dwarf was codified by Tolkien. Prior to his legendarium, dwarfs were ill-defined in mythology and folklore. To put it simply: dwarfs were not distinguished from dark elves, gnomes, goblins, kobolds, trolls, et al like they are in Dungeons & Dragons. In myth and folklore these fairies are largely synonymous.

Some unique traits displayed by dwarfs in Norse myth included:

• The dwarfs were considered a type of elf. They were called dark elves, as opposed to the light elves.
• The dwarfs were considered misshapen and ugly, like goblins or trolls. Likewise, trolls were described as dwarfs when they were not giants.
• The dwarfs, trolls, and giants alike all turned to stone under sunlight. The dwarf Alvis said his kind referred to the Sun as "Dvalin's Delight" (presumably ironically).
• The dwarfs forged abstract concepts into magical equipment, which they presented to the gods on multiple occasions. This equipment included Freya's necklace, Thor's hammer, and Fenrir's chain.
• The dwarfs were themselves forged by the gods from the flesh of the first giant Ymir (i.e. the earth itself) and/or the maggots that spontaneously generated from his corpse.

In other folklore they gain a variety of other properties and magical powers. For example, some folklore claims they spend the daylight hours as frogs or that they are members of the Unseelie Court. (See Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore and Mythology by Theresa Bane for more details.)

Research links

• https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dwarf
• https://www.dictionary.com/browse/troll
• https://pantheon.org/articles/d/dvergar.html
• https://pantheon.org/articles/s/svartalfar.html
• http://piereligion.org/pantheon.html
• https://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta25.htm
• https://abookofcreatures.com/2016/02/15/dwarf/
• http://www.thecompanyofgoblins.com/svartalfar.html
• https://norse-mythology.org/cosmology/the-nine-worlds/svartalfheim/
• http://nordicwiccan.blogspot.com/2013/02/svartalheim.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B3tsognir
• https://www.geek.com/culture/the-origin-of-the-species-dwarfs-1665473/
• https://dwarvenglory.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/maggots-of-the-earth/
• https://ogresvstrolls.wordpress.com/tag/dwarves-gnomes/
• https://www.timelessmyths.com/norse/beings.html#Dwarves
• https://wormstunggod.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/dwarf-dwarf-dwarf/
• https://artipeeps.wordpress.com/tag/dvalins-delight/
• http://www.norse-mythology.cba.pl/page,77,dwarfs.html
• https://www.vikingage.com/HTML/Our%20Friends%20the%20Dwarfs.html
• https://books.google.com/books?id=BYCeXcTjB1MC
• https://books.google.com/books?id=Y5FKDwAAQBAJ
• https://books.google.com/books?q=editions:ISBN0786471115
• https://dotrollsreallyexist.blogspot.com/2013/07/troll-dwarves-of-norse-mythology.html
• https://youtu.be/8VpY_MAT2B8

Kishi, the two-faced incubus

In previous posts I discussed myths related to hyenas. Here is another post in that vein:

Fairy tales in cultures around the world share the motifs of the "murderous bridegroom" and "murderous stranger." In Angola, legend tells of a demon named kishi. The kishi pretends to be a handsome man, but conceals the face of a hyena on the back of his head (talk about two-faced!). He uses the human face to charm unsuspecting women, then the hyena face eats them. As with other tales in this vein, the moral of the story is for women to be wary of unfamiliar men.

In modern times, the kishi has appeared as the subject of novels like The Kishi: An Esowon Story. It has appeared as a monster in fantasy gaming, too. Hence this post.

The vouivre, a weird wyvern/woman thing

The vouivre is a she-dragon from French folklore. The name derives from the Latin for "viper," and refers to the wyvern of heraldry or a mythical dragon inhabiting Lorraine, Jura, and other regions of France. In English, I suppose the idiomatic translation would be viperess or wyverness.

The following two pages from the comic book Vouivre: Thunder of Fury helpfully summarize the tales of this particular dragon:

The dragon is described as fond of bathing in her private cave and capable of assuming human form. This invites comparison to another French dragon, Melusine. Melusine became a dragon once a week and at this time bathed alone in her private quarters. A Book of Creatures calls the vouivres her spiritual descendants stripped of human form, with later accounts conflating the two to give the vouivre her womanly qualities where originally she lacked such attributes entirely.

Various regions of France and neighboring countries put their own spins on the myth. Traits include appearing as animals or balls of fire, greedily guarding treasure, dependence on magic gems (compare draconite from other folklore), and so forth. Your typical weird folklore stuff.

Modern sources put further spins on the monster:

1. When she was imported to the video game Megami Tensei, the vouivre appeared as a demon with features of both woman and dragon. Indeed, the left half of her body appears human but the right half appears monstrous!
2. When she was imported to the tabletop game Pathfinder, perhaps influenced by Megami Tensei, the vouivre became a bizarre creature resembling an amphisbaena with one end of the body appearing as a lovely woman. One wonders what was going through the writer's head, but I find it delightfully weird!

I like all these ideas so much. If I wanted to have the monster appear in all these forms, then I would use a simple explanation: the viperess' is a shape changer. Her power is flawed, however, and always reveals some obvious hint of her true nature. For example, the right or lower half of her body still appearing as a dragon, or she is followed by an entourage of vipers, or even that she sheds her dragon skin to bathe and is at the mercy of whoever steals it (echoing tales of the mermaid wife).

Research links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guivre
• https://www.blackdrago.com/species/vouivre.htm
• http://www.blackdrago.com/fame/melusine.htm
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vouivre
• https://abookofcreatures.com/2015/12/11/vouivre/
• https://www.wordnik.com/words/viperess
• https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type4080.html

Gaming and popular culture links

• https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Vouivre
• http://dailybestiary.blogspot.com/2014/02/vouivre.html
• https://shop.gempakstarz.com/clay/LM-XV-S03-ENG

Hellhounds and other fantastic canines

In this post, I will direct my attention briefly to the numerous varieties of fantastic canines in fantasy gaming.

Some thoughts on the lusca (sharktopus)

The lusca is a cryptid reputed to swim the waters of the Caribbean, variously described as part shark, dragon, and octopus. In modern popular culture, like Pathfinder Bestiary, it is often depicted as a "sharktopus."

Celestial spheres cosmology

The “celestial spheres” are an outdated model of the solar system dating back to Aristotle.

The Aristotelian universe consisted of the world in the center (composed of the four elements air, earth, fire, and water), the celestial spheres above (composed of the fifth element ether), and the spherical firmament of the fixed stars surrounding all.

A modern interpretation of the Aristotelian Universe, with the earth in the center, the elements above, then the celestial spheres, and finally the firmament.

People actually believed this was how the universe worked. It supplanted earlier models in which the world was flat, the heavens or “firmament” was a literal dome which separated the world from the “waters” of primordial chaos, and the underworld was another dome under the flat Earth which complemented the heavens. (A model I mentioned in past posts. It roughly informs the omniverse and world axis cosmologies.)

This model influenced some retroclone writers. The Pathfinder cosmology (specifically the Golarion campaign setting) based the organization its elemental planes on Aristotle’s. The Blood & Treasure cosmology (specifically the Nod campaign setting) adopts Aristotle’s cosmology wholesale, and combines it with that of Dante’s Inferno too. As I mentioned in a previous post, Nod’s cosmology goes even further and makes each of the planets an outer plane. ADDEDUM 11/21/2019: The Voidspanners setting also uses a variation of the Aristotelian celestial spheres. Unlike Nod, these are mundane planets and not outer planes as planets.

Why is this remotely relevant? It occurred to me that I was going about campaign cosmology all wrong. This should be common sense! There is no reason why the multiverse cannot contain multiple universes with different cosmologies. A flat world, celestial spheres, solar systems, etc.

In future posts I should like to describe a multiverse consisting of multiple universes with different cosmologies.

Inspiration for the abyssal larvae

In an older post, I wrote a bit on the origins and appearances of the monster called "abyssal larva." I briefly alluded to their mythological inspiration in the larvae or ghosts from Greek mythology. However, I suspect that the abyssal larva may draw from Biblical imagery as well.

In Mark 9:44-48, Jesus says that "their [sinners'] worm does not die," referring to the Greek larvae. In Christian philosophy, pangs of conscience or envy are metaphorically described as a "gnawing worm" on the soul. Sinners and sin itself are often conceptualized as worms.

As I mentioned in my prior post, some depictions of the fantasy larvae may add that it matures into a locust demon. Such locust demons are described in the Book of Revelations, with disturbing features like human faces and scorpion stingers whose venom causes agony but never death.

Eschatology never ceases to amaze.

Was Argus Panoptes a cyclops?

While reading about Greek mythology, I noticed something interesting. One of the elder cyclopes was named Arges. Another hundred-eyed giant was named Argus. Both of these names seemingly derive from an Ancient Greek root ἀργός meaning "bright, quick."

This leads me to suspect that these two may be multiplications of the same figure. Mythology, owing to its nature as orally-passed storytelling, grows and changes over time like kudzu. Multiplications of the same character or monster are just one example of the divergences that accumulate.

Previously I wrote posts speculating about the relationship between the cyclopean giants with variable numbers of eyes drawn from Greek mythology: monoclopes, biclopes, triclopes, megaclopes. (Of course, the naming scheme is nonsensical since cyclops itself is a combination of cycle and ops.) I find it highly amusing and ironic that mythology might have gotten the same idea millennia before me.

Research links

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἀργός#Ancient_Greek
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Κύκλωψ#Ancient_Greek
• https://www.theoi.com/Gigante/GiganteArgosPanoptes.html
• https://www.theoi.com/Titan/Kyklopes.html