winterfate wrote:Catoblepas...Catoblepas...where is that from?
(could've sworn I've heard of that before...)
wikipedia wrote:The catoblepas (from the Greek καταβλέπω, 'to look downwards') is a legendary creature from Ethiopia, described first by Pliny the Elder and later by Claudius Aelianus. It has the body of a buffalo and a head of a hog. Its back were full of scales that protected the beast, and its head was always pointing downwards. Its stare or breath can either turn people into stone, or kill them.
Pliny (Natural History, 8.77) described it as a mid-sized creature, sluggish, with a heavy head and a face always turned to the ground. He thought its gaze, like that of the basilisk, was lethal, making the heaviness of its head quite fortunate.
Claudius Aelianus (On the Nature of Animals, 7.6) provided a fuller description: the creature was a mid-sized herbivore, about the size of a domestic bull, with a heavy mane, narrow, bloodshot eyes, scaly backs and shaggy eyebrows. The head was so heavy that the beast could only look down. In his description, the animal's gaze was not lethal, but its breath was poison, since it ate only poisonous vegetation.
This is also a monster in D&D, but also in video games such as Castlevania or Final Fantasy.