Need names and/or pictures of "hideous creatures"

[alreadyded]

My immediate goal is to replace rebel armies (they bore me) with creatures, and the like. I have modeled two varying dragons already (lots of free time), but I need some ideas or pictures of other "evil" or "wild" beasts and creatures that were found all over Middle Earth, particularly in the North. Something that looks really badass and would be fun to model is OK too, I'm not terribly stuck on lore. I plan on modeling one more version of a dragon (still need pics) along with some smaller creatures (roughly the size of a man or larger).

So if you have some good ideas and some pics or a link to where they can be found, I would appreciate it greatly. Large and detailed pics from a front, side, or a "toppish" angle are ideal.

[el Cid]

You could do wargs, and I mean wargs without riders.

[SinerAthin]

Wouldn't most animals and creatures flee if an army ever came their way?

[alreadyded]

I didn't plan on making them a faction that can take over the world. I'm just going to place some "lairs" primarily in the North and West to spice things up a bit in those areas. The only faction I play as is Gondor, the others are a bit to easy and dull for me. As for how many units and how powerful... I'm not there yet. I wouldn't mind being ambushed by a pack of wolves, spiders, two-headed trolls, or dragons in a forest or mountain somewhere every once in a while. Then maybe get a reward for destroying their nest. Better than having my people rebel when they are perfectly happy.

Never the less, the main reason I am doing this is not because it makes sense (even though it does, since Tolkien stated how dangerous and dark a place the world was in every other paragraph), but because I'm bored and I like to dabble. Dragons are fun to model... but the wings are a b...

[SinerAthin]

There will be dragons? ;O

Better never leave my ballistas behind then...

[glassakias]

whoa looks really promising. i suggest you turn to offlore ideas only when you have run out of lore ones, so that the attached to lore players can enjoy this as well, if you ever release it.

[IrishBlood]

if your serious about this i'd like to help anyway i can!

i've often thought about doing this myself, but because of my SEVERE lack of any modding abilitys thats never gonna happen

here's a compilation of pictures that should suit your needs

hill troll chieftain

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these are Harads half trolls, but since we already have them, maybe you could use them as ogres or something?

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a nice dragon

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Giant spiders

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Shelob, maybe you could use her as a Ginat spider queen or something

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here's some snow trolls for ya,

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A werewolf

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Stone Giants

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Mewlips (a type of goblin creature found in the forests of Eriador)

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this is also a great source of information for all the lesser known races of middle earth

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/raceothe.html

here's another decent one http://ithronaiwendil.the3rdage.net/goblins.htm

well thats about all i can find at them moment, i'll update this if i find anything new
hope that was useful

[glassakias]

hey, you've got some nice (and somewhat funny) pics there.
i think alreadyded will find them really usefull

[Lordinquisitor]

Some of them can serve as nice inspirations, but some are also not backed up by the lore. Though, if he doesn`t mind thats okey, i guess.

[IrishBlood]

well all those creatures DID exist in the world of middle earth, we just know very very very very little about them

so what they looked like is open for interpretation

[Lordinquisitor]

Yeah, all of those are mentioned.. But the werewolves, for example, most likely had a wolf shape and not a humanoid form.
(But some of them like the mewslip and the ogres were most likely just mythical creatures in tolkiens books.)

[IrishBlood]

Yeah, all of those are mentioned.. But the werewolves, for example, most likely had a wolf shape and not a humanoid form.
(But some of them like the mewslip and the ogres were most likely just mythical creatures in tolkiens books.)

yeah your prob right about the werewolves, but come on, virtually EVERY creature in tolkiens books were mythical ones! just because he didnt go into any great detail for some of them, doesnt mean they didnt exist in middle earth, maybe he was hopeing that some day, nearly a hundred years after his death, that some dareing young modders would use these lesser known creatures for the basis of an excellent sub mod!

[alreadyded]

Thanks for the red dragon pic Irish, it is helping me a lot with the body and wings.

I will probably do some spiders next, of varying sizes, after that the hard work is over. The werewolves (Warg sized wolves I suppose), two-headed trolls, and wild goblins should be easy if I modify existing models. After that I am out of Ideas, maybe an army of smaller Balrogs in the far far North?

[Cyclops]

Armies of Balrogs are not really lore compatible.

IIRC there were "were-worms in the farthest deserts" or somesuch, at least according to Sam. You may laugh but he knew about "swertings", the "oliphaunt" and Mordor so they weren't laughably ignorant about distant lands.

What a were-worm might look like I can only guess.

Remember Tolkien has a skin changer (man-bear) in Beorn, and he does not use the term were-bear, so were-wolf and were-worm may mean something different to the D&D sense of the term.

O(f course the form were-(something) has a sort of evil connotation so prolly Tolkien used skinchanger to suggest Beorn wasn't bad like a were-wolf. Nevertheless...

"Were-" I think means man, so a were-wolf is quiite possibly a man-wolf (so the anthropomorphic blue wolf may be on the money), and by the same token a were-worm may be some kind opf wormy hybrid creature, something like a segmented yuan-ti, or maybe a human-ish head on a worm body, or even (given worm can mean dragon) a sort of man-dragon hybrid.

I think slow heavily armoured human headed worm creatrures would be a fine lore-compatible rebel army for Khand and other points east.

[alreadyded]

I'm making a lore accurate Smaug but I'm a little in the dark as to very specific details. Same with the other breeds of dragons. The whole point of creating the thread was to get some help with the lore. I need some accurate pictures, any pictures at this point. Or even a detailed description. The more info I have the better it will turn out. I've found a bunch on google but they all vary in some way. His head, body, and all but the end of his tail are done already. I just need to add spikes and what not. I made a smaller wingless dragon too. I'll post some pics in a day or two.

[IrishBlood]

I'm making a lore accurate Smaug but I'm a little in the dark as to very specific details. Same with the other breeds of dragons. The whole point of creating the thread was to get some help with the lore. I need some accurate pictures, any pictures at this point. Or even a detailed description. The more info I have the better it will turn out. I've found a bunch on google but they all vary in some way. His head, body, and all but the end of his tail are done already. I just need to add spikes and what not. I made a smaller wingless dragon too. I'll post some pics in a day or two.

well theres 3 types of dragons, the one's that breath fire, like smaug (he was one of the last of his kind though),
then there's the cold drakes, they are smaller dragons that cant breath fire, i dont know if they can fly or not though. they were the ones that drove the dwarfs out of the grey mountains. So it stand to reason that there should still be a fair few of them about, but the fire breathers like smaug are extremly rare though.
The third type are the were worms, im pretty sure their a reference to the dragons in chinese mythology that look more snake like than lizard like, thats my opinion anyway, so on that basis they'd look something like this:

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if you were to make them they should be exclusivly in the far eastern area's of the map, near Rhun and Harads territorys. Especially Rhun as it would fit in with the whole golden dragon horde mythology their elite units have going.

also i think you should REALLY make some snow trolls

[Hermes Trismegistos]

I'm pretty sure that there is no direct link to chinese dragons.

In ancient germanic languages "dragon", "snake" and "worm" were often used synonymous (remember dwarven song from the "Hobbit": "our foe is dead, the worm of dread...").

Tolkien is surely referring to the earliest european depictions of dragons.

See this viking runestone and his own drawing of Smaug:

[IrishBlood]

I'm pretty sure that there is no direct link to chinese dragons.

In ancient germanic languages "dragon", "snake" and "worm" were often used synonymous (remember dwarven song from the "Hobbit": "our foe is dead, the worm of dread...").

Tolkien is surely referring to the earliest european depictions of dragons.

See this viking runestone and his own drawing of Smaug:

point taken, but either way they still look much more like chinese dragons than they do european ones, eg the modern western conception of what a dragon looks like.

Chinese Dragon


european Dragon

(that particular one is smaug)

[Nicolaos]

nice idea thumbs up!

maybe additional to dragons you can add wyrms, since flying units are not possible

[IrishBlood]

nice idea thumbs up!

maybe additional to dragons you can add wyrms, since flying units are not possible

i think he's gonna have them on the ground, with the wings just for decoration