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- # This data file is generated by 'makedefs'. Do not edit.
- 00000854
- balrog
- 0,9
- Horned devil
- 533,2
- incubus
- succubus
- 629,4
- erinyes
- 850,2
- marilith
- 947,5
- barbed devil
- 1230,2
- vrock
- 1326,4
- hezrou
- 1554,2
- bone devil
- 1677,2
- nalfeshnee
- 1797,3
- ice devil
- 1949,4
- pit fiend
- 2167,4
- juiblex
- jubilex
- 2371,6
- yeenoghu
- 2739,5
- orcus
- 3023,3
- geryon
- 3209,3
- dispater
- 3373,2
- baalzebub
- 3457,3
- asmodeus
- 3618,4
- demogorgon
- 3827,4
- athame
- 4059,5
- babelfish
- 4342,20
- bug
- 5636,7
- *centaur
- 6105,17
- cockatrice
- 7181,23
- creeping 42
- 8464,5
- Cray
- 8782,9
- Deep Thought
- 9328,110
- Douglas Adams
- 13112,7
- *dragon
- 13537,10
- Eddie
- 14135,22
- *elemental
- 15109,6
- Ford Perfect
- Ford Prefect
- 15441,20
- *giant
- giant humanoid
- 16490,6
- gnome*
- gnomish wizard
- 16854,14
- gold
- gold piece
- 17655,9
- *golem
- 18156,3
- gremlin
- 18305,3
- grid bug
- 18485,3
- gunyoki
- 18658,2
- heisenbug
- 18775,14
- hobbit
- 19610,10
- hobgoblin
- 20243,23
- humanoid
- 21568,5
- human
- archeologist
- barbarian
- cave*man
- elf
- healer
- knight
- *priest*
- rogue
- samurai
- tourist
- valkyrie
- wizard
- 21854,7
- imp
- 22287,13
- jabberwock
- vorpal*
- 22981,20
- kabuto
- 23642,1
- katana
- 23662,3
- *kobold*
- 23841,5
- koto
- 24123,1
- leprechaun
- 24143,18
- leocrotta
- leu*otta
- 25225,7
- *lich
- 25641,7
- medusa
- 26091,6
- mind flayer
- 26431,6
- mithril*
- 26800,6
- mumak*
- giant mumak
- 27159,8
- *naga*
- 27644,4
- *ooze
- *pudding
- 27895,4
- orcrist
- 28114,9
- osaku
- 28658,1
- PDP-*
- 28706,22
- piercer
- 30134,8
- Prostetnik Vogon Jeltz
- 30578,13
- quantum mechanic
- 31317,2
- quadruped
- 31439,5
- rust monster
- 31750,3
- sake
- 31906,1
- sasquatch
- 31929,4
- shito
- 32147,1
- snickersnee
- 32177,6
- *soldier
- sergeant
- lieutenant
- captain
- 32418,8
- tanko
- 32916,1
- tengu
- 32976,7
- towel
- Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Traal
- 33394,16
- tsurugi
- 34498,6
- *unicorn
- unicorn horn
- 34840,20
- *UNIX*
- 35973,16
- VAX
- 37082,9
- vogon
- vogon lord
- 37693,22
- wakizashi
- 39021,2
- walking disk drive
- 39143,15
- *long worm
- worm tooth
- crysknife
- 40197,7
- wizard of yendor
- 40567,10
- xan
- 41182,12
- ya
- 41843,2
- yeti
- 41966,3
- yugake
- 42151,3
- yumi
- 42343,4
- *zombie
- 42567,5
- zruty
- 42842,2
- .
- 42944,0
- ... It came to the edge of the fire and the light faded as
- if a cloud had bent over it. Then with a rush it leaped
- the fissure. The flames roared up to greet it, and wreathed
- about it; and a black smoke swirled in the air. Its stream-
- ing mane kindled, and blazed behind it. In its right hand
- was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left it
- held a whip of many thongs.
- 'Ai, ai!' wailed Legolas. 'A Balrog! A Balrog is come!'
- [ The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]
- Horned devils lack any real special abilities, though they
- are quite difficult to kill.
- The incubus and succubus are male and female versions of the
- same demon, one who lies with a human for its own purposes,
- usually to the detriment of the mortals who are unwise in
- their dealings with them.
- These female-seeming devils attack hand to hand and poison
- their unwary victims as well.
- The marilith, a type V demon, has a torso shaped like that
- of a human female, and the lower body of a great snake. It
- has multiple arms, and can freely attack with all of them.
- Since it is intelligent enough to use weapons, this means it
- can cause great damage.
- Barbed devils lack any real special abilities, though they
- are quite difficult to kill.
- The vrock is one of the weaker forms of demon, being only a
- type I. It resembles a cross between a human being and a
- vulture and does physical damage by biting and by using the
- claws on both its arms and feet.
- ``Hezrou'' is the common name for the type II demon. It is
- among the weaker of demons, but still quite formidable.
- Bone devils attack with weapons and with a great hooked tail
- which causes a loss of strength to those they sting.
- Not only do these demons, which are of type IV, do physical
- damage with their claws and bite, but they are capable of
- using magic as well.
- Ice devils are large semi-insectoid creatures, who are
- equally at home in the fires of Hell and the cold of Limbo,
- and who can cause the traveller to feel the latter with just
- a touch of their tail.
- Pit fiends are among the more powerful of devils, capable of
- attacking twice with weapons as well as grabbing and crush-
- ing the life out of those unwary enough to enter their
- domains.
- Little is known about the Faceless Lord, even the correct
- spelling of his name. He does not have a physical form as
- we know it, and those who have peered into his realm claim
- he is a slime-like creature who swallows other creatures
- alive, spits acidic secretions, and causes disease in his
- victims which can be almost instantly fatal.
- Yeenoghu, the demon lord of gnolls, still exists although
- all his followers have been wiped off the face of the earth.
- He casts magic projectiles at those close to him, and a mere
- gaze into his piercing eyes may hopelessly confuse the
- battle-weary adventurer.
- Orcus, Prince of the Undead, has a rams head and a poison
- stinger. He is most feared, though, for his powerful magic
- abilities. His wand causes death to those he chooses.
- Geryon is an arch-devil sometimes called the Wild Beast,
- attacking with his claws and poison sting. His ranking in
- Hell is rumored to be quite low.
- Dispater is an arch-devil who rules the city of Dis. He is
- a powerful mage.
- Baalzebub has been known as the lord of the flies. His bite
- drips poison, and a mere glance into his eyes can stun the
- hapless invader of his realm.
- It is said that Asmodeus is the overlord over all of hell.
- His appearance, unlike many other demons and devils, is
- human apart from his horns and tail. He can freeze flesh
- with a touch.
- Demogorgon, the prince of demons, wallows in filth and can
- spread a quickly fatal illness to his victims while rending
- them. He is a mighty spellcaster, and he can drain the life
- of mortals with a touch of his tail.
- The consecrated ritual knife of a Wiccan initiate (one of
- four basic tools, together with the wand, chalice and
- pentacle). Traditionally, the athame is a double-edged,
- black-handled, cross-hilted dagger of between six and
- eighteen inches length.
- "The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the
- oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not
- from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all
- unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to
- nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its
- carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious
- thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech
- centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical
- upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear
- you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of
- language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the
- brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel
- fish.
- [...]
- "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all
- barriers to communication between different races and cultures,
- has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the
- history of creation."
- [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams ]
- n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece
- of hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of
- {feature}. Examples: "There's a bug in the editor: it writes
- things out backwards." "The system crashed because of a hardware
- bug." "Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs" (i.e., Fred is
- a good guy, but he has a few personality problems).
- [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ]
- Of all the monsters put together by the Greek imagination
- the Centaurs (Kentauroi) constituted a class in themselves.
- Despite a strong streak of sensuality in their make-up,
- their normal behaviour was moral, and they took a kindly
- thought of man's welfare. The attempted outrage of Nessos on
- Deianeira, and that of the whole tribe of Centaurs on the
- Lapith women, are more than offset by the hospitality of
- Pholos and by the wisdom of Cheiron, physician, prophet,
- lyrist, and the instructor of Achilles. Further, the Cen-
- taurs were peculiar in that their nature, which united the
- body of a horse with the trunk and head of a man, involved
- an unthinkable duplication of vital organs and important
- members. So grotesque a combination seems almost un-Greek.
- These strange creatures were said to live in the caves and
- clefts of the mountains, myths associating them especially
- with the hills of Thessaly and the range of Erymanthos.
- [ Mythology of all races, Vol. 1, pp. 270-271 ]
- Once in a great while, when the positions of the stars are
- just right, a seven-year-old rooster will lay an egg. Then,
- along will come a snake, to coil around the egg, or a toad,
- to squat upon the egg, keeping it warm and helping it to
- hatch. When it hatches, out comes a creature called basil-
- isk, or cockatrice, the most deadly of all creatures. A sin-
- gle glance from its yellow, piercing toad's eyes will kill
- both man and beast. Its power of destruction is said to be
- so great that sometimes simply to hear its hiss can prove
- fatal. Its breath is so venomous that it causes all vege-
- tation to wither.
-
- There is, however, one creature which can withstand the
- basilisk's deadly gaze, and this is the weasel. No one knows
- why this is so, but although the fierce weasel can slay the
- basilisk, it will itself be killed in the struggle. Perhaps
- the weasel knows the basilisk's fatal weakness: if it ever
- sees its own reflection in a mirror it will perish instant-
- ly. But even a dead basilisk is dangerous, for it is said
- that merely touching its lifeless body can cause a person to
- sicken and die.
- [ Mythical Beasts by Deirdre Headon (The Leprechaun Library)
- and other sources ]
- These are the incarnations of The Answer (although nobody
- knows the question). Eating the dead body of one gives
- you a short, but insightful glimpse on the answer, thereby
- greatly increasing your experience in life. However the
- shock will cause your vision to blur temporarily.
- :cray: /kray/ n. 1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of
- supercomputers designed by Cray Research. 2.Any supercomputer at
- all. 3. The {canonical} {number-crunching} machine.
-
- The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray, a
- noted computer architect and co-founder of the company. Numerous
- vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented
- by Cray Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image.
- [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ]
- "O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!" he cried out.
- "Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise,the Greatest
- and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known
- ... The Time of Waiting is over!"
- [...]
- "Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this
- Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader.
- "The Day of the Answer!"
- [...]
- "The time is nearly upon us," said one, and Arthur was surprised
- to see a word suddenly materialize in thin air just by the man's
- neck. The word was Loonquawl, and it flashed a couple of times
- and then disappeared again. Before Arthur was able to assimilate
- this the other man spoke and the word Phouchg appeared by his
- neck.
-
- "Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this
- program in motion," the second man said,"and in all that time we
- will be the first to hear the computer speak."
-
- "An awesome prospect, Phouchg," agreed the first man, and Arthur
- suddenly realized that he was watching a recording with
- subtitles.
-
- "We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg,"the answer to the
- great question of Life ...!"
-
- "The Universe ...!" said Loonquawl.
-
- "And Everything ...!"
-
- "Shhh," said Loonquawl with a slight gesture, "I think Deep
- Thought is preparing to speak!"
-
- There was a moment's expectant pause whilst panels slowly came
- to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off
- experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A
- soft low hum came from the communication channel.
-
- "Good morning," said Deep Thought at last.
-
- "Er ... Good morning, O Deep Thought," said Loonquawl nervously,
- "do you have ... er, that is ..."
-
- "An answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically."Yes.
- I have."
-
- The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been
- in vain.
-
- "There really is one?" breathed Phouchg.
-
- "There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought.
-
- "To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and
- Everything?"
-
- "Yes."
-
- Both of the men had been trained for this moment,their lives had
- been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as
- those who would witness the answer, but even so they found
- themselves gasping and squirming like excited children.
-
- "And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonquawl.
-
- "I am."
-
- "Now?"
-
- "Now," said Deep Thought.
-
- They both licked their dry lips.
-
- "Though I don't think," added Deep Thought,"that you're going to
- like it."
-
- "Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!"
-
- "Now?" inquired Deep Thought.
-
- "Yes! Now ..."
-
- "Alright," said the computer and settled into silence again. The
- two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.
-
- "You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought.
-
- "Tell us!"
-
- "Alright," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question
- ..."
-
- "Yes ...!"
-
- "Of Life, the Universe and Everything ..." said Deep Thought.
-
- "Yes ...!"
-
- "Is ..." said Deep Thought, and paused.
-
- "Yes ...!"
-
- "Is ..."
-
- "Yes ...!!!...?"
-
- "Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
-
- [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams ]
- Note to the real Douglas Adams: should you really ever read
- this text, please do not get upset about how you and your
- characters are represented in this work, but rather remember
- that it was you (yes, *you*) who started all this stuff!
- "All IMNSHO, constructive comments by e-mail, flame and
- murder threats to /dev/null, don't bother with flames,
- I'm fire resistant."
- In the West the dragon was the natural enemy of man.
- Although preferring to live in bleak and desolate regions,
- whenever it was seen among men it left in its wake a trail
- of destruction and disease. Yet any attempt to slay this
- beast was a perilous undertaking. For the dragon's assailant
- had to contend not only with clouds of sulphurous fumes
- pouring from its fire-breathing nostrils, but also with the
- thrashings of its tail, the most deadly part of its
- serpent-like body.
- [Mythical Beasts by Deirdre Headon (The Leprechaun Library)]
- "Hi there! This is Eddie your shipboard computer, and I'm feeling
- just great guys, and I know I'm just going to get a bundle of
- kicks out of any programme you care to run through me."
-
- Arthur looked inquiringly at Trillian. She motioned him to come
- on in but keep quiet.
-
- "Computer," said Zaphod, "tell us again what our present
- trajectory is."
-
- "A real pleasure feller," it burbled, "we are currently in orbit
- at an altitude of three hundred miles around the legendary planet
- of Magrathea."
-
- "Proving nothing," said Ford. "I wouldn't trust that computer to
- speak my weight."
-
- "I can do that for you, sure," enthused the computer, punching
- out more tickertape. "I can even work out you personality
- problems to ten decimal places if it will help."
-
- [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams]
- Elementals are manifestations of the basic nature of the
- universe. There are four known forms of elementals: air,
- fire, water, and earth. Some mystics have postulated the
- necessity for a fifth type, the spirit elemental, but none
- have ever been encountered, at least on this plane of ex-
- istence.
- By a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much
- suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his
- closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact
- from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from
- Guildford as he usually claimed.
-
- Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
-
- This friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen
- Earth years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself
- into Earth society - with, it must be said, some success. For
- instance he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out
- of work actor, which was plausible enough.
-
- He had made one careless blunder though,because he had skimped a
- bit on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered
- had led him to choose the name "Ford Prefect" [sic] as being
- inconspicuous.
-
- [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams]
- Giants have always walked the earth, though they are rare in
- these times. They range in size from little over nine feet
- to a towering twenty feet or more. The larger ones use huge
- boulders as weapons, hurling them over large distances. All
- types of giants share a love for men - roasted, boiled, or
- fried. Their table manners are legendary.
- ... And then a gnome came by, carrying a bundle, an old
- fellow three times as large as an imp and wearing clothes
- of a sort, especially a hat. And he was clearly just as
- frightened as the imps though he could not go so fast.
- Ramon Alonzo saw that there must be some great trouble that
- was vexing magical things; and, since gnomes speak the
- language of men, and will answer if spoken to gently, he
- raised his hat, and asked of the gnome his name. The
- gnome did not stop his hasty shuffle a moment as he
- answered 'Alaraba' and grabbed the rim of his hat but forgot
- to doff it.
- 'What is the trouble, Alaraba?' said Ramon Alonzo.
- 'White magic. Run!' said the gnome ...
- [ The Charwoman's Shadow, by Lord Dunsany. ]
- A metal of characteristic yellow colour, the most precious
- metal used as a common commercial medium of exchange. Sym-
- bol, Au; at. no. 79; at. wt. 197.2. It is the most malle-
- able and ductile of all metals, and very heavy (sp. gr.,
- 19.3). It is quite unalterable by heat, moisture, and most
- corrosive agents, and therefore well suited for its use in
- coin and jewelry.
- [ Webster's New International Dictionary
- of the English Language, Second Edition ]
- These creatures, not quite living but not really nonliving
- either, are created from inanimate materials by powerful
- mages or priests.
- The gremlin is a highly intelligent and completely evil
- creature. It lives to torment other creatures and will go
- to great lengths to inflict pain or cause injury.
- These electrically based creatures are not native to this
- universe. They appear to come from a world whose laws of
- motion are radically different from ours.
- The samurai's last meal before battle. It was usually made
- up of cooked chestnuts, dried seaweed, and sake.
- :heisenbug:
- /hi:'zen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty
- Principle in quantum physics] n. A bug that disappears or alters
- its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it.(This usage
- is not even particularly fanciful; the use of a debugger sometimes
- alters a program's operating environment significantly enough
- that buggy code, such as that which relies on the values of
- uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.) Antonym of
- {Bohr bug}; see also {mandelbug}, {schroedinbug}. In C,
- nine out of ten heisenbugs result from uninitialized auto
- variables, {fandango on core} phenomena (esp. lossage related
- to corruption of the malloc {arena}) or errors that {smash
- the stack}.
- [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ]
- Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more
- numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace
- and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-
- farmed countryside was their favourite haunt. They do not
- and did not understand or like machines more complicated
- than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a handloom, although
- they were skillful with tools. Even in ancient days they
- were, as a rule, shy of "the Big Folk", as they call us, and
- now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find.
- [ The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]
- Hobgoblin. Used by the Puritans and in later times for
- wicked goblin spirits, as in Bunyan's 'Hobgoblin nor foul
- friend', but its more correct use is for the friendly spir-
- its of the brownie type. In 'A midsummer night's dream' a
- fairy says to Shakespeare's Puck:
- Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
- You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
- Are you not he?
- and obviously Puck would not wish to be called a hobgoblin
- if that was an ill-omened word.
- Hobgoblins are on the whole, good-humoured and ready to be
- helpful, but fond of practical joking, and like most of the
- fairies rather nasty people to annoy. Boggarts hover on the
- verge of hobgoblindom. Bogles are just over the edge.
- One Hob mentioned by Henderson, was Hob Headless who haunted
- the road between Hurworth and Neasham, but could not cross
- the little river Kent, which flowed into the Tess. He was
- exorcised and laid under a large stone by the roadside for
- ninety-nine years and a day. If anyone was so unwary as to
- sit on that stone, he would be unable to quit it for ever.
- The ninety-nine years is nearly up, so trouble may soon be
- heard of on the road between Hurworth and Neasham.
- [ Katharine Briggs, A dictionary of Fairies ]
- Humanoids are all approximately the size of a human, and
- may be mistaken for one at a distance. They are usually
- of a tribal nature, and will fiercely defend their lairs.
- Usually hostile, they may even band together to raid and
- pillage human settlements.
- These strange creatures live mostly on the surface of the
- earth, gathering together in societies of various forms, but
- occasionally a stray will descend into the depths and commit
- mayhem among the dungeon residents who, naturally, often
- resent the intrusion of such beasts. They are capable of
- using weapons and magic, and it is even rumored that the
- Wizard of Yendor is a member of this species.
- ... imps ... little creatures of two feet high that could
- gambol and jump prodigiously; ...
- [ The Charwoman's Shadow, by Lord Dunsany ]
-
- An 'imp' is an off-shoot or cutting. Thus an 'ymp tree' was
- a grafted tree, or one grown from a cutting, not from seed.
- 'Imp' properly means a small devil, an off-shoot of Satan,
- but the distinction between goblins or bogles and imps from
- hell is hard to make, and many in the Celtic countries as
- well as the English Puritans regarded all fairies as devils.
- The fairies of tradition often hover uneasily between the
- ghostly and the diabolic state.
- [ Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies ]
- "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
- The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
- Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
- The frumious Bandersnatch!"
-
- He took his vorpal sword in hand;
- Long time the manxome foe he sought --
- So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
- And stood awhile in thought.
-
- And, as in uffish thought he stood,
- The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
- Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
- And burbled as it came!
-
- One, two! One, two! And through and through
- The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
- He left it dead, and with its head
- He went galumphing back.
- [ Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll ]
- A samurai helmet.
- The katana is a long, single-edged samurai sword with a
- slightly curved blade. Its long handle is designed to allow
- it to be wielded with either one or two hands.
- The race of kobolds are reputed to be an artificial creation
- of a master wizard (demi-god?). They are about 3' tall with
- a vaguely dog-like face. They bear a violent dislike of the
- Elven race, and will go out of their way to cause trouble
- for Elves at any time.
- A Japanese harp.
- The Irish Leprechaun is the Faeries' shoemaker and is known
- under various names in different parts of Ireland: Cluri-
- caune in Cork, Lurican in Kerry, Lurikeen in Kildare and Lu-
- rigadaun in Tipperary. Although he works for the Faeries,
- the Leprechaun is not of the same species. He is small, has
- dark skin and wears strange clothes. His nature has some-
- thing of the manic-depressive about it: first he is quite
- happy, whistling merrily as he nails a sole on to a shoe; a
- few minutes later, he is sullen and morose, drunk on his
- home-made heather ale. The Leprechaun's two great loves are
- tobacco and whiskey, and he is a first-rate con-man, impos-
- sible to out-fox. No one, no matter how clever, has ever
- managed to cheat him out of his hidden pot of gold or his
- magic shilling. At the last minute he always thinks of some
- way to divert his captor's attention and vanishes in the
- twinkling of an eye.
- [ A Field Guide to the Little People
- by Nancy Arrowsmith & George Moorse ]
- ...the leucrocotta, a wild beast of extraordinary swiftness,
- the size of the wild ass, with the legs of a Stag, the neck,
- tail, and breast of a lion, the head of a badger, a cloven
- hoof, the mouth slit up as far as the ears, and one contin-
- uous bone instead of teeth; it is said, too, that this
- animal can imitate the human voice.
- [ Curious Creatures in Zoology, John Ashton ]
- Once in a great while, an evil master wizard or priest will
- manage through use of great magics to extend his or her life
- far beyond the normal span of a human. The usual effect of
- this is to transform the human, over time, into an undead of
- great magical power. A Lich hates life in any form; even a
- touch from one of these creatures will cause a numbing cold
- in the victim. They all possess the capability to use magic.
- This hideous creature from ancient Greek myth was the doom
- of many a valiant adventurer. It is said that one gaze from
- its eyes could turn a man to stone. One bite from the nest
- of snakes which crown its head could cause instant death.
- The only way to kill this monstrosity is to turn its gaze
- back upon itself.
- This creature has a humanoid body, but has tentacles around
- its covered mouth and only three long fingers on each hand.
- Mind flayers are telepathic, and love to devour intelligent
- beings, especially humans. If they hit their victim with a
- tentacle, the mind flayer will slowly drain it of all
- intelligence, eventually killing the victim.
- _Mithril_! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like
- copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make
- of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel.
- Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty
- of _mithril_ did not tarnish or grow dim.
- [ The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]
- the Mumak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk, and
- the like of him does not walk now in Middle-Earth; his kin
- that live still in latter days are but memories of his girth
- and majesty. On he came, ... his great legs like trees,
- enormous sail-like ears spread out, long snout upraised like
- a huge serpent about to strike, his small red eyes raging.
- His upturned hornlike tusks ... dripped with blood.
- [ The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]
- The naga is a mystical creature with the body of a snake and
- the head of a man or woman. They will fiercely protect the
- territory they consider their own. Some nagas can be forced
- to serve as a guardian by a spell caster of great power.
- These giant amoeboid creatures look like nothing more than
- puddles of slime, but they both live and move, feeding on
- metal or wood as well as the occasional dungeon explorer to
- supplement their diet.
- The Great Goblin gave a truly awful howl of rage when he
- looked at it, and all his soldiers gnashed their teeth,
- clashed their shields, and stamped. They knew the sword at
- once. It had killed hundreds of goblins in its time, when
- the fair elves of Gondolin hunted them in the hills or did
- battle before their walls. They had called it Orcrist,
- Goblin-cleaver, but the goblins called it simply Biter. They
- hated it and hated worse any one that carried it.
- [ The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]
- The osaku is a small tool for picking locks.
- :PDP-10:
- [Programmed Data Processor model 10] n. The machine that
- made timesharing real. It looms large in hacker folklore because
- of its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing
- facilities and research labs,including the MIT AI Lab, Stanford,
- and CMU. Some aspects of the instruction set (most notably the
- bit-field instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The 10
- was eventually eclipsed by the VAX machines (descendants of the
- PDP-11) when DEC recognized that the 10 and VAX product lines were
- competing with each other and decided to concentrate its software
- development effort on the more profitable VAX. The machine was
- finally dropped from DEC's line in 1983,following the failure of
- the Jupiter Project at DEC to build a viable new model. (Some
- attempts by other companies to market clones came to nothing;see
- {Foonly} and {Mars}.) This event spelled the doom of
- {{ITS}} and the technical cultures that had spawned the original
- Jargon File, but by mid-1991 it had become something of a badge of
- honorable old-timerhood among hackers to have cut one's teeth on a
- PDP-10. See {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}}, {AOS}, {BLT}, {DDT},
- {DPB}, {EXCH}, {HAKMEM}, {JFCL}, {LDB}, {pop},
- {push}, {Appendix A}.
- [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ]
- Ye Piercer doth look like unto a stalactyte, and hangeth
- from the roofs of caves and caverns. Unto the height of a
- man, and thicker than a man's thigh do they grow, and in
- groups do they hang. If a creature doth pass beneath them,
- they will by its heat and noise perceive it, and fall upon
- it to kill and devour it, though in any other way they move
- but exceeding slow.
- [ the Bestiary of Xygag ]
- Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other
- Vogons. His highly domed nose rose high above a small piggy
- forehead.His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to
- play the game of Vogon Civil Service politics, and play it well,
- and waterproof enough for him to survive indefinitely at sea
- depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects.
- Not that he ever went swimming of course.His busy schedule would
- not allow it.
- [...]
- Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was
- thoroughly vile. Also, he did not like hitch hikers.
-
- [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams ]
- These creatures are not native to this universe; they seem
- to have strangely derived powers, and unknown motives.
- The woodlands and other regions are inhabited by multitudes
- of four-legged creatures which cannot be simply classified.
- They might not have fiery breath or deadly stings, but ad-
- venturers have nevertheless met their end numerous times
- due to the claws, hooves, or bites of such animals.
- These strange creatures live on a diet of metals. They
- will turn a suit of armour into so much useless rusted
- scrap in no time at all.
- Japanese rice wine.
- An ape-like humanoid native to densely forested mountains,
- the sasquatch is also known as "bigfoot". Normally benign
- and rarely seen, this creature is reputed to be a relative
- of the ferocious yeti.
- A Japanese stabbing knife.
- Ah, never shall I forget the cry,
- or the shriek that shrieked he,
- As I gnashed my teeth, and from my sheath
- I drew my Snickersnee!
- --Koko, Lord high executioner of Titipu
- [ The Mikado, by Sir W.S. Gilbert ]
- The soldiers of Yendor are well-trained in the art of war,
- many trained by the Wizard himself. Some say the soldiers
- are explorers who were unfortunate enough to be captured,
- and put under the Wizard's spell. Those who have survived
- encounters with soldiers say they travel together in
- platoons, and are fierce fighters. Because of the load of
- their combat gear, however, one can usually run away from
- them, and doing so is considered a wise thing.
- Samurai plate armor of the Yamato period (AD 300 - 710).
- The tengu was the most troublesome creature of Japanese
- legend. Part bird and part man, with red beak for a nose
- and flashing eyes, the tengu was notorious for stirring up
- feuds and prolonging enmity between families. Indeed, the
- belligerent tengus were supposed to have been man's first
- instructors in the use of arms.
- [Mythical Beasts by Deirdre Headon (The Leprechaun Library)]
- A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an
- interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical
- value-you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across
- the cold moons of Jaglan Beta;you can lie on it on the brilliant
- marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea
- vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so
- redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini
- raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-
- hand-combat;wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or
- to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a
- mindboggingly stupid animal,it assumes that if you can't see it,
- it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can
- wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of
- course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean
- enough.
- [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams ]
- The tsurugi, also known as the long samurai sword, is an
- extremely sharp, two-handed blade favored by the samurai.
- It is made of hardened steel, and is manufactured using a
- special process, causing it to never rust. The tsurugi is
- rumored to be so sharp that it can occasionally cut
- opponents in half!
- Men have always sought the elusive unicorn, for the single
- twisted horn which projected from its forehead was thought
- to be a powerful talisman. It was said that the unicorn had
- simply to dip the tip of its horn in a muddy pool for the
- water to become pure. Men also believed that to drink from
- this horn was a protection against all sickness, and that if
- the horn was ground to a powder it would act as an antidote
- to all poisons. Less than 200 years ago in France, the horn
- of a unicorn was used in a ceremony to test the royal food
- for poison.
-
- Although only the size of a small horse, the unicorn is a
- very fierce beast, capable of killing an elephant with a
- single thrust from its horn. Its fleetness of foot also
- makes this solitary creature difficult to capture. However,
- it can be tamed and captured by a maiden. Made gentle by the
- sight of a virgin, the unicorn can be lured to lay its head
- in her lap, and in this docile mood, the maiden may secure
- it with a golden rope.
- [Mythical Beasts by Deirdre Headon (The Leprechaun Library)]
- :UNIX:: /yoo'niks/ [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on
- Multics"] n. (also `Unix') An interactive time-sharing system
- invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics
- project,originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7.
- Dennis Ritchie the inventor of C,is considered a co-author of the
- system. The turning point in UNIX's history came when it was
- reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972--1974, making it the
- first source-portable OS. UNIX subsequently underwent mutations
- and expansions at the hands of many different people,resulting in
- a uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment. By 1991,
- UNIX had become the most widely used multiuser general-purpose
- operating system in the world.Many people consider this the most
- important victory yet of hackerdom over industry opposition (but
- see {UNIX weenie} and {UNIX conspiracy} for an opposing point
- of view). See {Version 7}, {BSD}, {USG UNIX}.
- [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ]
- :VAX: /vaks/ n. 1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most
- successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly
- excepting its immediate ancestor, the PDP-11.Between its release
- in 1978 and its eclipse by {killer micro}s after about 1986, the
- VAX was probably the hacker's favorite machine of them all, esp.
- after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD UNIX (see {BSD}). Esp.
- noted for its large,assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set
- --- an asset that became a liability after the RISC revolution.
- [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ]
- [...] Billions of years ago
- when the Vogons had first crawled out of the sluggish primeval
- seas of Vogsphere, and had lain panting and heaving on the
- planet's virgin shores...when the first rays of the bright young
- Vogsol sun had shone across them that morning, it was as if the
- forces of evolution ad simply given up on them there and then,
- had turned aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and
- unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should never
- have survived.
- [...]
- Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been
- working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They
- brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the
- Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall
- aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which the
- Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-
- like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons
- would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because
- their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them
- anyway.
-
- [ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams ]
- The samurai warrior traditionally wears two swords; the
- wakizashi is the shorter of the two. See also katana.
- :walking drives: n. An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk
- drives back in the days when they were huge, clunky {washing
- machine}s. Those old {dinosaur} parts carried terrific angular
- momentum;the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings
- and stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause them to
- `walk' across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a couple
- of millimeters at a time. There is a legend about a drive that
- walked over to the only door to the computer room and jammed it
- shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in order to get at
- it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns of drive
- access(a fast seek across the whole width of the disk,followed by
- a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of old-time
- hackers figured out how to induce disk-accessing patterns that
- would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive races.
- [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ]
- [The crysknife] is manufactured in two forms from teeth tak-
- en from dead sandworms. The two forms are "fixed" and "un-
- fixed." An unfixed knife requires proximity to a human
- body's electrical field to prevent disintegration. Fixed
- knives are treated for storage. All are about 20 centime-
- ters long.
- [ Dune, by Frank Herbert ]
- No one knows how old this mighty wizard is, or from whence
- he came. It is known that, having lived a span far greater
- than any normal man's, he grew weary of lesser mortals; and
- so, spurning all human company, he forsook the dwellings of
- men and went to live in the depths of the Earth. He took
- with him the dreadful artifact, the Book of the Dead, which
- is said to hold great power indeed. Many have sought to find
- the wizard and his treasure, but none have found him and
- lived to tell the tale. Woe be to the incautious adventurer
- who disturbs this mighty sorcerer!
- They sent their friend the mosquito [xan] ahead of them to
- find out what lay ahead. "Since you are the one who sucks
- the blood of men walking along paths," they told the mosqui-
- to, "go and sting the men of Xibalba." The mosquito flew
- down the dark road to the Underworld. Entering the house of
- the Lords of Death, he stung the first person that he saw...
-
- The mosquito stung this man as well, and when he yelled, the
- man next to him asked, "Gathered Blood, what's wrong?" So
- he flew along the row stinging all the seated men until he
- knew the names of all twelve.
- [ Popul Vuh, as translated by Ralph Nelson ]
- The arrow of choice of the samurai, ya are made of very
- straight bamboo, and are tipped with hardened steel.
- An ape-like humanoid native to inaccessible mountain tops,
- the yeti is also known as "the abominable snowman". Whether
- or not the title "man" is appropriate remains unknown.
- Japanese leather archery gloves. Gloves made for use while
- practicing had thumbs reinforced with horn. Those worn into
- battle had thumbs reinforced with a double layer of leather.
- The samurai is highly trained with a special type of bow,
- the yumi. Like the ya, the yumi is made of bamboo. With
- the yumi-ya, the bow and arrow, the samurai is an extremely
- accurate and deadly warrior.
- The zombi... is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but
- taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a
- mechanical semblance of life, -- it is a dead body which is
- made to walk and act and move as if it were alive.
- [ W. B. Seabrook ]
- The zruty are wild and gigantic beings, living in the wil-
- dernesses of the Tatra mountains.
-