Centauroid creature

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Urmahlullu relief from a bathroom in the palace of Assurbanipal in Ninevah

Centauroid creatures, also known as centaur-like or tauric creatures, appear frequently in mythology and works of fiction. Like the centaur of Greek myth, such creatures typically possess the body of a four-legged animal with a human or human-like torso where the head should be, giving them six limbs and a double set of ribcages.

[edit] Classic mythology, folklore, and literature

Heraldic emblem of King Stephen of England.

In Mesopotamian mythology the urmahlullu, or lion-man, was a centauroid creature who served as a guardian spirit, especially of bathrooms.^[1].^[2]

Lion-centaurs appear again in English heraldry. A centaur-like archer was at times used as a charge known as a sagittary, named for the Zodiacal Sagittarius. While this charge was typically depicted as a more traditional centaur, the heraldry of King Stephen of England employed leonine-bodied centauroids.^[3]

Some medieval bestiaries referred to a half-human, half-donkey creature called an onocentaur.^[4][5]

A dragon-like centauroid appears in an illustration by Dan Beard, appearing in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in 1889.^[6]

[edit] Modern science fiction and fantasy

Onocentaur from the medieval Aviarium / Dicta Chrysostomi

Writers of science fiction and fantasy literature frequently include centauroid creatures in their work. The liminal nature of the centaur is sometimes downplayed in these modern creations, lending animal features to the otherwise human upper body. This may include fur, horns, or an upper body which is wholly an anthropomorphized version of the lower-body animal.

Authors often coin names derived from specific animals. The metanalyzed suffix "-taur" is often appended to the name of an animal species ("liontaur") or to its Greek or Latin equivalent ("dracotaur"). Likewise, some fantasy writers, especially within the furry fandom, use "taur" as a generic term for any centauroid creature.

"They Thought I Was One of Those Fire Belching Dragons" by Dan Beard, from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889

Some centaur-like creatures in modern fiction and games include:

• A race of "Cat-Centaurs" appear in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series.^[7]
• The chakat, a hermaphroditic race of feline centauroids created within the furry fandom.^[8][9]
• Cheetaurs and liontaurs, derived from their namesake animals, in Sierra Entertainment's Quest for Glory series of computer games.
• The lobster-bodied Cray from the Bas-Lag novels of China Miéville.
• The drachnid in Sony Online Entertainment's Everquest.
• Warhammer Fantasy's Dragon Ogres.^[10].
• The dragonspawn^[11] and the insectile Nerubians in the Warcraft Universe.
• The Posleen, crocodilian centauroids which serve as the primary antagonists in John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata series.^[12]
• The Rowra, a race of centaur-like tigers mentioned in Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson's novel Hokas Pokas.^[13]
• Normal Centaurs, a tribal race of centauroid lions known as wemics, the evil leonine lamia, the spider-bodied and scorpion-bodied dark elves known as driders and scorrow respectively, the dracotaur, and the quaraphon included in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.^[14] One Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook provides rules for generating "tauric creatures" from an arbitarily chosen base species.^[15]

[edit] References