I’ve been meaning to do qualitative versions of the monsters from the Little Brown Books (LBB), but have been putting it off for almost three years. The idea was inspired by a community project that never went anywhere on a discord server I no longer frequent. For it, I wrote a gryphon and a centaur, but my perfectionist brain wants to get through these alphabetically (as if I will ever get around to doing all of them), so let's start with the basilisk:
‘Although this creature cannot fly, it has the power of turning to stone those whom it touches and those who meet its glance, but it in turn can be petrified by the reflection of its own eyes if the Iight is sufficient, and it looks at a good reflector. The Basilisk is not intelligent.’ (Monsters and Treasure p.10)
Amount encountered: 1 to 6; AC 4; Movement: 6; HD: 6+1; In Lair: 40%; treasure type: F (i.e. chance of silver, gold, gems/jewelry, and non-weapon magic). (Ibid. p.3 and p.22)
The LBB are delightfully vague about what a basilisk is. It is a monster, but so are ‘men’ when they are opponents. Instead it focuses more on what a basilisk can and cannot do:
It cannot fly (one assumes in reference to the cocatrice discussed directly before the basilisk). It can petrify by touch (any?) and eye contact (even with itself). It is unintelligent. More often than not it lives in groups (which it cannot make eye contact with and might not be able to touch at all), is decently armoured (the same as dwarfs), slowish (again, as dwarfs), on average can take a bit more punishment than a minotaur but less so than a troll, and spends about 9,5 hours a day at home (asleep?).
What is interesting to me is how little this has to do with the basilisk as a historical entity. Compare the above to the description Pliny gives of the basilisk in Natural History book 8, chapter 33:
‘There is the same power also in the serpent called the basilisk. It is produced in the province of Cyrene, being not more than twelve fingers in length. It has a white spot on the head, strongly resembling a sort of a diadem. When it hisses, all the other serpents fly from it: and it does not advance its body, like the others, by a succession of folds, but moves along upright and erect upon the middle. It destroys all shrubs, not only by its contact, but those even that it has breathed upon; it burns up all the grass too, and breaks the stones, so tremendous is its noxious influence. It was formerly a general belief that if a man on horseback killed one of these animals with a spear, the poison would run up the weapon and kill, not only the rider, but the horse as well. To this dreadful monster the effluvium of the weasel is fatal, a thing that has been tried with success, for kings have often desired to see its body when killed; so true is it that it has pleased Nature that there should be nothing without its antidote. The animal is thrown into the hole of the basilisk, which is easily known from the soil around it being infected. The weasel destroys the basilisk by its odour, but dies itself in this struggle of nature against its own self.’
This is a tiny snake, so deadly it kills anything it touches, looks at or breathes upon, including the earth itself. Easy enough to stab to death, were it not for the fact that doing so will kill you in the process. The focus is again on how the creature functions, though more attention is given on how one can recognize whether a particular snake is or isn’t a basilisk.
The basilisk from Natural History simply does not rhyme with what is described in the LBB, which means I have to make a choice: Which basilisk do I try to adapt: The petrifying beast, tough as minotaurs and trolls, or the small but deadly snake, an environmental catastrophe only difficult to kill because it would be hard to approach it without you or your weasel dying?
Let’s do both/neither in whatever distribution happens to strike my fancy:
Basilisk:
Traits:
- Large (like bull), heavy (like elephant), lumbering (like fat pig).
Strengths:
- Petrifying gaze: Turns anything organic it gazes upon into stone, each material a corresponding mineral.
- Stony hide: Requires heavy blows with hammers or picks to be damaged.
Weaknesses:
- Self-reflection: It turns to stone upon meeting its own gaze, and is blind to its own shortcomings.
- Cold-blooded: The colder it gets, the more sluggish it becomes. Also, severely lacking in empathy.
Ecology:
- Picky eater: Though the nutritional value of all rock seems to be the same, they nonetheless pursue a varied diet, wreaking havoc in the process.
- Sovereign of One: They are absolute rulers of their habitat, due to a total absence of any other living creatures. None has even met another of its kind. Hence their name: Tiny King.