DW Monsters: Wirrn

We don’t see any newly introduced races in the remainder of the first revived season after Dalek, but for the record, the relevant stories are:

• The Long Game – The “monster” here is the Jagrafass, which is, so far as we can tell, a unique being, not a race.
• Father’s Day – The Reapers are said to be completely impervious to damage, which makes them more of an obstacle than something that can be described with creature statistics so I will, at least for the moment, pass on them.
• The Empty Child – The real threat here are the nanites that create the empty children and they are only doing what they are doing because of a very specific malfunction. Thus, the empty children themselves are a one-off thing and the malfunctioning nanites are (game mechanically speaking) a disease, not a monster.
• Boom Town – features the Slitheen.
• Bad Wolf – features the Daleks.

With the Ninth Doctor’s run completed, I am heading back to the classic era, and looking at the monsters of the Fourth Doctor’s run. The first story of his run is Robot, which features a unique… robot… but after that, we get The Ark in Space, which introduces the Wirrn. 

Although we do briefly see a dead Wirrn in a later story, they otherwise do not appear again in the TV show. They do, however, feature in the 1998 novel Placebo Effect and in four audio stories. The most notable of the latter are perhaps Wirrn Isle, a direct sequel to The Ark in Space, and Wirrn Dawn, which is essentially Aliens with Wirrn instead of xenomorphs. As usual, a few comics and short stories round out the total.

D&D Monsters: Carrion Crawlers and Purple Worms

The majority of giant invertebrate monsters in the early editions of D&D are, at least in general terms, arthropods - the group of jointed-limbed creatures with chitinous exoskeletons to which insects, spiders, and crabs belong, among others. Exceptions include giant octopuses and giant squid, which are at least partially based on real animals, a few aberrations that are difficult to ally with anything real, and, somewhere in between, the purple worm. As originally drawn, the carrion crawler also qualifies, although this changes in later editions.

The worm-like body plan is a common one among real-world invertebrates, being found in a wide range of creatures that aren't all that closely related. But, on the whole, they aren't very fearsome, and the different types don't have the recognisability factor that spiders, scorpions, praying mantises, or whatever, might have. Even in D&D, the primary threat from the purple worm comes from the fact that it's just really big. The carrion crawler is a different matter, but, then it is rather less wormlike. Both creatures have 'Ronseal' style names, although, at least to my mind, 'carrion crawler' is, like 'mind flayer', one of the more evocative ones.

D&D Monsters: Rust Monsters

The rust monster is, like the bulette, a creature inspired by a cheap plastic toy bought in Hong Kong. The original toy apparently looked like a lobster with a propeller for a tail, perhaps to represent some weird aquatic kaiju. Gygax later admitted that he'd initially been stumped as to what special attack to give such a ridiculous-looking creature, but, of course, he eventually came up with something that made it a particularly memorable and unique monster. One that is essentially a walking hazard, an annoyance that's completely harmless by the usual standards of the game but nonetheless very much to be feared. 

Albeit, like displacer beasts and piercers, one whose name is just a rather bland description of what it does. 

D&D Monsters: Remorhaz(es)

The remorhaz is another creature original to D&D, and one of the few such that is honoured with a proper name rather than a descriptive term. It's one of the more powerful creatures in the 1st edition that are described as simply animals, rather than intelligent beings. This is largely because it's so difficult to hurt, although it also has a bite that does more damage than that of most dragons. In later editions, it's toned down, although it remains quite fearsome.

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1E

As originally depicted in the 1E Monster Manual, the remorhaz has a snake-like body, with a thick leathery hide that's harder to penetrate than plate steel. The upper surface of the body is covered with an irregular array of white protuberances, which apparently shed excess heat from the intestines. The lower surface has a series of wide flat scales, which also resemble those seen on many snakes, reinforcing the resemblance. The key difference, of course, is that the remorhaz also has a huge number of legs. These are multi-jointed and covered with an exoskeleton; the segments within the leg are all of similar size, suggesting the relatively simple structure of a centipede's legs rather than those of a spider or insect. 

D&D Monsters: Giant and Phase Spiders

The first edition of AD&D includes a number of giant invertebrates, mostly insects. The idea behind these may be influenced by the "big bug" films of the post-WWII era, starting with Them! in 1954, and they provide the possibility of exotic-looking monsters that nonetheless have to look no further than the natural world for inspiration. 

Once we leave insects and look at spiders, there is an even more obvious inspiration: Shelob in Lord of the Rings. While she, and her relatives in other Tolkien works, were likely the primary inspiration behind the original giant spiders of D&D, there are plenty of other fictional examples. The cinematic classic The Giant Spider Invasion is one such (yes, I've actually seen it; there's 80+ minutes of my life I'm not getting back...) and, from more modern fiction, there's Aragog in the Harry Potter books. Giant spiders aren't found in European myth, but there are the Tsuchi-gumo of Japan, which are usually described as spiders (but sometimes crickets) and, at a stretch, Anansi the spider-god of West Africa.

Some Thoughts on Ankhegs

Whip scorpions also spray acid
...but out of their other end

Giant insects - and other invertebrates - have been a common feature of fantasy role-playing games since the early days. The majority are based on real-world invertebrates expanded to much larger size. The ankheg, which made its debut in first edition AD&D, is unusual in being entirely fictional. Indeed, it is an original creation of the game, with the name being made up because it sounded good, rather than deriving from some mythological or other pre-existing fictional basis. Thus, it seems a good starting point to examine the question of how giant insects in general might actually work.