D&D Monsters: Dryads

Looking again at D&D creatures derived from Greek myth, we come to the dryad. In the original myths, dryads are a type of nymph, or female nature spirit, associated with trees. Originally, the tree specifically had to be an oak tree, but later on the term seems to have been used more broadly for woodland spirits in general. The term "hamadryad" was used for a dryad so closely bonded to her tree ("hama" means "together") that she would die if it did, but others seemingly had no such vulnerability. So far as one can tell, they were supposed to look like regular human women.

Dryads have occasionally appeared in works of fantasy fiction, most notably in C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, which maintains the distinction from hamadryads. In D&D, dryads and nymphs are different kinds of being, albeit with a number of similarities, but the latter did not make it into the 5E Monster Manual, something that's currently one of my criteria for including something in this series. In the first few editions they are, however, said to be "tree sprites"... but it's not clear what this means, since a sprite is yet another distinct creature in D&D, and one that resembles dryads rather less than nymphs do.

D&D Monsters: Zombies and Skeletons

As I have noted previously, undead in D&D represent at least three different broad categories of being: mindless corporeal, sentient corporeal, and noncorporeal undead. Zombies and skeletons fall into the first of these three categories, distinguished by the fact that they have no will of their own and are effectively automata under the control of their creator. They are also the weakest form of undead, a problem only for low-level characters.

It's well-known that zombies have their origin in Haitian legends, perhaps influenced by older African legends, but probably having more to do with the experience of slavery. In these legends, a recently-dead corpse is re-animated by an evil sorcerer, which it then serves as a mindless slave lacking all free will. The modern conception of the zombie, however, originates with George Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Ironically, that film never actually uses the word "zombie", but it has become widely used since to refer to a selection of similar beings in films and other media.

D&D Monsters: Satyrs

Like centaurs, minotaurs, and harpies, satyrs have their origins in Greek myth. The original versions are wild nature spirits and, in particular, representations of unbridled male sexuality... this survives today in the psychological term 'satyriasis' for uncontrollable sexual desire in men. As with centaurs, this part-bestial nature is represented in their physicality, which combines various animal-like features with an otherwise human, masculine, body.

In later times, the Romans conflated satyrs with fauns, nature spirits from their own mythology that were part-goat part-man. This is quite different from how early Greek art shows them as looking, but it has become essentially universal in western lore since. Nonetheless, since "fauns" lack the rampant sexuality of satyrs, it was their name that C.S. Lewis used in the Narnia books, and his fauns were far more pleasant than Greek satyrs were said to be. Otherwise, "satyr" has generally been the more common term in fantasy, and that's the term that D&D uses.

D&D Monsters: Minotaurs

Minotaurs are another creature with their origin in Greek myth. In the original, there was, of course, only one Minotaur, trapped in a labyrinth and slain by Theseus. Contemporary Greek illustrations show a male human with the head and tail of a bull, more obviously a hybrid than the D&D version, but at least broadly similar. However, some of the myths were vague as to exactly what the Minotaur was supposed to look like, and in the Middle Ages an alternative with a centaur-like form, albeit often with horns on the human-like head, started showing up in art. The latter form had some popularity (it was the first illustration of it I saw as a child) but has declined in modern depictions.

Given that crawling around in subterranean labyrinths is part of the point of the original D&D, it's unsurprising that the Minotaur would be included in the game. Here, of course, it becomes a race of beings and thereby loses its capital letter. (As an aside, both "mine-otaur" and "minn-otaur" are legitimate pronunciations in UK English, although the latter seems to be preferred in the US. In Ancient Greek, it was apparently "meen-otaur", so, hey...).

D&D Monsters: Wights

The word "wight", as D&D books are always eager to remind us, originally just meant "person". It was common enough in this sense in medieval English, and into at least the seventeenth century (Shakespeare uses it, for one). After that, it becomes somewhat old-fashioned, and it's unlikely that anyone much has used the word in this sense for over a hundred years, at least outside of poetry. In 1869, however, a translator used the term "barrow-wight" (literally "tomb-person") to describe a form of undead from Norse legends. This term, of course, was later borrowed by Tolkien in Lord of the Rings. Gygax abbreviated it back to "wight" again for D&D, while retaining the "undead" meaning.

It's likely Gygax's coinage that influenced George R.R. Martin when he chose the word to describe his own, more zombie-like, beings. However, in his universe, it's the White Walkers that most closely resemble D&D's wights, although there are a number of clear differences, not least in terms of how they are created.

D&D Monsters: Harpies

Harpies are one of a number of D&D monsters that owe their origins to Greek myth. However, the story is not quite as simple as that, since they actually combine two different Greek monsters into a single being: the harpies themselves, and sirens. Both were said to be creatures that were part bird, part woman, but beyond that, there is little similarity between the two in the original sources.

Although very early descriptions of mythic harpies portray them as beautiful, the great majority show them as monstrous. As is often the case, there isn't complete consistency in the descriptions of which parts are avian and which parts humanoid, although something at least resembling the D&D form is the most common. Sirens were even more variable, and some early Greek artwork shows male examples as well as females. In essence, though, it is really only the signature attack - the siren call - that copies over to the D&D 'harpy', which in other respects, is more closely based on its namesake.

D&D Monsters: Ghouls

1E

The term "undead", as used in D&D actually refers to (at least) three different categories of being. First, there are the mindless undead, such as skeletons and zombies, which are effectively automata that happen to be made from corpses, rather than from inanimate matter. Then there are what we might term the "wilful corporeal" undead, where some kind of intelligence animates the physical body of the deceased, and finally the incorporeal undead, which are a different kind of entity altogether. Ghouls belong to the second of these categories, although they are unusual in the degree of physical transformation that they apparently go through.

Ghouls are originally a creature of Arabic folklore, in which they are a kind of demon (as in the name of the comic-book character Ra'as al-Ghul) that lives in the desert and lures people to their doom in order to kill them. In the eighteenth century, this was introduced to Europeans by Antoine Gaillard, who added the additional detail that they live in graveyards and eat the dead buried there.  This has remained the standard version ever since, although with significant variation.