Monsters, Monsters everywhere; in legend at least.

I wanted to review some of the monsters, mythical creatures an even cryptids ( a cryptid is a creature, which had been seen but not recognized by science; think Bigfoot) that I am featuring in my novel, “Legend of the MysticKnights.”

The premise of my novel is that an evil has taken over the world and has released monsters who attack and terrify humankind, resulting in the stagnation of technology. Legend of the Mystic Knights is set today, but the technology is still stuck in the middle ages.

Although the novel includes monsters, I wanted to make sure I stayed within the concept and perception of these monsters by medieval people. We must remember, to them nature was an enemy; even though they farmed and harvested wood, the forest was a terrifying place. To them nature represented evil; nature sent storms and beasts of the field that attacked them. Most of all, it was the part of themselves that was nature, the beast inside of man, that kept them sinning and away from God. What people do not understand, they fear, and this was the case for medieval society.

If you remember some previous posts about how terrified medieval civilization was about witches.  During this time, witchcraft was often confused with worshiping nature. In many of these religions, it is mother-earth that was the highest deity; this was blasphemy to the Catholic Church at that time.

Our first monster is the lindworm.  In medieval writing, especially when referencing to Norse mythology, if you see the word WURM, or WORM, it means dragon. To people in the medieval period, the dragon, more than any other creature, represented the devil. In the bible, the devil is often described as a dragon.  An example is in Revelation 13:2; "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world:

The lindworm is described as a wingless dragon, with large rear legs and no front legs. When I first researched this, I imagine a T-Rex with no front legs. I could imagine a medieval person, stumbling upon a t-rex or velociraptor fossil, seeing the little legs up from, or maybe finding a broken fossil; they assumed it had no front legs and thought it was a dragon.

As for my dragon featured in the world of my novel, the above account is exactly how I described the lindworm.  He is 8 feet tall; the male has waddles on his face.  A wattle is a flap of skin on some animals, especially in birds. The lindworm is a fast walker, capable of walking a great distance in a short period.

The lindworm is also called a pestilence dragon, its appearance brings disease; I had to make this connection in my novel.  I decided to have the lindworm as a scavenger that digs up graves in cemeteries. In this way, it is the corpses which when uncovered, promote sickness in a community.

 The next creature is the amphithere. This is a small-winged creature with no legs.  It flies on large colorful wings; on the ground it slithers like a snake.  The main weapon for the amphithere is its tongue, which darts out of its mouth delivering venom.

Again, the above is how I described the amphithere in my novel.  Instead of having a random attack by one of these creatures, I created a large flock of them, hundreds attacking the castle at one time.

 

Although, I tried to include creatures of medieval legend, I also wanted to create a few. One of the nastiest creatures I created was the Demon Fly.  This insect is 3 inches long, with 3 compound eyes, and 2 sets of translucent wings.  It has a large pair of front claws to grasp its victims, and then injects corrosive venom into the skin with a huge curved stinger. Like most flies, they travels in huge swarms and a person may receive hundreds of these bites at one time; receiving this many bites will result in the dissolving of the skin and muscle in minutes, leaving nothing but the bone visible underneath.

So I hope this was not so horrible. Never week; we will return with some more medieval monsters form my novel.

All the monsters featured above are featured in my novel, “Legend of the Mystic Knights”, if you have not already, get your copy today!