Gorgons & Serpentaurs
The original gorgons, Stheno and Eurayle, were products of the original Typhon and Echidna, and as such were supremely powerful and complex chimeras in their own right. The most famous gorgon, Medusa, began life as an ordinary human woman before being cursed to have a gorgon’s body by Athena, and was subsequently adopted by the original gorgon pair as a surrogate sister.
The gorgon trio were absurdly complicated, being a mix of human, basilisk, dragon, boar, and eagle. While this mixture of parts is what made them so formidable, it also made them very difficult to replicate, which is why the number of gorgons that follow this original recipe are few and far between. Most gorgons reduce the ingredients to “serpent” and “human,” with more mundane snakes often being substituted for the basilisk and dragon bits in the original recipe. Even so, creating the iconic “snake hair” and deadly eyes that define gorgons requires a great mastery of wizardry, which is why even the most pared down gorgons are still relatively rare.
Wizards who fell short on those skills invented Serpentaurs, which are what they sound like: human from the waist up, serpent from the waist down. “Twin tail” variants of the serpentaur formula are common, with Melusines (sea-serpentaurs) being especially prominent.
