Faithless: The Making of an NWN2 Module

What would a one-headed hydra look like? Considering that hydras are always depicted in art as having many heads, the idea of a one-headed hydra may sound silly. Let us not forget, however, that when Heracles first encountered the hydra, it started out with only one head. The appearance of that head will determine how the rest will look. I searched the Internet for pictures of hydras, and I found various depictions of it with fins, barbels (appendages like the “whiskers” of catfish), horns, beaks, and even greyhound ears. Why would a hydra have one or more such features? To be sure, reptiles have been known to have fins (sea snakes, ichthyosaurs), horns (triceratops, horned lizards), and beaks (turtles), although I have yet to hear of reptiles with barbels or external ears. Nevertheless, there has to be some credible use for any trait. Unless the hydra spends all its time in waters deep enough for its huge body to swim in, it would have no need for fins or barbels. Horns are good def...

A hydra is not an easy thing to model. Each head should be sculpted symmetrically and animated individually. Be that as it may, a hydra is basically a fancy snake with more heads than are considered healthy. If I could sculpt one snake and embellish it to look like a one-headed hydra, it would be a simple matter to replicate the head and neck and attach each clone to the body. Regarding the position of the heads, I’m not inclined to follow the hydra model in Jason and the Argonauts , where one row of heads is on top of a second row. Apart from looking kind of messy, the heads that are in front will always have a clear advantage over the ones at the rear when it comes to grabbing food. Instead, I’d like to position all the heads in a single row like the fingers of a hand. It makes more sense to have each set of vertebrae fused side by side, the way it happens among conjoined twin serpents. This design is based on some amazing pictures of snakes with as many as five or ten heads tha...

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on the hydra that I wrote about in my last post. Sometimes life takes us in unwanted directions and puts a monkey wrench in our hopes and dreams. Anyhow, I’ve been reading up on creature design, and there’s this adage that goes, “Form follows function.” This means that any creature’s appearance should ultimately be based on what it is capable of doing. I’ve also been reading some fascinating material about adaptations, which are traits or capabilities that evolved in a species to solve a particular problem of survival. Even in fantasy setting, imagined creatures must abide by these principles for readers or players to willingly suspend their disbelief. Let’s take the hydra. Chaos Wielder, for whom I am creating this model, asked me to work within a couple of parameters in designing the creature: The hydra is a many-headed venomous snake like the monster that appeared in Jason and the Argonauts . In other words, Chaos Wielder wants the classical,...