What the fuck IS it?

What the fuck IS it?

A Tarrasque. It says so right in the filename. Are you feeling alright user?

Your daddy

The legend of the Tarasque is reported in several sources, but especially in the story of St. Martha in the Golden Legend.[2] The creature inhabited the area of Nerluc in Provence, France, and devastated the landscape far and wide. The Tarasque was a sort of dragon with a lion's head, six short legs like a bear's, an ox-like body covered with a turtle shell, and a scaly tail that ended in a scorpion's sting.[3] Other legends report it as living on the modern site of the Chateau Tarascon; i.e. on a rock in the midst of the Rhone. According to the Golden Legend "There was, at that time, on the banks of the Rhone, in a marsh between Arles and Avignon, a dragon, half animal, half fish, thicker than an ox, longer than an horse, with teeth like swords and big as horns, he hid in the river where he took the life of all passers-by and submerged vessels. " "Sainte Marthe". L'Abbaye Sainte Benoit. Retrieved 28 Jan 2013.
The Tarasque was said to have come from Galatia, which was the home of the legendary Onachus, a scaly, bison-like beast which burned everything it touched (this creature is similar to the Bonnacon). The Tarasque was the offspring of the Onachus and the Leviathan of biblical account; disputably a giant sea serpent.
The king of Nerluc had attacked the Tarasque with knights and catapults to no avail. But Saint Martha found the beast and charmed it with hymns and prayers, and led back the tamed Tarasque to the city. The people, terrified by the monster, attacked it when it drew nigh. The monster offered no resistance and died there. Martha then preached to the people and converted many of them to Christianity. Sorry for what they had done to the tamed monster, the newly Christianized townspeople changed the town's name to Tarascon.

So Saint Martha used the Tarasque and let it die only to boost her conversion quote?
What a bitch.

Godzilla. Use it as such.

How the GM punishes the party.

A non-intelligent, non-flying but really buff dragon.

Scholars, comparing the documents of its last few rampages over the centuries, have come to a terrible realization.

Tarrasque is only in its larval form, and will some day hatch into something far, far more.

Theories as to where and why it came into being have taken a new slant. Now, the popular theory is that it was created as a contingency, a hard limit on the world's life time. Or perhaps something more.

Then why don't people constantly try to convert Tarrasques?

A waifu

why,

OOCwise it was created as a bunch of exceptions to rules and abuses as many of the clunkier mechanics of AD&D to abuse PCs. The shell reflects pretty much every offensive spell commonly used and renders wizards virtually useless the high HP and AC keep it fighting in there vs Fighters long enough to auto-kill them with the clunky as hell Sword of Sharpness rules for its bite and its unkillable super-troll regeneration means you still HAVE to have a high level Wizard who memorized Wish that day to get rid of it. Its less "Ultimate monster" that a metagame creation based around the rulesets and common player tactics

That description sounds a bit like a hippo. Or maybe a pissed-off walrus.

Why not?

its a turtle

Its a koopa

>Tarrasque has an Int score of three
>It's past the baseline for sapient in D&D world
>YFW that's high enough for the Tarrasque to understand speech
>YFW that's high enough for the Tarrasque to take class levels

>Not posting best Tarrasque waifu

a shitty monster greatly improved by turning it into a normal beast (regeneration optional depending on what power level you want (pre death regeration that is once its dead keep it dead))

With a level adjustment of what? Thirty? Fourty?

Already filtered all three of the pics you're spamming.
What an epic raid, guy who just got banned earlier for posting horse porn. You really showed us.

LA doesn't count towards a monster's CR

Tis a prey animal. They're on the brink of extinction where I hail from. Shame, they make decent pets if you can tame one.

Isn't it pointless to keep pets if you can't ever pet them?
I mean, with all those edges

Your average DMPC familiar.

A plot device mostly.

It is to deathclaws what deathclaws are to chameleons.

Could you imagine meeting this in campaign?
You hear all those stories about a colossal destructive monster bent on destruction.
Instead, you meet her, barely large size, who's only demand is all the food she can eat before going back to bed.
Talk about anti-climatic.

3 Months late for Tarrasquemas is what it is.

>who's only demand is all the food she can eat before going back to bed.
>YFW her appetite and power is the same as the regular sized Tarrasque
>YFW she's literally eating the surounding countryside into starvation
>YFW she's not picky about what she eats, it's not cannibalism when she's not your species after all
>YFW as you talk to her she visibly goes from bored disinterest to sizing you and your party up like a pile of meat

Better question: what the hell is the deal with the Tarrasques on Falx?

>YFW when the king orders for the kingdom's best chefs to serve her the whole course.
>YFW when they bring the most delicious meals after meals ever conceived in front of starving villagers.
>YFW when she notes it was decent but she's she still yearning for more.

I'm not super familiar with DnD lore, so please forgive the rape that's about to occur, but with stats that dumb I'd probably hand wave it as a predator from a plane/dimension where the evolutionary stakes were raised at nearly exponential levels.

I'd also imply that the Tarrasque developed the ability to hop into our plane in order to escape the competition/food chain that would've otherwise made it extinct for being not strong enough, entirely because I like fucking with my players.

Animals are never important. Only people have souls to save.

The Emperor

i like this

A bit like that theory that tyrannids arrived in the WH galaxy because they fled something even MORE dangerous?

I like Fates' version where Martha was a tough smack happy nun who went around smacking so many people they told her to go smack a dragon if she's so tough, then she did until the dragon submitted to her will. The she went back to town on the dragon and kept smacking people.

A Hippo is quite apt.
Try figuring out what this other medieval beast, the Questing beast, was likely inspired by.

"The head and neck of a snake, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and the feet of a hart."

Giraffe?

Likely.

>fight Tarrasque
>Bard: hold on maybe I can pacify it
>Nat 20
>you succeeded

>new campaign
>I play the Bard's half-Tarrasque son

A white hole

Neat. I always thought the Tarasque was something Gygax made up like the rust monster.

It came from another dimension, where its species occupies about the same place as a squirrel in the chain of being.

It's adorable.

And every hole is a goal!

It's Bowser without his hair and spiked bands.

its a loss, boss
no idea what your talking about

...

What is it?

how was the first answer not hungry

An Endbringer

The reason why the bard fucked the Tarrasque, well more than it just looking like

This fits with the meme image from somewhere which mentions that

A: animals evolve spines so they can't easily be eaten by bigger things

and

B: The Tarasque is heavily spined

The thing about the tarasque is that we actually know exactly what its spiny carapace is for. It's not to prevent something bigger from eating it, it's to prevent spells from landing on it. And since magic would be one of the few things that could take it down, having an anti-magic carapace makes perfect sense. The fact that the carapace is spiked is just a coincidence, or possibly a case of A E S T H E T I C S from whatever overbeing created teh tarasque in the first place. They don't really add anything, but also do not detract from its existence or theoretical ability to breed.

So the natural predators of a tarrasque (there is totally not only one, shuttup stupid) is adventuring parties with high level mages

What if they have guns

You're not getting the joke.

>TFW You remember the tale of the Wizard Terrasque
>TFW It can be achieved without DM fiat

I've never seen this joke before, Sir, no one has, but I believe it's a Red Dwarf reference

If anyone has this image, I would like to show this to my dm. Because... there's something wrong with me, I guess.

OwO

I dont think their is an actual image for it, but here is the screen cap of the post.

Fate can be really goofy sometimes, but I still love that shit.

>France

Fuck yeah, finally one cool thing that we get for TTRPG.

Even WotC can't decide what the Tarrasque is. In 4e it was a heavily overpowered earth elemental.

Technically, in 4E it's an Earth-aspected doomsday weapon with its own gravity

Terrasques are grazing beasts that came from the planet of Falx. As they qre quite peacefull and big, we tought it wa a good idea to export them as the main meat stock of other worlds. We just discovered they slowly turn into psicotic murder machines in the wrong atmosphere AFTER we sold them to every planet we could...

I'm starting to write a campaign that actually uses the Tarrasque.
I'm considering ripping off Dragon Age Origins and going the route of:
>PCs are involved with defending a large city (conscripted maybe).
>Oh fuck they has a Tarrasque, U WOT?
>City and it's army get stomped.
>Oldking best in the land wizard kills himself teleporting it away.
>Tells PCs on his deathbed that it will be back in 6 month (or year or whatever appropriate time).
>PCs must go gather an army to fight it and the invaders who retreated to wait until their kaiju comes back.

Anyone here ever use the Tarrasque in a campaign?
Or any ideas for a campaign that does?

You fuckers made Polaris. Great game BTW.

Just an FYI, but even on Falx they're carnivores and I have no clue where the idea of their docility comes from.

Seriously, the book even has an entry for the lizard it preys on. An "Imbul", IIRC?

The Tarrasque is secretly replaced with Bowser, how your party reacts?

I think this is how it's meant to be used, as a plot device. It can't scheme. It probably doesn't have any deep, hidden history behind it that explains the true nature of the world. It's just really, really big. That is its purpose.

I always liked the idea that the gods made it to fight a thing.

Ironically true, since both the Tarrasque and the Endbringers serve to simply be a challenge for the world's most powerful people

If you're going to give it an origin story, that's the route you should take. Something grandiose and reeking of classical mythology.

Well? Post it.

Depends on the setting.

One of Pun-Pun's ancestors that thought becoming a lich wasn't a good idea because they're too easy to kill.

In my current campaign, the Tarrasque is one of the children of the god of destruction. The plot revolves around us fighting a doomsday cult that wants to free it from it's imprisonment.

Basically, a few years ago a wizard staked its feet to the ground with magic spears and built up a huge fortress around it to keep it contained should it ever manage to rip the spears out. The cultists called bullshit on that and are currently trying to wake up the Tarrasque's little siblings to try and help free it.

It's the giant space hamster's favourite prey.

Dire deathclaw.

Ah, thank you.