Attached Link: Tiamakhisis in Dragon Factory (shameless advertising ;) )

 no, it's not a davo monster, it's tiamakhisis! :) just a little (er, BIG, rather) experiment with my dragon factory project, to see if it would choke poser. it did. not a total crash, but things went very slowly and got very werid. check the project pictures page for more details, and a full body view of tiamakhisis. also, the subdomain is up, the new url is http://dragonfactory.3dmenagerie.com/ the manual is up -- or part of it anyway -- so you can read in more detail how it all works.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... blah, blah, blah... When can I go buy the darn thing already? :) (I am seriously looking forward to this, considering that an empire in my fantasy world is ruled by dragons...)

Pant, pant. (charge card out and ready)

It is great. I did a pewter sculpture of her and seeing her as a model is a treat. I can't wait.( mine only has one tail though) Marge

I love the name - Tiamakhesis... Yet another mutation from the Babylonian myth of Tiamat, evil creator of the universe and eternal enemy of Marduk, her son. Allegedly, the Babylonian symbol for Tiamat, BTW, was the double helix symbol used for DNA... Gary Gygax used the name to create a five-headed queen for evil dragons. In order to further divest TSR from Mr. Gygax, after his departure, she was renamed Takhisis, goddess of evil on Krynn. I hear her stats for the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons are a nightmare... And yeah, I AM babbling... ;-)

Actually Tiamat of Babylonian myth isn't listed as evil in any of the mythology/archeaology texts I've looked her up in. There's mythology and there's Gygaxology. Unfortunately it seems that D&D's one lasting contribution to pop culture has been to teach people a lot of falsehoods about ancient mythology. Thanks to the fact that gaming geeks like me are the ones writing all those durned video games and cartoon shows that our kids are growing up watching/playing. Translation of the actual myth: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Resources/Ane/enumaA.html Commentaries: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren/assyrbabyl-faq.html#Tiamat http://pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren/assyrbabyl-faq.html#a1.6 http://www.google.com/search?q=tiamat+myth+babylonian&num=10&meta=hl%3Den%26lr%3D&safe=off Tiamat is one of the early 'earth mother' myths. She has a violent death as one of those wars where one generation of gods kills it's parent generation. She originally did not desire this war but was tricked into it. Her body was used to construct many parts of the world.

Cool; the only version of the "true" Tiamat myth that I've seen was the bastardized version in the "paperback" Necronomicon released back in the early eighties. I knew it wasn't accurate, but didn't know HOW bad it was! ;-)

heyas; i thought tiamat got her bad reputation for trying to eat marduk. or something. well, arcady.... just today i re-calculated how long the rest of the morphs are going to take me, and some other sundry stuff (like checking everything), and it looks like it won't be finished 'til the end of july. sorry :( had trouble with the head morphs and head geometry hadda be re-structured, and the morphs re-done. but those are better, now. (or else! :) ) but you don't want a rushed, shoddy product, now do you? :)

Better late than imperfect. I've got lots of things to illustrate before I tackle the Empress and all her imperial dragons and such anyway... :) The project looks great so far from what I've seen of it. I like the fact that it'll let us do anything from cutesy 'puff' dragons to big monsters like this one. How about some 'chinese-dog' faces for those chinese dragons? I'm currently working on a scene at the moment involving a competition between Anton's and Zygote's dragons to win the service of an imperial maiden (Not ...THAT... kind of service). On the bad myths thing; the entirety of D&D's monster manual is riddled with stuff as bad as the Tiamat case or worse (do some research into hobgoblin and kobold). New agers will try to tell you how all these ancient myths were wonderful flower carrying hippie-gods. D&D's myths make them out to be horrid monstrosities. The truth; as with all things; lies in a middle ground based on an ancient culture who's ideas about morality and ethics were far different from todays. In both ideals and realities. When I read the Tiamat myth I got the impression that she got caught in a war between her siblings/spouse on one side and her children on the other. She chose a side and lost. But in the early part of the epic she seems the only god with any level of reason. By the end she's leading a horde of monsters against her children to avenge the death of the other gods of her generation. By modern ethics it's hard to judge what she should have done. I have no idea how the Babylonians would have called it.

heyas; arcady: there is a 'spoonbill' dragon head that is oriental-shaped, but i don't think that is exactly the chinese lion-dog type you are talking about. i think tiamat is whatever the winning side recorded she was. ;) (we kicked her butt, 'cuz she was evil.') so it coulda gone either way, prolly. modern interpretations kinda try to condense these things, so a lot is lost in the translation.

My favorite Deities and Demigods peculiarity is the fact that, even after they found out that the person at Chaosium who gave them permission to post Cthulhu and Melnibonean deities did not have the right to GIVE them that permission, they STILL kept the "Special thanks to Chaosium" note in the indica... :) The book DOES mention that it's difficult to accurately define the mythologies of Babylon and Sumeria because there are conflicting texts. And the Necronomicon I keep bringing up (not H.P. Lovecraft's Al Azif; the "real" one...) listed Inanna and Ishtar as the same person; I think Inanna might be a title... They listed "Ishtar Gate" as the fourth gate to awareness, IIRC, and the one most initiates stop at, because it is the "garden of delight", and was her home... Boy, when I start a tangent, I REALLY start a tangent! :)

As i read the title and whas shure i would see something of your new dragon. Thats a really outstanding project. Please, please don't forget to let us know where we can buy this terrific dragon. I don't spend much money for buying something for poser, but for this i would do. SHARKEY

well i dont know who this "tiamakhisis" is...i just hope he/she/it stays on the other side of my monitor screen....lol.. thats some piece of work ... totally awesome BLOODSONG

Oh, Bloodsong, thanks for the link for the Enuma Elish! I have a copy from an old book from 1921! I'll be checking that link out. I love archaeology! I specialized in the Maya of Yucatan, but I know a smattering of other ancient cultures too. Although Tiamat might not be viewed as 'evil', she did try to stop the Younger Gods from creating the universe because they were being too 'noisy' about it. Therefore the war began between the Younger Gods and the older ones. Marduk was elected the champion and given powers and gifts by the other Young Gods and he went and did battle with Tiamat and slew her. He created our world from her body. From her blood he created human beings.

One interesting thing about the Necronomicon, which has come into our modern age of mystism, is that there is some remarkable preservation of mythology in the text. It really should be studied properly. Within the copy I have, a mainstream paperback, the "Mad Arab" tells the beginning of the world. Interestingly enough, it's goes for several verses almost word for word with the Enuma Elish, the Seven Tablets of Creation. The Mad Arab was writing perhaps around the first century A.D. and yet somewhere he came across some preserved writings of Babylonian religion. The Necronomicon should be studied from that point of view by anthropologists. It might be garbled but the Mad Arab did once have in possession some lost literature from Babylon and Sumeria. By the way, I am also awaiting the release of this program! I love Dragons and you can knock on my door to help in texture creation. I'm learning more on how to do it everyday!

I think, with models of that quality, you're entitled to some shameless advertising. That is a stunning piece of work bloodsong and I'm counting down the days to the end of July. (Nothing like applying a bit of pressure, is there grin) Paul

<--Wishing the program were available now, for the "Goddess Challenge" in the Challenge Forum... ;-)

heyas; dream: i think you meant to thank arcady for the enuma elish. ;) (i dunno what an enuma elish is! geeze, and i used to feel so edjukated.) sharky: it'll be for sale online; stay tuned to the updates page for when/where. i'm glad you guys think everything looks great... i musta been working with 'em too long, i think they look dull. yes, lobo, i'm counting on you guys to motivate me for the final push to get this sucker done. thanks! :)

The reason the Necronomicon (well, one of them, anyway) has a fine version of Sumerian myths is that the writer(s) had 19th and 20th century classicists and historians to get the story from. The Necronomicon is a freaking myth. No such book ever existed in real life. None of the books using that title now can be dated from before Lovecraft mentioned the title and "the Mad Arab" in his fiction, and he stated in in his personal letters that he made it up.

{The Necronomicon is a freaking myth. No such book ever existed in real life. None of the books using that title now can be dated from before Lovecraft mentioned the title and "the Mad Arab" in his fiction, and he stated in in his personal letters that he made it up. } Actually, Lovecraft made up the ORIGINAL title (and contents) of the infamous Necronomicon - Al Azif. Necronomicon is, I think, the Greek phrase for "Book of the Dead" - many ancient religions have "Books of the Dead," the most famous being the Egyptian and Tibetan ones. (And the Evil Dead movies made this funnier by having the "Necronomicon Ex Mortis" - with "Ex Mortis" being Latin for "From Death" or "Of the Dead"). Personally, I prefer Terry Pratchett's "Necrotelecomnicon" (Phonebook of the Dead)...

{The Necronomicon is a freaking myth. No such book ever existed in real life. None of the books using that title now can be dated from before Lovecraft mentioned the title and "the Mad Arab" in his fiction, and he stated in in his personal letters that he made it up. } Actually, Lovecraft made up the ORIGINAL title (and contents) of the infamous Necronomicon - Al Azif. Necronomicon is, I think, the Greek phrase for "Book of the Dead" (Literally, I think it's "The book of the names of the dead," but I could be mistaken) - many ancient religions have "Books of the Dead," the most famous being the Egyptian and Tibetan ones. (And the Evil Dead movies made this funnier by having the "Necronomicon Ex Mortis" - with "Ex Mortis" being Latin for "From Death" or "Of the Dead"). Personally, I prefer Terry Pratchett's "Necrotelecomnicon" (Phonebook of the Dead)...