What is a thurse?

Thurse is, of course, my own transliteration and Anglicization of what was once an old Germanic word. Old English refers to the orc-þyrs in Beowulf, which Tolkien used to create orcs as we know it in the fantasy genre. The second half of that is þyrs, however, which was obviously an Anglo-Saxon word and a cognate to the Norse word þurs, or thurse, which was an alternate word for jotunn or monster. Thurse, therefore, has an ancient pedigree as a mythological and folkloric monster that somehow got "missed" by the fantastists who over-used every word from every northern European language that they could think of (Gary Gygax, I'm looking at you) to create minor variations on new monsters that are all conceptually the same and which all come from the same common source. Happily for me, however, I'm aware of the word and Gary wasn't, so it doesn't seem to have had common usage; I get to claim it as my own. Sorta.

Anyway, I've deliberately advanced the idea that thurses can represent a wide variety of monsters. Ogres, bugbears, yetis, sasquatches, gnoph-kehs, or more from more familiar fantasy settings can all be thurses. But I do sometimes ask myself what exactly is a thurse in my setting, and what would they look like? One of the oldest ideas I had for this was to use the imagery of the Warhammer Beastmen as thurses—and I probably like that the best. At least for the SHADOWS OVER GARENPORT campaign. No promises that if I use thurses in subsequent campaigns that they'll be the same visualization, though.

Warhammer has developed imagery and lore around beastmen that probably eclipses any of the alternatives or predecessors that came before it. Beastmen are essentially identical to trollocs from The Wheel of Time, for instance, they're not significantly different from schir demons or even the older style orcs and hobgoblins of D&D, or for that matter, even the diminutive foot soldiers of Maleficent in the 1959 Sleeping Beauty animated film by Disney; one of the genuine true works of art by that studio (due to the high quality tapestry inspired background paintings and the Tchaikovsky ballet being used as the actual soundtrack.) Even Orcus from old D&D and Baphomet from old occult writings and illustrations from the 1800s and earlier all have the same imagery of animal/people hybrids, especially goat-people hybrids; humans with goat legs and goat-like heads and an evil disposition. 

I've also modified my Morghox and Gorthos Hero Forge to match this iconography; adding the curling horns and a more muzzle-like face.

In fact, I've got all of my current thurse models below, including those that won't actually work for this campaign, just for comparison.

This model turned out so well, I'll probably call it Gorthos instead of the modified library model below.

My original (now modified) "bog beast" version of Gorthos.

Morghox

A too-human-like thurse

An older Beastman-style thurse attempt

A slightly reposed too-human-like thurse

My very original thurse model

Actually, a fantasy Chewbacca from the library

A very specifically gnoph-keh interpretation of a thurse, based on some gnoph-keh fan art

First playing around with face customizer beta. Still too Neanderthal for me, though.