weird monsters from the Middle Ages

[geoffrey]

All too often we assume that medieval man imagined rather staid monsters: dragons that looked like those in the Monster Manual, giants that were simply big humans, etc. Do a google image search for medieval depictions of monsters. Browse through the results. Medieval man populated his imagination with stuff that could have been created using a random generator of D&D monsters, or stuff that could be found in Weird Tales. I particularly like this guy:

public.media.smithsonianmag.com/legacy_blog/Sea-Swine-56.jpg

Look at those eyes on its side!

Also consider some of the art of Hieronymus Bosch, as well as the intriguing medieval depictions of knights fighting giant snails.

[jmccann]

You can also try googling for images of medieval marginalia, there is a lot of AHEM interesting imagery including a number of monstrous creatures. Some of these are familiar, but many of them might be interesting as monsters. I have written up a couple for use in my campaign.

[cadriel]

I didn't wind up going through with it, but I think you could do a perfectly horrifying bestiary based on the works of Ulisse Aldrovandi, who was a master of this kind of thing.