Medusa

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Medusa was a woman in Greek mythology who was extremely beautiful. One of her suitors was Poseidon, the god of the sea, and one day he realized that, since he was a god, he didn't have to ask for her permission before having his way with her. So he did, right in the middle of the temple to Athena where she worked. Athena was furious -- not with Poseidon for raping Medusa, but with Medusa for being raped in her temple -- and turned Medusa into a Gorgon, a monster with snakes for hair and a face that turned anyone who looked at it into stone. Greek gods are dicks.

Some myths said that her face was so ugly it turned people to stone, but most artistic depictions (and almost all modern re-tellings) have her looking rather beautiful, making her one of the first monstergirls.

Dungeons & Dragons

Medusa was a person, not a species (she is a Gorgon), but that didn't stop the writers of Dungeons & Dragons from naming a whole race after her. "Medusae" vary a fair amount depending on which edition you look at.

2e: Medusae look like elven women with snakes for hair and white eyes. They tend to rely on mating with human men to have more medusa daughters, since actual men of their race (called "maedar") are rare as fuck and the bizarre-ass nature of their reproduction keeps them that way... what? You want to know the details? Alright, it works like this: human man plus medusa equals 2-6 eggs, all of which hatch into medusa daughters. Maedar + medusa, on the other hand, equals 2-6 eggs, of which 25% will hatch into boys. Of those boys, ONE PERCENT are maedar in turn; the other boys, and all the girls, are humans. Medusa and maedar are extremely sexually dimorphic; medusae have snake hair and petrifying gazes, maedar are bald and can turn stone to flesh with a touch. There's also greater medusae, who have snake-bodies instead of legs (like a Lamia) and super-poisonous blood, and glyptars, which are undead maedar whose souls possess crystals, which can be attached to statues (to make golems) or swords (to make intelligent magical weapons).

3e: Medusae are covered in scales and, in most official artwork, tend to look rather ugly. There's no mention of maedar existing.

4e: As in 3e, medusaea are all scaly, though not actually that ugly. Male medusae have returned, but don't have their own name, are just as scaly and don't turn stone to flesh anymore; instead, they can poison anyone they look at.

Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40,000 has no monsters specifically named "Medusa," but the name is still applied to lots of places and items:

• The Tyranid Hive Fleet Medusa
• The planet Medusa, a Death World and the homeworld of the Iron Hands First Founding Chapter of Space Marines (incidentally, their Primarch, Ferrus Manus, was playfully nicknamed "the Gorgon" by Fulgrim for his lack of aestheticism). Medusa is a tectonically unstable planet with constant volcanic eruptions and so many earthquakes the Iron Hands can't build a single fortress-monastery, rather having each Clan-Company using mobile fortresses known as "Land-Behemoths" (think the size of an Adeptus Mechanicus Ordinatus Engine).
• Medusa V (no relation to the above planet Medusa), the site of Games Workshop's 2006 global campaign, which was conveniently destroyed after the campaign ended, so no matter who won, it would not upset the status quo.
• The Medusa Siege Gun, one of several artillery pieces used by the Imperial Guard, and its main weapon, the Medusa Siege Cannon.