Chimera

If you were looking for the 40k vehicle, see Chimera Transport

The Chimera is a monster from Greco-Roman mythology, described as a tripartite fire-breathing beast with the forequarters and head of a lion, the hindquarters and head of a goat, and the tail and head of a snake. Exactly how that works out depends on the artist; perhaps the most iconic of real-world art depicts it as having a lion's head on its neck, a goat's head growing straight up out of the middle of its back, and the snake's head replacing the tip of its tail. What doesn't vary, strangely enough, is that even though the original Chimera was female, it always has a mane (beard) on the lion, even in period art depicting it as a unique creature. It ravaged the land with its fiery breath until Bellerophon killed it by using Pegasus to fly out of range of the fire whilst carrying a lance with a big block of lead on its tip; he threw this at its mouth and the flames melted the lead so it poured down Chimera's throat and killed it. In the centuries since, the word chimera has gained a second more broad meaning, referring to any sort of weird mishmash between two or more different things Frankensteined together.

In Fantasy Gaming

Chimeras show up in a lot of fantasy games. Thanks to D&D, pretty much all incarnations have the three heads sharing the same neck stump, a dragon head instead of a snake head, and a pair of wings giving it flight! (TSR really liked adding wings to lion-based creatures), despite the fact that the original Chimera was landlocked and this played a huge role in its defeat.

They are particularly prominent in Dungeons & Dragons (and thusly Pathfinder), where they are capable of speech, but usually not very bright. All the ego of a Red Dragon and none of the brains, essentially. The unique awnsheigh in Birthright, the Chimera, is essentially a were-creature, a half-elf who sometimes explodes into a hideous and ever-shifting monster form that goes on feral rampages.

Chimeras also appear in Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar, where they are creatures of Chaos and so usually show up as mounts for the Chaos Lords.

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  Original D&D
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  1e
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  2e
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  3e
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  4e
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  5e
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  Pathfinder
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  GURPS

Star Wars

The Chimaera was introduced as Thrawn's flagship in Heir to the Empire and would quickly become one of the most prominent ships in the EU. This is despite it being a mere Imperial II class when many other Imperial warlords had Super Star Destroyers or some manner of super weapon. The Chimaera had a cloaking device... which was deemed useless without an allied force user because you can't see where you're going when cloaked without the force and all non-force base communications were blocked.

Star Wars doesn't have Greek mythology, so fans assumed it referred to genetic Chimeras or, at least, some mad science hybrid beast since Star Wars has genetics advanced enough to produce human clones.

Monstergirls

Well, what did you think a cross between a catgirl, a dragongirl and a satyress might look like?

Chimera monstergirls are a rare breed, mostly because designers struggle with how to incorporate the three heads and tripartite body into one design.

In the Monster Girl Encyclopedia, the "Chimaera" belongs to the small family of "Demon Beasts", and has the form of a lion-girl with goat's horns and legs, a serpent for a tail, a leonic paw for a right arm, a draconic paw for a left arm, and pauldrons reminiscent of a goat's and a dragon's heads. Extremely powerful and destructive, it has a bad case of split personalities, with one persona for each of the four beasts that work as a team to support her in her goal of finding and keeping a lover.