Manticore

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This page is for the mythological creature. If you are looking for the page about the Imperial Guard artillery piece, please see Manticore Launcher Tank.

How could you say no to that Cheshire Cat smile?

The Manticore is a monster originating from Clasical Mythology. Said to originate in Persia, it is a Sphinx-like monster consisting of a lion with a fang-toothed human's head and a tail covered in myriad spikes, which it can launch to impale victims from a great distance. Some variants instead just give it a simpler scorpion-like stinging tail instead. In fantasy games, the manticore is occasionally depicted with bat-like wings, allowing it to fly.

The creature is generally considered a fierce, malevolent and ravenous brute, seeking only to gorge itself on as much raw meat as it can find and attacking anything that moves in pursuit of food and/or the pleasure of the kill.

Dungeons & Dragons

The manticore has been around in Dungeons & Dragons pretty much since the beginning. Just like the Chimera, they decided to put wings on it for seemingly no reason. The standard depiction is as a brutish but roughly sapient flying predator with vicious melee attacks and the ability to hurl spikes from its tail as ranged attacks.

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Warhammer

In the Warhammer Fantasy setting, manticores are flying, leonic beasts associated with Chaos. They are sometimes used as steeds both by Chaos Champions and by Druchii leaders - indeed, the Druchii revere the manticore as an animal sacred to Khaine and one of his aspects, such is the beast's love of slaughter. They're so bloodthirsty, even their riders often struggle to control them. Mention is also made of Mer-Manticores in Aranessa Saltspite's backstory.

Star Wars

An Imperial Star Destroyer named Manticore shows up in the Jedi Academy trilogy (which sucks) aping the earlier established ISD Chimaera's name. What's interesting about this is the trilogy also stated the Manticore was a supposedly extinct beast that was since proven to be an archeological hoax/mistake that people still thought was cool enough to name things after anyways. While the trilogy is bad enough to dismiss this as more of Anderson's bad writing this kind of thing happens more than you think in real world palaeontology, especially if you count young and adult dinosaurs being mistaken for separate species, and plenty of Dinosaurs known to be fake still show up in fiction.

Monstergirls

The legendarily infamous MGE Manticore.

Manticore monstergirls are rare, but quite distinct from your standard catgirl, what with the flying and the stinger tail. They are often especially aggressive in temperament.

The Monster Girl Encyclopedia version of the manticore is particularly infamous, as not only does it have a tail covered in spikes that secrete aphrodisiac venom, but the bulbous tip of the tail actually opens up into a tentacle-filled secondary vagina that secretes the same venom as part of its lubricating fluids. The ability of this monstrous sexual organ to extract semen from men is almost memetically infamous.