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I am trying to identify this fantasy creature. It was used in an article about "D'N'D" in a polish magazine "Top Secret" #14 (February 1993)

enter image description here

After hours of googling I found a few similar images:

a Commodore-64 demoscene image by Cruise:

enter image description here

Lovecraft bestiary:

enter image description here

and something called Bullywug:

enter image description here

But can't find the magazine image. Any help would be appreciated!

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    It looks like you found the Bullywug. What exactly is your question?
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 11:41
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    @FuzzyBoots Bullywug has different feet
    – Tom
    Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 11:49
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    Reminds me of some amphibious creatures from Andre Norton's post-apocalypse novel "No Night Without Stars"
    – Stanley Webb
    Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 15:51
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    @FuzzyBoots This: archive.org/details/TopSecret14/page/n3/mode/2up
    – Tom
    Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 16:15
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    @Giter Yes. This creature is just a "generic fantasy image" for the article.
    – Tom
    Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 17:32

2 Answers 2

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Found it! This monster is from a 1982 artwork by Boris Vallejo called "The Witch and her Familiar".

enter image description here

The monster, then, is meant to be the familiar of a witch. The artwork was used as the cover art for the December 1982 edition of Marvel's Epic Illustrated magazine.

After tracking down the Commodore 64 demo mentioned in the OP, I started by trying to find any of the images in the slideshow. Eventually a google image search for "Barbarian fantasy cover art poland" had one of the images in the demo as the first result, which showed me that the image was from an art by Boris Vallejo. After searching through artwork by Boris Vallejo, I quickly realised that all of the images in the demo were by him, so then it was a case of trawling through every repository of Boris' art I could find online until I stumbled across the image with the creature in question - eventually tracked it down on a website where all the thumbnails were broken, so I had to go into each larger image one by one to check them!

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(Advanced) Dungeons & Dragons has had a variety of piscine humanoids since 1st edition at least. You can see the menagerie below, and take your pick, but I think your first green image looks most like a Locathah (especially the 1st edition AD&D spear wielders) or Kuo-Toa (1st edition AD&D likewise wielding spears):

Could be a Locathah

1e Monster Manual Locathah
5e Ghosts of Saltmarsh Locathah

Could be be a Nixie

1e Monster Manual Nixie

Could be a Sahaugin

1e Monster Manual Sahaugin

Could be a Kuo-Toa

1e Fiend Folio Kuo-Toa 1e D1-D2 Kuo-Toa
5e Monster Manual Kuo-Toa

It is probably not a Merman, Morkoth, or Triton since the image you share has legs, and not fish tails (split or not) or tentacles:

1e Monster Manual Merman
1e Monster Manual Morkoth
1e Monster Manual Triton

Also, Dungeons & Dragons has had a few amphibious humanoids, notably the Bullywugs, Gripili, Grung, and, arguably, Salamanders (although the latter are fire creatures):

1e I6 Bullywug
1e Monster Manual II Gripili
5e One Grung Above Grung
1e Monster Manual Salamander

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  • Very informative, thank you, but someone found the exact image so I gotta accept the other answer.
    – Tom
    Commented Nov 26, 2022 at 16:24
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    @Tom Oh! You were not asking "what is this creature," but "what is this artwork". Got it. :)
    – Lexible
    Commented Nov 26, 2022 at 23:04

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