"The ancient Fishers from Outside—Were there not tales the high-priest told, Of how they found the worlds of old, And took what pelf their fancy spied?"
H.P. Lovecraft, The Outpost
"One glimpse of the repulsive thing with its one leg and one glaring Cyclopean eye and hideous, hooked, fang-lined beak-"
Here's a really odd one. The fishers were never described by HPL himself. They were only ever described in a posthumous "collaboration" with Lin Carter. Carter describes them, in the quote above as having one eye, one leg and a hooked beak. In a part of the quote I omitted, he also describes them as having scales and no wings: I stared with unbelieving horror at its hulking horribly apterous, quasi-avian form, clothed with scales not feathers...
Allen K's illustration also includes wings
I'm pretty rigorous in sticking to the text when designing my creatures. I will rely on 2nd, 3rd or even 4th tier Lovecraftian authors stories, RPGs, or even notes and letters to flesh out the design of a creature. However, I find Lin Carter to be such an immense hack that truly could care less about sticking strictly to his description. I don't seem to be alone in this; every illustration of the fishers (there aren't many) include wings.
As far as the redrawing goes, I still really like my basic design so I just tightened up the line work and color.
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