Silly Rabbit

Death awaits you all.

A rabbit may seem an odd starting point for monster creation. (Unless you're a carrot; rabbits scare the hell out of carrots.) Nonetheless, various folklore traditions and taxidermists provide a surprisingly varied collection of horned and/or winged chimera-bunnies (Sweden's Skvader, Germany's Wolpertinger, America's Jackalope to name a few).

Alan Hunter illustration from Fiend Folio

Not to be outdone, the Fiend Folio throws the Al Mi'raj into the mix. I foolishly believed that this was a recent hybridization in the spirit of the Owl-Bear... take a rabbit, slap a unicorn's horn on its noggin, and call it a day. It turns out this critter can be traced back to the Mid-East as detailed on Wikipedia. Cool.

Cool too is the fact that Wyrd produces a Jackalope mini perfectly suited for a simple Al Mi'raj conversion. Nasty, big, pointy teeth (to quote Tim the Enchanter), an aggressive stance, and separate antlers were all selling features. A winged unicorn from Mirliton, earmarked for another conversion, provided the horn.

Step one: drill a hole in the forehead just forward of where the antlers would go.

Step two: carve the lower section of the horn into a post that fits into the hole. Attach with super-glue.

Step three: Some putty work.

Painting was very straightforward. The source material indicated a pale coloration with a black horn. The spotted coat seen in some illustrations was intriguing but in the end I kept it simple.

 

 

 

The Wyrd mini was fun to work with and is just a pair of wings shy of the dreaded Wolpertinger, undisputed king of all rabbit-monsters. I'll save that for another day though. Right now I have a post-operative unicorn and several half painted minis vying for my attention.