Medusa

This page is needs images. Help plz.

Medusa was a woman in Greek mythology who was extremely beautiful. One of her suitors was Poseidon, the god of the sea, and one day he realized that, since he was a god, he didn't have to ask for her permission before having his way with her. So he did, right in the middle of the temple to Athena where she worked. Athena was furious -- not with Poseidon for raping Medusa, but with Medusa for being raped in her temple -- and turned Medusa into a Gorgon, a monster with snakes for hair and a face that turned anyone who looked at it into stone.

Some myths said that her face was so ugly it turned people to stone, but most artistic depictions (and almost all modern re-tellings) have her looking rather beautiful, making her one of the first monstergirls.

Dungeons & Dragons

Medusa was a person, not a species (she is a Gorgon), but that didn't stop the writers of Dungeons & Dragons from naming a whole race after her. "Medusae" are very sexually dimorphous: the women have snake hair and turn people to stone with their gaze, while the men (called "maedar") are bald and turn statues back into flesh (which the medusae then eat).

Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40,000 has no monsters specifically named "Medusa," but the name is still applied to lots of places and items:

• The Tyranid Hive Fleet Medusa
• The planet Medusa, a Death World and the homeworld of the Iron Hands First Founding Chapter of Space Marines (incidentally, their Primarch, Ferrus Manus, was playfully nicknamed "the Gorgon" by Fulgrim for his lack of aestheticism). Medusa is a tectonically unstable planet with constant volcanic eruptions and so many earthquakes the Iron Hands can't build a single fortress-monastery, rather having each Clan-Company using mobile fortresses known as "Land-Behemoths" (think the size of an Adeptus Mechanicus Ordinatus Engine).
• Medusa V (no relation to the above planet Medusa), the site of Games Workshop's 2006 global campaign, which was conveniently destroyed after the campaign ended, so no matter who won, it would not upset the status quo.
• The Medusa Siege Tank, one of several Imperial Ordnance Pieces used by the Imperial Guard, and its main weapon, the Medusa Siege Cannon.