Crawler, the Director's Mount

I'd been wondering what to do with the WOTC Gauth for a long time, since it has no resemblence at all to the TSR description of that creature. Ral Partha did a good rendition of it, and I have one of those in my collection already.

The WOTC mini does make a reasonable fascimilie of the description of the Director beholder-kin. It looks like a beholder and has only six eyestalks, so other than not being 8-10 feet in diameter it is pretty good. It even has what looks like little appendages on its chin for holding onto a mount.

The Crawler, which is the Director's mount, is a weird cross between a giant centipede and a spider. I was trying to figure out a way to scratchbuild a mount for the WOTC gauth when I stumbled over the Mage Knight miniature "Thorn Crawler" (available at Troll and Toad for under a dollar, but getting pretty rare).

This creature looks like someone had the TSR crawler in mind when they made it, and then added "thorn" to the name to avoid any cease and desist action from WOTC. It has a centipede body, spirdery legs and eight eyes with spider mandibles.

Perfect!

I might have to break off one of the spikes behind the head so that the WOTC Gauth can fit up there (with a superglue saddle), but since a WOTC Gauth is going for nearly $20 at the same site, I can wait a while before I need to have a mounted director.