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You know, this really smacked me in the face.
For the last 50+ years I've been playing D&D (I started with the Purple-shoe box set) and for all those centuries I've been spelling it, "Bar-Lgura." Cuz, you know, whenever I saw it in print I THOUGHT that only the first part was capitalized -- that the "igura" part started with a lower case "L" -- but, damn it, it's an upper case "i"!
See: "Bar-Igura" (upper case i) and "Bar-lgura" (lower case L) look darned near the same.
I'm flabergasted!
I was rereading "City of Skulls" by Carl Sargent (it's been 60 years since I last read it) and there it was, in lower case, "bar-igura."
I thought it was a typo at first.
-W. E. Ray
bar-Lgura wins over bar-Igura with 992 over 352 results in google fight. Still, not quite the landslide one would have hoped for.
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I believe the confusion stems from the first appearances of the creatures.
Module S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth had the Bar-Lgura write-up
AD&D Monster Manual IIhad the Bar-Igura - same stats, different spelling, and I think even the same art but may be wrong there.Different authors spelled it the way they thought it should be from that point on (one module, I think H4 but I'm not sure - actually used both!).
If it helps, 4E spells it with an L - we know that because it is in the DoD D&D minis set, which is all previews of what is in the 4E monster manual.. if the stats on the card are any indication, though - it has changed sizes
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In "City of Skulls" it is an "i"; that's what prompted my consternation. There's about a million bar-iguras in that adventure, spelled with an "i" each time.
So lemme guess; however way it was first spelled, the next time it was spelled it was spelled differently -- not too big a surprise considering the quality of editing/proof reading back in the TSR '80s. Anyway, maybe each designer or editor wrote it thinking it one way or the other.
At least I'm not the only one!
-W. E. Ray
If I remember correctly, its a currently a Medium creature (3.5 rules). The RPG-side of the card says its been advanced up to Large size, so it could go either way as far as size change occurs. Its a cool fig, but sometimes I wish they would do the monster as it is normally before they do a larger version. I also wish that Dire didn't have to mean "has bones on the outside and horns everywhere" but thats for another day.
I never paid much attention to them until I was running Savage Tide for my husband. It might as well have been a new invention, as far as I was concerned. (I couldn't afford many published adventures when I was in school, so I never read Tsojcanth or some of the other classics.)
I run the first encounter where they get to see a bar-lgura (with an L), and my husband yelps, "It's a bar-lgura!" (with an L), and I was just amazed that he could not only recognize these things from that quick description, and actually put a name on them.
But it makes me wonder - do the bar-iguras owe allegience to a different demon-lord than the bar-lguras?
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I also wish that Dire didn't have to mean "has bones on the outside and horns everywhere" but thats for another day.
Ugh. I have the same gripe. Who exactly designed that brilliant policy? The picture of the dire elk in the MMII makes it looks like some type of cancerous growth.
"Oh no, we're being attacked by a dire elk!"
"No, man, it's cool. That tumor's about three seconds from shutting down its brain."
AD&D Monster Manual 2 is an L not an I on page 37 (where the monster is written up)... since the creature is based upon a "real" demon I would have to say any case where it is spelled with an I is simply incorrect.
here is an entry from a dictionary of demons I found online (LINK):
Bar-Lgura - (Semitic) A gargoyle type demon who is said to sit atop houses and pounce on the inhabitants.
it is Bar-Lgura in the 2e planescape monstrous compendium, it is with an L in the 3.0 book of vile darkness, and with an L in the 3.5 Fiendish Codex 1... I haven't done a truly exhaustive search but is there any place in an official product besides WGR6 (City of Skulls) where it is mispelled?
The dragon compendium also follows the L. Apparently the pronunciation is bar-lu-G0R-a.
*press 2,
and I've thought so since the old days. Don't know why, maybe because Lgura just seems unpronounceable.
Lgura just seems unpronounceable.
*Press 3=Gorilla, Demon
I've always taken the hyphen to be an accent mark indicating that you rrroll the R. It looks more demonic than barrrlgura.
