"Things get more imaginative later, though. This time, for example, you fight a topless lady with a scorpion for an arse! Push that motherfucking boat out!"
Scorpion people are chimeric beings combining the physical characteristics of scorpions and of humanoids. They almost always have segmented tails tipped with poisonous stingers, since it's the signature physical feature of a scorpion; they're often also poisonous in general, and some have claws while others do not — if they do, these can either replace their hands or, if the scorpion person is centaurine in shape, be attached to their waists, where the scorpion's mouth would be if it weren't attached to a human body.
Scorpion people have been around for quite a long time — centaur-like scorpion people first appear in Sumerian and Babylonian myths, under the names of aqrabuamelu or girtablilu, as powerful guardians of places the gods don't want humans poking around in. (So they’re definitely a Mesopotamian Monstrosity, but maybe on the side of law if not goodness.) Many modern works use this as inspiration and depict them as guardians of holy sites in desert settings. These scorpion centaurs are the likeliest to be called girtablilu.
Scorpion People can also appear as a more exotic or threatening alternative to Spider People. In general, scorpions are perceived in fiction as an Unpleasant Animal Counterpart to spiders: while heroic or benevolent spiders are far from unheard of, scorpions are much more universally portrayed as aggressive or outright evil — Scary Scorpions sees far fewer inversions than Spiders Are Scary. Further, scorpions are often perceived and portrayed as more dangerous or powerful than spiders typically are. Thus, in much the same way that scorpions are sometimes used when something more dangerous or intimidating than spiders is needed, scorpion-based humanoids can serve as a more threatening or dangerous replacement for Spider People, and are more likely to be portrayed as aggressive or simply antisocial. This disparity may owe itself to the real-life fact that scorpion stings tend to be more painful and dangerous than spider bites.
Regardless of how they're used, they appear most often in desert-themed settings, usually ones inspired by the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East or by Ancient Egypt.
Overlaps with Our Centaurs Are Different when the scorpion person specifically has a human torso on a scorpion's body. Compare Big Creepy-Crawlies, which are nonhumanoid giant arthropods.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- One Piece has artificial Devil Fruit users who can turn into scorpion people: the first is a nameless mook of the Beast Pirates who has a giant pincer in lieu of his arm. The second named one, Daifugo, has a rather unusual body type with six legs and a stinger on the tip of his hair.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has Adiane the Elegant, one of the four Beastmen Generals, who looks fairly human aside from her scorpion tail.
Card Games
- Magic: The Gathering: The Amonkhet cycle, set on an eponymous plane based off of Egyptian Mythology, features the monstrous Scorpion God, who has an entire scorpion replacing his head and growing from his neck. The set also includes the Soulstinger
, a dual-typed Scorpion Demon resembling a gray-skinned humanoid with the lower body of a scorpion and grotesquely elongated arms ending in two additional stingers.
Comic Books
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): One of Circe's Beast Men who does not loose his original form entirely is a scorpion monster with a human face.
- Wonder Woman (Rebirth): Nemesis is a shapeshifter and chooses to switch out her human legs for a monstrous scorpion body during her fight with Diana. For the other scorpion lady Wonder Woman enemy look in the Literature section.
Fanfiction
- Frozen Turtles: The Duke of Weselton ends up becoming one of these after exposure to mutagen.
- A Waterbending Quirk: The Hunters member Sasori fits this, having the claws, stinger, exoskeleton of a scorpion thanks to her "Emperor Scorpion" Quirk.
Films — Animated
- Treasure Planet: Scroop is a scorpion-like alien with pincers for hands and a humanoid upper body.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: The Scorpion is a cyborg with robotic scorpion legs and a mechanical pincer, instead of being a human wearing a scorpion suit like most incarnations of the character.
Films — Live-Action
- The Mummy Returns: Mathayus, the Scorpion King, is transformed into a being with the body of a giant scorpion, a pair of scorpion claws attached to his waist and another pair of claws instead of arms after Anubis claims his soul.
Literature
- Forges of Mars: Galatea is a villainous, millennia-old AI whose physical form is a tank-sized scorpion-centaur.
- The Ravirn series has a version like this, but the one seen most often has the "humanoid half" take the place of the scorpion tail, with pincer-like finger on the hands.
- Underworlds: Kingu, the Scorpion King, who was cursed into the form of a scorpion as punishment after his failed war against Marduk.
- Werenight features a demon that's a scorpion/human hybrid conjured by the Big Bad in the first fight in the story. It doesn't have a scorpion body, but it does have scorpion claws instead of arms, scorpion legs instead of human legs, and scorpion mandibles.
- In Way of the Tiger, the evil god Nil, Mouth of the Void is the father of many different kinds of monstrous beings. Among his children are the Sons of Nil, which are scorpion-men who have the world's deadliest poison in their blood. The main hero, the ninja Avenger, has some of this blood in his equipment.
- Wonder Woman: Warbringer: Pinon, the Drinker, has the torso and head of a red haired lady, and the segmented black body of a scorpion.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who: In "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror", the Skithra are giant red-and-grey scorpions with energy weapons in their tails. The Queen is considerably more humanoid than the rest.
- Kamen Rider Fourze: The Scorpion Zodiart gained a One-Winged Angel form that transformed it into a giant with a humanoid top and a bottom with a scorpion's legs and stinger.
- Mutant X: Lorna Templeton (Krista Allen), an evil New Mutant who has Living Aphrodisiac Pheromones and deadly stingers as a result of being genetically spliced with a scorpion.
Music
- Pink Floyd's The Wall features Pink's mental manifestation of his wife, who he envisions as a lecherous scorpion with a human head, fiery hair, exposed cleavage, and the claws of a praying mantis.
Myths & Religion
- Mesopotamian Mythology provides the Ur-Example and the Trope Maker — and also the earliest known example of centaur-like creature of any kind, predating Greek centaurs by a considerable stretch — in the form of the scorpion-men, who are humans from the waist up and scorpions from the waist down, with a pair of huge scorpion claws. The Enûma Eliš lists them among the monsters created by Tiamat in her war against the gods, and in The Epic of Gilgamesh a pair of gigantic scorpion-men guards the gates to the tunnel the sun passes through each night.
Tabletop Games
- Call of Cthulhu. The T.O.M.E. (Theatre of the Mind Enterprises) supplement Pursuit to Kadath has the Dragon Warriors, a set of monsters created by the Cthulhu Mythos deity Yig. One of them is Choara, a giant black scorpion with the torso, arms and head of a human.
- Chaosium: In the supplement All the Worlds' Monsters, the humbaba is half human, half giant scorpion with a tail six to nine feet long.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Throughout the game's many editions and settings, a fair few types of scorpion centaurs have cropped up:
- Basic D&D has the manscorpion, a basic scorpion-centaur with three-fingered, taloned hands sometimes mistaken for claws. Manscorpions stuck in Forgotten Realms, where they're known as "stingers" or "tlincalli". They're hostile desert-dwellers, and primarily live in complex underground cities tunneled out of the desert soil.
- The 3rd Edition Creature Collection includes the sandmaskers, beings created in a Deal with the Devil. They have a scorpion claw instead of their left arm, and an additional pair of claws dragging on the ground on their hind ends.
- 3rd Edition introduces the Scorpionfolk, also called the Girtablilu, which have the distinction of having four arms on their human torso — one pair ending in human hands, the other in scorpion claws. In later editions, they're reimagined slightly to have conventional human torsos, with the scorpion claws being attached to where they'd be in an otherwise normal scorpion.
- Mystara's manscorpions, also called the Nimmurians or sohktars, were originally desert-dwelling barbarians who eventually settled in the vaguely Sumerian civilization of Nimmur, originally founded by a race of winged minotaurs called the enduks. This lasted until the sohktars betrayed the enduks, ran them out of their homes and claimed Nimmur for themselves, an act for which they were cursed with extreme albinism and intolerance of the sun, forcing them underground.
- In Eberron, where scorpions replace spiders as the Drow's animal obsession, the traditional driders are replaced by the nomadic, savage scorrow, who are dark elves from the waist up and giant scorpions from the waist down.
- Exalted:
- Tinsianas are demons resembling humans with the claws, feet and tails of scorpions. They're profoundly sadistic and often hired as soldiers, guards and thugs, eschew weapons in favor of their claws, stingers and paralyzing venom, and are greatly feared throughout the Southern deserts.
- Lodestar is a creation of the First Age Solars resembling a humanoid with crushing pincers instead of hands and a scorpion's body instead of legs. It was created to be a wilderness guide; its many legs give it a very stable stance when climbing across ice or steep slopes, while its tail is packed with sensory organs and, when raised up, serves as a living sensory array to scan its surroundings — and also shoot beams of burning energy.
- The Madness Dossier: The horrifying Anunnakku are essentially Mesopotamian Monstrosities, and so it's quite predictable that their primary combat troops would be the scorpion-man girtablullû.
- Pathfinder: Girtablilu are highly religious scorpion-centaurs inspired by Mesopotamian myth. They have scorpion claws growing from their waists, can control regular scorpions, and guard tombs and holy sites in the deserts of Garund, where they live in devoutly theocratic societies. Their stings, of course, are highly poisonous.
- Rifts: The centaurine Scorpion People are among the servants of the Mesopotamian gods.
- RuneQuest: The scorpion men are the basic centaurine version of this trope. They're descended from the scorpion goddess Bagog, whom they worship, who spawned the first clutches of their kind during the coming of Chaos into the world. They're evil creatures of Chaos who hate all regular life, but sometimes ally with other Chaos monsters.
- The Strange: The scormels of Ardeyn have the upper torsos of humans and the lower bodies of giant scorpions.
Toys
- Legends of Chima has the Scorpion Tribe once they are evolved by CHI. Curiously, they have variants within them; Scutter has a larger articulated tail and an insectoid lower body, some minifigures lack tails at all, while most have smaller tails (though in the series all of them have tails).
Video Games
- In Age of Mythology, there is the Scorpion Man myth unit that is unlocked by the Egyptians when worshipping Nephthys. They can sting any enemy to inflict poison on them. They are based on the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns, with large pincers instead of hands.
- In Altered Beast (2005), the Final Boss Anastasia's second form has a giant scorpion-like body, complete with the long tail, and a human torso on top. The arms on the torso changes as its health bar is depleted; the fifth form has them change into scorpion pincers, making it a full scorpion-human.
- Dark Souls II has a female scorpion hybrid named Scorpioness Najka as a boss. Her much smaller mate Manscorpion Tark is an NPC you can recruit to aid you in your battle with her (provided you wear the Ring of Whispers that lets you understand him).
- Eastern Exorcist has a benevolent, non-hostile example, the resident doctor who's an elderly scorpion-man. With thick, bushy eyebrows and a long flowing silver beard.
- EverQuest: The Scorpikis are the half-scorpion half-Iksar creations of the ancient Iksar sorcerer emperor, Venril Sathir. In the centuries after his death, the Skorpikis have made the lands surrounding his tomb their home. While they are largely hostile to everyone in Everquest, players can build up faction with tribes of Skopikis in EverQuest II.
- Heroes of the Storm: One of Zagara's alternate skins, associated with the Ancient Egypt-themed realm of Luxoria, is "Desert Queen Zagara", a scorpion-woman in ornate armor and leader of the "Scorpid Swarm".
- Mega Man: Mega Scorpio, the boss of the Opening Stage in Mega Man X7, is a giant scorpion-like Reploid with a humanoid torso and claws instead of hands that Red Alert used to track down Axl after he escapes from the Crimson Palace.
- Path of Exile: The goddess Shakari mostly takes the appearance of an enormous scorpion, but her tail ends with a human body mutated and fused to function as her sting. Gods are of human origin and generally lose their minds in the process of ascending to divinity, so this sting was the original person.
- Shantae:
- ScorpGals are a recurring enemy, appearing in Shantae and the Pirate's Curse and Shantae and the Seven Sirens, resembling red-skinned humans with six-legged scorpion torsos, and are found in desert areas. They attack either with their stingers or with scimitars.
- Male scorpion people appeared in Shantae (2002) and Shantae and the Seven Sirens.
- Smite: Serqet, the Egyptian goddess of scorpions and poison, is depicted as resembling a human woman with a large scorpion's tail arching behind her back.
- When the Babylonian pantheon was added in 2021, the Conquest Mode map was updated with a Babylonian visual design and two aqrabuamelu/girtablilu were placed as high-tier jungle camps.
- Akranox from Temtem is named after akrabuamelu (scorpion men). Its natural habitat is the Tasa Desert, and it resembles a scorpion with four legs that holds its upper body upright.
- Titan Quest: Scorpion-people are met in Egypt, but they're not centaur-like.
- Warlords Battlecry: The Swarm (a faction of Big Creepy-Crawlies loyal to Melkor the Horseman of Famine) includes two of these; Scorpionmen are the pincer-armed variant and are the Swarm's cavalry unit, while Scorpionpriests have humanoid arms and are the faction's main spellcasters and generals.
Web Animation
Webcomics
- Goblins: One of the alternate versions of Kin encountered in the Maze of the Many, instead of being a yuan-ti like other Kins, is a scorpion centaur with a deadly sting.
- Realta is set in a world where people have attributes of the Western Zodiac. Ava is a Scorpio, so she is humanoid with an extra set of arms and a scorpion tail.
Web Original
- Looming Gaia: Skorpius are monsters with the bodies of giant scorpions and humanoid upper bodies. They were created by Mankind's Disgrace to be his soldiers.
Western Animation
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: The villain Scorpia is a woman with scorpion claws instead of hands and a scorpion tail that injects paralytic venom. That said, she's one of the nicest members of the Horde, basically a Minion with an F in Evil and a near-literal Cuddle Bug. She later defects to the side of good.
- The Secret Saturdays: One of the villains has a robotic scorpion lower torso. Considering how the series borrows heavily from Sumerian mythology, this actually has relevance.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: "The Spy Humongous": When Tendi comes under the influence of the alien emotion-altering cube, she transforms into a huge, raging scorpion woman with pincers for hands, mandibles, and multiple eyes.
- Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go: An ice witch with a scorpion-like lower half is the Monster of the Week of the episode "Snowbound".
