A serpent like creature has allegedly been sighted near Halong Bay, Vietnam. The SCI FI original series entitled "Destination Truth" did a show on it and captured one picture that seemed convincing. The creature is said to be anywhere from 15 to 25 meters long which would be apporximately 60-75 feet. Scientists say that the locals could be mistaking this creature for a whale shark, which can grow up to 40 feet in length, which doesn't meet the size of the Tarasque, but when you factor in dramatizations it seems possible. I personally believe it is possible that something like this exists, but until I can see some hard evidence i will remain skeptical.


Here is a photo I found of the so called serpent. I believe what is supposed to be the Tarasque is the thing in the middle of the two rocks, if you ask me it looks like just another rock, please give me your thoughts on this Vietnamese Legend.

Click to view attachment

Well in truth all i know abou the Tarasque is D&D Lore and i think it might just be a rare breed of dinosaur, but i dont know maybe its a creature all in itself, or a type of dragon. but i think the point im making is that little is known about the creature, i don't claim to know much just stating my theory on what it might be.

Tarasque mean a dragon from france .........Legend has it that the creature inhabited the area of Nerluc in Provence, and devastated the landscape far and wide. The Tarasque was a sort of dragon with six short legs like a bear's, an ox-like body covered with a turtle shell, and a scaly tail that ended in a scorpion's sting. It had a lion's head.

Well Undeadskeptic this is the first thing that you and I have agreed upon (that I know of anyways) and i am really quite interseted by this beast

that is the Tarasque as depicted by the artist of the Monster Manual does it come anywhere close to what you think it might look like?

We agree on much, much, much, much more than I let off my friend.

The first thing I think is that such an animal is very poorly adapted for underwater life. Assuming it swims, such a bulky body adorned with unhelpfully posistioned gigantic spikes doesn't really help. Also, it has no obvious gills or a similar underwater breathing system, so that would mean it must emerge to breath occasionally, which would inevitablly have given away such a fantastic and huge creatures existence by now. Also there seems to be no reason a creature so very comfortable on land, as depictd in the image, would feel forced to move into the water. Such a collosal predator would undoubtedly have no natural threats in the form of other carnivores. And another point is that nothing at all like it appears in the recent (Or non-recent for that matter) fossil record and inded it appears to be a hodge podge of different animals stuck together to create this fanciful beastie.

I imagined a cetecan with sharp fangs like the Orca, but a little more sinister looking.

so far im liking this we are agreeing and little skeptism is met with the statments i have put out, and to use the D&D version of it, it is a massive creature that is of a legand and one of a kind, and thought untouchable, even by the most mighty weapons. and in the D&D version it avoids going in water like the plauge...


also you were right it is sinister looking, you shure as hell wouldnt want to meet that thing under any conditions.



heres another pic i found on google by looking up "D&D Tarrasque"



scary looking huh?

Ok well sue me for having never fought the thing ok?

still the whole idea of it being Aquatic is kinda silly, but my vote stands a possible fact

It's obviously turtle shaped, so why wouldn't it be aquatic? That's what the ORIGINAL legend says, so I would assume that's what it means. Don't always trust D&D DS.... It's a game for a reason.

Well yes, it is a game.

but i really dont think it could be aquatic, with its insane size, no evident gills and clearly no flippers or fins it just seems a bit odd to me that it would be aquatic doesnt it?

http://www.eurocbc.org/2067Leatherback_Bame_MWitt030-med.jpg
And yet the leatherback sea turtle is very large as well, and it can swim just fine. The blue whale is the largest mammal on Earth and lives in the ocean. And how do you know it doesn't have any of those features? No one's ever seen one, so I think we can assume we don't know what features it has.

Well yes, it is a game.

but i really dont think it could be aquatic, with its insane size, no evident gills and clearly no flippers or fins it just seems a bit odd to me that it would be aquatic doesnt it?

elephants can swim, though not aquatic, shows that this beast is capable of it also, in D&D they made it non-aquatic to fit the game obviously

Tarasque mean a dragon from France .........Legend has it that the creature inhabited the area of Nerluc in Provence, and devastated the landscape far and wide. The Tarasque was a sort of dragon with six short legs like a bear's, an ox-like body covered with a turtle shell, and a scaly tail that ended in a scorpion's sting. It had a lion's head.

Glyptodon (Greek for "grooved or carved tooth") was a large, armored mammal, related to the armadillo, that lived during the Pleistocene Epoch. Flatter than a Volkswagen Beetle, but about the same general size and weight, the Glyptodon is believed to have been an herbivore, grazing on grasses and other plants found near rivers and small bodies of water.[citation needed] A large and heavy mammal, it could probably only have moved one or two miles per hour.

Its physical appearance superficially resembled the much earlier dinosaurian ankylosaurs, an example of the convergent evolution of unrelated lineages into similar forms.

Glyptodon are part of the placental group of mammals known as Xenarthra. This order of mammals includes anteaters, tree sloths, extinct ground sloths, and armadillos.

Glyptodon originated in South America and first appeared in the American Southwest after North and South America connected at the Isthmus of Panama, about 2.5 million years ago. They became extinct about 10,000 years ago. The native human population in their range is believed to have hunted them and used the shells of dead animals as shelters in inclement weather.[1][2]

I dought it, it barley looks like it would be a threat, besides in all of the legands i've heard and looked up, the Tarrasque is a huge beast not a tiny thing

To me, it looks like either a rock... or something a giant might leave behind after a meal tore up its stomach. >.< However, this image could have falsely been labeled, too.

Are we debating about a cryptid or a character from a video game?

Has anyone actually seen the destination truth episode? In it the creature is described as being long and serpentine
all of this turtle talk is nonsence

Are you talking about the one in Asia, or the French Tarasque. The French one looks clearly like some kind of uber-turtle. I posted a pic of it earlier in the thread of a real statue in the real village the legend came from.

Well then what is the one in Asia? so far all of the disscussion i've seen is about the French one (well relivant disscussion)

I'm pretty sure the Asian one is more serpentine like on Destination Truth. It seems to be more along the lines of a giant fish. But, a rare, giant, softshell turtle has just been discovered in that area (?) in Vietnam, so this turtle could be the source of the Tarasque legends.