I recently saw this for the first time in my life: a hawk swooped down and picked up a fairly long snake right off the road by my house. Wow! It was really weird and kind of magical to see the hawk fly by with the snake hanging down. Of course I quickly put this event in D&D terms, and realized this could be where the Couatl creature came from! Whoa.
This in turn got me thinking about other mythical things that might have real world inspirations. I could easily see the centaur in the mind of a human who had never seen anyone ride a horse before, for example. Or if you had never before seen a beautiful Greek statue, then the first time you do see one, you might easily believe it was a real person who had been petrified. Mythological misunderstanding might make a great subplot premise for BG III someday.
One thing I have not figured out is the genie in the bottle thing. Where the @#$% (heck) does that come from?
