The Myrmidons
Taxonomy: Vilekin (Antling)
Description: Antlings are common creatures in the deserts of Aldenard and are in almost every way simply enormous ants. Their ‘societies’ are divided in twain, between a worker and soldier caste. A number of variants of these creatures are native to the Cry, first and foremost being the sentries. Members of the soldier caste, these creatures seem to have acted as guardians for the sensitive parts of the nest deeper within. The adventurers who cleared the Cry also reported the presence of a princess deeper within. A princess arises in a rare birth, at which point the queen will take half of the colony and depart, allowing the princess to flower into a queen in their own right. Nearby the princess were a number of lesser soldier ants including guards, the princess’ personal bodyguards, soldiers who attacked at her commands and marshals. These seem to have been particularly large and dangerous ants that were capable of working more sophisticatedly than the average soldier ants.
Capabilities: The myrmidons are almost universally capable of using their enormous jaws to act as some kind of ‘trap’ and vice them into a target with cataclysmic consequences. The princess was apparently somehow capable of manipulating aether to stymie spellcasting via a ‘silence’-like effect, as well as granting her marshals a fearsome ‘haste’ effect. Besides this, she was capable of inflicting a ‘mandible bite’ with jaws so large that it could strike whole groups of foes.
Etymology Notes: These ants are named after the myrmidons, a nation from Greek myth that claims descent from a woman who was somehow seduced by Zeus in the form of an ant. It has also been used as a name for various species of ant in real life too.
Sand Bat
Taxonomy: Cloudkin (Bat)
Description: Bats reside within the dark places of the world, roosting in caves and other secluded locales. It is common knowledge that they are nocturnal creatures, but more dedicated research by the scholars of the realm has uncovered that they are capable of feats of extremely keen hearing and a technique called echolocation. Although most bats feed on insects and fruit, folklore has long held that some of them instead feed on blood.
Capabilities: Much to the chagrin of this author, it was discovered by the research team that these particular bats are fully capable of the blood-draining abilities ascribed to them by folklore.
Quicksand Basilisk
Taxonomy: Scalekin (Basilisk)
Description: Natives of Aldenard, basilisks are fiercely territorial creatures that have a particularly dark place in Eorzean culture, where they often represent evil.
Capabilities: These basilisks used their formidable mass to ‘body slam’ their foes.
Shrapnel
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Bomb)
Description: Bombs are an interesting example of Voidsent, occupying the eleventh rung of the voidal hierarchy, they are driven to constantly replenish their internal fuel stores and are thus wildly carnivorous.
Sabotender Desertor
Taxonomy: Seedkin (Cactuar)
Description: Cactuar are desert-survival specialists, capable of weathering brutal heat and prolonged absence of water. They are also entirely capable of defending themselves against foes, launching their needle barrages, often a little indiscriminately. The locals who reside around the Cry refer to these creatures as desertors, possibly due to them not living in complex communities as some cactuar do.
Capabilities: These creatures are quite capable of their species’ signature ability, showering their immediate area with ‘1000 needles’.
Etymology Notes: The term sabotender is a composite of saboten, japanese for cactus, and the word pretender. The word desertor is a spanish spelling of deserter, which makes a great deal of sense considering how often cactuars are coded as spanish.
Sandshell
Taxonomy: Wavekin (Crab)
Description: Giants crabs such as these, often called snipper crabs, are abundant across Eorzea and beyond. Their strength makes them a thoroughly inconvenient food-source however, and only the qiqirn rat-folk commonly eat them due to the effort needed to pierce their iron-hard shells.
Sandstorm
Taxonomy: Vilekin (Swarm)
Description: Thick clouds of aggressive insects, this behavior is fairly common across flying insects on Hydaelyn.
Canyon Condor
Taxonomy: Cloudkin (Vulture)
Description: Vultures are commonly symbols of impurity in cultures due to their reliance on carrion to survive, although they are also fully capable of hunting down a target with their bladed talons and claws.
Capabilities: The fearsome condors of the Cry were fully capable of marshalling wind aether and using their wings to stimulate it in a kind of ‘wing cutter’ that inflicted harm upon the team’s guards.
Giant Tunnel Worm
Taxonomy: Vilekin (Worm)
Description: The giant worms of Eorzea are, frankly, enormous and utterly terrifying creatures that hunt prey by swallowing them whole. Their preferred method of locomotion is by vibrating their whole body rapidly, allowing them to burrow beneath the earth at speed.
Capabilities: According the adventurers that slew it, this creature was capable of extending its control over sand from merely travelling through it to manipulating it properly to create localized ‘sand cyclones’ capable of harming targets for extended periods of time. It would also create huge buffets of sand like a localized ‘sand storm’, causing the sand to whirl in a technique termed the ‘bottomless desert’ by the adventurers for its ability to suck individuals into it or using its bulk to slam into the sand and emerge from it at speed in an ‘earthbreak’. Finally, it was capable of agitating the sands so that they created a minor sandspout or ‘sand pillar’ that would harm those nearby to it.
Slipsand
Taxonomy: Ashkin (Slime)
Description: Slimes are produced when humors leaking out of corpses come to rest on an area enriched by earth aether. The earth aether adopts the aetheric energies left behind by the dead individual(s) and uses them to control the congealed biological material. Fiercely toxic, Slimes are completely without will and tend merely to mill around until being taken control of by a magick user. These slimes are likely the product of the Chimera’s victims
Arkose Golem
Taxonomy: Soulkin (Golem)
Description: Golems are beings of stone animated by magic, with rumors suggesting that they may be easier to animate in the path of a calamity, although any real research will demonstrate that this is not the only time they are possible to create. These particular golems are made out of arkose, a form of sandstone.
Capabilities: These golems were capable of unleashing great waves of force and shards of earth through a ‘boulder clap’ as well sandblasting foes with pressured jets of the material, sarcastically referred to as an expression of ‘true grit’ by some particularly machoistic adventurers.
Schorl Doblyn
Taxonomy: Soulkin (Coblyn)
Description: What exactly a coblyn is, differs depending on who you ask. In Gridania the theory is that coblyn are beastkin who graft mineral to their flesh in order to gain a measure of armament. In Ul’dah, the prevailing thought is that they are instead true soulkin, ore that has taken on sentience and the ability to walk in order to propagate… Somehow. The Ul’dahn theory is increasingly the one accepted as fact within the halls of Sharlayan. These particular creatures are spawned from schorl, a form of the gem tourmaline.
Capabilities: These coblyn proved able to channel aether through the crystals across their body, causing a few of them to ‘shatter’ in a harmful aetheric shockwave.
Spriggan Crier
Taxonomy: Soulkin (Spriggan)
Description: Despite their seemingly corporeal nature, spriggan are essentially the animated forms of aetherial earthen energy, and are frequently referred to as being the ‘will of earth.’ That the personality and abilities of the spriggan are determined by the stones they hold implies that their primary source for this energy is derived from their constant companion. These spriggans may have been given the title of ‘crier’ in order to mark them as wardens of Craver’s inner sanctum, wailing to alarm the fearsome chimera when disturbed.
Etymology Notes: Spriggan are Cornish nature spirits known for their mischievous behavior, a trait shared by the creatures in Eorzea as is their aspect as nature spirits.
Craver/The Chimera
Taxonomy: Chimera (Chimera)
Description: Horrifying creatures created via the melding of a lion, goat and dragon by the fel aetherochemistries of ancient Allag, these beings are first generation chimeras. Allagan records indicate that this constitues the use of a single creature as a base, augmented with live body parts of other creatures. In this case, Craver’s base is a lion and the goat and dragon are additive. One can only pray that this precludes the dragon component from having the sapience of its original form to spare it the torment of its existence. It earned the name Craver from encounters with terrified woodsmen nearby the Cry, presumably due to its thirst for flesh, and was almost slain by the Darklight Raiders before prevailing over them, leaving but one survivor.
Capabilities: Craver was apparently capable of an array of terrifying abilities, each typified by a specific head. The dragon head was capable of spewing gouts of lightning far around the chimera in a technique known as the ‘dragon’s voice’ by the Darklights due to the terrible din it provoked. It was apparently capable of raising that voice even higher to a ‘cacophony’ at which point an unstable orb of lightning aether formed and careened towards Craver’s foes. The ram head of the chimera was capable of manipulating ice aether around the chimera’s immediate vicinity in a technique called the ‘ram’s voice’. The ram head is also capable of producing wide areas of painfully cold air via a similar technique, named ‘the ram’s keeper’. Scholars who have studied chimeras previous have pointed out that techniques such as these likely stem from stimulation of very low-level aetheric manipulation abilities used by mountain goats to keep themselves from freezing. Each head is also capable of emitting streams of their respective element, which is fire for the lion head, in techniques called ‘the dragon/ram/lion’s breath’.
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