The Allagan Defense System ☠
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Defense Node)
Description: The defense node was a creation of the fevered minds of Allag’s upper class, too paranoid to entrust their knowledge to anything but a mechanical creation. Vast numbers of these creations could be found across key Imperial locations, and some scholars believe that Dalamud was essentially a defense node on a grand scale. This particular example of the nodes was a large, defense-specialized node, nicknamed the ADS for short by its creators.
Capabilities: The ADS was a mighty contraption, and was capable of employing, amongst other things, a self-destruct protocol heralded by a loud ‘click timer’. The device was also capable of compressing lightning aether in the air to cause large gouts of ‘high voltage’ lightning to lash out, damaging a foe and stunning their nervous system. A number of miniature ‘repelling cannons’ fitted to the node’s sides allowed it to slay those nearby it, while a sizeable central ‘piercing laser’ allowed it to make targeted beam attacks.
Dark Matter Mantis
Taxonomy: Vilekin (Mantis)
Description: Immigrants of Eorzea, the greater mantis actually arrived on the continent at the same time as this author’s ancestors. Lalafellin voyagers landed on Vylbrand, carrying the mantis with them unintentionally via egg sacs attached to their boats when they were still reeds yet to be woven into ship hulls. These particular specimens seem to have wondered into the caverns rent by Dalamud and come into contact with dark matter, a substance that is capable of melding with other materials and improving it. This likely caused the distinct red-veining across the creatures as well as their increased physical strength.
Capabilities: Those who fought these creatures have named the strongest of their strikes ‘standing chine’ in reference to the butchers’ technique known as the chine, slicing meat across the backbone. Graphic. Another technique used by these creatures, involving a vicious lunge, was nicknamed a ‘kneeling snath’ after the term used for the shaft of a scythe.
Dark Matter Pteroc
Taxonomy: Scalekin (Puk)
Description: The common puk is an insectivore creature specialized for an arboreal life with an irritable, territorial streak a mile long. They are unrelated to dragons despite their common name of ‘wind dragon’.
Capabilities: Augmented by the dark matter, these creatures were capable of cavorting in ‘tail chases’ and ‘backflips’ the sheer speed of their movement able to unleash waves of kinetic energy strong enough to damage flesh.
Etymology Notes: The name of pteroc is evidently drawn from pterosaur, a gliding dinosaur.
Dark Matter Pelican
Taxonomy: Scalekin (Ziz)
Description: Speedy creatures, the ziz is not capable of flight but can cover ground at a rapid pace with its powerful legs and sharp claws. They are also often capable of exhaling poison.
Capabilities: The poison employed by these creatures was a ‘petrifying breath’ able to lithify flesh. They were also capable of bludgeoning their foes as if they had a ‘hammer beak’.
Dark Matter 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.
Capabilities: This grand golem is capable of unleashing great waves of force and shards of earth through a ‘boulder clap’. It is also capable of ‘obliterating’ its foes by slamming the ground forcefully.
Dark Matter Coeurl
Taxonomy: Beastkin (Coeurl)
Description: Coeurl are beastkin native to the Near East, and are famed for both their savagery and ability to channel lightning-aspected aether through the long appendages attached to their face. They have made their way to Vylbrand via smuggling, which explains how one might come to the deep places of Dalamud’s fall.
Capabilities: According to the adventurers that slew the beast, it was as capable as any coeurl at channeling lightning aether through its appendages, a technique we will name ‘charged whisker’.
Etymology Notes: Coeurl have an interesting etymology, actually being named for a fictional alien race from various pieces of fiction written by A. E. van Vogt. This race has gone on to adopted by the Final Fantasy series, as well as others such as Dungeons & Dragons with their displacer beasts, and Guild Wars with their colocals.
Dark Matter Pugil
Taxonomy: Wavekin (Pugil)
Description: Bizzare wavekin that propel themselves in a primitive form of flight using a wind-aspected gas filled bladder within their body, pugil are famed for their voracious appetite and single-minded attitude towards food.
Capabilities: These pugil were capable of twisting their bodies and manipulating water aether into a ‘screwdriver’ of harmfully rapidly twisting liquid.
Etymology Notes: Pugil means fist, or boxer, in latin, which may refer to the aggressive outlook of the pugil in Eorzea.
Dark Matter Slime
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 particular slimes were produced by the influence of certain Allagan boobytraps when they came into contact with a living creature, likely siphoning the unfortunate’s aether to do so.
Caduceus ☠
Taxonomy: Scalekin (Cobra)
Description: Enormous creatures, cobras such as these were originally native to Othard before coming to Eorzea as part of trade. Some scholars do suggest a different origin however, that of the Allagan Empire’s fearsome chimerical experiments. The latter seems somewhat truer, seeing this creature here.
Capabilities: The mighty serpent’s ‘steel scales’ were capable of gradually sharpening, making it a terrifying foe that grew more harmful to those around it over time. The beast was also capable of ‘devouring’ the slimes nearby its habitat, consuming them whole and using the aether to heal itself, though in doing so the bladed scales would retract, perhaps due to the lubricating elements of the slime. After doing so, Caduceus was capable of ‘regorging’ or regurgitating the harmful elements of the slime, to leave toxic puddles on the ground. The snake’s physicality was impressive, and it was able to use its tail to ‘whip back’ and bludgeon its prey as well as slamming its upper body onto a target in a ‘hood wing’. In an example of particularly ingenious Allagan bioengineering, the creature was even capable of splitting itself in twain so that it may divide its attention as two separate creatures.
Etymology Notes: The caduceus was a staff or wand carried by the Greek deity Hermes that resembled a central rod decorated with wings and entwined by two serpents. It historically represented occupations and activities associated with the god, as well as trade. The staff’s meaning when applied to the serpent is a reference to the beast’s ability to split itself into two, as the rod held two serpents.
The Nodes ☠
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Defense Node)
Description: The ADS was not the only node found within the ruins, and a plethora were found within the Lower Aetheroacoustic Exploratory Site. The first node was a monitoring node, doubtless used to survey the state of Bahamut’s imprisonment. Second was a sanitary node, surely used to clean up after the beasts within Dalamud, as well as likely cleaning up the beasts themselves when needed. Third was a defense node, one of the wardens of the lesser moon against external attack. Fourth was a disposal node, apparently used in conjunction with the sanitary node. Fifth was the attack node, its function obvious. Sixth was a quarantine node, used to contain the pathogens found within the various creatures within the moon, as well as various Allagan bioweaponry of a disease-nature.
Capabilities: The nodes were capable of deploying ‘repelling cannons’ and ‘high voltage’ attacks just as the ADS was. The monitoring node was also able of unleashing ‘vacuum waves’ from its body, damaging the flesh of a foe. Meanwhile, the sanitary node could unleash compressed waves of water at enough velocity that it caused considerable harm in a technique nicknamed ‘ballast’ by those who survived it. This must also have been used to clean up the messes of Dalamud. The defense node was capable of unleashing ‘chain lightning’, channeling lightning aether through a series of foes.
The disposal node was able to unleash wide gouts of flame nicknamed ‘firestream’ for obvious reasons. This was likely originally intended to incinerate the waste of Dalamud. The attack node was able to summon ‘gravity fields’ which constituted large areas of greatly intensified gravity, able to crush those with a weak constitution and slow those who were more robust. The quarantine node apparently released gouts of an ancient disease named ‘allagan rot’ provisionally by the medics who tended to the heroes of the coil, which after incubating released wide gouts of harmful toxin.
Dreadguard
Taxonomy: Chimera (Mirrorknight)
Description: Chimeras of owls and bears, mirrorknights are physically powerful and immensely perceptive creatures, albeit lacking in intellect and the ability to restrain their aggression, as is typical of second generation chimeras.
Capabilities: The dreadguards were able to unleash ‘gusts’ of wind aether, likely originating from the owl origins of their chimeric fusion, while from their bear origins they were able to savage a foe with their ‘bearclaws’.
Etymology Notes: Dreadguard is named for a special mirrorknight from FFXII.
Dark Matter Slug
Taxonomy: Wavekin (Slug)
Description: The giant slugs of Eorzea are nuisances on a grand scale due to the oozing secretions that coat their flesh, which have been observed as acidic enough to eat away even stone on some occasions. This has earned them a reputation amongst the inhabitants of the Aldenard, and they are often killed on sight or trapped using ale, which attracts them.
Capabilities: The cog oil slugs were capable of loosing a tide of harmful ‘aqueous discharge’ upon their foes.
Dark Matter Aurelia
Taxonomy: Wavekin (Jellyfish)
Description: Unusual creatures, dissection has demonstrated that the Jellyfish is capable of a crude form of flight by expelling gas from its body. The tendrils of a jellyfish contain potent stinging barbs which can disable their foe.
Clockwork Bug
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Clockwork Bug)
Description: Engineered for the purpose of patrolling Ragnarok-class ships, these creations are able to both repair minor damage and slay foes such as escaped chimeras.
Capabilities: These particular bugs were able to leech aether from their foes, using it to empower themselves.
Clockwork Soldier
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Clockwork Soldier)
Description: These engines were created for both civilian and military matters, employed both as manual labor and as general soldiery.
Clockwork Knight
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Clockwork Knight)
Description: More sophisticated than the general clockwork soldiers, knights such as these were created with warfare specifically in mind. Common features included enhanced armory, weaponry and even the ability to jam the aether of others, preventing spellcraft.
Capabilities: These knights were able to magnetize their foes and through this manipulate their bodies via ‘electromagnetism’.
Clockwork Dreadnaught
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Clockwork Dreadnaught)
Description: Mighty weapons of war, the dreadnaughts were most retired from pure combat duty before Allag’s zenith, instead being used for construction, cargo transportation and demolition or siege tactics.
Spinner-rook
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Spinner-rook)
Description: Spinner-rooks were essentially the prototypes of the Defense Nodes, and the Allagan’s first forays into aetherochemical levitation.
Twintania ☠
Taxonomy: Scalekin/Spoken (Dragon)
Description: An elder wyvern, these kinds of dragon are found when a wyvern decides to evolve in an unspecialized direction, instead of continuing in the single-minded flight specialization that led to them becoming wyverns in the first place. Twintania was a member of the Meracydian horde whose power was such that she flew into combat directly besides her sire, Bahamut and was responsible for wreaking immense damage upon the Allagans. Unfortunately, the day came that she fell and was captured and twisted into a servant of the empire she so hated, eventually coming to be imprisoned in Dalamud alongside her father in order to continue his regenerative cycle and thus supply Allag with infinite power.
Capabilities: Twintania was reportedly a figure of immense power, and was capable of spitting forth patches of flame of such potency that the areas in which they burned were named ‘liquid hell’. The elder wyvern’s mastery of fire aether was so grand that she was even able to shape it into a prison of ‘conflagration’ trapping and badly burning a target. She was also capable of ‘plummeting’ her massive bulk onto a person to crush them, as well as ‘divebombing’ a target by launching herself towards them at immense speed. The dragon was apparently also able to suffuse the air with such a concentration of aether that it was directly harmful, a technique coined ‘aetheric profusion’. Fire aether was not the only specialty of Twintania, however, as she showcased an ability to create ‘twisters’ of such immense power that they could instantly tear apart even the most heavily armored of warriors. Finally, the dragon was able to ‘hatch’ large orbs of harmful aether that inflicted immense damage on contact.
Etymology Notes: Twintania’s name does not directly relate to anything, but is clearly inspired by the Titania, a name most commonly applies to the queen of the fae in Shakespear’s works but that originally applied to the Greek term for the daughters of their divine titans. One could certainly call Bahamut a titan, in all senses of the word, and Twintania is indeed his daughter.
The Scourge of Meracydia
Taxonomy: Scalekin/Spoken (Dragon)
Description: Wyverns such as these are the inverse of lesser dragons, specializing in flight over movement on the ground. Their rear legs wither slightly, although are still substantial, and they lose their forelegs in exchange for much greater dexterity and speed with their wings. They are, of course, the level in evolution behind elder wyverns like Twintania. Their names doubtless referred to the horror of the dragons being turned against their own homeland of Meracydia.
The Cobras
Taxonomy: Scalekin (Cobra)
Description: A number of additional cobras were apparently fought nearby Twintania, with the greater ones named ascelpius and their lesser kin hygieia.
Etymology Notes: Asclepius was the Greek god of healing and medicine, but the name for this snake comes from his rod, an international symbol of the same things Asclepius stood for that resembles the caduceus but bears a single snake. Thus, as caduceus was able to split into two, asclepius is restrained to be one snake. Hygieia, however, was Asclepius’ daughter and a goddess of health and cleanliness, often represented as holding a snake. This may imply that the hygieia were the children of the asclepius serpent, or merely continue the Grecian snake motif.
Leave a Reply