Lunar 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 creatures names draw from the fact that they were animated by the energies of Dalamud.
Dark Matter Roselet
Taxonomy: Seedkin (Flying Trap)
Description: Deeply predatory seedkin, flying traps rely on the use of their brightly colored petals to lure in prey which is then stuck to these petals by a secreted adhesive, and drained of nutrients by the plant’s roots. They are also capable of more direct combat, however. These particular specimens seem to have come into contact with dark matter, a substance that is capable of melding with other materials and improving it. This likely caused the distinct purple veining across the creatures as well as their increased physical strength.
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.
Dark Matter Hornet
Taxonomy: Vilekin (Wespe)
Description: These fearsome creatures were imported to Eorzea from the New World after hiding in the hulls of trading ships.
Dark Matter Bulbs
Taxonomy: Seedkin (Bulb)
Description: Bulbs are odd, weak seedkin that seem to be able to ambulate merely in order to find richer soils, and pose little threat alone.
Rafflesia ☠
Taxonomy: Seedkin (Rafflesia)
Description: The rafflesia is a dreadfully vicious, carnivorous seedkin that used sweet scents to lure and hypnotize vilekin, using these servants to subdue larger, more nutritious prey. They had long been absent from the world until the fall of Dalamud unearthed a number of their seeds, re-introducing them to the realm.
Capabilities: The rafflesia was able to sweep its barbed tendrils out in a ‘bloody caress’ that caused great physical harm to those it struck. It was also able to lure targets in using a ‘floral trap’ by sucking them towards it, then devouring them whole. The terrible creature was capable of unleashing its long, barbed roots in a technique fearfully nicknamed a ‘blighted bouquet’ by its survivors, as well as unleashing sharp-edged leaves in a ‘leafstorm’, creating artificial ‘acid rain and clouds’, unleashing a harmfully foul ‘rotten stench’ and unleashing its tendrils as a ‘thorn whip’.
Etymology Notes: Rafflesia are real plants, known for their immense stench resembling rotten flesh that attracts carrion flies which it employs as pollinators, similar to how the rafflesia of FFXIV use their own scents to control vilekin.
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.
Etymology Notes: Dreadguard is named for a special mirrorknight from FFXII.
The Lamia ☠
Taxonomy: Chimera (Lamia)
Description: Odd chimeras with a twisted hyuran upper body and serpentine lower body produced by a horrific fusion of female spellcasters and serpentine beasts, these creatures are capable spellcasters in their own right and are also able to use their massive stores of aether to fuel their accelerated healing rates. There were a number of forms of lamiae in this area of Dalamud, including agile dancers and archers. Foremost, however, was a particularly enormous example of the creatures named Melusine.
Capabilities: Melusine was able to emit a painful ‘shriek’ in her ‘cursed voice’ which could petrify those who heard it unfiltered. She was also able to employ her physicality by ‘tail whipping’ at her foes and using the venom within the tail when needed.
Etymology Notes: Lamia was a figure from Greek mythology that took the form of a beautiful woman with the lower body of a snake that devoured children and seduced men. Melusine was a water spirit of Western European myth who bore a form similar to the lamia, but could assume the glamor of a human woman which fell away on contact with water. She made her lovers swear not to look upon her when she bathed to hide this truth, but each in turn broke these oaths and she moved on to her next one. Multiple European dynasties claimed descent from her.
Maintenance Module
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 presumably employed to maintain and repair the moon.
Proto-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 constitutes the use of a single creature as a base, augmented with live body parts of other creatures. These particular creatures must have been early chimera, judging by their being named as prototypes.
Capabilities: These chimera were 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’ due to the terrible din it produced. 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 lion head was also capable of emitting streams of flame in a technique called ‘the lion’s breath’.
Allagan Cobra
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 these creatures here.
Renaud
Taxonomy: Spoken (Cyclops)
Description: Beastfolk native to the mountains of Abalathia’s Spine, known for their dim wit and ease with which they may be manipulated, cyclops are nonetheless fiercely physically powerful. These particular creatures were likely employed to guard Melusine due to this ease of control.
Etymology Notes: Renaud is a name that occasionally pops up in a minor way in some Melusine myths, but is more prominently linked to the singer Renaud who released a song called Melusine that tells a tale of a man and his many lovers.
Clockwork Footman
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 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.
Shaper-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.
Clockwork Warrior
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.
The Avatar ☠
Taxonomy: Forgekin (The Avatar)
Description: Testing chimeras was apparently such dangerous business that the resulting death toll persuaded the Allagan Empire to create a technological device to test their abilities in the hope of saving the lives of valuable aetherochemists. This device, the avatar, was equipped with an array of dangerous torture devices to thrash the chimeras it faced into submission through agony.
Nael deus Darnus ☠
Taxonomy: Spoken (Garlean)
Description: The figure met by the adventurers in the depths of the moon was, in truth, not even Nael at all. Eula Darnus was the younger sister of Nael Darnus, and as a member of the Darnus family was entrusted with ancient Allagan secrets long safeguarded by her bloodline. Garlean women of her rank commonly became military doctors and Eula was no different, following her warrior brother into the Garlean army. The patriarch of the family sent Nael out on a poorly advised mission however and he returned severely wounded, dying soon after. His betrothed, Bradamante took up his mighty halberd (named after her by Nael) and impaled herself upon the blade in sorrow. Nael was driven quite mad by her brother’s death, taking up his armour and Bradamante before poisoning her father and posing as the recovered legatus of the VIIth Legion, an army group famed for its ferocity on the battlefields of Ilsabard. She led a brutal purge of her father’s officers and guards, going to war for the Garlean Empire and proving utterly brutal in battle, masterminding the Meteor project and earning the title of ‘White Raven’. She eventually perished at the Rivenroad at the hands of the Warriors of Light, but not before ensuring the fall of Dalamud. For this act it seems that Bahamut has bought her back or salvaged her from the edge of death, bestowing her with the title of deus in replacement of the Garlean military name of van (meaning legatus). The title deus, of course, implies a sense of godhood.
Capabilities: As befits her name, White Raven, Nael/Eula used a number of techniques including ‘ravensclaw’ and ‘ravensbeak’, each using Bradamante. She also employed a number of abilities that drew upon the cosmic nature of Dalamud, throwing comets like ‘starbust’, ‘lunar dynamos’ of harmful energy, presumably influenced by Dalamud’s energies, and a ‘super nova’ employing the explosive power of Nael’s impressive aether stores. She was also able to launch herself from on high in a technique known as the ‘dalamud dive’ referencing the plummeting nature of the second moon, a fact also referenced by ‘heavensfall’ in which she uses the holocharts to generate a large chunk of stone to drop on those she was fighting.
Etymology Notes: The halberd Bradamante is named for a fictional female knight of Italian origin who was known for her masterful skill with a lance and her forbidden love of the muslim warrior, Ruggiero. The significance behind this name was most likely the shared female polearm-wielder nature of Bradamante and Nael.
Leave a Reply