Clockwork Spider
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Clockwork Spider)
Description: Fitted with enhanced weaponry and sophisticated defensive techniques, these clockwork spiders were also possessed of advanced AI allowing them to adapt quickly to emergent crises.
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. 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.
The Lamias
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 alluring bellydancers and ‘sharpers’, archers named after charlatans for their cunning nature.
Allagan Naga
Taxonomy: Chimera (Naga)
Description: It was once thought that the naga were natives of Othard, but further investigation into the matter proved that they were a particularly insidious form of chimera. These creatures were pieced together out of voidsent body parts, presumably largely ahriman, obtained by Allag. Their creation seems to have been a matter of curiosity, simply born out of the crafters asking if they could create chimeras out of voidsent.
Imdugud ☠
Taxonomy: Scalekin/Spoken (Dragon)
Description: Despite superficially looking somewhat like a coeurl, this is in fact a verge dragon, the kind of dragon found at the very end of a dragon’s specialisation in speed on land, after lesser dragons and brobinyaks. Apparently they first evolved in the jungles of Meracydia, and are famed for their bloodthirst.
Etymology Notes: Imdugud is an alternative name for Anzu, a colossal mesopotamian mythological bird or winged lion creature that verges on a minor deity. The name Imdugud directly translates to heavy wind, perhaps referring to the immense speed of this creature and its ability to manipulate wind and lightning aether.
Spanner-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. The spanner term here may well imply that they are used primarily for maintenance.
Scouting Node
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Defence 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 were presumably employed to check over the artificial moon and ensure that intruders do not make their way in.
Valiant
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.
Etymology Notes: The dreadnaught name is a reference to the now defunct class of ships and there was indeed a (British) dreadnought named Valiant, which may be the root for this name.
Kaliya ☠
Taxonomy: Forgekin (Kaliya)
Description: One of Allag’s attempts at fusing their mechanical and chimerical technologies, Kaliya were first deployed in the conquest of Meracydia before being sent into Dalamud as sentries. Their hydra-like design was apparently an attempt at infuriating and/or intimidating the dragons, a technique commonly used by Allag in their invasion of the southern continent, and in truth the chimerical components of Kaliya are likely the twisted remains of captured dragons.
Etymology Notes: Kaliya is named for a venomous naga of Hindu myth, evoking both its serpentine nature and preference for using nerve gas poisons to destroy those who oppose it.
Phoenix ☠
Taxonomy: Primal (Phoenix)
Description: Louisoix Leveilleur was arguably the most powerful mage of his era, and a genius archon that earned his title by studying prophecy. Besides this, the seventy two year old man was also a talented crafter of magical items. Although the archon disliked war, he did not share the absolute aversion to it that most of his colleagues in the Sharlayan Forum, the city state’s governing body, had. He formed the Circle of Knowing, an organisation of twelve proven archons dedicated to saving the most people possible, and stood against Garlemald by the side of the remaining Eorzean city-states. As Dalamud came crashing down towards Carteneau he invoked the power of the Twelve in an attempt to shackle Bahamut back inside the lesser moon. He failed, sadly, and had to gather the aether around him and launch himself at the core of a massive magical projectile through Bahamut’s chest, killing him. Louisoix was understood to have died in the process.
Tales did linger of visions of a mighty phoenix appearing in the skies above Carteneau at the end of the battle, however, but the colossal aether released in the Calamity ensured that the survivors found their minds clouded in the aftermath, making any complete truth difficult to assemble. These visions did eventually prove true, however, and it was revealed by the shade of the archon himself that the prayers of those taking part in the battle and Louisoix, aimed at saving the realm, interacted with the colossal surfeit of aether left behind after his failed ritual, converting the archon into the core of a primal, Phoenix, which was the means by which he slew Bahamut. Nevertheless, the act slew the elderly elezen, though Bahamut was able to seize upon his remaining aether and reconstitute him into a tempered servant of the elder primal.
Bahamut Prime ☠
Taxonomy: Primal (Bahamut)
Description:
Bahamut came into existence as one of the first brood, one of seven dragons hatched from the eggs brought to this star by Midgardsormr. After bathing in the immense aetheric charge of Silvertear Lake and maturing the first brood left their home to found draconic communities anew. Bahamut left to the south with his sister, Tiamat, and settled in what would become Meracydia. The Meracydians revered the Meracydian Horde, and so many millennia later it was Bahamut that led the men of the continent against invading Allag. Although Bahamut was able to carry Meracydia to a win at first, the arrival of the Empire’s terrifying chimera managed to defeat and kill Bahamut. His sister, Tiamat, broken by grief decided to summon her brother as a primal alongside the surviving members of the Horde. The rite succeeded, birthing a primal unlike any seen before since the days of the sundering, and the new Bahamut descended upon the armies of Allag, incinerating them with ease.
Allag was once more driven back, and would be torn asunder repeatedly until they finally managed to bring the extradimensional weapon Omega to bear, capturing Bahamut and sealing him within Dalamud. The moon exploited the dragon’s command over fire aether to channel the energy of the sun into the Crystal Tower. Freed in the calamity by the maddened exploits of Midas nan Garlond and Nael van Darnus, Bahamut was poised to bring mass destruction to the world at large before being shattered by Louisoix and forced to regenerate. The creature confronted at the end of the purging of the Coils was likely a construct of Bahamut’s aether and mind, rather than any true body of his, and if such a representation was able to test even the fiercest warriors of the realm all must be truly grateful that they were not forced to face a full-grown, physically present Bahamut.
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