Behemoth
Behemoth
| Respawn: ?? | |||||
| Level: 17 | Attack: 1081 | ||||
| HP: 28139 | MP: 2000 | SP: 3295 | |||
Max Drop: 2500 gold, 5000 silver, 10000 copper
- A beast of unrivaled aggression and malice. The once and future king of beasts and monsters. Luckily, it's trapped in Alithrya, and moreso than the naga who may leave their home-become-prison by way of any number of portals that may be created there and back. May it never find an escape. Instead, the entire expansive and unexplored wilderness that the behemoth makes its home belongs to the behemoth alone.
And here is a place of bloodshed. The boundaries of these woods that it makes its home are seemingly always drenched in blood and viscera and bone. A dark forest of tall trees stained red. A floor drenched and muddy, pools of blood and worse that quiver with barely detected tremors from something miles away. And yet the quickness in which the tremors grow into quakes...
Primary sources are summarily dismissed by anyone with an inkling of wisdom, because the creature doesn't tolerate observation. The only survivors who happened upon it are the ones who ran or flew or teleported faster the rest (not faster than the behemoth, it's worth noting), and didn't dare to chance a second look. Even when viewed from afar with a spyglass, or scryed upon from safety, the creature eludes. Instead, parts of it are glimpsed. Massive, sinewy, muscled arms that rend the earth and carve canyons, sculpting the very landscape at its whim. Horns that curve out of a massive canine-like cranium and pierce the sky and tower over treetops. A mane like fire scorching its dark velvety fur from shoulders to skullcap. A belly full from all that it's consumed, all that its ended. The path of its heavy tail through the forest today will be the river of tomorrow. And this is all that can be gleaned. The beast has never been seen in it's entirety, due to what might be a cleverness or an instinct to know when it's being watched. But a thing so enormous could never be observed; to get close enough to see past the trees is too near to observe more than a piece.
Some suggest that the real reason Alithrya was sealed away was because the naga failed to contain this, and so to save everyone, some were sacrificed to time. Yet others contend that it serves a divine purpose, for it must've been Hind who created it initially. And the gods intentions may well be unknowable, but some legacies of Hind's worship claim to have inherited the knowledge of their ancestors. It is said that nature on its own would destroy itself, and the animals who are constantly at war with one another would grow fiercer and wilder and stronger without the presence of a true King. And even from its far away home beneath the sea, all it takes is one roar every few years or decades or centuries to keep the beasts in check. A roar that echoes through dimensions to remind the would be kings and tyrants of the animal kingdom never to grow too big or take too much.
Of course there are skeptics. Ones who say nature on its own could never produce such a magnificent and powerful creature, that there must have been not only design, but magical assistance. Those are but narrow-minded scholars and mages and warriors and hunters, who in their infinite hubris, believe nothing is out of the reach of magic and practice and skill... The wisest understand that the gods set limits. The behemoth is one of them.
Written by Lanlan