-The Latimeria-
Few creatures' stories are as riddled with mysteries and folklore as the mighty Latimeria. Named after the legendary Latimeria, who's sleeping breath was said to cause the unusual currents of the Serpent Trench, these giant blind eels are perhaps one of the oddest "living legends" of the modern world. For little did the sailors who discovered the serpentine beasts know how close to the truth they were when they named them after the famous sea monster.
These secretive animals were only recently unearthed, deep at the bottom of the Serpent Trench, and given the initial name of Oceanus. As its likeness to the Latimeria of old became well-known, Oceanus was forgotten by all but scholars and its more fantastic appellation stuck. The first time the name Latimeria appeared in a published book was Cid's seminal work, Our Strange World, written in 981 PW, when he was a much younger man and more interested in the beasts of the world than the nightmarish machines of his later years. It is both strange and tragic how his passion for monster lore and technology combined in the bowels of the Imperial laboratories to bring about the ill-fated Magitek revolution. And even stranger is the fact that the Latimeria is, in fact, a forgotten spawn of another magical union. Not just any magical union was the genesis of these beasts, but the very first known to man. The Latimeria is an inherently magical beast, descended from a distant Esper progenitor!
It seems unbelievable, but the creatures we call Latimeria are directly descended from the Latimeria of legend, which itself was born from the union of two Espers. Yes, the titanic serpent as long as a mountain range and capable of devouring even the largest ships whole actually existed, and its presence can be seen today in the comparatively tiny(a mere fifteen feet long!) specimens of its bloodline we see crawling the shores of Figaro. But how could such a thing have existed? And who were the unfathomably ancient Espers that gave birth to such a monstrosity?
Even more unbelievably, I have the answers to those questions. Maduin, in his An Esper's Compendium of Magical Beasts, makes special note of the Latimeria of legend. The smaller ones we are familiar with were apparently unknown to him, but he was intimately knowledgeable of the great serpent that spawned them. He claims to have actually encountered the creature, and while he chooses to leave the incident shrouded in vagaries, citing the event as "personal fluff that does not belong in a proper bestiary," it is clear that the original monster is now dead, and has been for well over a thousand years, since before the War of the Magi.
With the help of unnamed Esper colleagues, Maduin explains that the original Latimeria was what was known during ancient times as an "Esperkin," or a monster born from the union of two incompatible Espers. What was meant by "incompatible" I am not sure, but I theorize it is related to the inherent elemental affinities all Espers possessed. He says Esperkin were sometimes intelligent, sometimes peaceful, but always monstrous in appearance, and always ostracized from both human cities and Esper homes as well. In the case of the Latimeria, it was neither intelligent nor peaceful, and as it grew to ungovernable proportions, it was forced to sleep forever under the seas near the former Serpent Trench. Some more fanciful legends claim it was actually put there to protect some forbidden artifact of divine origin, but I do not tend to believe such wild claims.
But who were the Latimeria's parents? Maduin gives the names of both parents, but only the mother is familiar to me. The father was a seemingly respected Esper of extremely high rank named Genju, of which nothing is known to today's scholars or mages. The Espers themselves were notoriously tight-lipped about themselves, and most of what we know today about their private lives and history either comes from Maduin's book or his daughter, Terra. Neither Maduin nor his book ever divulged exactly who this Genju was, and Terra does not seem to know, or is not willing to tell us, at the very least. She takes after her father in that respect.
Miraculously, though, I have had the pleasure of experiencing the warm, maternal glow of the Esper matriarch myself, and have on more than one occasion been given a new lease on life by her unparalleled restorative powers. This mystery Esper is none other than the famous Phoenix, who's magicite was sought after by countless treasure hunters ranging from our own Locke Cole to even the Emperor Gestahl himself. And so Phoenix, one of the oldest and most revered Espers, brought into this world the dread form of the mindless beast, Latimeria. What twist of fate allowed such a thing to happen? How could the gods allow such a violent beast of pure destruction to be born from a being of pure love and life? I am afraid these questions even I do not have the answer to, and perhaps such lore is too taboo even for this bestiary.
What we do know now is that the death of the Latimeria was not the end of Phoenix's corrupted brood. Somehow it mated before it died, possibly with some other lost creature of the deep, and its descendants slithered first in the hidden abysses, and then later on the desolate shorelines of our world. Its similarity to the blind eel known as the anguiform cannot be denied, and it is my belief that it is some larger, prehistoric version of the anguiform that mated with the original Latimeria to produce what we see today.
Perhaps the oddest trait of the current Latimeria presence is the beast's ability to survive on land. It was only ever observed in the deepest parts of the Serpent Trench before the world fell, but as the Serpent Trench rose above water, soon too, did the Latimeria. Most aquatic life that thrived in the Serpent Trench was quickly snuffed out in that massive uprising of eons-old rock and sediment, but somehow the Latimeria persisted, and now finds its home on the shores and even forests of the great desert-island of Figaro. A strange end to a strange history if there ever was one.
A little about the habits of the latter-day Latimeria before I leave this entry. As its progenitor was magical in nature, so too did a small amount of magical essence survive in the modern Latimeria. Its ability to survive on land, despite not having lungs, is probably its most well-known unusual feature, and possibly has its roots in the ethereal genes of its famous ancestor. Even the loss of magic did not dispel this power, leaving me to guess that biology that has been warped and mutated by magic retains its unusual attributes even now, when magic itself has ceased to exist in the world.
While there was magic in the world, though, the Latimeria was capable of conjuring powerful tremors when threatened. And with its massive size and formidable jaws, one would think there were very few things to threaten the beast. The Latimeria has an unnaturally foul temper, however, and if one encounters it, there is little to be done but calmly walk away and hope it finds you uninteresting. If you so much as look at it the wrong way, it will coil up and strike like a snake, constricting its victim and suffocating it to death. If you choose to put up a fight, it would knock you senseless with its earthshaking, then bite your head off with its gruesome jaws.
Fortunately, the beast is as stupid and slow as it is powerful and temperamental, and a human can normally outrun them if they beyond range of attack. Once out of range the Latimeria will let out a low bellow that sounds like a wounded sheep, then it will crawl back to whatever dank hole it calls home. The monsters can be dangerous, but they are lonely, sightless creatures that only want to be left alone to wallow in their miserable lot in life.
I have personally watched these dislodged denizens of another world, and it seems to me they are more melancholy than angry. Ever since they were tossed onto land from there abyssal homeland, they never seem to be content with their surroundings, constantly wandering and wailing in the moonlight for a lost era. Are they crying for their dead mothers, the divine Phoenix and the mighty original Latimeria? Are they crying for a world that no longer holds a place for them? These fish out of water are one of the sadder stories of the beasts of our world, and I cannot help but weep alongside them as I watch them creep across an alien shore that is no more their home than the abyss is mine.