-The Bug-
On the outskirts of the former Imperial continent there swarms a strange insect known simply as the Bug. If it ever had a proper name, it has long since been lost to the ages. As far back as I can delve, I only come up with this deceptively simple name for a very complex creature, full of wondrous surprises.
Yes, it is a bug. A passing glance at the Bug reveals little. It is a small, black beetle-like insect that prefers to live out its days buzzing in swarms over the hot deserts that spot the Central continent, attracted to the living bones that inhabit these wastelands. Even after the Fall and the twisting of the Imperial continent into the Central continent, it continues to buzz over those same spots of desert as if nothing occurred at all. A truly innocuous thing, hardly worth noting by passing travelers anymore than the common fly. Why would I even mention such a seemingly ordinary insect here?
Do not let your eyes deceive you. The Bug is a dangerous and intelligent creature, bred for some unknown purpose by the scientists of a bygone age. Its very appearance and name are meant as a deception, to fool the unwary and keep its secrets hidden. What those secrets are we may never know for sure. The Bug survives...its creators do not.
The most remarkable aspect of the Bug is its ability to communicate. Yes, these insects have a language all their own, made up of clicks, rasps, and whispers. Hunters, scholars, and bug collectors from all over the world have tried to decipher this language for centuries, but have come up empty-handed. A careful examination of the structure of the clicks makes it clear there is meaning in them, and the sheer variety of sounds and pitches hints at a robust tongue as complex as our own. No garden-variety insect could have evolved in such a way. There was definitely a hidden hand at work in the education of this creature.
Despite a mostly fruitless quest for the key to the Bug language, there have been brief, tantalizing hints at a greater meaning uncovered by pure chance over the long study of the insect. Short snatches of what seem to be conversations have been stumbled onto over the years, always baffling those who manage to crack the code, if only for a single moment. Such cryptic phrases as "dead brothers rising" or "magical rift opening" or the dreadfully ominous "the moon will fall" comprise much of the pieces we have gathered. The strangest translations we have found are ones that seem to reference actual known events, like the War of the Magi or the construction of Figaro Castle. What these tiny little things could possibly know of such historic events I can only guess. But there is no doubt - "all Magi must die" and " the Figaro falls beneath the sands" have clear meanings.
I have my own theory about the Bugs, bolstered by my study of their physiology. One thing is true - they are not magical constructs, but completely natural organisms, bred carefully and diligently over many generations, culminating in the miraculous creature we see today. Like domesticated dogs, the Bugs have a wide variety within their species, each sub-species bred for a specific task, or perhaps even a specific person. There are Bugs that are capable of flying across the globe in a day, others that seem incapable of leaving their own desert. Some are huge things the size of my fist, others are so tiny as to be almost nothing more than specks of dust. Some speak loudly as if they wanted the whole world to hear them, others speak in a whisper too soft to hear even a finger's length away. One thing remains the same for all of them, though - they all speak the same clicking language, apparently ingrained in the innermost recesses of their tiny brains.
My theory, which I have struggled to prove since the records at Karnak were uncovered, is that they were created by ancient breeders to serve as messengers, much like our carrier pigeons today. The language we hear is no more than the echoes of old messages, passed down from one curious Bug to the next and degraded to the point where the context has been lost. I feel if we could crack the code these superbly skilled breeders implanted in the minds of these Bugs, we could learn much of the history of the world before the War of the Magi.
Alas, the science of Bug-breaking, as it is called, has been on the decline in recent years. People are eager to create a new future, free of the sins and memories of the past, and I cannot blame them. I am an old man, though, and still wish to learn the lost, sometimes troubling history of our planet. I have tried to get the scholars studying in Karnak's vast libraries to keep their eyes peeled for any information pertaining to the Bugs and their forgotten history, but they almost universally scoff at my interest. Me, the famous Blue Sage of Thamasa, scoffed at by youths barely out of diapers! Ah, but that is the spirit of the times, I suppose, and the inevitable fate of the elderly.
One thing should never be forgotten about the Bug, however. As harmless as it looks, it carries within it a truly devilish secret. If handled improperly or unduly aggravated, the Bug will sting its handler...turning them to stone. Any common softening agent such as a Gold Needle will cure this petrification, but there are few fates more unpleasant than being turned into solid stone. Especially if it is in the wild, in the middle of the desert, surrounded by the undead grotesqueries the Bug seems to enjoy accompanying.
The Bug is not aggressive by nature, though, and its sting is a last resort, causing the death of the creature almost immediately. As long as one remembers that this creature is a fellow living thing, and does not try to treat it as some sort of toy to be taken apart, there is nothing to fear. Only when a foolish scholar tries to forcefully pry the secrets of the Bug from its body does the poor thing snap. This reaction, I feel, is part of the Bug's breeding, designed to keep unwanted recipients from deciphering their messages by force.
How the Bug turns its victims to stone has always been a bit of a fascination to me. It is not magic, like many other forms of petrification, but a completely natural process. The venom seeps into the body and causes a runaway chain reaction, causing vital chemicals and minerals to be converted into extremely hard calcite deposits that cover the living tissue underneath. Like a vicious germ, the reaction eats away at every inch of a person's skin, turning them into a living statue within seconds.
Fortunately, this reaction is only skin-deep and reversible, but there have been reports of particularly nasty Bugs whose stingers penetrated to the bone of their victim, causing a petrification so deep that only the magically-imbued Super Soft elixir was able to restore them. Seeing as this remedy is magical in nature, it is no longer capable of being reproduced in today's magic-free world. So beware travelers of the wastes, lest you find yourself joining the doomed "Statues of Sand" that dot the Central deserts as testaments to those unlucky wanderers who dared to mock the mighty Bug.