The Garamsythe Waterway

020: Dire Rat

Genus – Beast Classification – Rat

Observations: Being a manner of vile and verminous beastie, much favoring the fetid stench of the sewers and making their nests therein. Past attempts at eradication to contain the plagues these pests are known to carry have greatly reduced their numbers, yet a preternatural rate of reproduction has kept the strain from extinction. And so they remain, an ever-popular subject for natural philosophers keen to fathom the secrets of their indomitable constitution.

Today's Recommendation: The rat tail: a cheap reagent for all your potion-crafting needs. And that's not all: some aficionados say they're quite tasty fried with a little cactus butter!

The large volume disappearing from merchant's stalls would seem to confirm their popularity. Rumor has it that, with the right spices, the flavor can only be described as "transcendent." I, for one, am not sure I'm quite ready to transcend.

021: Baritine Croc

Genus – Beast Classification – Gator

Observations: Should the traveler hear a hauntingly sweet song in the wetlands, beware! For it is surely the dulcet lure of the baritine croc, a crafty and dangerous beast favoring cold climes and dank underground caverns. The thick layer of vermillion fur covering much of its bulk is of great density, and containing of air pockets which further insulate the beast against the elements, making it better suited to living in harsh environs than its gator brethren.

The Adventurer's Handbook: Have you slain the sweet-singing baritine croc? Then look into its belly for the lost treasures of those who hunted this wily beast and fell. You may claim a broken sword or the like. Do with your findings what you will, but we recommend turning a profit. Whatever it meant to those who came before, to you it's a treasure with which to line your pockets. Then again, you could use it to arm and armor yourself, adventurer. Who knows, it may be your broken sword that is found next.

022: Gigantoad

Genus – Beast Classification – Toad

Observations: This amphibious, carnivorous monstrosity is said to live only in the Dalmasca region, much to the relief of peoples living elsewhere.

During the mating season, the male inflates a great sac in his gullet producing a distinctive galumph sound, whereby he makes his intentions known to the fairer (as far as he's concerned) sex.

Its horns are unsuitable for combat, and are instead used to mark territory with gouges on tress, as do some great cats, or for threatening the predatory wooly gator.

Though possessed of a relatively peaceable nature, the gigantoad is fiercely territorial and can be deadly when provoked.

Sage Knowledge (42 of 78): The Garamsythe Waterway: An underground waterway running deep beneath the Royal City of Rabanastre. Built and rebuilt over the centuries, no one alive knows all of its labyrinthine ways. Some are said to lead even to the royal palace.

There are stairs leading down to the waterway in Lowtown, but they are normally barred to keep unwelcome visitors down in the sewers where they belong.

023: Malboro Overking

Genus – Plant Classification – Malboro

Observations: This malboro, through its abstinence of the odd practice of heterogenesis by which its lesser ilk procreate, has reached the foreseeable pinnacle of its development.

Its hide has grown hard to the very point of petrifaction, and the crown it wears is studded with a glittering gemstone for each year of its life. Truly a king among foul-smelling vegetables.

Research Notes: Completed phase three of inquiry into nature of putrid breath. Unable to annul stench, though have developed several deodorant solutions of passable strength, and three fragrances withal, such as may be marketable with further refinement.

Indeed, three of my most experienced researchers have joined a small venture marketing these scents, and so spend their days mixing, culling, and sniffing. They have even achieved some measure of financial success with a particular fragrance derived from putrid liquid, the public being none the wiser! I know not if I will see them in my laboratory again.

024: Garchimacera

Genus – Fiend Classification – Gargoyle

Observations: There was once an unenlightened age when all manner of maladies were believed to be the work of demons.

It was customary in those days to place statues with terrible visages in the houses of curing so as to ward off these demons. Eventually, it came to pass that the people thought of the statues themselves as a sort of demon, and they feared them so much that the fear took shape, and the garchimacera was born: a foul simulacrum of the statues carved to keep such evil at bay.

Sage Knowledge (41 of 78): Royal Palace: A short walk north from the center of Rabanastre will lead you to the gates of the royal palace.

Before the war with Archadia, this magnificent structure was home to the Dalmascan royal family, and barracks to the order of knights that served them. It is currently employed as living quarters and apartments by the recently appointed consul from Archadia.

The palace itself was built several centuries ago and has since been home to many Dalmascan monarchs, King Raminas being the most recent.

Numerous additions have been made to the palace over the course of its long history (the Royal City of Rabanastre having several times fallen under the control of foreign powers through invasion), but the overall bearing of its architecture is true to the original Galtean design.

Within the palace are secret chambers containing documents and treasures belonging to the royal family. Few who live beyond the palace walls know how they may be found.

025: Gespenst

Genus – Undead Classification – Reaper

Observations: Being an undead given to sudden manifestation in the streets of large towns where the living reside in numbers.

Such that perish with sins unabsolved are barred from celestial repose and cast into the darkness, from which pollution they rise once more.

Though they are related in sort to the ethereal ghost, their fearsome appearance has led to the widespread belief that they are none other than the very hand of Death. This has led some necromantic authorities to place them in a genus altogether separate from their ghostly kin.

Aletap Rumors: More equipment and weaponry draws its power from the darkness than your local armorer is like to admit.

Of these, the demon shield is one o' the best.

Why, they even apply leamonde halcyons to aged turtle shells and destrier barding, these days. Makes you think twice about charging into battle against the forces of darkness. I mean, what if you're one of 'em?

Strout, Acolyte

026: Ghost

Genus – Undead Classification – Ghost

Observations: Any soul when trapped in a coffin by magicks will become a vengeful thing of passionate violence, no matter how innocent or unsullied its former life.

The ghost is a lamentable example of such. Tales tell of a mage who trapped his lover's soul in a casket of cold wood and set it at his side, only to be rent limb from limb by the monster his love became.

Destroying the casket is often enough to dissipate the apparition, this being more properly called "releasing," for it frees the soul at last to assume the form assigned to it by Nature.

Sage Knowledge (16 of 78): The Ifrit: No. 1 Cruiser Class Airship.

Belonging to the 8th Fleet of the Archadian Imperial Army.

Led the Imperial response to the Resistance attack on the royal palace in Rabanastre.

027: Water Elemental

Genus – Water Elemental Classification – Elemental

Observations: The element of water, the vital element, present in all spaces where there exists life.

Should a water elemental appear near to a befouled pool, it is made clear as a mountain spring, and for this, these entites are worshipped as purifiers by diverse faiths.

"As water consumeth all, and cleanseth the land, so doth violence silence uprising, and purify thought," says the central tenet of one such belief, much to the dismay of those caught up in its holy wars.

Aletap Rumors: To heat tell of it, nothing packs quite the punch of the bombs made out in the lands to the far west. But how exactly does one go about fashioning something like a water bomb, an explosive which harnesses the power of water? I've collected a fine amount of materials, yet aught's missing and I'm lost as to what it might be. Truly, a challenge to warm the heart of this old artificer.

Karimdt, Guild Artificer