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Description
Entity NEMESIS (AKA SKULLCRAWLER)
First Sighting: Faro Island, 1973
Size: 58 metres in height and 265 metres in length at maximum size
Weight: 47 900 tonnes in maximum weight

History: During the 1973 Monarch expedition to Faro Island, many of the expedition members were killed by the countless predator species which inhabited the island, but few hunted them with as much persistence and malice as the Skullcrawler, lindworm-like beasts with insatiable appetites which emerged again and again from volcanic vents leading beneath the isle. However, when the expedition were rescued by the Iwi and the castaway who had lived among them, he explained that the Skullcrawlers were an invasive species, only arrived on Faro Island a few decades ago. Without warning, one night they simply emerged from the coast in great number, and quickly began a campaign of indiscriminately purging all animal life from the island as they gorged themselves on the native megafauna. But the Skull Isle did not fall so easily, and soon a war raged between these great devourers and the gods of Faro, lasting for weeks as numbers on both sides dwindled. At last, when the corpses of hundreds of dead kaiju and kaijin lain strewn across the isle, the surviving Skullcrawlers had finally had enough and retreated into the island’s underbelly to lay dormant until the ecology of the archipelago had recovered and they could begin anew.

In a few short months, they had brought to complete extinction almost the entirety of the archipelago’s great saurians which had dominated the ecosystem for millions of years. But in doing so, almost of the first-generation Skullcrawlers had been killed in the war, those which had originally crawled from the sea. All but one. This Skullcrawler alpha was considered to be the serpent which gnawed at the heart of Faro, evil incarnated as an all-devourer, the Skull Devil itself. When Monarch arrived in 1973, they accidentally roused this ultimate demon from dormancy, and while its smaller brethren began making their way to surface to begin gorging anew at the first opportunity, it waited for the perfect moment when its greatest foe Kong would be most vulnerable. When Kong was momentarily brought down by a rogue faction of the helicopter squadron Monarch had enlisted, the Skull Devil ripped its way free from the boneyard amongst the skeletal remains where Kong’s species had made its last stand years ago, and determined to wipe out the super-species once and for all. With his rallying war cry, many more Skullcrawlers began emerging from the earth, a vanguard of death marching towards the southern wall of the Iwi village.

Kong was tired and weakened, but this would not stop him from his duty. The last survivors of the expedition regrouped at the Iwi settlement as Kong arrived at the wall, with the distant howls of the enemy not far behind. The wall was set alight, a barrier of flames and spikes fourteen storeys high facing down an enemy intent on slaughtering all within. Kong and the Skull Devil charged at one another in battle, as Monarch and the Iwi held back a tide of smaller Skullcrawlers. Ape and serpent fought tooth and claw, tentacles against fists, simian cunning versus reptilian fury. As dawn broke over the mountains, Kong was pushed back, but finally managed to overpower the Skull Devil when it briefly distracted by a hail of gunfire, giving Kong a moment to rip off one of the rib bones which it had used as armour and spiking it through the eye, disorienting it long enough for Kong to shear his foe’s exposed underside completely open with a large boat propeller, eviscerating the Skull Devil. As the reptilian creature writhed in its violent death throes, Kong finished off his enemy by bashing in the Skull Devil’s head in with the very ape skull that it had utilized as a crude helmet. At the sight of Kong's victory roar against the rising sun, the few surviving Skullcrawlers quickly fled in terror, retreating back into the underworld.

After Monarch returned from Faro Island, they began studies into where the Skullcrawlers came from. Tissue samples that were recovered from the expedition indicated that they likely originated as an abyssal species. During earlier seafloor mapping ventures, Monarch had discovered a localized radioactive deposit on the seabed in a deep-sea chasm near the Marshall Islands which appeared to have exposed relatively recently and was initially believed to have been the place of origin for Godzilla, but dating of the rocks around the site indicated that it was too early, for Godzilla was first sighted in 1954, while this deposit was dated to have been disturbed around the mid-1940s. This lined up well with the noted and sudden appearance of the Skullcrawlers on the Skull Islands, and from this a rough timeline of the events was able to be pieced together. The ancestors of the Skullcrawlers likely evolved around naturally occurring fission reactors on the seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago, and when the last of these reactors was finally destroyed as a consequence of nuclear testing, the Skullcrawlers turned to Faro Island, likely attracted by its unique geo-magnetic signals and abundance of prey. It is believed that this original generation is now extinct, and the newer generation is comprised almost entirely of adolescents that now lie dormant on the radioactive deposits beneath the Skull Isle. Perhaps in some not-so distant future when this generation has matured, they may rise to try and raze Faro once more.

Description: Skullcrawlers were initially believed to be reptiles of a sort, a burrowing species which had lost its back legs like Bipes, but the presence of traits such as gills and tentacles quickly brought this idea into question. Most detailed studies indicate that Skullcrawlers are ichthyic hybrids, and based on its rough body anatomy, likely originated as an ancient abyssal species (possibly either nautiloid cephalopod or eellike fish in origin) that adapted to the conditions around naturally-occurring fission reactors under the ocean floor, and this proved an ideal location for YOG-based mutation to prompt horizontal gene transfer from other species of deep-sea life over generations. When they arrived on the Skull Islands, some assimilation of saurian genes occurred as well, resulting in an amphibious species that is maneuverable on land, in the trees, and in the water, but never had back legs to begin with. Skullcrawlers are separated into two distinct morphotypes, dubbed alpha Skullcrawlers, or first-generation, and beta Skullcrawlers, or second-generation (note that the names do not necessarily indicate actual generations or social status among the species). The alpha Skullcrawlers originated in the ocean and represent the initial invaders which landed on the shores of the archipelago. Almost all of the alpha Skullcrawlers were killed on their initial assault on the islands, and only one member of the first-generation was known to exist by the 1973 Monarch expedition, a massive individual known as the Skull Devil. The Skull Devil was considerably longer and bulkier than any known beta Skullcrawler, and displays more obvious signs of their aquatic origin, such as the more well-developed spines protruding from parts of the body, which manifested in blade-like spikes at the end of the tail, a greater number of digits, and proportionately larger gills. Some distinctions may be the result of age differences however, as the Skull Devil is believed to have been a fully mature individual, while most beta Skullcrawlers appear to be immature adolescents, subadults at best, born in blood during the initial siege on the Skull Islands.

Skullcrawlers are an unfortunate mistake of YOG-mutation, tragic monsters born from their own inescapable nature. They are hypervores, and due to a highly accelerated metabolism must continuously consume food to survive if not within near-constant contact with a strong source of radiation, or they will start digesting themselves. Insatiable predators, they will not know peace from starvation until they or everything else on Earth is dead. This desperation drives them to near-suicidal extremes, and in pursuit of prey they will seemingly forgo self-preservation for a taste of flesh. It has been suggested that they are perhaps driven so relentlessly by the subconscious knowledge that the only permanent end to their hungering is death. While such an idea is realistically untestable, it is clear Skullcrawlers are more intellectually sophisticated than their hyper-aggressive nature may initially imply; during hunts, they use numbers to their advantage whenever possible, set ambushes, parrot the cries of an animal in distress as bait, and move confusingly to bewilder prey. If they recognize a danger, they will take means to avoid or neutralize the threat as soon as possible, making complete eradication of the species incredibly difficult as they adapt so quickly. It may not be hyperbolic that they rival Kong himself in terms of intelligence. Lacking significant dermal armour, they instead attach the bones of their kills onto their bodies like a macabre carapace using an adhesive mucous secretion (an advantage of their hypervorous nature is that they are immune to most infections, such as those that would normally result from wearing rotting remains for long periods, as almost all infectious microorganisms are incompatible with their aggressively high metabolic processes). Interestingly, they almost always display the skulls overtop their own heads, which is believed to act both as an intimidation display and a sign of social status.

Cephalopodic eyes give them excellent vision, a trait bolstered by heat-sensing organs located behind their beak which allow them to "see" even if blinded, but as ancestrally abyssal organisms, they are sensitive to light and prefer to hunt at night if they can. A Skullcrawler on the attack is a whirlwind of claws and tentacles, slashing and leaping with its forelimbs, snapping and battering with its beak, and coiling and slamming with its muscular tail. The Skull Devil had learned to use the spikes at the end of its tail as a slashing weapon and its adhesive spit as a long-range attack to momentarily blind or slow the movements of its opponent. Their speed and agility are their most vital attributes, even more so in younger individuals. Skullcrawlers are born with a large membrane running down their bodies from their arms which allows them to glide for short distances, but this is reabsorbed into the body as they age and become too heavy to get airborne. From carcasses, it has been discovered that Skullcrawlers are asexual and give live birth, periodically spewing out small litters of offspring without the need for a mate, thereby allowing a single Skullcrawler to build up an entire population easily. Although usually not cannibalistic and mostly social animals, they do not provide parental care; it's already difficult enough for them to feed themselves, and they cannot afford extend the extra effort to feed several more mouths on top of that. Nonetheless, young Skullcrawlers often gather themselves with more mature individuals to hunt any small prey they flush out of the brush or scavenge from the scraps of their larger kills. In effect, when Skullcrawlers move through an area, they will scour the lands of all types of prey, leaving only devastation behind.

———

NEXT: Inhabitants of Faro Island (Part I)

Description
Entity NEMESIS (AKA SKULLCRAWLER)
First Sighting: Faro Island, 1973
Size: 58 metres in height and 265 metres in length at maximum size
Weight: 47 900 tonnes in maximum weight

History: During the 1973 Monarch expedition to Faro Island, many of the expedition members were killed by the countless predator species which inhabited the island, but few hunted them with as much persistence and malice as the Skullcrawler, lindworm-like beasts with insatiable appetites which emerged again and again from volcanic vents leading beneath the isle. However, when the expedition were rescued by the Iwi and the castaway who had lived among them, he explained that the Skullcrawlers were an invasive species, only arrived on Faro Island a few decades ago. Without warning, one night they simply emerged from the coast in great number, and quickly began a campaign of indiscriminately purging all animal life from the island as they gorged themselves on the native megafauna. But the Skull Isle did not fall so easily, and soon a war raged between these great devourers and the gods of Faro, lasting for weeks as numbers on both sides dwindled. At last, when the corpses of hundreds of dead kaiju and kaijin lain strewn across the isle, the surviving Skullcrawlers had finally had enough and retreated into the island’s underbelly to lay dormant until the ecology of the archipelago had recovered and they could begin anew.

In a few short months, they had brought to complete extinction almost the entirety of the archipelago’s great saurians which had dominated the ecosystem for millions of years. But in doing so, almost of the first-generation Skullcrawlers had been killed in the war, those which had originally crawled from the sea. All but one. This Skullcrawler alpha was considered to be the serpent which gnawed at the heart of Faro, evil incarnated as an all-devourer, the Skull Devil itself. When Monarch arrived in 1973, they accidentally roused this ultimate demon from dormancy, and while its smaller brethren began making their way to surface to begin gorging anew at the first opportunity, it waited for the perfect moment when its greatest foe Kong would be most vulnerable. When Kong was momentarily brought down by a rogue faction of the helicopter squadron Monarch had enlisted, the Skull Devil ripped its way free from the boneyard amongst the skeletal remains where Kong’s species had made its last stand years ago, and determined to wipe out the super-species once and for all. With his rallying war cry, many more Skullcrawlers began emerging from the earth, a vanguard of death marching towards the southern wall of the Iwi village.

Kong was tired and weakened, but this would not stop him from his duty. The last survivors of the expedition regrouped at the Iwi settlement as Kong arrived at the wall, with the distant howls of the enemy not far behind. The wall was set alight, a barrier of flames and spikes fourteen storeys high facing down an enemy intent on slaughtering all within. Kong and the Skull Devil charged at one another in battle, as Monarch and the Iwi held back a tide of smaller Skullcrawlers. Ape and serpent fought tooth and claw, tentacles against fists, simian cunning versus reptilian fury. As dawn broke over the mountains, Kong was pushed back, but finally managed to overpower the Skull Devil when it briefly distracted by a hail of gunfire, giving Kong a moment to rip off one of the rib bones which it had used as armour and spiking it through the eye, disorienting it long enough for Kong to shear his foe’s exposed underside completely open with a large boat propeller, eviscerating the Skull Devil. As the reptilian creature writhed in its violent death throes, Kong finished off his enemy by bashing in the Skull Devil’s head in with the very ape skull that it had utilized as a crude helmet. At the sight of Kong's victory roar against the rising sun, the few surviving Skullcrawlers quickly fled in terror, retreating back into the underworld.

After Monarch returned from Faro Island, they began studies into where the Skullcrawlers came from. Tissue samples that were recovered from the expedition indicated that they likely originated as an abyssal species. During earlier seafloor mapping ventures, Monarch had discovered a localized radioactive deposit on the seabed in a deep-sea chasm near the Marshall Islands which appeared to have exposed relatively recently and was initially believed to have been the place of origin for Godzilla, but dating of the rocks around the site indicated that it was too early, for Godzilla was first sighted in 1954, while this deposit was dated to have been disturbed around the mid-1940s. This lined up well with the noted and sudden appearance of the Skullcrawlers on the Skull Islands, and from this a rough timeline of the events was able to be pieced together. The ancestors of the Skullcrawlers likely evolved around naturally occurring fission reactors on the seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago, and when the last of these reactors was finally destroyed as a consequence of nuclear testing, the Skullcrawlers turned to Faro Island, likely attracted by its unique geo-magnetic signals and abundance of prey. It is believed that this original generation is now extinct, and the newer generation is comprised almost entirely of adolescents that now lie dormant on the radioactive deposits beneath the Skull Isle. Perhaps in some not-so distant future when this generation has matured, they may rise to try and raze Faro once more.

Description: Skullcrawlers were initially believed to be reptiles of a sort, a burrowing species which had lost its back legs like Bipes, but the presence of traits such as gills and tentacles quickly brought this idea into question. Most detailed studies indicate that Skullcrawlers are ichthyic hybrids, and based on its rough body anatomy, likely originated as an ancient abyssal species (possibly either nautiloid cephalopod or eellike fish in origin) that adapted to the conditions around naturally-occurring fission reactors under the ocean floor, and this proved an ideal location for YOG-based mutation to prompt horizontal gene transfer from other species of deep-sea life over generations. When they arrived on the Skull Islands, some assimilation of saurian genes occurred as well, resulting in an amphibious species that is maneuverable on land, in the trees, and in the water, but never had back legs to begin with. Skullcrawlers are separated into two distinct morphotypes, dubbed alpha Skullcrawlers, or first-generation, and beta Skullcrawlers, or second-generation (note that the names do not necessarily indicate actual generations or social status among the species). The alpha Skullcrawlers originated in the ocean and represent the initial invaders which landed on the shores of the archipelago. Almost all of the alpha Skullcrawlers were killed on their initial assault on the islands, and only one member of the first-generation was known to exist by the 1973 Monarch expedition, a massive individual known as the Skull Devil. The Skull Devil was considerably longer and bulkier than any known beta Skullcrawler, and displays more obvious signs of their aquatic origin, such as the more well-developed spines protruding from parts of the body, which manifested in blade-like spikes at the end of the tail, a greater number of digits, and proportionately larger gills. Some distinctions may be the result of age differences however, as the Skull Devil is believed to have been a fully mature individual, while most beta Skullcrawlers appear to be immature adolescents, subadults at best, born in blood during the initial siege on the Skull Islands.

Skullcrawlers are an unfortunate mistake of YOG-mutation, tragic monsters born from their own inescapable nature. They are hypervores, and due to a highly accelerated metabolism must continuously consume food to survive if not within near-constant contact with a strong source of radiation, or they will start digesting themselves. Insatiable predators, they will not know peace from starvation until they or everything else on Earth is dead. This desperation drives them to near-suicidal extremes, and in pursuit of prey they will seemingly forgo self-preservation for a taste of flesh. It has been suggested that they are perhaps driven so relentlessly by the subconscious knowledge that the only permanent end to their hungering is death. While such an idea is realistically untestable, it is clear Skullcrawlers are more intellectually sophisticated than their hyper-aggressive nature may initially imply; during hunts, they use numbers to their advantage whenever possible, set ambushes, parrot the cries of an animal in distress as bait, and move confusingly to bewilder prey. If they recognize a danger, they will take means to avoid or neutralize the threat as soon as possible, making complete eradication of the species incredibly difficult as they adapt so quickly. It may not be hyperbolic that they rival Kong himself in terms of intelligence. Lacking significant dermal armour, they instead attach the bones of their kills onto their bodies like a macabre carapace using an adhesive mucous secretion (an advantage of their hypervorous nature is that they are immune to most infections, such as those that would normally result from wearing rotting remains for long periods, as almost all infectious microorganisms are incompatible with their aggressively high metabolic processes). Interestingly, they almost always display the skulls overtop their own heads, which is believed to act both as an intimidation display and a sign of social status.

Cephalopodic eyes give them excellent vision, a trait bolstered by heat-sensing organs located behind their beak which allow them to "see" even if blinded, but as ancestrally abyssal organisms, they are sensitive to light and prefer to hunt at night if they can. A Skullcrawler on the attack is a whirlwind of claws and tentacles, slashing and leaping with its forelimbs, snapping and battering with its beak, and coiling and slamming with its muscular tail. The Skull Devil had learned to use the spikes at the end of its tail as a slashing weapon and its adhesive spit as a long-range attack to momentarily blind or slow the movements of its opponent. Their speed and agility are their most vital attributes, even more so in younger individuals. Skullcrawlers are born with a large membrane running down their bodies from their arms which allows them to glide for short distances, but this is reabsorbed into the body as they age and become too heavy to get airborne. From carcasses, it has been discovered that Skullcrawlers are asexual and give live birth, periodically spewing out small litters of offspring without the need for a mate, thereby allowing a single Skullcrawler to build up an entire population easily. Although usually not cannibalistic and mostly social animals, they do not provide parental care; it's already difficult enough for them to feed themselves, and they cannot afford extend the extra effort to feed several more mouths on top of that. Nonetheless, young Skullcrawlers often gather themselves with more mature individuals to hunt any small prey they flush out of the brush or scavenge from the scraps of their larger kills. In effect, when Skullcrawlers move through an area, they will scour the lands of all types of prey, leaving only devastation behind.

———

NEXT: Inhabitants of Faro Island (Part I)