Just a quick question, since it's october: what monster spooks you guys?
Meet our first choice for one of the “scariest” monsters we've ever had the misfortune of meeting. But today I’m probably going to strip most of its more frightening aspects away by explaining its lifestyle.
This Elder Dragon is one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen - and possibly not for the reason people think.
Where to start? The foul, freezing liquid it produces that instantly freezes water and creates massive spike traps? The pseudo-mouths on its wings that produce a drool-like sweat that also has the same freezing property? Or the horrific and unending appetite these beasts have that puts Deviljho to shame?
Morudomunto are mainly Tundra-loving monsters that are near literally the malformation of flesh that would come from a Gore Magala, a Velkhana, a Nergigante, and a Deviljho having far too much of a good time.
Which is to say that Morudomunto could possibly be considered the progenitor of all four species, as it has elements of its anatomy that could be attributed to all the others. This is not fact however, but a theory as to common ancestors amongst the Elder Dragons and some wyverns.
I’m sure many are curious about the mouths on the wings of Morudomunto - and while I can say clearly that you can rest assured that these are not real mouths - they are still fully capable of killing you. These pseudo-mouths and the muscles around them are for suffocation and smothering prey and competition, and are believed to be used mainly as a rather convincing defensive tactic by juveniles who need to look bigger and nastier quickly to scare off predation from other Elder Dragons or literally anything larger than them.
(I am however curious as to what ever the hell a Morudomunto finds scarier than itself.)
The freezing liquid Morudomunto produces is close to a chemical named acetaldehyde phenylhydrazone (APH). APH is essentially a form of crystal made with sugar/glucose.
In retrospect you could say that this Elder Dragon weaponizes the glucose it produces from food into this freezing secretion. APH is a strange element in that it freezes at different temperatures depending on what levels of acids and alkali it's in contact with - so it’s dependant on the chemicals the Murudomunto is producing at the time as to when and how it reacts. So while it is fair to call Murodomunto an Ice elemental Elder Dragon because it is technically freezing something, it’s not freezing water.
I am explaining this because a fellow researcher mentioned Antarcticite and after testing the raw crystal formations against the “ice” formations created by Murodomunto, they are completely different in composition. Antarcticite is just far too brittle and fragile to do anything on the level of APH. There’s also another small point I shall make about colouration of these crystal formations.
Antarcticite is white and has no colouration in or out of the light, whereas APH appears colourful when exposed to polarized light - which would explain the distinctly vivid blue colourations of Murodomunto's “ice” spikes.
Okay, I’ll stop boring you all with chemistry and tell you more about the ecology.
Admittedly, there’s not much known about how Murodomunto behaves outside of human interactions because they are highly territorial and aggresive; researchers have yet to find a way of sneaking up on one without detection - this isn’t because of naivety or inexperience on the field - but because the Morudomunto is so highly aggressive that it attacks based off any movement it sees. Any shrub or tree that shakes its branches in the wind will probably be on the ground in splinters the next second because this monster has some of the worst eyesight ever displayed, it relies purely on peripheral vision and sound. So it doesn’t really matter if you are perfectly still - if there’s a bit of snow that drops just a little bit too loudly behind you - the Morudomunto will be there to smash your face in.
This is literally the only reason why they’re successful hunters. They don’t think, they just kill.
It’s also why their numbers are probably so low, since Morudomunto can’t tell their own kind apart from other monsters and so even mating is highly violent and very likely to end with either participant dead. They have also been known to kill their own whelps in their ferocity.
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