“Wait, hold on! Isn’t Garuda a Hindu mythology character?! Explain yourself!”
Okay, okay! Technically, Garuda does not belong to the Indonesian, Thai, or any Southeast Asian culture. Garuda does indeed originated from India, of the Hindu mythology.
The reason that it is revered so much in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Thailand particularly, is because Hindu travelers and merchants came to the area and shared their religion and mythology. Honestly, it’s not hard to imagine how and why a lot of indigenous Southeast Asians convert to Hinduism back in the day; the mythology rocks.
For this particular entry, I won’t get into details with the history or what Garuda is. There are plenty information written in English about his appearance, mythology, and history. For a more detailed history of Garuda’s evolution in Indonesia: http://www.goarchi.com/archo/mag/garuda.html
Now let’s get to the meat of it...
ARE THEY ELIGIBLE?
Garuda himself, no.
If you haven’t done your own reading yet about Garuda, then let me fill you in that the name ‘Garuda’ can actually be used as both the name of the holy bird himself AND his race/species. The OG Garuda is basically the Adam to man-birdkind. His name became what he is.
Again, I’m not Hindu so do not take everything I say at face value, but I would suggest to avoid trying to romance the holy man-bird himself, let alone sexualizing him. He’s an important figure in the myth, serving as one of the main gods’--Vishnu’s--super steed and loyal sidekick.
Like many ancient myths, the Hindu mythology actually isn’t shy about sexual themes (hell, where do you think Kamasutra came from?), so there’s probably a story about Garuda mating somewhere back in the day, but it’s better not to tamper with that.
However...
If you write/draw someone else of the same species/race as Garuda and making them the monster lover in your story, that’s perfectly okay! As long as it’s not Garuda himself, you should be okay. Have fun imagining ways your gigantic man-bird kaiju can pleasure your main character!
Lembuswana is an amalgamated cryptid, with the body of a bull, head of an elephant, wings of an eagle, talons of a rooster, and fish scales for skin. They are the royal steed of kings that once ruled what is now known as Kalimantan a.k.a Borneo.
They don’t have a very extensive history behind them; the famous one was just acting as the steed which brought baby Princess Karang Melenu from the bottom of the Mahakam River (which was ‘born’ from a dragon, by the way). Later beliefs simply depicted the Lembuswana as just a ride or a chariot puller, an exotic water buffalo, most famously as a steed to King Mulawarman of the Kutai Empire.
Today, the Lembuswana are mainly revered in Kalimantan. Multiple statues have been made of them, with a golden one standing in front of the Mulawarman museum, East Kalimantan. They are a symbol of regal, righteous, and wise leader because of their association to great kings and the Hindu god of wisdom, Ganesha. Despite their ties to godlike ancient kings and Hindu gods themselves, they are not holy and sacred creatures. Their status is like Sleipnir, in a way.
The sapience of these creatures is dubious at best, though it wouldn’t be quite surprising if they have some form of sapience.
ARE THEY ELIGIBLE?
Proceed with caution.
Do realize that the Lembuswana has always been referred to as an ‘animal’ in the myths.
People of Borneo (and Indonesians in general, for that matter) have never heard of romances with a being that isn’t human. Our myths aren’t as raunchy as the Greeks or the Nordics. We’re a generally very chaste culture, too shy to even think about sex.
Sexualizing and objectifying the Lembuswana is INADVISABLE.
Romanticizing is a different story, though. The Lembuswana’s concept is already a romanticization of ancient kings that are revered to the same level as gods (they did name a shopping mall after it and had its statue built at the entrance) . Regular water buffaloes just aren’t pretty enough, so whoever started this myth began slapping other cool animal features to the bull and make it shiny golden.
I can’t speak for the people of East Borneo, but romancing the Lembuswana seems to be pretty okay. I’d just advise you to keep their regalness and wisdom intact. It’s sort of like the only thing they’re known for. A high fantasy setting where they remain as a king’s steed and companion but has the sapience to interact with people is, in my opinion, the best, most respectful way to depict them in a romantic fashion. Bonus point if you can give the effort to make it extra ethnic.
Platonic affection is the safest way to depict this creature in fiction.
Random trivia: The Indonesian contestant for Miss Supranational 2017 in Poland wore this Lembuswana-inspired costume to the runway and I just have the greatest need to share this adasdkaskfljasjd
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Even though they’re mainly known to be from Bali island, according to the mythology, they actually originated from East Java, particularly the Kingdom of Kahuripan, during the reign of King Airlangga (alternate spelling: Erlangga).
A dark shaman who is also a single parent named Calon Arang (this name cracks me up because calon means “prospective; soon-to-be” and arang means “charcoal”. Imagine naming your kid Charcoal) who has a beautiful daughter named Ratna Manggali. Ratna Manggali may be pretty, but nobody dares to flirt with her and it makes her sad nobody wants her as their wife. So Parental Unit Charcoal was enraged and unleashed their fury upon the village. Together with their four best and most powerful students--which were all women, by the way--summoned floating-headed demons and had them spread diseases to the village folk. Many died after the havoc.
The surviving folk reported to their king, who then consulted his mentor and royal light sorcerer, Empu Bharada. Bharada then sent his student to propose to Ratna, with the mission to infiltrate Calon Arang’s belongings and steal their magic scroll.
War between the kingdom against the dark shaman and their students ensued, with victory to the kingdom. Calon Arang tried to escape by shapeshifting into a garuda (see episode 2 for entry about this awesome creature) but was hunted down by Empu Bharada, who stabbed them on the chest with a Kris knife.
Empu Bharada disposed of the evil scroll into the sea as he and his king crossed the Bali Strait. But Empu Bharada has never seen Jumanji before, so the evil scroll arrived at the hands of shamans and magicians in the island of Bali, not yet a popular tourist attraction, and the dark arts of summoning the Leak thrived ever since...
WHAT THEY ARE:
There seems to be two definitions of what a Leak is:
The magicians that used the dark arts and then consumed by it, warping their humanity
The demons summoned by the dark arts
For this instance, I’ll talk about the creatures themselves, because that’s literally the point why I made this series.
The Leak is a shapeshifting demon that can take the form of a human or animals, though their true form supposedly looks like the masks and costumes worn in Balinese theatrical dances. They shapeshift into a disguise during the day, and revealing their true self at night when they go hunting. They can also turn into a big ball of floating fire.
(The four-legged creature on the left is NOT a version of Leak. It’s called Barong. It’s a costume of an animal meant to ward off evil spirits by taking shape of some powerful ghost honcho. The Barong is the nemesis of the Leak queen, Rangda.)
Leak have long unruly hair, which can range from dark black, brown, and even white. They have long tongues that hang out of their mouth, their teeth are long and sharp, and their eyes are said to never blink. Good luck winning a staring contest with these guys...
The demons are said to be found commonly in graveyards, where they would dig up corpses from the graves and feast on them, or collect the organs to make potions out of. Their other favorite diet is the blood of an unborn child still in their mother’s womb.
How do they extract unborn baby blood? I don’t know. Perhaps those nails aren’t nails--they’re suction tubes?
In their true, monstrous form, they are invisible to the naked eye, except to people who have learned magic, have trained to communicate with spirits, or if they’re born being able to see and communicate with spirits. Normal humans can see them in their disguised form, however. God knows if the stray dog you see in Bali is an actual dog or a Leak in disguise.
Unless summoned by shamans to do their bidding, Leak mostly just...exists, without causing much damage except towards the pregnant.
REPELLING THE LEAK:
Get a knife.
Stab that shit under the neck.
Cut that motherfucker’s head right off.
Or don’t.
There’s a weirdly conflicting statements on what to do if you have enraged the Leak. There’s a more peaceful route where you can simply just apologize and admit your mistakes if you did accidentally offended them. The other less than savory way is the one above. This conflict may have been due to the double definition of what Leak is, as I have explained before.
It seems like if you cut their head off, they can just reattach it and be fine again. However, if you cut their head from under the neck, the head will float away and prolonged separation of the head from its body will kill them eventually.
Getting out of Bali is also an effective way to escape the wrath of Leak. The magic that fuels the modern Leak are only effective in Bali, so if you get out of there before they kill you, you’ll be fine. Granted, you may have to circumnavigate your travel plans so your flight never has to transit there.
This concludes the first episode of Equatorial Beasts, my new mini docu-series of Indonesian monsters, cryptids, and occult creatures. It’s not perfect and I did leave out a bunch of stuff that are very complicated (like rituals and stuff like that, there’s actually a very detailed description on how to summon Leak but it’s not something I want to share.)
