FFTA Tough Skin

Ivalice Monster Compendium Entry#7

Clanners have always found ways to battle the dangerous creatures of Ivalice; through spell and sword, staff and bow, knife and spear, clanners usually have weapon that can take down even the most difficult foes. However, how does one battle the equalivent of a moving mountain? That is what a clan must ask amongst themselves when they face the indomidable fortitude and titanic might of an adamantoise. Commonly called Tough Skins due to their incredibly resilant bodies, adamantoises are giant turtles that have existed longer than recorded history. Some scholars state that the species as a whole could in fact predate dragons or at least have existed around the same time. One thing is for certain, physical weapons are almost pointless against these creatures the reason being in how they gained the name 'Tough Skin'. Admantoises so called because the material that makes up their shells is 76.89% adamantite. The amount of admantite that makes up the creatures armor increases as it ages, the oldest specimens having 98-100%. The discovery of the adamantoises quickly followed the discovery of admantite itself. Apparently the gigantic reptiles use veins of admantite as breeding grounds. Normally docile when left to its own devices, an adamantoise will charge anything foolish enough to invade its territory, which more often then not are caves where precious minerals such as adamantite, materite, and the rarest of all peytral (the metal used to make chocobo armor) can be found. These creatures breed during the winter months and the smooth round eggs these creatures lay are nearly as large as a person. The female guards the nest while the male brings back minerals on which they dine. When the hatchlings emerge from their emerald shells their bodies are smooth and their scales soft, this just about the only time that an admantoise is vulnerable to the natural weaponry of most predators. As they age, the hatchlings start absorbing more and more of the minerals that make up their nest. The outer shells growing thicker, stronger, and more jagged with each session until the armor is complete. Upon achieving this state, the young admantoises then leave the nesting grounds and venture out to find more veins of adamantite or similar metals.

One can tell how old an adamantoise is by how how many jagged protrusions they have produced on their back. Each full shell spike being worth a century. Eventually the entire head, shoulders, belly and back are engrained with adamantite and thus become so sturdy and resistant to damage they are hardly fazed by standard attacks. This leaves only the throat, legs and tail as its only weak points, which due to hard pebbly skin, thick muscles, and great size still makes attacking them a great danger. A typical adamantoise can live to be around 15000 years old sometimes far beyond that.

Despite its great size and immense weight, reaching to records of over 5 tons. The metallic turtles are not slow as one would hope. An adamantoise is certainly no panther, but it can drop its head and plough through foes and walls alike at 40 miles per hour with the force of a battering ram. The great turtles cannot change direction in mid charge however and must stop and align themselves with their target after a charge. One would think that ganging up on an adamantoise would be the best plan but the adamantoise, like all monsters, has its share of supernatural powers at its disposal.

One of the oddities of the species is that most adult specimens have a massive blade or spear ebbed in their shells. This was the most confounding mystery of the species until a brave beast master followed a young adult adamantoise that lacked such embellishments for several months. Tracking the beast until it stopped in an ancient gorge. According to the beast master it appeared to be an adamantoise burial pit, shelled skeletons of eons dead adamantoise littered the site in mounds leaving only paths weaving around them like veins. He warily followed the titanic turtle until it stopped before one of the mounds in question. The beast master claimed that he then noticed that many of these adamantoise skeletons had sometimes as many as 10-25 metal weapons wedged in their shells. The young admantoise grabbed a large sword in its beak and shook back in forth for at least five minutes until the titanic blade was eventually pried from its dead former host. What the beast master claimed next was even amongst monsterologists an act bizzare beyond comprehension. The adamantoise then held the sword by the blade with its beak and planted it at an angle in the ground. The beast then moved alongside it, and with a single push from both its left legs, the adamantoise toppled itself back first onto the blade. At first the beast master had thought it had commited suicide. But a couple moments later the beast shook itself side to side and righted itself, the blade neatly transfixed into the creatures shell. After the adamantoise left, the beast master inspected the other similarly impaled bodies. The weapons were sunk into the shells as plain as day but what the beast master discovered next amazed him and the scholar communities for decades. Apparently adamantoises can absorb just about any metal that exists into their bodies etheir through their shell or by eating it. In this case the weapon was lodged between two shell plates and the adamantite had grown around the weapon, securing it in place. Only in death did the adamantite seal on the weapon weaken enough for it to be dislodged.

This is not the only method admantoises gain these 'trophies'. Other times the creature gains one when in the heat of battle, the blade being stuck fast where it was planted. The reason for this odd habit of self impalement generates from one of its most powerful abilities: resonate. Being creatures deeply tied to the earth itself, adamantoises can make their entire body thrum with vibration. It turns out to be a tool used in the mating process when calling for a mate. Unfortuantely it also has a martial purpose; the adamantoise can send these vibrations into the metal weapon often lodged on its back, by fine tuning this sonic tremor, the creature can create a single resonace in every single metal weapon in the area. This causes the weapons to shake uncontrolably and until the resonance has ended, use of the hands or the weapon being held is hopeless without an outside interferance which is usually to bind the hand and weapon still. Adamantoises are thought to have created this ability when they were being consistantly attacked by miners with metal weapons who were working near their breeding grounds.

The second ability these creatures have is just as feared as resonate but by mages especially, the strange power known as matra magic. Apparently these creatures have such control over the natural flow of the physical world that they can alter it in living things. Instead of creating a resonance with themselves, they instead create a resonance within a living being. After this has been accomplished the adamantoise alters the tempo of the resonace between the living creatures life force and spiritual force or mana. Thus the amounts of both are effectively switched, the value of one being exchanged with the other. The reason mages fear this ability the most is because they are at most risk of mana depletion and thus if matra magic used against them when they are out of mana, they would die instantly as their life force was forcefully turned into mana with no mana to transfer into life force in return. Warriors hate this power as well simply because they often have little mana to begin with and an adamantoise can cripple them simply by switching their strong constitutions with their weak, undertrained mana pools.

As formidable as a adamantoise may be, they are not invulnerable. They have one primary enemy, one that has stood with them through time: Dragons. Dragons are the only predator that can bring down an adamantoise single handedly and not without a great deal of effort. But Dragons have the advantage fore dragons are creatures of the primary elements and with one blast of their pure elemental power from their gaping maws, an adamantoise's shell is all but shattered. Surprising panthers can also bring down an adamantoise but instead of tackling the turtle head on, they use pack tactics to circle the adamantoise, striking its weak points. They eventually try to goad the adamantoise into rearing up on its hind legs, they then use its own weight against it and tackle it as one to the ground, flat on its back. After that the pack leader makes the finishing blow to the soft pebbly throat and the pack then divides the spoils. Malboros avoid attacking admantoises, the turtles lack a strong sense of smell and being highly inorganic in nature make unappealing meals for a malboro on the hunt. Unless desperate, a malboro will usually go after easier prey. Other monsters simply try to stay from under foot of these titanesque chelonians. Magic is perhaps the only sure fire way of taking an adamantoise down, being the creatures do not have very high resistances to it.

Adamantoises have been known to congregate in large groups of up to 5-10 members with an elder matriarch leading the group. This is undoubtedly to protect them from panther packs and single dragons thus, most who fall to these predators are ethier solitary young males or the old, very young, and infirm. Typical adamantoise territories include the various deserts such as the Eluut Sands, the Kudik Peaks, the Naragi Cave and the Siena Gorge. Though they appear the most in these locals, they will also occasional be found in Nubswood and Materiwood, rooting out any minerals they can find there.

-RenDragonClaw