The Great Beasts are powerful creatures that are the result of natural magic as opposed to mutation through Bacteria Z.
At one time the entities which CLEA now refers to as the Great Beasts were largely through to be creatures of fiction and myth. The initial dismissal of the existence of these powerful animals came from a time before the agency had become aware that magic was real. Even now many in the agency do not believe in magic.
When the Great Beasts were first sighted in “modern” times the agency concluded that these unusually powerful creatures where simply the emergence of new Species Beta hybrids. As the last reported “story” of any large creature that could be considered a Great Beast had been in the early nineteenth century, confusing them with Species beta was an easy assumption to make since their reappearance started with marine creatures which coincided with the appearance of animals such as Deep Blue.
Only in recent times after gaining magical allies such as the MI5 team and other sources has the agency found that there is a difference between large Species Beta hybrids and the Great Beasts, the one thing that separates both groups being that the latter are infused with magic. Much of the data though is open to speculation and none of it can be proved or even disproved.
The Great Beasts are divided into two subgroups
- Legendary Beasts – are the types of creature that have chosen to either ignore or work alongside humans. Despite the fact that most are predators they do not consider “intelligent life” such as humans prey.
- Darklings – are a type of Great Beast that are highly aggressive in nature. The sole drive is for power over their brethren and will eliminate their own kind to attain that power.
Origin
There are many possible hypothesis from where the Great Beasts originated. One theory is that they came from a parallel universe whilst the most popular one is that they evolved on our Earth. Whatever the source of their creation they have never appeared at any one time in great number and have been around for thousands of years.
Since Demon’s control dark magic and come from the Dark Realm, and Angels control light magic and come from the Light realm and together they create balance, it is believed that the Great Beasts were “born” in the mortal realm as a natural form of balance. Since most Great Beasts are Apex predators this would fit the theory.
History
Whatever their origin, it is believed that throughout history the Great Beasts like most predators in the animal kingdom regularly competed with each other. If they entered each other’s territory then conflict would often ensure. When they first encountered humans the Great Beasts generally ignored them, considering mankind insignificant but as centuries past and man evolved they were forced to see that whilst humans were small they had great potential and could be both an ally and a threat.
Where the Great Beasts lived in harmony with each other, in places such as Asia they formed a positive association with humans. Here people actually revered and respected the Great Beasts. Though they had no interest in being worshipped it allowed both of their races to live peacefully. For descriptive purposes they are known as the Legendary Beasts.
The same though could not be said in the west where the Great Beasts had the same history as their Eastern counterparts until mankind grew stronger. Instead of being respected as had happened in the East, they were feared and fear led to them being hunted or captured to be used as weapons of war. Humans taught them how to hate and desire power which led to aggresive behaviour and a need to become superior to each other. These creatures would eventually evolve into Darklings, rivals to the Legendary Beasts.
With humans hunting Darklings that succeeded in culling the weaker members of the kind leaving the stronger ones to fight with each other. Not all humans in the western world were threats but that did not prevent them from becoming collateral damage with their territorial clashes. Sometimes the more intelligent Darklings would use humans as pawns against enemies that showed no desire to harm mankind. In their minds as humans had once used them as weapons turnabout was fair play.
The only balance to the Darklings using humans came in the form of powerful mages who found they could control Darklings and Legendary Beasts alike through use of magic. Inevitably humans did not learn their past lessons and some Mages would enslave such creatures.
In the west the Darklings fell into legend via stories of Knights killing dragons as they eliminated unwanted menaces. Though most of the Darklings in the passage of a few centuries had either killed each other or been killed by humans, the damage caused by them had led humans to fear the entire race regardless of whether they were altruistic or not. That fear spread to the the East and in time even the most hardened of the Great Beasts realised that as technology improved they were all becoming endangered.
In bid to save their race from being destroyed by mankind the Legendary Beast and Darklings decided on establishing a truce with each other. Since humans were the biggest threat the only option they had was to go into hiding, sleeping, until such time that the threat had passed.
Two possible outcomes were available
- Humans wiped themselves out and the Earth was free for the beasts to inhabit
- Humans became enlightened to the point they no longer feared the creatures and were prepared to shared the world with them.
For the truce to work it meant all of their kind, needed to act as one. Apart from a few, the rest of their respective races were to hibernate. Some however would remain awake in order to monitor mankind. The Great Beasts suggested they took on this duty for the Darklings wanted an equal number of their kind to remain active. They feared their rivals might take advantage of a situation and kill them in their sleep.
The ones that remained awake became the Watchers and their task was to watch over the human “situations” and decided when it was safe to emerge.Since their natural forms would attract danger they had to adopt a human guise to walk the Earth, hidden in plain sight. Their natural magic was not able to perform such a feat so they asked for help from some of the most powerful human witches and wizards. Using combined magic the humans gave the Watchers the means to transform their physical forms from human to beast form at will. In return for their help the Great Beasts gifted the humans with great longevity (see Harman and Irmina).
Occassionally cataclysmic events and natural disasters had the potential to awaken any Great Beast (that was not a Watcher) from its slumber an so they were still periodically seen at random but on each occasion had chosen to return to their slumber, hence no sightings of unexplained creatures after the early 20th century.
Whilst many who study magic and ancient history had worked out that the Great Beasts and Darklings had decided to sleep it was not until the emergence of the Leviathans that ordinary humans learned that such creatures would emerge if the Earth was threatened.
Though there is no first hand account, it is presumed that the role of the Watcher was merely to act as messengers to account to the other Great Beasts when it was safe to awaken, modern technology and data recovery suggests that some Darkling Watchers have grown bored of waiting and elected to try and bring about the end of humanity by sowing the seeds chaos and discontent. Such actions were very subtle but eventually the Legendary Beasts learned of the manipulations and thus reignited old rivalries.
Such actions were often between individuals and are often little more than minor skirmishes or establishing dominance over a rival without violence, so not enough to awake their races en bloc but instead a hidden secret war akin to that between Demons and Angels.
Attributes
Since the Great Beasts all possess magic to a greater or lesser extent each of them seems to have special abilities that makes them more formidable than just their size and strength alone. Though each creature is unique they all have similar abilities in common brought about through their alignment with natural magic and these include:
- Longevity – if it were not for mankind killing them they would be near immortal
- Stealth/Camouflage – depending on the Great Beast each of them has a means to remain hidden. For some this is invisibility whilst for others they can blend into the natural environment.
- Magical Detection – they have the means to “sense” the presence of other Great Beasts by their ability to detect the “special” magic they all share. This ability seems to be passive in operation.
- Magical transformation. A few Great Beasts are now known to be able to shift form to resemble humans. In such a disguise they lose many of their “unique” attributes but would appear stronger and more resiliant to damage than ordinary humans. The amount of effort it takes to shift form would seem to use great amounts of energy so unlike animal hybrids than can quickly change between forms and back again, Great Beasts able to shape shift lack that rapid transformation and remain stuck in a changed form for some time. This might explain why they would often “wear” their human guise until a threat becomes life threatening and they need to adopt a more powerful form.
Awakening of the Leviathans
The first of the large creatures that CLEA has identified as not being species beta and as being Great Beasts are a group known as the Leviathans. It is believed that during the first Merlateenan incursion their presence was detected by the Leviathans. Despite being thousands of miles from where the Merlateenan had chosen to establish their foot hold, natural instincts of the giant underwater creatures kicked in.
Unlike other Great Beasts on land, the Leviathans were far less easily disturbed than their land counterparts due to the limitations of the environment. Having less encounters with mankind meant that they were not used to “detecting” a possible threat which was why they were awakened despite being nowhere near the alien invaders.
Upon being awakened the Leviathans all detected the presence of magic in the water, the Taniwha. Since each member of the Taniwha was an Avatar, being creatures who possessed magic, the Leviathans were drawn to them. After the Taniwha were able to prove that they were not responsible for disturbing them the Leviathans were happy to find a new place to return to sleep. The vigilante team though persuaded them to help against the alien threat.
Unfortunately the activity of the Leviathans did not go unnoticed by the watchers from both sides. Rather than forcing the Leviathans to return to their slumber is was decided that as long as an aquatic threat existed from “outsiders” from other worlds they would be permitted to remain awake but must never take advantage and attack any of their slumbering brothers. Should that ever occur the Darkling Watchers threatened a mass awakening which would probably end the human race as well as their own.
