It always fascinates me how peoples and cultures can evolve in isolation from each other, and yet share such similar legends. Take the Turali, for instance. When they appeared here in Alexandria thirty years ago, our cultures could not be any more different, any more separated, and yet even they told tales that sounded oddly familiar to an Alexandrian ear. For instance, we both have a legend where crystalline creatures appear on the fields of war after battle, to feed on all the energies released in the fighting. And the bigger the battle the more energy expended and life force liberated the more terrible the titan that appears to feed. Perhaps the tales were intended as warnings against war: that nature will always punish those who wage it, no matter how powerful they might be. Or perhaps they are simple statements of fact: that here, as in Tural, massive disturbances in the aether are wont to awaken something inside the earth. If crystalline beasts start to appear during a particularly strenuous hunt, don't be surprised if their master isn't far behind!

  Do you know who sits at the top of the Kozama'uka food chain? It isn't the killer piranha, nor the pumas. No, it's the bugs?particularly the ones that are ten yalms tall and have razors for arms. They'll swarm upon anything that moves and slice them to shreds?and that's just the nice ones. Ihnuxokiy isn't one of the nice ones. It was the Hanuhanu who gave him the name: “the knight in bloodstained armor,” it means, after his crimson chitin. It was only later they found out it really was the blood of his victims that painted him red. They learned that he isn't just a mindless killer, either. Seems he hunts by following a particular kind of phosphorescence that grows stronger as the density of aether increases, allowing him to corner packs of prey.

  A poisonous toad, in every meaning of the words. Crawls up out of the mud every odd summer to rain death down upon the plains. And I mean that literally. The beast's a master of water magicks, you see. The jets it conjures are powerful enough to sweep its prey off their feet – and often enough, to sweep the feet off its prey. If you mean to put it back in the mud where it belongs, a word of advice: keep your ears open. It's a boastful bastard that's wont to announce its every move in song.

  It's told that a young Zoraal Ja, seeking to hone his sword arm, caught a swift–winged toucalibri and kept it in the palace as a sparring partner. He'd try to knock it out of the sky with a wooden blade as it gyred and gamboled around him. A cruel pastime, perhaps, but it made his reactions fast and his eye keen. Had a similar effect on the toucalibri, too: it got faster and stronger, that it might better evade or counter his strikes. One day, it broke loose from its cage and flew away into the sky. Years later, when an enormous, bloodthirsty toucalibri began attacking travelers passing through Kozama'uka, many and more thought back to the tale of the young prince and his pet, Pkuucha. No one can say for sure if it's the same bird, but either way, the name stuck. And if it "is" Zoraal Ja's Pkuucha, well... that would explain why it's so angry.

  Quite the name, isn't it? You can blame the Hanuhanu for that. Part of it means "half–fish." It's the same name they give to the swampmonks. As for the rest, well...that means "man–eating." Or "Hanuhanu–eating," I suppose. Holds water either way. The creature's killed, and it'll carry on killing if we don't stop it. So do us a favor, will you? The Hanuhanu are good people, and it breaks my heart to see them so afraid... but so long as that bastard lives, they've every right to be.

  The waterways of Kozama'uka are teeming with life, and life that feeds on that life. A good example of the latter is the hammerhead crocodile. They knock their prey out with their maul–like heads and swallow them whole. The Slammer's the same, just bigger, stronger, and hungrier. What the crocs do to fish, he does to folk. Entire caravans have been lost to that lizard's gullet, alpacas and all. Make sure you don't go the same way they did.