More lore of A’s Devil Fruit, Mythical Zoan, Model: Manticore, and its chimerical birthplace, Island of Chryseus 🌙
At the threshold of New World, shrouded in salt air and protective incantations, drifts a fabled island of Chryseus (Island Made of Gold), known in legends for its veridian valleys, bountiful harvests and inexhaustible riches.
Those who have heard the tales of the golden island and embarked on a voyage to see it for themselves, however, beg to differ – this plot of land has nothing to do with its generous descriptions from the hearsay: liquid gold doesn’t flow in the aqueducts, the citizens’ prosperity isn’t glaringly evident, the island’s agriculture is thriving, but that’s the way it goes on most islands.
What sets the difference between Chryseus and the rest of the islands, even the most peculiar ones, is the plentitude of bizarre statues embellishing every square, street, alley, and residency. Stones and metals, coagulated in shapes of all sorts of demonic, brutish, disimpassioned, primordial, even benevolent creatures stand guard of each corner of the island.
And that’s when a benighted traveller comes up with a delusional sense that Chryseus isn’t made up of a metaphorical gold after all. The precious jewels and metals must be stashed in these terrifying statues, the contents of just one could probably provide him with unheard of riches for the rest of his life. An unfortunate traveller reaches for the etched creature, a feeling of unease descends upon his shoulders and soaks into his skin as soon as his fingertips brush the cold surface of the idol. Before he can discern what happened between the moment he touched the statue and the next, the thief’s chest reverberates with a sharp pang, he can no longer feel his extremities as venom from an enormous scorpion sting spreads across his entire body.
The deafening roar is the last thing he’s capable of hearing, when an amber-maned beast with unsettling human features, that seemingly materialised out of thin air, sinks his teeth into the thief’s paralysed flesh.
A tragic fate meets those who in their heart deemed that Chryseus’s possessions would make them wealthier. An ill intention of disrupting the island’s way of living or taking away from its citizens results in the perpetrator’s encounter with Manticore, the vengeful guardian spirit of the legendary island. Many millennials ago, Chryseus lived up to its epithet of Island Made Of Gold, its wealth overflowed, trade and culture flourished. The folk worshipped countless gods and spirits, carving marble sculptures in their honour. Alas, soon the island’s allies discovered that despite boundless resources it has to offer, Chryseus citizens are barely capable of protecting themselves against a large number of enemies. The island suffered from relentless attacks and pillages more and more often, soon its golden halls were torn down and sold out, the fruitful soil bled dry by the fiends.
A selfless hero, whose name lapsed into oblivion, sacrificed himself to preserve the last remaining evidence of Chryseus’s mythology and heritage in the form of defaced sculptures and feeble scrolls. The hero’s wrath towards the fiends who destroyed his home, conflated with the last heartfelt prayer to the spirits manifested in the birth of the brutish Manticore, an abysmal beast with a body of lion, gigantic wings of an eagle and a monstrous scorpion sting. An amber mane frames a beastly face with glowing golden eyes. For a fleeting moment, Manticore’s targets could witness an eerie humanity about the beast’s face. Perhaps, these were the traces of the deceased hero’s soul exposing themselves to the beast’s victims before they let out their last breath.
As the centuries marched on, Chryseus quietly recovered from its ruin. The Island Made Of Gold was no more, instead its citizens resorted to farming as their means of survival. The formerly glorious trade was conducted through trusted third parties. Until decades ago, Chryseus banners flew neither on trade ships nor at summits.
Hoping for their civilization’s restoration, the citizens carved more statues of the island’s spirits and guardian beasts, although due to the sparse resources, new statues seemed to immortalise disfigured monsters, as opposed to benevolent spirits. Manticore’s spirit now stood in the centre of the island’s pantheon, as the loyal aegis, celebrated by the recently tormented folk.
Incantations and protective spells cast during the decades of merciless onslaught on the island made the salt breeze waft around the suffering plot of land, rendering it practically invisible to the ships passing by. Every now and again, Chryseus reveals itself to weary souls in need of rest, or to those marked by fate to carry on Manticore’s legacy. Peculiarly, log poses malfunction or even spontaneously shatter into pieces in the proximity to the island.
A mighty and dreadful spirit, alas, is still capable of fading away. In order for Manticore to continue existing, it must merge with a human and establish a firm bond with its vessel. The reasons for the vessel selection remain unknown, however the legends claim that the spirit can sense the souls that most remind it of the hero’s soul from which Manticore manifested. The spirits populating Chryseus cannot enter a human body even with the host’s permission but they can possess a range of objects, and even food. When its former vessel passes away, Manticore must possess a fruit grown on Chryseus soil.
A new host then must consume the possessed Devil Fruit and let their soul merge with the spirit. The cycle continuation can be delayed for months or a year before Manticore senses and leads a potential host to the island. But the cycle can be broken as well: if the host is killed while in Manticore form, the spirit perishes along with them without a chance of restoration and Chryseus loses its steadfast sentinel.
Once the possessed Devil Fruit has been consumed, the current Manticore bearer must assume their duties as the island’s protector. Whether they want to disclose their new role to the rest of the islanders is up to them.
Manticore bearers obtain the ability to transform into the beast and can utilise its supernatural strength in order to punish the transgressors.
The chosen soul’s spiritual attunement becomes extremely refined: they can sense and communicate with the spirits and ghosts, hints about the bearer’s future can be revealed in dreams and visions.
The Zoan user can also access the spirit’s memories, and look for the answers in the past. The Manticore bearer must keep an eye on the island’s frenetic paranormal activity, pacifying the restless ghosts if required.
It is impossible for the possessed devil fruit user to enter a hybrid form until they’ve connected with the spirit properly through many hours of meditation, training and fasting.
Curiously, they are capable of achieving Manticore’s monster point, the form when all humanity is erased from its user, and the beast’s primordial wrath is unleashed. Although the monster point demonstrates extraordinary destructive force, it rapidly drains the user’s energy which causes them to recover for days after having resorted to such extreme transformation.
The spirit’s vessel must operate on a cline between their human, hybrid, Manticore and monster forms.
