Monsters

The diversity of Monkind is incapable of understatement. "Monster" is a category of being like "life" or "rocks". Using sweeping generalizations and declaring hard rules will inevitably lead to the rise of one exception after another. That being said, some generalities exist.

Virtually every monster has within its body a nodular mana stone known as its core. The core contains the monster's essence. When a monster is slain, the core is usually removed from the monster's body within a few minutes, once the core has made contact with the air outside of the body, the corpse will dissolve into motes and evaporate. The remaining core will quickly dry out and preserve itself. Monster cores stored in a dry place will become refined with aging with some cores being found to still be good even after being buried for millennia. Fresh or aged, monster cores are always in high demand from alchemists and monster breeders.

If the core is left within the dead monster, it will melt into and preserve the monster's flesh, making it safe for consumption. Though many people prefer the taste of their favorite creatures grilled, fried, baked, or sauteed with herbs and salt, everyone knows that, with few exceptions, most monsters are safe to eat between five and forty five minutes after being slain, largely depending on size.

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In the wild, most monsters emerge fully formed and mature from the spawn points, areas where the barrier between different planar realms is weakened by environmental mana. Spawn points often form in the vicinity dragon nests. Monsters adapt to the environment in which they emerge and become highly defensive of their territory. People interested in making fast money doing dangerous work can always find profit in clearing out spawn point and retrieve the valuable egg shaped mana stone that forms at the center of the monster breeding grounds for their wonderous magical properties. This is a service vital for the long term health of any community.

When an location reaches a critical monster population, depending on the species and environmental circumstances, the monsters will either migrate en masse to find new territory where they will create and defend new spawn points, or the monster population will undergo a rapid and violent evolutionary metamorphosis into more potent forms capable of greater feats and power. Forms that are more difficult to domesticate.

Unchecked, a concentration of legendary or mythic tier spawn points has the potential to be a birthing ground for dangerous nigh unbindable behemoth tier monsters, or even the calamity that is a living titan.

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Slimes are found on the edges of nearly every spawning point. Slimes are capable of a unique form of mitosis in which a parts of them splits off to form a number of smaller but slightly altered versions of the original slime. Inevitably, some someones wondered what happens if you throw a monster into a tub filled with a lot of slimes, the answer was a number smaller slightly altered versions of the original monster. Whenever someone figured out that using monster's core has the same effect as using the monster itself, things got interesting. Then most of those someones go the next step and throw two or three cores into the same tub, that is when things get really interesting. Some of those someones find out that adding a little of this or that ingredient to the breeding tub can have drastic effects on the end results of the genesis process. When enough of those someones write down their discoveries over time what developed was monster breeding as both serious science and refined art.

The methods and techniques for improving the quality and quantity of farm raised monsters are as numerous as the civilizations of The Spiral. Everyone has their own theories about important minutia like if alchemical reagents are as good as using wild harvested mana-stones as a genesis enhancement or the age old question of if it is better to wait until after the monsters are spawned to have the bindings cast upon them or if the breeding pools themselves should be enchanted to enthrall the creature upon the moment of its creation, but overall the process of creating and training new monsters is well understood knowledge engrained into the institutional foundations of any society which would dare to call itself a civilization.