The Malacosm

**The Malacosm** is one of three playable monsters that may antagonize the player while they escape The Sea Fort in Monstrum 2.

## Description

**The Malacosm** is a very tall squid-like entity (taller than even the Brute) with greenish-blue and yellow skin, speckled all over with blue bioluminescent light from within. Its lower half is composed of one main tail-like tentacle surrounded by seven ancillary ones. The Malacosm has three pairs of arms with five clawed fingers, as well as a tall head with three eyes on either side of a stretched, V-shaped mouth of sharp teeth, grinning menacingly. Some variants feature an assortment of horns or crests on their heads (with this particular example sporting a pair of vertical blade-like crests, curved like horns, along with similarly-designed shoulder blades to match).

## Capabilities

**PHYSICAL CAPABILITIES:** The Malacosm is not particularly fast nor strong, being comparable to the Bhagra, but inferior to the Brute. Still, it can easily break down weak barricades like wooden boards with a claw swipe as well as restrain victims with a tentacle hug (though this is just to restrain them before melting the victim's brain with its powers). Animations for a future update also shows the Malacosm swimming through the air to easily burst through windows, giving it a quick option to break into rooms.

**LOCOMOTION:** The Malacosm's squid-like lower half is fit for underwater movement, though this does mean that, on the surface, the Malacosm cannot walk conventionally, rather, like its counterpart from the first game, the Fiend, which also has legs that cannot be used to walk (ending in stubs instead of proper feet), it levitates a short distance over the ground, though it does this by manipulating its own density (and therefore, the effect of gravity on it) rather than via telekinesis. This doesn't completely exempt it from the laws of gravity, hence why it can only float a short distance above the ground as opposed to being able to float upwards to access upper floors instantly, meaning it still has to rely on vines to climb walls, though it can at least "glide" and control the rate of its descent when falling. The Malacosm's ability to manipulate its own body density also allows it to pass through solid, thin, delicate matter, like bars, weak walls, and other breakable objects. Even so, it is the slowest monster in Monstrum 2, and thus cannot catch up to prisoners in a straight chase. Hence, it relies on its abilities to judge where its prey is (or will be) in order to ambush them. One efficient way for it to cover large areas is to set down sentinels in strategic ambush spots. Sentinels are immature forms of the Malacosm, essentially genetic clones, that normally swim in place around an orb of blue electricity, but stand erect (with their head pulled into the electrical orb) and make a metallic screech when prey is close to their location. The Malacosm can sense the sentinels and their current state regardless of distance and physical obstructions due to its telepathic link. The Malacosm can then use this link to teleport to the same position as its spawn (or rather, as current theories suggest, it destroys its old body and rapidly regrows a new body within the chosen sentinel), allowing the monster to close the distance between it and its victim, at the cost of the sentinel, which is destroyed in the process.

**SENSES:** The Malacosm's sense of smell is limited to aquatic environments; on land, it relies more on its eyesight and telepathic abilities. To help in pinpointing a prisoner's location, the monster can cover its own eyes to use its clairvoyance ability, allowing it to hijack the senses of sight, sound, and smell of the nearest living being to it.

**INTELLIGENCE:** With its six brain lobes giving it an estimated IQ of more than 2000 (at the cost of its sanity), the Malacosm is easily the most intelligent monster in Monstrum 2. It is for this reason that it is able to boast a slew of telepathic abilities which it uses to manipulate and control mind and matter (the extent of which is unknown but significant), as demonstrated by how easily it is able to pull a human at close range with its telekinesis, allowing it to kill them in a manner of gruesome ways, like constricting them with its tentacles before melting their brain with its focused psionic ability, or twisting their necks 180 degrees. More experienced Malacosms would spawn sentinels where they believe prey would be, either through behavioral observation or well-calculated anticipation. Those more familiar with the environment would end the telepathic link with their victims early due to presumably quickly recognizing the prey's location, in order to begin the hunt as soon as possible.

## Warning Signs

**PARANORMAL NOISES:** As with the Fiend, the Malacosm makes similar (if not identical) demonic seething sounds, distorted remnants of what was once a human's voice. The intense psionic energy generated by the monster's mere existence (possibly amplified by passive tasks like its constant levitation) also emanates otherworldly humming sounds.

**SENTINELS:** Prisoners that see these squid-like creatures patrolling a certain area ought to keep their distance so as not to alert these creatures, which would in turn notify the Malacosm, who can instantly teleport to their position. Should a prisoner alert a sentinel, the best course of action is to leave the area as fast as possible in order to evade the Malacosm and nullify its planned ambush, which compensates for its slow movement.

## Trivia

* The Malacosm seems to be a replacement for the Fiend given how it is also a slow monster that levitates and hunts with the telekinetic abilities its high intelligence grants it. The Malacosm, however, possesses more advanced powers, and is presumed to possess greater intelligence than its predecessor.
* The Malacosm's ability to reproduce asexually is taken from the Hunter, which was also able to do so by laying egg sacs on the floor and walls, where it can pop out of once the player is close to the sacs, just as how the Malacosm can spawn sentinels (which it presumably pulls out of its glowing stomach), then teleport to a chosen sentinel (preferably one that has detected a prisoner).
	+ This ability, now used by the monster as a form of hunting trap, was originally intended to produce Malacosm specimens en masse for quick mutation and testing.
	+ Unlike the Hunter, the Malacosm's usage of its asexual reproductive ability as a means to teleport across the map gives some proper reasoning as to why there can only still be one of it in each gameplay. Unlike the egg sacs, which supposedly spawn a new Hunter (and thus, should logically fill up and overwhelm the Hisa Maru were it not an unfair, game-breaking mechanic), the old Malacosm takes the place of the spawn it chose to teleport to, so players are indeed running into the same individual that hunted them before, and not a new being.
* The monster selection screen also states that the Malacosm is capable of mind control. However, in-game, it displays no such ability (for it would have given it an unfair advantage); the closest power it has to this is clairvoyance, which allows it to perceive the world through the eyes of the nearest prisoner to it.
* As revealed by concept art, the Malacosm was originally supposed to have eight arms, tentacles that seem more closely intertwined, as well as different designs showing eyeless heads (one was octopus-esque much like Cthulhu, another has a small, ring-like head with a mouth that goes through the front and back of the head, a well-liked but hard-to-animate design featuring a mass of hands reaching out from within the mouth, a more plain design with an oblong head and beak much like a cephalopod without tentacles, and even a design with spiny hair and a cage-like grin formed by thin teeth, much like the mouth of the Fiend).

## Gallery

### **GIFs**

The Malacosm floating through windows to be exactly where he needs to be.