We covered some of the enemies in the 2021 RPG Scarlet Nexus before. Now we continue on with even more of the enemies, starting off with the Paws category of enemies...
Vase Paws
We'll start off with this enemy that kind of shows up a fair bit in promotional material and the anime. Again, there isn't really any explanation to why these three enemies are called 'Paw's, though the 'Vase' bit is a bit more understandable here. Once more, I have to warn of slight spoilers for the first arc of the game, but just as with the Rummies and Pendus, can totally kind of see these as some sort of hideous mutation of what 'humans' are. The Vase Paws have very obvious sexy long women legs that end in high heels, but there is one joint too many! And sure, it has a criminally short skirt that tapers up into an hourglass figure, except the hourglass is literal, looks like it's made out of the same material as the lampshade we see in other Others, and it's actually a vase for the Vase Paws' upper body -- a bouquet of flowers. Just to complete the bizarreness of this altered human, there is a tail made of very bony spines ending with a tiny stinger that functions like a bell to summon other Paws. This thing doesn't have a visible mouth, but since the profile doesn't call attention to it, I'm going to assume it eats. Somehow.
The Vase Paws, despite having gigantic bouquets of flowers on their heads, 'have no interest in elegance or grace' and will shake off the petals when they meet others of their kind. Probably a bit more 'simpler' in design compared to the Pandus we just discussed at the end of the previous article, but the still extremely unsettling for what is basically a vase of flowers with a pair of human legs.
Saws Paws
This one has basically very similar anatomy to Vase Paws, but instead of a bouquet of flowers it just has a single specimen of Rafflesia, the corpse flower that Pokemon fans would recognize as the inspiration for Gloom and Vileplume. It's 'dress' is far more corset-like, and is one of those 'this creature has a sexy imagery, but it's so fucked-up looking'. Instead of regular humanoid legs, however, the Saws Paws has two arms ending in gloved hands, each holding big-ass knives that it uses as the terminal segments of its legs. I genuinely thought that all they did was swap the high-heeled feet with knives, which would be cool enough, but the fact that they are arms holding knives is the extra oomph to make the Saws Paws extra creepy.
Behaviorally, there's a surprising amount of description given to the Saws Pas. It can become invisible with camouflage, and it will spread a 'lecherous' odour from its head to hunt prey. What does a 'lecherous' odour even smell like?
Base Paws
Our third and final 'Paws' deviates a lot from the general body plan of the Vase and Saws Paws, although it still is a pair of legs jutting out of a vague human-ish body-shape. The slender legs of the Vase and Saws Paws have mutated and are covered with tumorous growths. The Base Paws still has the corset hourglass body, but has a metal cage 'skirt' that covers the upper parts of its legs. Above the 'head', though... I'm genuinely not sure how the fuck to begin to describe it. There are a bunch of pipes and lighters and shit, before a bunch of red steel growths branch out in a framework -- almost looking like those electricity pillars, ending with what kinda-sorta looked like transformer units to me, but the profile identifies them as 'lantern-like organs'.
Apparently, the Base Paws often drop down from the sky, but the steel frame gets stuck on the ground when they make landfall, causing them to die from being unable to pull out? Okay? The Base Paws is described as a timid, cautious creature that likes to hide, protect its body and launch its lantern-organs everywhere and set the whole place on fire.
Brawn Yawn
Next up is the 'Yawn' family group, which, in the same way that the Pendus resemble birds, the Yawns resemble hideously mutated crocodiles! If crocodiles are mdae out of inanimate objects and have like more than seven pairs of legs! All the Yawns look like they're emerging from some swamp like an alien creature with a lot of legs, and the thing that screams out as a 'face' is that crocodile head. Which, if you zoom into the picture, is an actual skull with a metal plate with grill-eyes bolted onto it! The body is hunched-over, perhaps alluding to the fact that, again, this thing was once a human, with a pair of larger 'arms' that look like gorilla arms -- it's the white thing ending with a red glove, covered with lightbulbs -- almost like tumours (and are in fact the weak points). And the lightbulbs remind me of the Bile or Doppel Pools. There is some sort of bizarre chemical or electrical plant bolted on top of the Brawn Yawn's head, and from the bottom of its body are a bunch of... shit, I don't even know. There are plant vines, pipes from which oil pour out, and a 'fan' of stockinged legs that may or may not be connected to the Brawn Yawn.
The profile notes that the Brawn Yawn only looks like it turns the ground into liquid with those pipes, but it's actually turning itself into liquid. I'm really not sure what's going on with the Yawns and how my brain can go 'yep, scrapyard crocodile monster' before I sit down and try to dissect what's going on here... and the fact that there are so many parts of the anatomy.
Grin Yawn
You can probably tell at this point that a lot of the variants are just swapping out the 'element' that it does, with Grin Yawn being a Yawn that spits fire. The anatomy of a hunched-over crocodile with the bulky human arms in addition to the spidery mass of pipe-legs is a lot more clear with Grin Yawn's pose here, and the Grin Yawn also has the same ability to liquefy its body into the ground. Unlike Brawn Yawn, whose weak-point lightbulbs are on its arms, the Grin Yawn's is on its mouth. Your characters either have to super-speed and strike the Grin Yawn before it can breathe fire, or tank the fire attack and strike afterwards. Also, it seems to have swapped the Brawn Yawn's weird chemical contraption with a steampunk water tower.
Spawn Yawn
It took me a while to try to figure out what's going on here because I was looking at the left side as the 'head', when the crocodile skull is still there, on the right side, yawning and 'drinking' from water. This one brings back the mass of lady legs that the Brawn Yawn has, though the ones here are more explicitly connected to the Spawn Yawn's body. Also, yeah, that cluster of light bulbs are on its ass now, and the Spawn Yawn chooses like a bunch of pumps as its head ornament.
The Spawn Yawn are apparently highly aware of its weak spot, and gets very defensive about not letting anything, even other Yawns, near its back.
Vine Yawn
Another Yawn that swapped its head ornament, I actually wasn't sure if the big red... tower-looking tree with lightbulbs is part of its anatomy or just prat of the terrain that the Vine Yawn is illustrated with. But I assume that from the profile, this is the 'vulnerable, tail-like appendage'. Apparently, the Vine Yawn will often hide underneath the ground in its liquified state, but can't do the same for its tail, which sticks out like a morbid Christmas tree. My friend had to point it out for me, but this isn't just metal vines or girders like the Base Vase... but are human legs. Yeah, the branches of the 'vine' or the 'tail' are human legs with stockings, which are overgrown with lightbulbs. What the hell!
The Vine Yawn is able to do the Doppel Pool's cloning ability, and you have to look for the main body and take it out first, and just like the Grin and Spawn Yawn, have fire-based attacks. Yeah. This is our last Yawn and while they visually don't change too much from one design to the next the way the Pendu or the Paws do, they still look so weird and confusing.
Cushion PoundI am not sure what the Pounds remind me of. Flying jellyfishes, I think? Trying to describe them, well... The lower bodies of the Cushion Pound resemble one of those rolling tray-tables with wheels, except the table legs are replaced with mean-looking rusty hooks, and there is a fleshy... organ... tail-thing that I think ends with a... sucker? I think that might be its mouth? Then there is that very eye-catching red skirt, which almost obscures the mass of webbed shadowy hands that sprout from below it. On top is a cranium filled wiht a bunch of metallic... things that kinda remind me of those weights people use on old-timey scales. Like any good video-game monster, breaking those projectiles exposes the weak point. Which, in this case, is a green brain with a bunch of yellow flowers growing on it. What the fuck.
The Cushion Pound is noted to be focused on trying to float -- even sometimes forgetting to eat and dying out of starvation when there isn't a convenient wind to help it float. Similar to some of the behavioural notes of the enemies we covered earlier, there is just something so... disturbing about these things trying so hard to imitate life, while not knowing why life does what life does. This is a very creepy enemy, and from a straight-up 'cool creepy video game monsters' that I could see most showing up in another franchise, the Pounds might be it.
Session Pound
I think looking at Session Pound was where I got the idea of one of those 'serving trays with wheels'. You can see it, yeah? The 'skirt' is the tablecloth, the tray is the bottom, and the 'head' of this thing is the cloche or whatever those fancy metal things that restaurants use to cover food are called. Except, of course, Session Pound looks rusty and unhygienic as shit with those hooks, not to mention those spikes that surround the central cloche, looking almost like deer antlers or something.
I really was confused by the description of the Session Pound being 'three-headed' until I realized that there is a three-faced upside-down head within the cage under the skirt. Also, it sings. Yeah. It sings, and when prey comes near, the singing becomes a countdown as the Session Pound is this setting's equivalent of Pokemon's Electrode or something, existing just to blow up. I'm not sure what the biological usage of this is, though, since all the Others have a hypothesis on why they do the things they do -- either to feed, or to maybe mimic humanity.
Missin Pound
The Missin Pound is a bit different from its two siblings, where the 'cage' is the 'head' of the jellyfish. It still has the same fleshy tail and the creepy tentacle-looking hands of the Cushion Pound, although those are all clustered together on the bottom half of its blue skirt -- perhaps looking the most 'jellyfish-like', if these things can truly be described as jellyfish-like. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this thing is the four-faced head within the cage, which looks like the most distorted clown face ever, bing pasty-white with grinning mouths, no eyes and a bunch of flowers.
Interestingly, Missin Pound's signature ability is to harass its prey with smoke screens, though the profile does describe how it single-mindedly hunts its prey by obscuring the area with smoke and then firing projectiles. However, using the smoke screen actually makes the organ on top brittle -- pulsating similar to a cephalopod's fleshy head, turning it into a weak point that your characters can exploit with their powers. I guess the Pounds are meant to have some octopus-esque inspiration, too, with the pulsating head and the smoke resembling the inks octopi are associated with?
Rat Rut
There are only two members of the 'Rut' family, but now we're getting into the weirder parts of the bestiary. Referring presumably to the deep tracks made by repeated passage of wheels (instead of, um, animals rutting), remember that these bizarre monsters that look like someone had too much fun in a junkyard are all originally humans. The Rat Rut originally manifests as some sort of covered metal thing that reminds me of those cover bags for a man's overcoat. It's got a gramophone horn as a 'head' and like, several metal skewers stabbed through it that kinda look like rudimentary 'arms' or 'wings'. Some nice texturing on the metal 'coat', too. There are hints of something under the 'coat', though, most notably part of an ouroboros -- a snake eating its own tail.
It's a typical video game trope that we see a lot in games like Zelda, but beat up the Rat Rut enough and the metal shell shatters, revealing the creature inside. And it's... what the fuck is it? It's neither a rat nor a rut, and I guess it's supposed to be a wheel? The ouroboros snake is still there, but there are also signs of metal casing and I'm not good enough in these sorts of things to begin to tell you what that is supposed to be. Actually, and this is a bit more clear on the other Rut below, the snake doesn't even run the whole length of the wheel, and I'm not sure about how I feel about it. The gramophone head is presumably there because a CD is also round like a wheel? At the core of the Rat Rut an organ that I thought was going to be a heart, but on closer inspection, is... a fruit? Okay? This is so fucking otherworldly. I love how weird it is.
The profile is even weirder about it, talking about how it 'stores oil inside a solid exterior shell', talks about how it 'scatters the trash that Plateau Pendu pile up'... and then describes its tactic of attacking with oil. And if you didn't have the picture to see, you'd probably think this was a vaguely-animalistic creature like the Yawns or Pendus. That's right, this thing is so weird that it made the abominations we saw before look almost natural in comparison!
Cut Rut
The other Rut is the Cut Rut, which is a bit bulkier compared to its 'Rat' brother, and... it shows a bunch more things in its shielded-up form. though it still has six skewers, albeit splayed out a bit more. There is still an ouroboros theme going on, the wheel setup is still the same, but this time instead of a fruit serving as a heart, there are two fruits being pierced by the skewers? Hmm? There is an additional bit of anatomy that isn't visible when the shields are up, which is a mass of... plumbing equipment right behind the gramophone?
The profile of the Cut Rut clarifies a bit about how this thing functions, which I'm going to assume applies to the Rat Rut too. The snake head lets go of the tail when it eats. Okay! That solves the question of how this thing eats brains, at least. Anyway a wholly bizarre creature, but nowhere as bizarre as the creature that comes right after it in the codex of the game... which we'll talk about next time!
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