The Death Aquatic with Allister Zissou (Patreon)

Today we have something a little different from the norm, this is not exactly a lore piece, nor is it a design piece. You could almost call it a 'Game Theory' piece, but it's unlikely that YouTube channel would dive into a game like Kingdom Death as the game skews too mature for their intended audiences as genitalia is still often a taboo thing in art over in the US, even when it is not connected to sex (it's almost completely decoupled from sex in KD:M, overtly so). Ultimately, what is presented here is NOT cannon, it can't be because Adam changes things all the time during his process because he's making it up as he goes along. But it is based on things that are 100% cannon facts.

This is an exploration of themes, how they fit into design and what the core themes of the Plain of Stone Faces (PoSF) are. In short; the PoSF is a 'what if' thought experiment that asks. What if there was a deep sea biome but it all took place on dry land? And then we stuck people "down" there?

In order to properly explore this and show how it has been constructed, we'll first need to look at how the game has two main kinds of creatures in the current pool of quarries and nemesis monsters. Those that are from the PoSF and those that are not. We'll call each group endemic and interlopers respectively. 

Interlopers

Interlopers currently breakdown into two different groups. Those from the Abyssal Woods and those from the Holy Lands. I'll list each group, and we'll also discuss the White Lions here, because they're one of two special cases that holds a different place in the world. In the case of the White Lions, they're very special indeed.

Abyssal Woods

The Abyssal Woods inhabitants are:

• The Phoenix
• The Dung Beetle Knight
• Spidicules
• The Flower Knight

We know the Phoenixes currently come from the abyssal woods due to the Dung Beetle Knight lore. Both the Phoenixes and Dung Beetles come from a (currently) undisclosed part of the Kingdom Death world, the phoenixes migrated to the abyssal woods and the Dung Beetles followed, eventually evolving into the Dung Beetle Knight in mimicry of the Flower Knight. 

Now we have no direct proof of this, but based on the way that APG perverts the history and fantasy lore of our world, it's likely that both of those creatures came originally from the Holy Lands. While Phoenixes and Dung Beetles are parts of many cultures across our globe, the place where they both hold some of the strongest imagery together is Egypt. And that culture seems to be a strong influence on the Silver City (which in turn is a very strong influence on the Holy Lands). So tentatively we could suggest that these two left the Holy Lands (can't blame them, it's a mess filled with smoke there) and moved into the woods.

Spidicules and the Flower Knight are far, far more overt. The Flower Knight is the "elemental guardian" of the woods and both it and Spidicules are confirmed inhabitants (along with the Flower Witch, her disciples, the Sparrow King  Née Goblin King, the Lotus creatures, the Spiral Knight and others). It's not really accurate to call the Flower Knight an "interloper" as she has no interest in leaving the woods.

Holy Lands

The Holy Lands inhabitants that come into the PoSF are a shorter list:

• The Manhunters
• The Lion Knight (2nd)
• White Lions (special case here, see below)

We don't have a lot of details about the Holy Lands outside of the lore stuff that came with the various pieces in the past. But the specific details don't matter, what matters is we know that both the Manhunter and the Lion Knight are not natural to the PoSF, they're created by the Golden Entity's perversion of people. 

As a quick aside, the Lion Knight strongly highlights the Golden Entity's obsession with the past civilisation of the Lion God. The Lion Knight wears a full costume (including mask, that's why the innovation and descriptions that represents him are the way they are) to make himself look like one of the people of the Silver City. 

Special Cases - White Lions

White Lions are actually endemic to the Silver City, which strongly seems to be a part of the PoSF, but without the Silver City expansion, there's just not enough details to be sure. What we do know is that they are the devolved descendents of the Silver City's inhabitants. And they used to look more like this:

That's the sarcophagus from the deepest dives of the Sink Hole (Lion God L3 encounter), and we know it's not just a whimsical image because it contains the following mummified corpse inside.

The society here is heavily Egyptian in its influences, which suggests that it borders with the Holy Lands or was the site on which the Holy Lands now stands (there is a lot of cultural appropriation from the Golden Entity, like a LOT). We'll eventually learn more when the Silver City expansion lands in full, and you can be sure I'll put all the pieces together for you.

So, that's almost* all the interlopers dealt with, we understand now where they come from and why they don't really fit in with the endemic life. So lets look at those.

*There's one left to come, but I've put it in the Endemic Life section for reasons that will become apparent.

Endemic Life From The Plain of Stone Faces

All of the Endemic life in the plain of stone faces is in one way or another, based on an aquatic creature. Not one of them is exclusively an aquatic beast (Sunstalker comes close), they're all blended with other things, but just about every single one of them has traits of underwater creatures and we'll walk through them all.

The Gorm

The Gorm is constructed from three main different aspects; the vast majority of it is an Elephant, but it also has elements of babies and the deep sea angler fish. While its life cycle is completely based around the Elephants, its hunting methods employ large portions of the deep sea angler, using its lure to entrance potential meals before devouring them with its vulva-mouth.

The Screaming Antelope 

Clams! That's right, clams. The Screaming Antelope is an antelope crossed with a clam. Not only does it dart about the place the way that a clam does when disturbed, but it also clamps shut on things, bringing back the fantastical legends of giant pearl oysters and divers getting trapped inside. Except it has a second heart in there, instead of a pearl.

The King's Man

They're a form of shellfish/starfish, both in structure and in behavior. The King's Man armor is a hard shell constructed by the body of its victim and it also has a very strong ability to "replicate" itself, you can't kill one of these without you having to replace it. Which is rather akin to the regenerative abilities of starfish.

The Hand

This one has already been spelled out by Adam in one of the updates, now I'm going to not get too far into how wrong it is that he claims The Hand imitates the 'singing mantis shrimp' for his fighting style. But, what The Hand does is western boxing and pugilism - I am someone who is a (lapsed) practitioner of both Mantis Style and Mantis Shrimp Kung Fu and I can tell you that with 100% confidence that nothing the Hand uses to fight with is inspired by a Mantis Shrimp. 

Still, the Hand does have some stomatopod (mantis shrimp) inspired aspects to his design. So while the fighting style was incorrect, the other aspects hold up. The Hand has a heavy eye based focus and stomoatopods are renowned for their incredibly complex eye sight (and a coral reef sculpted on his helmet, what you thought that was just a brain? no it's brain coral).

The King

The King is something we don't have too much information on right now because it is still being developed. However, what I have seen includes the use of a kelp like leaf for its pauldrons...

... and the overall structure of the creature suggests it is like a starfish. Both in design (somewhat) and in the way that it is a roving monster that devours settlements in its path. Starfish are very destructive creatures.

The Sunstalker

One of the most overtly aquatic creatures in the game, this animal is a combination of the Dumbo Octopus, a shark and a sun. It's also a copy of Hellstar Remina's titular antagonist, and an inversion of the "warriors" from Brian Lumney's Necroscope series (highly recommended, though it does have problematic elements to it).

The Watcher

It's a jellyfish. What more can one say? It has all the physical trappings of a jellyfish wraith, even down to how its AI works and its HL is designed. It's the quintessential jellyfish in KD:M so much so that I can't see any other jellyfish design ever working right in the game at all. Adam nailed it with this one, I just wish he'd give us huntable Watchers in the future so they can be explored more. Perhaps we'll get there somewhat with the Ivory Dragon expansion.

The Smog Singers

Newly coming, the prawn-like design of these creatures, along with their link to the Singing Skywhale are all you need to discuss at this point in order to see how it holds up.

The Singing Whale/Ethereal Dreamer

We'll learn more about this creature in the Gambler's Chest, but for the moment we know that it's up there. We know that it is linked to the Black Lichen (and therefore both the Saviors and the Watchers) and that it's a huge whale, inspired by the one from Zelda: Link's Awakening.

The Skyfish

There are a whole bunch of fish up there swimming about above the heads of the survivors alongside the Suns and the Singing Whale. The Hagfish, Jowls and Bugfish represent three of them.   If you catch all three, you even get a filleting table so you can endlessly catch and fillet small fish for resources.

Also lets just take a moment to appreciate the Jaws pun with Jowls shall we? Don't catch it twice or you die! 

The Lonely Tree

While its main base is the legends of the man-eating trees this entity also has a lot in common with static aquatic animals like the sea anemone. It cannot move to hunt, so instead it lures its targets in and sucks them dry before turning them into its fruit.

The Crimson Crocodile

It's a crocodile, they live mostly in water. What more do I need to say?

The Dragon King/The Tyrant

He's an interloper from above, and his main design is a blend of a celestial star, an attack on titan "mech" pilot and most of all Godzilla. Godzilla is famous for coming from the sea. I rest my case there.

This is all without considering the overall low level of plant life in PoSF (but not in the abyssal woods), the low light levels, the constant "wave like" clouds that conceal the night sky and stars above and far, far more. So, as you can see, a journey around the world of Monster is far, far more water based than you may have first realised. Happy swimming!