True Name: Mavros, Mother of the Black Sea, Nemesis of Nature, Incarnation of Pollution, Defiler of Oceans
Code Name: Charybdis, the Purple Regent / Violet Ruler
Age: Millions of years old?
Gender: Female
Species: Petrolith (according to human’s classification system)
Origin: The Black Sea of Inner Earth
Theme Song: Hate | Dark Music Box Version (can be looped while reading the form to get the best of the mood)
Introduction: Known by mankind as Charybdis is the mother who gave birth to every fiend that they called as the Petrolith. Her true name is Mavros, she’s an embodiment of malice and malevolence, plague and pestilence, rot and decay, that naturally exist to corrupt everything that’s pure in the world. She’s the nemesis of the Chrysalis that known as the protector of nature, who nurtured the living from the ancient time, until the two deities returned to their slumber.
Appearance: Charybdis is one of the largest Petrolith in the world, and although not as long as the Tower of Corruption, she’s a much heavier and stronger being. She’s unlike any marine biology and looks more like an amalgamation of sea monsters. Charybdis has the appearance of both of a mollusk and crustacean, she’s like a lobsters if they have many tentacles, though her proportion is closer to a scorpion. She has many spindly legs along her front abdomen, with two largest limbs in the upper side, with a sturdy claw that are pretty jagged and spiked, acting as both pincer and scythe, much like a crab but also a mantis. Her lower region which leads into her tail is which makes her appear to be serpentine, though her exoskeleton armor plates would easily tell that she’s not one.
Overall, Charybdis is a spitting image of an extinct prehistoric sea creature if they instead evolved into a gigantic monster. Though it’s hard to describe her exact design, here are several pictures that are great for imagining her appearance, even if they might not exactly looks like her.
Personality: Mavros, much like Chrysalis, are embodiment of nature and not a true living organism. Although intellectual, they’re mainly driven by simply, primal desire, as design of their core personality, that represent each of them. In this, Chrysalis is always benevolent, caring and kind, motivated only by love, sympathy and empathy. On the other side, Mavros is wicked vile monster, as she’s malevolent, cruel and ruthless, wanting nothing but suffering, to degrade and corrupt everything in nature. While Chrysalis embodies the change of season and kindness of nature, Mavros is the malevolent hatred to all that lives and thrives.
Note: Ever since we start writing battle scene of EBG, from round 3 and beyond, Mavros is the very first EBG bosses that does not speak to the players. This is mainly requested by everyone who contributed on the Discord discussion when discussing the concept of the Petrolith, that they wanted a non-speaking boss.
Backstory: One day, creatures known as Petrolith awakened from the abyss and begin attacking human for no apparent reason. However the ugly truth is much more complicated, as her existence tied to the sin of mankind, as manifestation of malice, corruption and degradation through time of the world.
Long ago, when Somerset is still pure, before the climate change that raised the sea level and drowned the land, there’s a paradise nurtured by she who they called as Chrysalis, the golden goddess butterfly. She’s a symbol of an everlasting prosperity under her wings emanate the warmth of life, and the reason why the planet called Somerset, as the mythical butterfly is the reason why every islands are tropical haven for everyone.
Chrysalis born after the first ice age of the planet passed, when lifeforms began to evolve rapidly in response to the changing environment. In the thriving wilderness of flowers and endless lush green forest, the golden butterfly bloomed, who embodies the change of season and kindness of nature. She spread her blessing to the land until mankind entered the advanced stage of civilization which akin to the Bronze Age of our world.
With establishment of borders that separate people, so comes laws that keeps everything in the right order. However, from morality and religion also comes persecution, where some start to judge others in accusation of crime, and so born the concept of sin, that there’s good and evil. Humanity begin to lose their innocence as knowledge raised, and some misused such power, to abuse others for their benefit. Money, treasury, riches, green and lust breed into malice. This leads to destruction and bloodshed, as war started, and an even more horrible act such as slavery become more common. Even the dead cannot rest well, as those who buried within graves still hold resentment, desire of vengeance. Just like a drop of poison into a body of water, their sickness seeps into the bottom and continue to grow as years passed…
Deep underground, there’s a hollow space that humanity refers as the “Inner Earth” where all that hatred seep into the mud. In truth, this place is nothing but natural cavity filled with organic mass of the dead turned into what known as fossil fuel. At first, there’s nothing but microbes in there, but as mankind continue to commit evil deeds and pervasive degradation peaked, depravity becomes corruption, which gives birth to a monster that embodies the sin of man. So then born the leviathan named Mavros who raised a legion of creature known as Children of the Black Sea, that mankind later called as Petrolith.
From the ocean, Mavros and her children invade the surface world, terrorizing the land. Nothing can stand against manifestation of malevolence itself, that exist only to destroy everything in nature. However, the pollution did not go unchecked, as Chrysalis who represent purity would not allow an evil entity of corruption run for free. Though Mavros is much more powerful and that she’s backed with larger number of army, Chrysalis manage to purge their power by purifying them along with the entire land. Though it does not destroy Mavros, the legion of the Black Sea were extinguished. Mavros sink back into the depth, waiting for her time to return…
Ever since, Chrysalis remembered as a “goddess” of Somerset that sacrificed herself to save the world. However, that’s not what actually happened. Chrysalis were still alive, only weakened. She was worshipped and gained numerous of followers, but she never was a divine being or the likes. All that she wanted to do is to makes sure that mankind understand the importance of protecting the earth, their homeland, not just for the ecosystem but also for themselves.
Sadly, as centuries passed, humanity begin to forgot that they owed their life to the planet. The fear that was implanted by Mavros lingers in the heart of man, as war taught them that only the strong would survive. Hunger for power, nations began attacking each other from years and years, driven by ego and corrupted by hatred. The teaching of Chrysalis remain nothing but faith for those who worshipped her, and little still believed on her. Unable to stop or bear witness to degradation of the living, the depressed goddess put herself to sleep, abandoning Somerset that forgotten about her.
Thousands years after the battle, the world completely drowned due to the inevitable climate change, in which where the age of Zaratans become the new hope of mankind. However, even this doesn’t last for long, because the insatiable desire of man for riches leads to conflict and destruction. This peaked when technology industrialized every society of Somerset, and fueled by greed, everyone start digging for precious resources, disregarding its damage to the environment, ignoring the death of many innocent life.
Mavros been been waiting in deep slumber, as she knew that the corruption of human moral would soon lead to her awakening. All that it took is a single drill into the seabed, as the key to open the gate to the Black Sea, freeing her and the rest of her children.
Base Stats:
- Strength: Although rather irrelevant since she does not use her body for melee combat, she’s still extremely strong, as she can bulldoze buildings through cities. Her hands which are like crustacean version of a scythe can easily demolish hills or portion of larger earthly structure.
- Durability: Extremely durable and resilience, will be explained below.
- Mobility: Considering her size and weight, she’s rather slow. Though she still swim faster than most of sea animals or when compared to large ships. When in land, she’s more fierce, as going out from the ocean always means that she’s about to hunt and to destroy.
Overall, Charybdis is like a massive, submersible naval battleship. Her durability is like warships multiplied many times, and that assume they’re not further dampened by her resistances. She took no damage from impurities, including pollution and corruption. She deals double damage to natural environment or anything connected to nature, may it be physically, magically or spiritually. She’s vulnerable to purity, such as what purify and cleanse the world, which can gradually weaken her.
Honestly, she’s nigh-indestructible on this power level, but this is why there’s Chrysalis! Once summoned, she will blow her wings and purify everything on the battlefield, purging out pollution and destroy large percentage of the Petrolith, with the survivors would be close to dying. This will weaken Charybdis and makes her vulnerable!
Once weakened, Charybdis become exceptionally weak to any form of power related to nature and life in general.
Abilities: Charybdis has so many abilities and she’s not even the most powerful of EBG bosses since her power level is much inferior to EBG boss round 17 (Youlong the dragon of calamity) and yet she’s still really hard to kill. Her capability to prolong the battle and to corrupt more things the more the battle dragged would makes sure that she remain at her prime while others gets weaker and weaker. Her style of battle is not to fight a single individual but constantly debuffing, poisoning everything in a slow, painful death, until the inevitable end of the world.
Before we go into her advanced abilities, we need to list her resistance under this special ability…
Mother of the Black Sea: As she’s the one who gives birth to all Petrolith (Children of the Black Sea) which includes the Scylla, she has all of their power. Although this doesn’t meant that she’s better at every single subjects in compared to her child, she still can do what they can do to a degree.
( This includes the decay from the Prophetess, can freeze the world like the Whisperer and can burn the land just like the Sovereign. Has mental power like the Stalker, can launch projectiles like the Chimera, could spread virus like the Crawler, can regenerate and reshape their body like the Hunter. They also able to consume plastic and weaponize them, while they can turn crude oil into smoke like the Smoker, plus have their hardness of exoskeleton. They could also manipulate matters in nature just like the Queen, and can sucks the life of others like the Reaper. They can spew poisonous slime like the Abomination, and most importantly, they can pollute the ENTIRE ocean like the Tower of Corruption )
So let’s try to classify all of them to the right categories!
[ Elemental ]
Death: The ability that the Prophetess of Plague inherited. Although what Mavros had isn’t as deadly as what her daughter got (and that she does not sing), she got the greater influence. Any lifeforms including the ecosystem itself will gradually weaken and dying, with its effect spanning over hundreds of kilometers away from her. Those on the outer range would barely be affected by anyone under ten kilometers would be drained faster. Overall, in an hour or two, anything around Charybdis begin to wither, rot and decay.
Ice: What the Whisperer in the Mist used is only the washed-down version of what his mother had. Mavros didn’t need to breathes misty vapor to freeze the world, because although her method is slower, it’s what can truly encased the world in ice. When desired, Mavros can drops temperature of the weather to a drastic amount, affecting a big nation at maximum range. Though if given enough time and effort, she can cause a REAL ice age in about a month.
Fire: On this case, she’s even more terrifying than the Sovereign of Flame because she her complete control over fuel of the flame. (Read “Oil” on the Pollution Type later) Mavros is the only Petrolith that can ignite any petroleum-based material with nothing by simply willing it. This has a limited range but what really matters is her concentration and perception, which mean as long as she can focus herself and as long as she knew that there’s an oil factory somewhere, she can makes it explode. This is one of her most proficient skill among her (offensive) elemental ability, which grant her huge range of fire moves. (Will be listed later)
[ Attributes / Target / Catalyst ]
Mind: What passed down to the Laughing Stalker, although vastly different in caliber. Mavros does not cast illusion or bend the mind of others, but instead cause psychological degradation for any sentient being that’s exposed too against her. This is connected to some of her special abilities such as Unnatural Degradation.
Body: Though her colossal mass doesn’t allow her to modify her body as much as Ravenous Hunter, she can do it to a degree. She can temporarily enhance her flesh or bones with various attributes, such as hardening them or infuse them with various of her toxic abilities. Thankfully, her regeneration/healing isn’t as insane as what the Hunter had, or she would be practically unbeatable on this power level.
Soul: What the Reaper of Revenant learned from her. Mavros can’t do stuff like turning into a ghost, but she instead able to affect the spirit of others as much as she can affect the living themselves. This also allow her to absorb life energy, which will be explained in one of her special move.
Magic: Although not a savant bender like the Queen of Catastrophe, Mavros possessed ancient power that’s similar to magic since she’s an embodiment of malice, among many other things that she symbolized, such as the “sin” of humanity. Her magical power mostly used to enhance her moves, that will be explained later.
Energy: I promise that it’s not as overpowered as it sounds like. Just like the Screaming Chimera, Mavros can shoot projectiles and to empower them, making them energized. Although they do not control energy itself, they can charge their attacks with kinetic force and chemical reaction. It’s even much easier for Mavros because she can draw energy from her seemingly-endless fossil fuel that she can burn and harness easily.
[ Pollution Types & Toxicity Media ]
Oil: The root of pollution in the world. It all begin with fossil fuel, thus are their source of power. Unlike the Tower of Corruption that merely leaking pollution to the ocean, Mavros can completely control ANY form of petroleum material, with very little limitation. It’s arguably her true strength as it’s what fueled her, and that there’s a virtually unlimited amount of fossil fuel in the planet. (Read “Underground Resource” on her advanced ability section later) With this, Mavros can do whatever she wanted with them, such as spraying the land with flammable fluid or even creating construct made of asphalt. More to be listed later.
Plastic: The primary product of oil and another major pollution to the world. This is a rather complex creation since it require extensive chemical process with ingredients that might not be readily available, BUT she can also consume and store plastic, weaponizing them like the Deep Dweller, only in a whole new level. Because plastics is a petroleum product, Mavros can control unlimited amount of them from the surrounding ocean. She can digest and reused them into various different function, listed later.
Smoke: The derivative byproduct and effect of burning fossil fuel, that is carbon dioxide, among others in the mix. This is the easiest feat for her to do since it took literally nothing but breathing for her, and it’s an automatic process, like how our body naturally sweats in distress. Just like the Smoldering Smoker that vent out smoke from their body, Mavros also did the same, but she’s like a huge battleship with countless chimneys because these gases can seeps out from every opening of her armor.
Acid: Another form of disaster caused by pollution originated from fossil fuel, that is unhealthy level of acid in the environment. This ability of Mavros is not as disgusting as what the Rotten Abomination had, but more lethal to the living and the environment. She can easily amplify acidity level of the ocean, cause acid rain, et cetera~
Microbiology: Although every Petrolith can spew poison, few could went into microscopic level. Unlike the Grave Crawler that specialized in zombie virus, Mavros can spread her infection with bacteria and such microbial agents with every touch and contact. She doesn’t revive the dead but she did brought various of deadly diseases, especially those that stems from oil spill or pollution in general.
Now that we’re done with what Charybdis can do based on the Scylla, here are her own abilities that are unique to herself. However this will be connected to the previous section, as this will include her advanced technique which may be based on her previously mentioned capabilities.
Petrol Pollution: As the “Incarnation of Pollution” there’s simply too many things that can she can do related with pollution. Basically, as long as it’s a pollution based on petroleum, then assume that she can do all of them. This ranges from polluting the land, ocean, sky, and every other ecosystem, may it be natural or artificial.
Blackened Rocks: Petroleum exist in many forms including asphalt, bitumen, and even kerogen. Mavros can either draw them from the surrounding environment or make one by processing and solidifying crude oil into rocky shapes. This can be spiky projectiles, a huge boulder, even walls and such constructs. She can control them remotely, levitating and tossing them as she please, breaking and reshaping them as she sees fit.
Underground Resource: Other than huge amount of oil that exist deep within the earth, there’s also kerogen which is organic matter in sedimentary rock, and considered to be the most abundant source of organic compound on the real world, exceeding total organic content of living matter by ten thousand fold. Due to this, Mavros has practically unlimited resource to use for the entire round, even in theoretical “bad ending” when all Zaratans are gone.
Hydrophobic Coating: Though Mavros can be considered a sea creature, she originally dwell in the “Black Sea” which is an underground oil deposit, and since oil are hydrophobic, Mavros can be the same. This means she can swim in the ocean even without a real contact to the water. She did this by coating herself in oily substance that’s so viscous and thick that it worked like an armor with similar property like body fat. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty weak protection and only good isolating herself from the ocean.
Oil Cannonballs: As mentioned in her “Mother of the Black Sea” abilities, especially about the Fire and Oil section, she can spray the land with flammable fluid, and that she can ignite them as she please. When she mix both of them, she can literally send projectiles of highly-flammable fuel (which no longer colored black because these are not crude oil, instead are like gasoline for cars) in varying shape and size, then launch them like cannonballs, which may either explode on contact, or would splashing out first before they burst to flames. Depending on the variation, they would be like a huge Molotov bomb or straight out napalm bombs.
Flamethrower Breath: The simplest thing to do when she can use so much petroleum as a source of energy is to burn and breathe them out from her mouth. She can release a constant stream of flame like a gigantic flamethrower, enough to make huge tunnel of fire to wrap multiple warships in a long straight line. She can do this for a long while, more than a minute if she wanted, and can potentially reduce an entire forest to ashes, scorched the ground black, evaporating every water on the area.
Bitumen Bombs: Natural form of asphalt often called bitumen instead, which are like black oily rocks that are toxic and flammable. However by supercharging them (like what the Screaming Chimera do) with energy, she can keep them in solid shape while igniting the inner core of the rock to point that it become incandescent, with glowing light escapes from the crack to the surface. This weapon worked rather similar to nuclear weapon but looks more like meteor, though different than both of them. When the projectile done charging and fired, she can blow open a big hill, burning down small village or about the size of a city block. Took about 10 seconds for charging. Due to the size of the projectile, it’s a rather slow shot (like a tossing a rock with a catapult) so it can be seen from afar and dodged with enough preparation.
Asphalt Berg: Mavros can manipulate and levitate a huge chunk of earthly body as long as they’re diluted and polluted enough with petroleum. With enough effort, or by finding the right spot, Mavros can literally draw out a portion of the inner earth’s content out, thus controlling huge raw black rocks such as asphalt, bitumen or kerogen. Though their weight makes it slow to move around, she can use them as shield, or to drop them somewhere, thus crushing everyone down. She can optionally spend enough energy and concentrating them into the berg, igniting massive explosion that’s comparable to a low-caliber nuclear explosion.
Smoking Hazard: Though Mavros cannot really control the air unlike the Queen of Catastrophe, she can control the carbon dioxide within. Since she can manipulate any form of pollution including poisonous gases, she can make extreme deadly smokes that would kill most of living being in minutes. It’s far more lethal than directly exposed to heavy amount of smoke in a wildfire and more or less as deadly as pesticide, especially remembering that creation of pesticide involves petroleum.
Heated Plastic: Unlike the webs of Deep Dweller that merely adhesive, Mavros can spray heated plastic and get caught by them sounds as painful as that sounds like. She can spew tons amount of them from her mouth, either as a stream or as a big web of sticky mess. They’re more like nuisance than sudden death, since it’s hard to get them off and they’re excruciatingly tormenting, even though it would definitely deal less damage than boiling oil.
Boiling Oil: Yep she can do this too and it’s as painful as it sounds like. She can shower heated, boiling oil from her mouth, and in huge quantity.
Super Acid: As mentioned in Acid section in “Mother of the Black Sea” ability, she can amplify acidity level in the environment, which is a natural effect of climate change, but she can makes it way worse by swallowing large volume of water, processing them into extremely acidic liquid, and spew them out again. The substance can vary in chemical composition but they’re all limited from what can be made from hydrocarbon, such as sulfuric acid that was used by the infamous acid bath murderer, John Haigh. The worst of super acids are hydrochloric acid which can melt organism as it’s part of gastric acid, or hydrofluoric acid that’s so corrosive that scientist noted them for “eat practically anything” including glasses. Either way, the acids of Mavros can be thrown in large quantity, enough to melt sturdy stone walls of a cliff.
Unnatural Degradation: In presence of Mavros, everything in nature would gradually degrade in quality as everything will be more corrupted, including non-physical aspect such as mind and soul. Although it’s not deadly or dangerous, it’s extremely bad on the long run because even without her need to fight, she can continuously influence mankind of Somerset, since she’s born from the sin of man and their evil deeds. As seen in the backstory, the fear and hatred that she implanted last even after her defeat, further pushing mankind into degeneracy, making them incline on destroying nature. Which is why banishing Mavros or to spare her like what the Chrysalis did would not solve the issue, because everyone become increasingly negative as time goes.
Evil Invocation: Related to Unnatural Degradation but much worse. Those that continuously under influence of Mavros, including whoever fought her or simply around her side would has their darker side becoming increasingly dominant. Which mean, those that are naturally destructive would get more destructive. Those who suppressed harmful desire such as murderous intent, obsession with revenge, and such would gets more unbearable until it took over them. Even if someone is a nice person and they didn’t want to hurt other, but has malevolence power, it would more likely gets out of control. For example, a man inherit a demonic bloodline and they try to keep it under control, but it would become increasingly difficult to point that they would eventually get berserk thanks to influence of Mavros.
ULTIMATE MOVES!
(NOTE: Names that written like “example / example” means that they have multiple names, mostly because both sounds good and I can’t decide which to use)
Malice Embodiment: Mavros is being born from destructive hatred to nature and the living, that only will bring malice to the world. When this hatred peaked, she can temporarily concentrate everything into her body, rejecting influence of others, while causing harm to all that touched her. Although it doesn’t makes her impervious or invincible, most of attacks would decay and degrade, especially anything related to nature and life, which mean that physical contact could be fatal. During this phase, her entire body will be drenched entirely black (like a silhouette) with swirling oil-colored pattern flows on her surface. When she swim, she leaves trail of “darkness” in her path, and while on land, black mark spread to the surrounding earth. (Last for a short moment and only usable when she truly had enough)
Needle of Death / Fatal Spike: Though Mavros rarely ever focused on a single target, she had this special move that used to kill one specific target. Mavros will create a single spike and empower it with death aura, which basically combining the technique of both Prophetess of Plague and Screaming Chimera into one. This create a black spear that brims with sickening aura, about in the size of missiles, but much longer. Once fully charge she will spit it from her mouth, but depending on the distance, she might launch it upward like how missile fired to the sky before arching downward to their target. This is because the projectile is heavy and large, yet she use ignition (like how explosive used to launch cannons) to prevent it from exploding, as she need the projectile to be intact when it reach its target in order to inject the deadly poison. How deadly it is? Anything weaker than an adult Zaratan would instantly die, while adult Zaratan would still die in few minutes or hours depending on where they got hit. Fortunately it’s not powerful enough to penetrate the defense of prehistoric Zaratan such as Rockenford, where the boss battle happens.
Sea of the Dead: The true potential of she who symbolize pollution, poison, death and decay to the environment, especially to the ocean. Mavros will let her corrupting essence leak out along with viscous slimy toxic sludge and crude oil as catalyst to her deadly power. This will pollution spread incredibly fast and even if it’s stopped, it would leave irreversible damage to the environment as an entire ocean would be turned into a dead zone as everything in the ecosystem will die. Though it would not affect the land, under prolonged exposure, it will kill every Zaratans in the area, thus game over.
Life Sapping: By instilling death aura and sucks out life from natural environment, she can accelerate the deadly effect that she exude.
Climate Change: She can gradually and forcefully changes the order of climate in the world through various means. This ranges from simply heating the weather, to even summoning an ice age, given enough time. Which is why Mavros is a bad influence to the world in the long run.
Frozen Ocean: By absorbing heat and life energy from her surrounding, she can literally makes the surrounding ocean freeze.
Burning Ocean: By using the Sea of the Dead or by simply pouring enough fuel to the ocean, she can makes large portion of the sea to burn. Of course only the surface burn because oil would always float on top of water, but nevertheless, the flame can spread wide and burn an entire archipelago.
Burning Land: Variation of Burning Ocean that can be used together. By dousing the entire island with oil, she can ignite them in wildfire that’s especially intense in location that’s heavily drenched by her oil. Mavros can levitate and pour in petroleum either as waterfall, rain, or just slam the giant ball down.
Self Ignition / Overfuel: As the body of Mavros contain huge amount of fuel that she can burn into energy, she can makes her energized by igniting herself. The first phase would simply looks like she’s burning inside out, to point that she’s glowing incandescent. This is actually a very harmful choice for herself because even if she had absolute control of petroleum, and even if she can burn them as much as she’s wanted, it doesn’t meant she’s immune to heat and flame. This would however makes her overwhelmingly powerful as she moves twice faster and seemingly much lighter, exchanging defense for offense as she react fiercely and fight violently. This is usable only in land because putting her back to the ocean will revert the effect. Destroying her at this moment will makes her detonate into huge explosion, killing the entire island, thus game over.
Flame of Extinction / Ashes to Ashes: The absolute final move out of desperation, a dying scream that wishes to destroy the world to drag down everyone along with her. Only available when she used Self Ignition / Overfuel and will be remain accessible even when she’s in water, because what important is that her internal organs are burning. She would be halfway submersed into the ocean when using this, with her upper section rising up and mouth opens wide. Temperature around her will rise into extreme level as she emit unbearable heat that the surrounding water would begin to evaporate. She will condense every amount of energy in her body into a single breath, into a bomb made of enormous amount of fuel that are both liquid and gasses, condensed into a solid projectile. After a long charge, the shining bright flame will be released to the sky which explode into what resemble atomic bomb, though it’s more closer to a napalm. This bomb imbued with death and decay power, spreading into the world along with its destructive shockwave and searing heat. The bomb by itself can destroy an entire nation, but its true hazard is that it will incinerate everything in nature, effectively causing death to any form of ecosystem in the planet, up to a huge radius. If this ever fired, it’s an automatic game over because regardless if you survived or not, the Zaratan would die. Assuming it missed its target, it will still poison the world with pollution, blanketing everything in smoke and prevent sunlight from shining, making the land wither and ocean blackened. This will guarantee a total extinction of every species, as the irreversible ecological issue would means no survival in the long term.
Fighting Style: Charybdis is overwhelmingly powerful on the current power level, but she’s not a fighter and possess almost no combat skill. She’s specialized in destroying the ecosystem because she’s embodiment of pollution that exist as the nemesis of nature. She never focused on a single target and would care more about killing the Zaratan than actually beating the players.
Strategies versus the Boss: Charybdis is admittedly a really tough boss to bring down. Recently, EBG bosses been very OP because they need to be able to handle many players, and that they’re designed to eliminate anyone underpowered. However, Mavros is simply tough because she’s a defense-oriented character. Her style is to constantly weaken everyone with various types of poison and pollution, while everything in nature progressively degrades, getting weaker and weaker, especially due to her death aura.
Another reason why Mavros is pretty dang OP is that because Chrysalis exist and she will definitely going to blow the boss at least once. This will literally wipe out her entire legion because even Scylla classes would be terminally weakened, assuming they survived. This is important to makes Mavros vulnerable, and thus her defense would drop down significantly, forcing her to use her expansive list of abilities to cope with multiple situations.
On the first phase, Charybdis would be on the ocean, mostly underwater, or partially submerged. During this phase, Coda and such who could battled underwater would be really helpful, especially since Charybdis rarely move at the start of the battle, making it easy to attack her.
When she’s on the ocean, we need people who can attack from afar, such as Bhod that can launch fiery bombardment, or sharpshooters like Yakaira and Lyn. Also, regardless of their location, Kestrel can blast the boss by summoning thunderstorm, given that she had enough time to make one. Remember that the boss would receive extra damage from nature-based moves once she’s weakened by the Chrysalis, and lightning bolt would be considered one.
Raphael would be important at all time because he can purify everyone along with the world. This can be used to further weaken the boss. Since he cannot be harmed by manipulations and energy, then he could also block many of the attacks launched by the boss. He’s also key player on reviving Tsunami!
You will need Tsunami to win the game, or your winning chance would always be low, regardless of how strong you are. This is because Tsunami is specialized on cleaning the ocean and you need her in order to keep the Zaratans alive, or everyone would drown. Raphael could be the one who would handle Tsunami’s purification.
Those such as Sidian has the versatility and freedom to either focus on cleaning the pollution, or supporting offensively with his flame. He would also be one of the unit that fight in melee, along with Icelia, Meyer, Allan, Luzia, Luca and Leven. Additionally, Sidian would help translating those who had trouble with communication, such as Coda.
Allan would be mostly useful on air and water. When in air, he could use his wind to disrupt the projectiles of the boss or to weaken her flame. When in water, his ultimate move would be super useful against the ultimate moves of the boss such as Burning Ocean or even Sea of the Dead although it risk of himself get harmed. Nevertheless, a massive whirlpool can potentially purge the pollution or at least suck them down into one point, so it’s easier to be purified by others.
Keep your strongest ultimate moves when you really need them! Those such as Icelia who command the power of ice can be very important when the boss went into their final phase, when she get so heated that she could potentially detonate and blow the island. Optionally, Tsunami can easily solve the issue since she’s literally water.
In the end, those with the most powerful ultimate moves such as Bhod, Lyn, Raphael and Icelia would be most important in the final phase of the boss.
Disclaimer: Though the concept of the boss primarily created by myself, their design and details of features are contribution of multiple players. Special thanks to @MistickMage @Sandcat @litericy and @Logia-senpai for helping me out with both the boss and the story of the entire round!
Trivia and Fun Facts: Chrysalis refers to a development stage of butterfly where they become encased in gold-like coating. It originates from Latin or Green, as gold can be translated chrysos. Meanwhile, Mavros simply means black in Greek. (Not the Latin version, don’t use the Latin version)
Chrysalis was once made as nothing but a random plot device for me to add into Meyer’s form. Her inclusion to the lore of the boss battle is out of my plan.
Charybdis is the second among two only EBG bosses that are modeled based on sea creature and that fight on the ocean. The first one is the boss of round 8, Mal’zagub which is basically a Lovecraftian eldritch deity based on Cthulhu which seek to gain the power of Atlantis, thus are enemy of Poiseidon and Hades. His difference between Mavros is that his power is shapeshifting and mostly revolved on manipulating water, while Mavros is all about pollution and pestilence.
Charybdis is the second among two only EBG boss to be designed by multiple author. The first time it ever happened, it was the subsection of round 10 known as the “Fight For Fun” mini game which leads into a plot twist that behind a certain government there’s a certain mad scientist.
In order to avoid similarity with the boss of EBG round 17, we avoid using any semblance of creature that resemble dragon, especially one that’s serpentine. Even more importantly, we can’t use too much tentacles because the final boss of round 18 already has a lot of them. I also keep in mind to make sure that Mavros is different than Mal’zagub which has humanoid body but can shapeshift into multiple forms.
After discussing with the players that’s involved in the making of Somerset, many such as Mistick and Sandy likes the idea of something with slimy or oily, with tentacles or something wormy. Logia thought that there’s nothing better to be related to fossil fuel than a real fossil, so I went on making the boss looks like a prehistoric sea creature. The pictures used to represent the boss also mostly voted by the players.
Charybdis as code name of the boss was suggested by Sandy and Ricy. At the same time, Ricy also the one who invented the term Petrolith.
All the names of the Scylla such as the Prophetess and the likes as man-made and thus not their real names.
I almost want to humanize Charybdis, but as I discussed it with everyone else, they said that we had enough of bosses with angst backstory, and they want a purely evil boss instead. This originate with the idea of Mistick about the boss being mindlessly destroying the ocean without care as it is evil. Meanwhile, Ricy wanted the boss to be a force of nature, completely and purely evil, as he said that it fits greatly with the theme of humans not being responsible for their actions. In the end, she became an embodiment of pure malevolence, to represent the ugly sins of mankind that they committed to the world.
Epic Battle Game 