Five Evermon arrived today and the Everdex is up to 76. One of them does something no Evermon has done before, so that one goes last.
The one that is friendly at the front
Nº072
Venomouse
Small, grey and delighted to meet you, with its front half entirely sincere about that. The tail is a separate arrangement and has agreed to nothing.
Venomouse is a small grey mouse and it is genuinely pleased to see you. The problem is at the other end: it carries a scorpion's sting held up and clear of itself, which is the only part of it that has not agreed to be friendly.
Nº073
Ratcid
Grew up, stood up, and sharpened everything on the way. It opens with the tail and keeps the claws back for whatever is still upright afterwards.
At Lv.28 it stands up. Ratcid keeps the tail — longer now, with a skull on it — and adds four purple claws it did not have before. It opens with the tail and keeps the claws back for whatever is still upright afterwards.
Normal and Venom together is a sturdy pairing: three weaknesses, four resistances, and nothing a Spirit move can do to it at all.
The one that comes in two
Nº074
Tentattack
Four arms, no bones and no particular hurry. The two you can see are a courtesy; it is the other two that decide how the conversation ends.
Tentattack is four arms and a head, and it is the first Evermon in the game with a male and a female.
They are the same creature — same stats, same moves, same everything that decides a fight. The male is red and has a moustache. The female is pink and wears a bow. Which one you meet is a coin flip, and the Everdex has a ♂ / ♀ switch under the portrait next to the shiny one, so you can look at both.
It is appearance and nothing else, deliberately. A creature that was stronger for being one or the other would turn a coin flip you cannot control into an advantage, and catching the wrong one would feel like bad luck rather than variety.
No other Evermon has a sex. The other 75 are not secretly male — they simply do not have one, because nobody has drawn them twice. If that changes for a creature later, it will be a second drawing and nothing else.
Underneath all that it is the sturdiest thing in the game so far: Zilla and Tide together is weak to only two types, and takes a quarter damage from Flame.
The one that was sitting very still
Nº075
Zilliac
Sits with its eyes shut and its hands arranged just so, and has been doing it since before anybody started counting. Whatever it is waiting to be sure of, it is nearly sure.
Zilliac sits cross-legged with its eyes shut and has been doing it since before anybody started counting. It is not asleep. It is nearly sure of something.
Nº076
Scaliac
It has finished deciding, and every eye it was keeping shut is open. Four arms, none of them in a hurry, and it watches four different things at once without turning its head.
Then it finishes deciding. Scaliac stays exactly where it was sitting, and every eye it was keeping shut is open — one on its head, one in its chest, and one on the end of each of its four arms. It watches four different things at once without turning its head, and it still has not stood up.
It is also made of glass on purpose. Zilla and Psyche together is the most fragile pairing in the Everdex — weak to six types — so it was built to win the fights it does get rather than survive the ones it does not. Scaliac is the third-fastest final form in the game and has the least health of any of them.
Three new moves
Septic Claw
Everything it has, put through four claws at once, and nothing held back to guard with. What gets in afterwards was never the claws' doing.
Ratcid's finisher, and the reason it grew the claws.
Coil Lash
An arm comes round faster than anything that size has any business moving. The sound arrives second.
Drag Under
Takes hold and goes down with it. Whatever it was standing on stops being relevant.
Both of these exist because of a problem worth explaining. Nearly every Zilla move in the game needs a body with feet, a tail or a shoulder of hardened scales — they are written for enormous things that walk. Tentattack is four arms and a head, and could not perform a single one of them below 70 power. So Zilla got two moves that a creature with no legs can actually do, and Zilliac turns out to want one of them too.
And two faces
Kakilln and Slaughterfly were both redrawn this week — their faces, mostly. Their rare colours were redrawn with them, because a shiny is made from the ordinary artwork and quietly goes stale when that changes.