#qurio

Will post more soon.

If Narwha waits for Ibushi to find her around Kamura, she likely has selected a good feeding spot, for herself or her young. The former due to how Ibushi may need to travel hundreds of kilometers to reach her, perhaps taking weeks to get there. The latter due to how Narwha will need the nutrition for her precocial babies and waiting for weeks without food to birth children into a locale without food seems like a bad idea.

Qurio may have been an easy prey source for the storm serpents, as the two are well equipped to kill many of them en masse with their area-of-effect abilities and swallow their prey whole. Without them, they likely take more aeroplankton or small volant endemic life. The amount of Spiribirds and Spiribugs around Kamura may make up a decent amount of Qurio-sized fare.

We do not know how long it was between the slaying of the Storm Serpents in Rise and the stirrings of Qurio activity that spark the plot of Sunbreak, but we do know that the Kingdom and Kamura are quite close by. Close enough for both Lunagaron to travel from the Citadel when displaced, as per the first appearance of it we see in game after hunting the Daimyo Hermitaur. While Lunagaron is quite the mobile animal, and lives in montane/alpine regions, it is clearly new to the Shrine Ruins, and to Kamura as a whole, based upon dialogue.

If not slain, the juvenile storm serpents may have arose and handled much of the Qurio outbreak around the ruins. The fact that Kamura seems to lack any history with afflicted monsters, despite being near the Kingdom and Malzenos that must die at times and leave behind free-flying Qurio, it seems to be an indicator that the Qurio have not been much of an issue for the Shrine Ruins in the past few centuries. While Gaismagorm are overtly subterranean and Malzeno have only been found around the Citadel, the Qurio are clearly able to fly long distances in search of new hosts. The 100 and 50 year timeframes that are used to describe the surfacing of Gaismagorm and the next recorded infected Malzeno respectively line up decently with the 50 year periods between the storm serpents drawing near, so it may not be unreasonable to think that such ecological disturbances are part of an evolved relationship in which nature manages its own disasters.

These two are, if I'm not mistaken, the only two big monsters that live most of the time underground and although I don't think they feed on the same. Shara feeds on bioenergy and Gaismagorn uses the Qurio to absorb nutrients (not sure about this)

I forgot Kulve Taroth, she also lives underground, so I guess they had fights too.

Although maybe not because they don't live on the same continent. Apart from Kulve and Shara.

I would like to theorize that Gaismagorm is technically a Deep Sea Elder Dragon, not an Underground Elder Dragon given its dens location. It's probably best to explain how bioenergy and dragon energy work to explain the feeding methods of both Shara Ishvalda, Gaismagorm and the beginnings of Xeno Jiiva.

Bioenergy (or dragon energy) is everywhere, in the water, in the earth and in the air we breathe. It flows throughout the world. Xeno'Jiiva are born when this energy coalesces in one spot like a whirlpool. Shara Ishvalda meanwhile are drawn to the natural flow of this energy so they move with the flow of the bio energy underground and take root where it is most prevalent at the time. These two instances often occur after a large elder dragon has died.

Gaismagorm is a different beast.

Gaismagorm was, and possibly still is, an ambush predator for deep sea elder dragons. Instead of supping on bioenergy - it sends out scouts of a sort in waves that we have grown to know as:

The Qurio. A relatively simple life-form in the shape of a fish that could flutter around with bright colouration to lure prey. One could say that they are actually the closest in biology to a Xeno'Jiiva, as both are comprised of bioenergy.

The Qurio were Gaismagorm's lure for elder dragons like Ceadeus; a means of attracting these dragons to the cave of Gaismagorm so that the dreaded devil could grab them with its great arms and pull them into its lair to feast.

But over time, creatures tend to get wise to one's tricks, so it's a question of adapt or die. So the Qurio became parasitic leeches that would drain bioenergy from other elder dragons to give to Gaismagorm. They grew more complex, powered by Gaismagorm to find and hunt down prey instead of just luring it. But seas can run empty, and when they do - new sources must be acquired. So the Qurio began to fly. Thus began the plague on air and land.

...and how they found the species of Elder Dragon called Malzeno.

Unlike most other monsters, Malzeno were not drained but instead gained a symbiotic relationship with the Qurio, essentially leeching Gaismagorms' bio energy for themselves through the Qurio.

However, I am getting off topic.

You want to know if Gaismagorm and Shara Ishvalda fight and how often. I would say no.

Shara Ishvalda prefer arid areas and mountains, whereas Gaismagorm is going to be underground under entire oceans and seas. The two simply would not meet unless there was a large source of bioenergy between their individual biomes that was too irresistible for either to ignore.

-Leo Briarworth

To piggyback off of Leo's theory, it could be surmised that the Qurio started out as single-celled organisms during the time that Gaismagorm as a species dwelled in oceanic trenches, where light can't easily penetrate except in very specific forms and down to a certain depth. You see, taking a close look at the Qurio themselves, they give off a peculiar red glow. It's something that we can pick up on easily at a glance, something that monsters can see and follow above the ocean's depths... but past around 4.6 meters below the surface, red light begins to be absorbed as light waves are scattered.

In the deep ocean, there are creatures that use light to hunt, luring prey with a nice, shiny promise of food that sometimes glows to scare off smaller, less capable predators. In this same vein, light can be shown on prey that most creatures wouldn't be able to detect otherwise. It isn't too much of a stretch to assume that this same principle was followed before Gaismagorm eventually made the transition from sea to land, when the Qurio were still parasites that fed on Gaismagorm and the nutrients it processed as it, too, fed.

Eventually, in time immemorial, though... something changed. Gaismagorm as a species grew and their prey didn't, so they continued to adapt, and so did their parasites to this ever-changing biome whilst they worked their way up the food chain. Eventually, fish and other creatures that lived in the ocean just weren't enough, so the species both had to broaden their horizons or die. Fins became legs, legs became wings, gills that filtered oxygen from the water became lungs and vents to expel waste and excess, unusable energy.

It could be assumed that they were out-competed in the air, so then they adapted to food they could reach without expending so much energy. Once aquatic, then aerial, then subterranean... it's a massive leap and seemingly a step backward evolutionarily, but the structure of Gaismagorm's larger pair of arms suggests that they were once wings and simply evolved into powerful limbs, too heavy for flight but perfect for tunneling through solid earth and stone. Down in giant tunnels, they didn't need powerful hind legs for taking to the skies, so those became vestigial, Gaismagorm's eyes shrank as an adaptation to low-light conditions, and the Qurio, their parasites... developed wings from fins used to swim through water and their host's innards.

We might never know what led Gaismagorm to start creating exit points in the ground for the Qurio to find their way out and feed, but somewhere down the line, the behavior was sparked and a new pattern of hunting was born. Gaismagorm, too large to easily leave their tunnels, had to find food somehow, so they began to rely on the Qurio, which in turn began to treat their host as a hive. They began to leave its body, taking to the skies, hunting down and draining precious lifeblood from monsters up topside, then returning to Gaismagorm to feed it what they'd stolen.

From there, the Gaismagorm could (and can) process the blood into something that the Qurio can eat--a form of energy expelled by the elder dragon, a waste product, pure and filtered down into everything that it can't use but they can.

In the simplest of terms, think of the Qurio as Bnahabra or Vespoids, feeding their larvae meat so that they can create a protein-rich slurry that they can actually digest. It's the same principle; both species rely entirely on each other to survive.

Afflicted Zuko

So, just saw Primordial Malzeno (haven't actually fought it due to controller drift souring the playing mood) and I thought: Hmmm... this might make ganondorf more reasonable to be in MH as a monster from that series (kind of like the unique monsters in Xenoblade).

To start off:

Demise - The first Gaismagorm to ever appear

Demise's curse - the Qurio

Ganondorf - Malzeno

Ganon - every Gaismagorm that came after Demise