| “ | He’s torn through our front line, he’s taken down some of our best, and he’s deliberately targeted and eliminated most of the capes who were in Bastion’s group. We have precious few left who can take a hit from this creature and survive it, and we’re running low on those who can wall off another tidal wave or block his path. | ” |
Leviathan (pronounced: "leh-VY-uh-than") is one of the Endbringers. He is the second of the Endbringers to appear and is considered the "middle child" between Behemoth and the Simurgh. Despite not possessing the sheer power of Behemoth or the intellect of the Simurgh, he shares strengths with both of them, making him a dangerous threat that can be unexpectedly cunning.[21]
Personality[]
Although less tactical than his sister, by no means is he stupid: Leviathan is more than capable of catching his opponents off guard with his brute cunning.[21][22][23] Despite being better than his brother at fighting humans,[24] many capes tend to underestimate him, letting their guard down to often fatal results.[25]
In combat, while his opponents race against the clock in an attempt to whittle him down,[26][27] Leviathan has a tendency to give them a little hope before crushing their morale[28][29] such as baiting out fights before relocating,[24] and wearing down his opponents' resources for walling off his waves and interrupting his movements.[30][31] When he fights more optimally, he leverages his powerset to fight only the fights he wants to, such as using hit-and-run tactics[32][33] and fighting like Skitter.[24] He is fully capable of choosing to keep his distance: in the Battle against Leviathan, if he went all out from the start, he would simply stay in the bay to call tidal waves from there.[34][35]
His Drives[]
Eidolon created the Endbringers with a fundamental drive to go to war against him.[36] However, because he unwittingly built Leviathan from structures derived from Eden's[37][38] pool of emergency resources, Leviathan also has a drive to take away resources necessary for survival, and thus force relocating communities into conflict.[39] As an example, shattering Kyushu started a refugee crisis and some 'small' wars.[40] All these drives are just as fundamental to him as water and food are for humans.[41]
Appearance[]
Leviathan is thirty feet tall with a seemingly disproportionate body and scaly green skin. He has a top-heavy appearance due to his hunched shoulders and the large cords of muscles standing out on his neck, upper torso, and shoulders. The top-heavy appearance is only strengthened by his much thinner forearms and calves, topped off with massive claws and digitigrade feet. At the rear end of his body is a prehensile whip-like tail around 40-50 feet long.[42] Leviathan weighs nearly nine tons.[43][44]
His face lacks any kind of mouth, nose, or ears, with the only features being four cracks containing glowing green orbs that resemble eyes. These eyes are placed asymmetrically, with three on the left side of the face and one on the right.[42] At some point, Leviathan seemingly developed a fifth eye.[45] This eye appeared due to battle damage.[46]
When walking on two legs he sways his upper body back and forth in sync with the swaying of his arms, using his tail for balance. However he is far more balanced and significantly faster once on all fours, fast enough to run on the surface of the water. He leaves an "afterimage" of water whenever he moves, equivalent to the volume of whatever body part is in motion, perpetually shrouding him in water.
Abilities and Powers[]
Macro-Hydrokinesis[]
Leviathan's main power is the manipulation of water on a massive scale.[47] He often preludes his arrival to his target with a torrential downpour and a tsunami-like wave, which he continuously calls down throughout the battle.
Leviathan lacks planetary range: a non-sandbagging Leviathan at least needs to remain in/near the general periphery of a city to call tsunami-like waves on it.[35] That said, he can still pull in water from presumably hundreds or even thousands of miles as demonstrated by his attacks on Newfoundland and Kyushu.
Tidal Waves[]
Leviathan's ability to call tidal waves presents an offensive time-intensive ability[48][26][49][50][51] that enables him to threaten and exert pressure against his opponents over a broad area.[52][53] They can also help him regain the initiative when put on the backfoot[54][55] or relocate.[56] Each tsunami-like wave that he calls over to crush a target location (e.g., city, landmass) is stronger and reaches further inland than the last.[44][26][57] For example, Leviathan's initial wave on Brockton Bay left the ferry, south-end harbor, and the Boardwalk in ruins.[58] However, his second summoned tidal wave was several stories high[59] and strong enough to tear the PHQ off its fixtures.[60] Despite being dampened by existing wreckage and Eidolon's barrier of ice, his fourth wave reached half a mile into the city, uprooted trees, and flattened entire neighborhoods.[61] After some hours at Kyushu,[62] Leviathan's tidal waves are powerful enough to eventually topple even tsunami-proof buildings.[57]
Leviathan's tsunami-like waves are periodic and take time to arrive;[63] he explicitly needs time to build up the strength of his waves in order to pull in his most devastating macro-scale attacks.[44][48] Indeed, a non-sandbagging[64] Leviathan could not fully stop the immediate tidal waves produced as collateral damage by Scion's blasts.[65] That said, the longer he continuously pulls in tidal waves on a target location, the more momentum he builds up with these waves.[49] Thus, their frequency will generally increase over time. For example, in the Battle against Leviathan, he only summoned three tidal waves[58][55][66] in the first hour, though Clockblocker's power did give the city a short reprieve,[67] and Leviathan did spend some time targeting the city's underground water infrastructure after his third wave. The time between his third and fourth wave was at least 3.4 minutes.[68] In contrast, after some hours[62] in Kyushu, he could summon tsunami-like waves every minute to hit the target location.[57]
Underground Water Manipulation[]
If the target location has intact underground water infrastructure (e.g., sewers, water supply network), instead of calling a tidal wave,[54] he can use this time to manipulate the water in pressurized pipes with the goal of destroying this infrastructure. After bringing these pipes to the surface and cracking open the ground,[69][70] Leviathan can then leverage these damaged pipes to temporarily shoot geysers of water at his targets.[71][72]
He can demonstrate the true strength of underground water manipulation when the target location has a large aquifer and/or coastal erosion vulnerability. When Leviathan approached Brockton Bay, Legend informed capes that Brockton Bay was a vulnerable soft target where they could not afford to buy time and let Leviathan build up the strength of his attacks[48] because the city was above an aquifer.[73] He could manipulate this aquifer in an attempt to erode the surrounding sand, silt, and rock, having the end goal of collapsing a section or perhaps most of the city.[74] After an hour,[75] a heavy slam from Leviathan could now collapse a section of Downtown to form a massive sinkhole[76] that would later be called a 'lake'.[77][78] If not stopped over the course of many hours,[51] Leviathan can eventually even sink or level entire islands as he demonstrated with the complete disappearance of Newfoundland[79] and the shattered, half-sunken Kyushu.[80]
Rainstorms[]
Leviathan can leverage his macro-hydrokinesis to move clouds and fog within range[11] and gather them into heavy storm clouds[81] in order to call down[34] torrential downpours over an area.[82][83] Besides adding more water to the battlefield, this rain cover can also make it harder for his opponents to see him from a distance.[27]
Smaller-Scale Hydrokinesis[]
In the immediate area, Leviathan can gather water, including quantities produced by his echo, to then send out as a small wave.[84] For example, he formed a wave five feet tall, fifteen feet wide on the same street as him for heaving a nearby van in his direction,[85] a wave three times as tall as Bitch in his immediate vicinity for attacking a grounded Scion,[86] and a wave behind Armsmaster in an attempt to hit him.[87] These waves can move as fast as a speeding car.[88] However, it is possible for a sufficiently powerful hydrokinetic to deflect his smaller-scale ranged attacks.[89]
For defense, Leviathan formed a rising geyser of water to block some of Legend's lasers.[90] He raised a spraying wall of water in an attempt to cover his retreat from Scion.[91]
He can use his power to stand on the water's surface.[92]
Limitations[]
Leviathan is Manton-limited: he is unable to manipulate the water within biological living entities.[93] His hydrokinesis is also crude and lacks fine control.[94] For example, he cannot fly as a cape had to fling a non-sandbagging[64] Leviathan at a flying Scion during Gold Morning.[95]
Water Echo[]
Along with his hydrokinesis, Leviathan has an "echo" of water that appears whenever he moves, adding vast amounts of water to the battlefield.[44] For any body part moved, voluntarily or being attacked, water will appear seemingly out of nowhere to fill the space in the air where that body part just was.[96] Taylor speculates that with a single step forward, he produces three times his body volume in water.[97]
Normal physics still applies to this water as it will maintain the speed and direction of the area that created it, even if the movement of that area changes.[98] For example, if he whips his tail in the direction of a nearby flying cape or crowd and then quickly stops it, the water produced from that movement will continue forward at the same deadly speed as the tail was moving (something he uses to greatly increase the range of his attacks).[99][100]
Brutes can find it harder to hurl Leviathan because of the water echo materializing between himself and their grip.[101] That said, Alexandria at Kyushu did manage to grab his tail and lift him into the air for a short time.[102]
Super-Speed[]
Unrelated to his hydrokinesis,[103] Leviathan has enhanced reflexes[104] and the ability to move at extremely fast speeds,[105] allowing him to move around the battlefield faster than many individuals can retreat and rapidly dodge slower ranged attacks. He could climb a 5-story building fast enough that his momentum carried him 20 feet above the rooftop.[106] On two legs, Leviathan can lunge forward at the speed of a locomotive[107] and swipe his claws as fast as a speeding car.[108] That said, non-speedsters such as Armsmaster[109] can aim dodge Leviathan's swipes with the help of combat analysis software.[110][111][87][112][113][114][115]
Leviathan crouching on all fours is typically an indication that he is preparing to charge into combat,[116][117][99][118] relocate,[119][28] or retreat.[120] On all fours, he is fast enough to run on the surface of water despite weighing nearly nine tons.[44][116] However, Clockblocker managed to tag a charging Leviathan with his power, albeit being half-immersed in Leviathan's echo.[121] It is also possible for non-speedsters to aim dodge his charge (e.g., Armsmaster with a grappling hook and combat analysis software).[122]
If he chooses, Leviathan can run slower with a loping gait.[123]
While underwater, he can use his hydrokinesis with his super-speed to move faster than normal.[94] In a growing lake that was at least three city blocks across, Leviathan swam fast enough to essentially be a teleporter, finding the drowning and executing them.[77][44] He can also swim underwater to relocate[56] or retreat.[124][29] However, Skitter could track his underwater movements as he could not accelerate or decelerate fast enough to kill her bugs via G-forces.[77] Leviathan's swimming speed was not enough to dislodge a sufficiently ramped-up Lung holding onto his back and shoulders;[125] Lung was less than 15 feet tall at the time.[126]
A speedster, distinct from a flier,[127][128] describes an individual that can move their body at a ridiculous pace[129] using either a Breaker state, propulsion, environmental manipulation, or alien biology.[130] While underwater, Leviathan could move far faster than any speedster on record[94] as of May 15, 2011.[131] The only known parahuman speedster faster than him is Secondhand; Secondhand is faster than light in his time-dilation state.[132]
Enhanced Strength[]
Although Leviathan is not as physically strong as Behemoth,[21] he still has enhanced strength[105] on the same level as Echidna.[133] He can bend steel with his tail,[134] rip a transformed Hookwolf in half,[135] and claw away layers of armor from the Cawthorne.[136][137] Leviathan is strong enough to break through several steel columns (each 3-4 feet across) and a barrier of steel blades by pushing them.[138] He pinned Alexandria to the ground in an attempt to drown her[139] and could hit hard enough to take Legend out of a fight.[140][141]
Leviathan can pick up debris,[142] capes,[143][144][145] Bitch's dogs,[146] and vehicles[147][148] to hurl as projectiles.
From a rooftop, Leviathan leaped 80 to 100 feet into the air from a standing position to attack nearby flying capes with his tail.[140]
Fins[]
Following the Simurgh's upgrades to him in Gold Morning, Leviathan gained fins, which are just as tough as the rest of his body. They also sport nano-thorns, a blur of microscopic blades stolen from Defiant's design, which turns things to dust on contact. This is the reason the water around him turns to mist with the fins unfolded.
Other Abilities[]
Leviathan has incredible durability[149] and can regenerate[150] thanks to his Endbringer physiology. He perceives the world as water.[11]
Like other Endbringers, Leviathan cannot be predicted easily with the typical Thinker danger sense[151] and is also a blind spot to the typical precognition,[152] including Contessa.[153] That said, Armsmaster's combat analysis software[154] (with no interference and outside variables) genuinely worked against Leviathan by predicting his attacks, movement, counters, and tactics; Armsmaster lost the duel because he assumed his nano-thorn Halberd could fully cut through the Endbringer.[155][156]
History[]
Oslo, Norway[]
On June 9th, 1996, Leviathan appeared for the first time in Oslo, Norway. No other details are known about this encounter.[12]
Sydney, Australia[]
Leviathan attacked Sydney, Australia on January 18th, 1998. The city was destroyed, but was received a good amount of international funding and support, which allowed them to rebuild. The city became known as "The Harbor City," providing shelter and support to others after rebuilding.[157]
Kyushu, Japan[]
Leviathan's sixth attack was on the night of November 2nd, 1999, and continued into the morning of the day after. Leviathan surfaced at the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu, swamping the region with tidal waves from every direction and disrupting prearranged evacuation efforts.[158] The battle finally ended when Lung fought Leviathan to a standstill, with Leviathan fracturing Kyushu's landmass as he retreated.[29] The attack was incredibly devastating, with nine and a half million killed, and nearly three million evacuees left homeless.[158] Afterward, Japan was crippled, preventing it from becoming a world power and leaving it dependent on international assistance even twelve years after the attack.[40]
Hyderabad, India[]
No details on this battle were revealed except that it took place on July 6th, 2001.[159] An intriguing fact is that Hyderabad is over 217 miles inland from the Indian Ocean, making an assault from the water difficult. However, using existing rivers, there is a possible route to the city from the ocean. Leviathan would have had to make his way northward through the Krishna River and the Musi River, the latter of which is barely 10 feet deep in some places, requiring a disproportionate amount of effort just to attack one city.
Newfoundland, Canada[]
On May 9th, 2005, Leviathan began an attack on Newfoundland, Canada. Leviathan bombarded the island with incredible pressure beneath the water level, cracking the shelf of land holding it up and sinking the island, killing half a million people,[79] including Andrew Richter.[160] Since this point, Leviathan's potential targets were classified as hard, meaning heroes could stand their ground and gradually wear him down, and soft, meaning he must be attacked quickly and not given a chance to build up his attacks.[161]
Brockton Bay[]
At the end of Buzz 7.12, a program designed to predict Endbringer attacks anticipated Leviathan's arrival in Brockton Bay. Air raid sirens were activated to alert the public and allow them to evacuate to the local Endbringer shelters. Meanwhile, every major Protectorate and Wards group on call began arriving via teleportation along with a few villains. They joined local capes, including Skitter and the Undersiders.
Consequences[]
The attacks by Leviathan from his appearance up to 2011 had had global consequences.
Attacks on sources of fresh water has led to a water crisis.[162][163] The shipping industry was hurt, although not entirely extinguished, by his (and to a lesser extent the other Endbringers') attacks on port cities.[164]
Leviathan's devastation of Kyushu led to particularly dramatic consequences. Japan was no longer a world power, and was dependent on international assistance as of 2011. The wave of refugees caused minor unrest around the world. Many settled in the United States of America, where President Bradley passed a Preservation Act that helped them.[162]
His attacks on Sydney and Newfoundland, which left them unrecoverable, also had wide-ranging effects on the world.[162]
Later Appearances[]
Following the destruction of Behemoth, Leviathan would start to adapt hit and run tactics, attacking several targets at a time.
Gold Morning[]
Around the same time Tattletale "recruited" Simurgh, Leviathan joined the fight against Scion too. Leviathan was first "assigned" to go to a city created and controlled by the Elite through the powers of one of their members to destroy it. Within an hour he had demolished and flooded the entire city with his after-echo and a torrential downpour, killing almost all of the Elite present.
When Skitter's group arrived he was resting on top of one of the skyscrapers. Once Simurgh arrived in the area she immediately slammed into Leviathan and stabbed a long black blade she had built into his core. They remained frozen in place at the top of the tower until she let Leviathan crash to the ground. It soon became apparent that she had upgraded him with the sword as he sprouted collapsible nano-blade fins over his body. A serrated growth of fins sprouted along his spine and tail, ending in a bulb of blades at the tip. Several more grew along his neck and up the length of his forearms.
During the final battle, he managed to fight Scion head-on for a little bit before he retreated. As the battle moved over the ocean he took to suppressing the tidal waves caused by it as he regenerated. At the final staging area at New York, Earth Beta, he took Scion on directly with the support of the other Endbringers. However, Scion still managed to tear open his chest and obliterate his core with a sphere of golden light, killing him instantly.
Chapter Appearances[]
| ||||||||||||||||||
Trivia[]
- The lowest fatality rate for a fight with Leviathan was 1 in 4 parahumans.[165]
- He is implied to have attacked the San Francisco Bay Area and sunk Emeryville, one of its cities, at one point.[166]
- Leviathan roughly means the twisting one and is the second creature in what can be called an Abrahamic trinity of beasts. As Ziz is first among the creatures of the air, and Behemoth is first among the creatures of the land, Leviathan is first among the creatures of the water. This serves as a larger clue to the Endbringers' constructed nature that they deliberately tap into these belief structures.
- The Fallen branch dedicated to Leviathan tend to have duplicative powers.
Fanart Gallery[]
Illustration by AznFailureGuy on DeviantArt
Illustration by kuraitormentus on DeviantArt
Illustration by DerTodesbote on DeviantArt
Illustration by keladry0alanna on DeviantArt
Illustration by drunkfu on DeviantArt
Leviathan videogame boss by WorkingOrder on DeviantArt
Illustration by acerbicCatharsis on DeviantArt
Illustration by DerTodesbote on DeviantArt
Illustration by MrShadowManSir on DeviantArt
Illustration by LatePenguins on Reddit
Illustration by whos to know on Reddit
S-Class Threats by BenswFrenefits
Illustration by Blasterweave on DeviantArt
References[]
- ↑ Jormungand / Jörmungandr – Another name for Leviathan (see below). - Cast (spoiler free)
- ↑ Edit by Wildbow
Not in the list of retracted edits. - ↑ “Yes. This is likely,” Phir Sē said. “This is what he may want. I hoped for the Second or Third. This will have to do.” - Crushed 24.3
- ↑ Another note:
- they want to lose I think. set themselves up to fail. but not fail so bad they risk dying. levi was after something, noelle I think. but why didn’t he show up closer to downtown?
- big b wants something. not at india gate. somewhere past it. why not come up right underneath it?
- matters. looked at past attacks. pattern. small pattern. behe attacks nuclear reactor, appears some distance away. attacks birdcage, appears in rockies, no sign he was close or beneath cage. pattern says he wouldn’t emerge this close if he just wanted to attack india gate. He attacking something north of it. - Crushed 24.3
- they want to lose I think. set themselves up to fail. but not fail so bad they risk dying. levi was after something, noelle I think. but why didn’t he show up closer to downtown?
- ↑ Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She also joined the Levi fight. She apparently helped against the S9. She joined the Wards - Glow-worm P.9
- ↑ Foil, quiet up until this point, started shooting the crossbow, launching her augmented bolts. I’d known her as Flechette, back in the days when I’d thought my boyfriend, Eric, and Uncle Neil dying at the hands of an unstoppable giant lizard was the worst life was going to get. Back then, she’d had something elegant. Now she had something big. - Blinding 11.7
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Scion was killing the serpent-Endbringer… Leviathan. Pummeling his chest, shattering it. Cracks radiated from the wound, glowing gold. Scion’s face was twisted in fury, his fury was that of a berserker. The blows were heavy enough that they drove Leviathan into the shattered earth below. Water was flowing in around them, Leviathan’s element, but the attack continued, the glowing wounds creating mountains of steam around them.
[...]
Scion merely shifted his orientation in the air. Not even shaking himself, not pausing to find his balance. He was roaring, screaming, and in his thrashing movements, his blind fury, I nearly missed it. In the moment he returned to an upright position, he flung out a sphere of golden light.
The light curved in the air, and punched into Leviathan’s open chest cavity.
The Endbringer fell. The color went out of Leviathan, his flesh breaking up, like clay overbaked in a kiln. The fins were the first thing to crumble, the rest of his body following suit. - Speck 30.6 - ↑ November 2nd, 1999
Lung toyed with a flame in one of his hands as he watched the great lizard-man’s rampage. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y - ↑ “That doesn’t make sense.”
“He bloody well flies! And fights a giant continent-shattering lizard with golden laser beams! Nothing about him makes any sense!” - Interlude 18.x - ↑ Pahan: “Leviathan leaped to hsi feet” should be “Leviathan leaped to his feet”.
By the way, why is Leviathan a “he”? Why not at an “it”?
wildbow: You’re not the only one to comment on the gendering of Leviathan.
In short? Convenience of language, and there’s a kind of security in humanizing an inhuman threat, the same way one gives names to hurricanes. - Comment by Wildbow on Extermination 8.5, archived on Spacebattles - ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 A current of water in a particular set of wavelengths, to her brother who sees the world as water – living things as balloons of meat largely made up of water, moisture in the air, moisture running over every available surface as he uses his abilities to move clouds and fog into place. - Interlude 28
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Oslo, June 9th, 1996. Leviathan. - Excerpt from Interlude 24.x
- ↑ The younger siblings are harder to target, but their birthplace is studded with temporal anomalies. Holes in time, wells, echoes, slowed time and accelerated time, from confrontations that have occurred, even confrontations she participated in. She manipulates the wind as she affected the water. - Interlude 28
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 The younger sister needs only a tremor, the very same wavelength their oldest living brother received. She responds in kind.
The youngest sister needs only an expression of any power. By the time the others are alerted, the youngest is prepared. - Interlude 28 - ↑ Jguy: This is a bit out of left field but I didn’t know where to put it. In the comments during the Leviathan fight, you stated that Leviathan wasn’t considered a Brute 10, despite his incredible toughness. With the imprisonment of Lung, he was classified as capable of going up to Brute 9 on the scale. Does this mean that Lung has the potential in a drawn out fight to be as strong and as durable as Leviathan?
wildbow: In terms of sheer physical power and durability, yes. - Comment by Wildbow on Scourge 19.5 - ↑ ereshkigala: Out of curiosity, how is Leviathan rated? Lung was potentially Brute 9, how does he compare with him? And does the scale max out at 10? I.e. how would Behemoth be classified as a brute?
wildbow: The scale doesn’t max out at 10, but very few individuals actually exceed 10. Leviathan does not exceed 10 on the Brute scale. - Comment by Wildbow on Extermination 8.5, archived on Spacebattles - ↑ Lung was the next one to speak. “What did she do?”
“Upgraded Leviathan,” Tattletale said. “Attuned some device to the right frequency or setting, then tapped into his core without doing too much harm to Leviathan. Fed things into there. Knowledge, data, nanotechnology.”
Defiant’s head turned, as if Tattletale had said something.
“Yeah,” Tattletale said. “Nanotech. Why do you think the fins were turning water to mist?”
“My tech?” Defiant asked.
“Among one or two other advancements. If the density rules are in effect, I’d bet those fins are just as hard to cut through as Leviathan’s arm or torso. Disintegration effect, maybe something else.”
“Mecha-Leviathan?” Imp murmured. - Cockroaches 28.5 - ↑ But she could imagine Grue shouting at her, “Something we can use!” and that was nudge enough to get her to focus her efforts. “Weak points.”
- No vulnerable organs, hyperdurable tissues: simple organs exist at core of torso, where there is highest amount of surrounding tissues. Optimal thickness of layer and narrowness of body part at upper arms, just before shoulder joint, and upper thighs, just below hip joint.
- ↑ The Simurgh had both feet pressed against Leviathan’s stomach, one hand reaching up to grip his face, the other hand holding the gladius she’d made, buried so deep in Leviathan’s sternum that only a little bit of the handle stuck out.
She’d hit his core. - Cockroaches 28.5 - ↑ Eidolon had reported that Leviathan descended into the Atlantic Ocean as he made his retreat from Brockton Bay. He had sustained heavy injuries, which led Dragon to think he would delay his next appearance slightly. She adjusted the window and checked the data. As was his habit, Leviathan would likely lurk in the deepest recesses of the Ocean to mend. - Excerpt from Interlude 10.5
- ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 “We think of Leviathan as the middle child; he was the second of the three to arrive. He is not the physical powerhouse Behemoth is, nor the cunning manipulator that the Simurgh so often proves to be. That said, I would advise you to think of him as having many of the strengths of both siblings at once. You’ve seen the videos on television and the internet. You know what he is physically capable of. I want to be clear that despite the image he might convey, he is not stupid, and he can display a level of cunning and tactics that can and will catch you off guard. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2
- ↑ Did he have a strategy? The Simurgh was supposed to be the tactician, Leviathan had the brute cunning. Was Behemoth harboring a certain degree of intelligence?
I didn’t like that idea, but I couldn’t think of a good way to explain just why he was willing to stand there and take abuse. - Crushed 24.3 - ↑ Then he’d taken command of a team, and he’d seen the process of trial and error, as they learned their opponents’ capabilities, saw how Leviathan or the Simurgh could keep tricks up their sleeves for years, before using them at a critical moment. Even now, they didn’t fully understand the Simurgh’s power, how long it might take someone to recover, if recovery was even possible. - Excerpt from Interlude 24.x
- ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 I'd argue he's stronger than Behemoth. In a fight, and in terms of the damage he can do, and against humans, he's stronger. People tend to underestimate the value of enhanced speed. He can use skitter tactics. He doesn't have to, but he can. But honestly, imagine fighting Skitter, right? Except he's nigh invincible, he has super speed, and he has tidal waves instead of bug swarms. He only fights the fights he wants to. Give them a little hope, then crush it. Then, when all is said and done, just keep his distance from anyone and everyone and let the tidal waves finish them off. That fight against Lung, he destroyed Japan. In his damn /introduction/ the heroes warn not to underestimate him. I'll just add that he's sort of a response to the fact that the heroes have banded together, ready to organize to defeat this monster Behemoth. So he's there alternately as a coward and a duellist, to bait out fights and crush morale. - Comment by Wildbow on IRC, archived on Spacebattles
- ↑ There was a quiet murmur through the room at Legend’s words. One in four dead. And that didn’t mean the rest of us would get away unscathed.
“I’m telling you your chances now because you deserve to know, and we so rarely get the chance to inform those individuals brave enough to step up and fight these monsters. The primary message I want to convey, even more than briefing you on the particulars of his abilities, organizing formations and battle plans, is that I do not want you to underestimate Leviathan. I have seen too many good heroes,” he paused for a fraction of a second, “And villains, too, die because they let their guard down.” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2 - ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 He paused, “We have to end this fast. Each wave he brings on top of us is stronger than the last. This means we have two priorities. First, we cannot let him out of our sight. From the moment the battle is initiated, we hem him in, sustain an offensive onslaught. If we let him slip past our defensive lines, precious time will be wasted chasing him, getting him in another situation where we can contain his movements.
“Our second priority is that we need to find ways to hurt him. If you cannot, if your attacks are deflected or prove otherwise useless, work to support those who can. It is vain to hope to kill him, but he can be whittled down enough that he will flee back to the ocean, and if we hurt him enough, it may delay the time before he is capable of making another attack elsewhere.” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2 - ↑ 27.0 27.1 rmcd94: If I was organizing it (which it’s a shame I’m not I have to say) I would gather up invincible heroes of NATO and potentially other places like Russia and China if they’re up for cooperating, and then really long range heroes and that’d be it. The invincible heroes would harry and harass and generally just get in the way, while long range heroes do damage from helicopters or somewhere that’s invulnerable. Pretty easy to take out Leviathan with that strategy. Not sure how they’re going to defeat Simiruigh here or how they beat Behemoth.
Wildbow: Try to deal with Leviathan with a few brute strength heroes and some long ranged ones and he runs. He’s faster than most, and anyone fast enough to keep up with him is generally too weak to keep him in one place (and vice versa). It takes too long to whittle him down and the target gets smashed. Rain cover and storms make getting a bead on him difficult from a certain distance. - Conversation with Wildbow on Migration 17.3 - ↑ 28.0 28.1 “How!?” Armsmaster roared.
[...]
Leviathan planted one foot beside Armsmaster for balance, reached out with his free claw, and pressed the tips against the side of Armsmaster’s throat and torso. Still holding on to Armsmaster’s hand and wrist, he pushed against the side of the man’s body. Armsmaster screamed, a frantic noise that seemed to redouble in urgency with every breath. He tipped over and fell with a splash.
The Endbringer stood, showing none of the frailty or pain it had been displaying seconds ago. The injuries were there, to be sure, his head hung at an angle because of the way the weight of his head hung on the intact portions of his neck, but he wasn’t suffering, had no trouble putting his full weight on his more injured leg. Had it been an act?
The Endbringer dropped Armsmaster’s arm and Halberd, where the weight of the metal armor and device pulled them beneath the water. A lash of his tail dispatched two of my three swarms. He watched, seeming not to care, as the third ran up to him, smashed against his leg. The bugs spreading out, burying themselves deep into his injuries. I was hoping to find some weakness, devour him from the inside out, but the bugs might as well have been biting on steel. Nothing budged beneath their jaws, their stings couldn’t penetrate.
He turned, crouched, bolted West, away from the coast, full speed.
I hurried to Armsmaster’s side. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4 - ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 The landmass disappeared beneath the pair of them, the shards of land drawn beneath the waves, and Lung was now fighting Leviathan in the monster’s home ground.
For an instant, he thought he would die. But Leviathan, wounded, broke away and fled into the depths.
Lung only sank, too dense to float, growing wearier by the second as his power left him, the fight over.
He’d expected a feeling of satisfaction, but he knew he hadn’t delivered a killing blow, that he had been a long, long way from it, though he’d done more damage than anyone had in years.
His enemy couldn’t be killed. Lung had become something more terrifying than the Endbringer, but there had been nobody to see. None of the public to recognize him, to respect and fear him.
He sank, feeling a kind of despair. Too tired to move, he touched bottom. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y - ↑ “Listen!” the voice that cut through the shouts and the frantic chatter was authoritative, strong.
Armsmaster. He had Myrddin, Eidolon and Chevalier just behind him. People turned to listen, myself included.
“He’s torn through our front line, he’s taken down some of our best, and he’s deliberately targeted and eliminated most of the capes who were in Bastion’s group. We have precious few left who can take a hit from this creature and survive it, and we’re running low on those who can wall off another tidal wave or block his path.
“We’re not going to be able to go on with Plan A.” The words hung in the air.
“This brute is hurt, but we don’t have the resources to hold him down while we hurt him any more. We’re too tightly packed, like this, and it’s too easy for him to take us down in droves. Two or three more minutes of this, and there won’t be any of us left.” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ Legend was still organizing the groups. “-forcefields, telekinesis, whatever your power, if you can interrupt Leviathan’s movements or help reduce the impacts of the waves, you’re the backup defense! Bastion will direct you!” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2
- ↑ Flight BA178, November 25th, 2011 // Simurgh
Notes: Loss? Plane destroyed, Eidolon/Pretender drive off Endbringer. Marks start of guerilla tactics from Simurgh and Leviathan.
[...]
Lüderitz, April 2nd, 2012 // Leviathan
Notes: Loss? Driven away by Eidolon. Secondary targets Swakopmund, Gamba, Port-Gentil and Sulima.
Target/Consquence: Moord Nag. Guerilla tactics continue, losses in notable but not devastating numbers, but his target survives. - Excerpt from Scarab 25.6 - ↑ The issue was that after they discovered the full ramifications of her powers, the Endbringers changed their methodology. Leviathan made hit and run attacks that meant he was gone and attacking another city before Scion/Foil/anyone else reached a location, Simurgh attacked abstract targets, Khonsu teleported, and Tohu/Bohu were difficult to pin down or find easy answers to. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles]
- ↑ 34.0 34.1 I think part of the reason Anzer'Ke isn't necessarily getting it is that he's imagining some scenario where Leviathan throws himself at the enemy.
Quite frankly, if Leviathan wants to win (and if he's not in Earth Bet and he's not dormant, he will) he's going to do it smart, which is something he is capable of (see his actions during the timeskip, hitting multiple cities). He's not going to surface, and he's just going to call tidal waves and rainstorms down on the enemy until they stop moving (see his literal first appearance in story - he interrupts the strategy meeting by hitting them with a wave before he shows himself. Now remove the 'show himself' element). If they're on boats (they're often on boats) he may well gut the boats from beneath. The only ones standing are going to be the ones who have special ships and/or powerful devil's fruit abilities.
What happens after that? Well, maybe they can block the waves or simply weather them, but can they resupply? Or does he simply occupy them and prolong the fight until the fruit users get tired or exhausted, make a mistake, or start to falter for lack of sleep and/or food? There are a lot of advantages to being nonhuman in nature.
I stopped watching shortly after Ace's execution arc, so I can't speak to the individuals who appear after (or the fishmen) but I suspect Anzer'Ke is simply making the classic mistake of underestimating Leviathan. - Wildbow on Spacebattles - ↑ 35.0 35.1 The post that follows will assume that Leviathan and Behemoth are going full-strength and Simurgh is using her powers as detailed in the story (where she's jobbing, in large part).
[...]
The Simurgh sees how long she can scan/sing, Leviathan and Behemoth just stay where they are, in Gotham bay or beneath the city.
[...]
Behemoth is the best counter to the Manhunter, and would be paired up with Simurgh, producing ridiculous amounts of fire, while Leviathan remains in the bay/periphery of the city, hitting it with subsequent waves (and pulling away a contingent of the JL). - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit - ↑ She had other drives. To go to war against her creator. To these ends, she created a nemesis. She made him better. He freed people, upset the system, disrupted the process, and in that, he created the chaos that would keep her simulation from being too sterile. - Infrared 19.z
- ↑ If people start forming alliances/peace and Eden sees it as too much trouble to sabotage, then she sics an Endbringer Lite on them, and then works with the remains. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles
- ↑ Assuming that Cauldron's operatives maybe killed Eden but then just sat on their hands/died, the Endbringers don't exist, the cauldron vials aren't spread out, and there's less of the really powerful parahumans here and there who're capable of acting decisively. - Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles
- ↑ Her creator was an administrator of the highest order, and she had been selected out of a pool of emergency resources. All of her kind had. Behemoth had been created to break stasis, Leviathan to take away resources in space and land, forcing communities into conflict as they were made to relocate. - Infrared 19.z
- ↑ 40.0 40.1 You have the events that left the world reeling: Lausanne, Hawaii, Kyushu, Newfoundland, Moscow, Sydney. The attacks that left major areas uninhabitable or unrecoverable, with wide-reaching effects on the rest of the country/region/world. In this setting, for example, Japan isn’t a world power and it’s still dependent on international assistance 12 years after Leviathan’s visit to Kyushu.
But even there, where do you say, “Ok, that’s the sum total of the damage done”? The disaster at Kyushu, the number of refugees seeking living space/work and the pressures on the rest of Asia’s pacific border might have led to some more unrest and tension. Some friction, some ‘small’ wars, infighting and intermingling. Refugees and immigrants. Many settle in major cities across America because President Bradley’s Preservation Act gives them a hand in getting on their feet. - Comment by Wildbow on Colony 15.5 - ↑ She was built out of greater structures intended to salvage a situation where the species eliminated itself. Future-looking, she would create a forced simulation. It was worse than an organically emergent simulation, but in a process that saw the planet revolve three hundred times around its star, it could be necessary in the final years, consolidating and sorting information, forcibly exploring the resources the planet had to offer.
That was her drive, as much as water and food were necessary for this life she farmed out and put to task in a greater system. - Infrared 19.z - ↑ 42.0 42.1 Extermination 8.2
- ↑ Getting hit by something [Leviathan] that weighed nearly nine tons sent men, women, boys and girls in costume flying, if it didn't kill them outright. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3
- ↑ 44.0 44.1 44.2 44.3 44.4 44.5 Leviathan is the middle child. He's fast enough that he can run on the surface of water, despite weighing something like 9 tons, and beneath the water's surface he's so fast as to essentially be a teleporter (assume faster than Superman, slower than the Flash on level terrain). He's accompanied by a water echo, which mirrors his movements and produces vast amounts of water, which he uses as a hydrokinetic. His main weapon, however, is macro-scale hydrokinesis. He has leveled Newfoundland and the Kyuushu islands of Japan. Each wave is stronger than the last. He can and will play keep-away (keep in mind that he's effectively a speedster) while calling tsunami-like waves over to crush a city or landmass. - Wildbow on Reddit
- ↑ Leviathan had perched himself atop the castle's highest tower [...] Even through the rain, his five eyes glowed. - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.5
- ↑ WOG on Reddit
- ↑ “I spoke of Leviathan as a hydrokinetic. I can’t state this enough – Leviathan is primarily a hydrokinetic on a macro scale. There is no better illustration than the days where Leviathan won. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2
- ↑ 48.0 48.1 48.2 “These were errors, grave mistakes from defending heroes. We had but one strategy at the time – to hem him in, minimizing the effects of growing waves and casualties until Leviathan was beaten into a retreat or Scion arrived. These areas, however, were too vulnerable. Waiting let Leviathan build up the strength of his attacks, and we lost.”
He paused. “We have since classified the locations the Endbringers target as either hard targets or soft targets. The hard battlefields are where we stand our ground, buy time, wear him down. The soft ones are locations where we cannot afford to do this.” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2 - ↑ 49.0 49.1 Either way, it was a delaying tactic. Holding off the damage, in the hopes that we could end this or get reinforcements before Brockton Bay became another Newfoundland.
We were hoping for Scion. The first cape, the golden skinned man. The guy that could go toe to toe with an Endbringer and win, if things hadn’t already gone too far south. If Behemoth hadn’t already turned the area into a radioactive, magma-ridden wasteland. If Leviathan hadn’t built up enough momentum with his waves. If the Simurgh… Ok, the Simurgh was different, I had to admit. The issue with her wasn’t so much winning the battle. It was what came after. Win every battle against her, lose the war, more or less. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4 - ↑ “She’s scary,” Ballistic said. “Let’s settle for that. You don’t get within Behemoth’s range, you don’t aim for the long fight against Leviathan, and you don’t send everyone against the Simurgh at once, or you’re screwing yourself over. Trust me when I say this is better all around if I skip this fight. She knows me, and she’ll use me against you.” - Queen 18.2
- ↑ 51.0 51.1 moridinamael: If he just sucked all the water out of rock in the subsurface below Newfoundland, the island would sink. The briney water that permeates all earthly rocks below sea level always helps support some of the overburden pressure of the rock above it. If you suck some of the water out of an aquifer or an oil field, the ground above it will sink. Only a few meters at most, in the worst known scenarios, but Leviathan can move a lot more water than humans with a few wells with limited operating conditions.
Wildbow: Yeah. My mental picture of the scene & understanding of how things could theoretically work was that Newfoundland has historically been prone to erosion, and there's a lot of stuff going on with plates and separation from the crust/mantle. Water within the rocks creates a kind of erosion from within, concentrated, high-pressure movement of water erodes the layers most prone to damage while scooping out water while creating a kind of power-augmented hydroplane/sediment layer, and... over the course of hours, it slides beneath.
Of course, the entire thing goes hand in hand with calamity, waves taller than many boats, people trying to use powers to mitigate the damage and give people a better chance to evacuate, yadda yadda. - Conversation with Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles - ↑ She wasn’t an Endbringer, in the end. It would be impossible to trap any of them like this, to get an advantage. They had other tools, ways to exert pressure that were entirely independent of their own abilities. Behemoth generated storms and background radiation, Leviathan had the waves, the Simurgh had her scream. - Scourge 19.7
- ↑ My growing sense of dread was confirmed as the image on the monitors changed.
Even with those circles being as devastating as they are, it wasn’t enough. There wasn’t the same broad scale, the promise of lingering devastation.
No. There was something more to Khonsu.
The monitors showed him in a different city. A caption on the bottom of the screen showed the words ‘Cape Verde’.
He’d teleported halfway around the planet.
All of the problems with getting to Endbringer fights on time, with mobilizing and dealing with the fact that half of our best teleporters and movers had been slain in past battles… he was capitalizing on that weakness. - Scarab 25.4 - ↑ 54.0 54.1 Leviathan slapped the teenage hero down, swiped at one of my swarm-people, then was forced down onto all fours as Purity struck him square between the shoulderblades with a column of light. A metal shelving unit shot from the interior of a store, Ballistic’s power, I was almost positive, and made Leviathan stumble back.
We had the upper hand, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. More than once, in the past hour alone, the Endbringer had demonstrated that any time the fight was going against him, he’d pull out all the stops and do something large scale. A tidal wave or tearing up the streets.
We did not have what it took to withstand another wave. No forcefields, no barriers. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5 - ↑ 55.0 55.1 There was the girl with the crossbow, who had been with Shadow Stalker. She had a teammate next to her, handing her the needle-like bolts from a quiver, was loading them into the large crossbow and firing them as fast as she was able. More than any other attack, the bolts were stabbing deep into Leviathan.
The attacks were actually having an effect. He was on the defensive, now, and he was hurting.
We’re winning, I thought.
A flash to my left caught my eye.
It was my armband. The screen was ringed by a square of yellow, a yellow triangle with a black exclamation mark pointing in Leviathan’s general direction.
People were shouting. Screaming, Narwhal was moving forcefields up in between us and Leviathan, other forcefields were going up.
“To me!” someone near me shouted. I turned to look, saw Shielder from New Wave.
Tidal Wave. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ 56.0 56.1 Another tidal wave hit. Leviathan disappeared in the midst of it, reappearing elsewhere. Lung could hear the destruction as the beast clawed and tore through the base of one building that heroes were perched on. He quickened his pace, felt himself growing stronger as he got closer. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y
- ↑ 57.0 57.1 57.2 A tidal wave rocked the area, and Lung had to hold on to a nearby building to keep from falling. Heroes were swept up in the wash of water, and buildings were leveled.
[...]
The waves were more frequent now. Buildings here had been built to tight specifications, to remain standing in the face of earthquakes and tsunamis, but it wasn’t enough. Barely a minute passed between the strikes, with each wave reaching further inland than the last, and only a handful of buildings stood at their full height, where there had been a city here only an hour ago.
It was in one of those brief moments of respite that the ground shuddered. Lung nearly lost his footing. When he looked up at the night sky, he could see that the tallest standing buildings were swaying, like fronds bending in the wind.
Somewhere he couldn’t see in the gloom, a building swayed too far and crashed to the ground. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y - ↑ 58.0 58.1 One of the television screens toppled in the onrushing flood. The other two showed a flickering series of images, a half second of each. The coast of Brockton Bay being struck with a wave. The ferry, the harbor down at the south end of town, the boardwalk, all smashed by the initial wave. I saw a glimpse of a tall figure in the middle of one shot, little more than a blur behind the spray of water and the rain.
[...]
At the end of the road, downhill, was the Boardwalk, or what was left of it. From what I could see through the downpour, the wooden pathways and docks had been shattered by the initial wave, to the point that many were standing nearly straight up, or were buckled into fractured arches. Water frothed and sprayed as it rushed back against the ragged barrier that had been Brockton Bay’s high end shopping district. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2 - ↑ “Wave!” someone screamed.
Forcefields went up, and being as high as they were, they were out of reach of the worst of it. She could see it, a tide of water several stories high. The impact was reduced to a manageable level only by the shattered Boardwalk and fallen buildings at the end of the road, the uphill slope.
The crash when when the wave rolled against the side of the building was enough to knock over nearly everyone on the roof.- Structure, building age, strength of wave; building will hold.
- ↑ Leviathan had more than halved our ranks with the wave. I could see people face down in the water. Others were crumped up, their bodies contorted, broken, still.
And the damage to the city was just as bad, in a different way. I stared at the wreckage, the block and a half of shattered buildings, and saw a looming mess of arches and massive iron beams and girders, unable to comprehend what it was.
It dawned on me. The PHQ. The headquarters of our local superteam, tourist attraction, torn from whatever fixtures had rooted it in place, smashed to ruins against our coastline. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ “BZ-4,” I reported. Then I saw movement from the coast, called out through the armband’s channels, “Wave!”
I was glad to be in the air as the tidal wave struck. The barrier of ice and the wreckage at the beaches did a lot to dampen the wave’s effect, but I watched as the water streamed a good half-mile into the city. Buildings collapsed, cars were pushed, and even trees came free of the earth.
[...]
The area we were entering had been further from the heroes with the forcefields, where waves hadn’t had their impact softened or diverted by the the PHQ’s forcefield or the larger, heavier, blockier structures of the Docks. Entire neighborhoods had been flattened, reduced to detritus that floated in muddy, murky waters. Larger buildings, what I suspected might have been part of the local college, were standing but badly damaged. Countless cars sat in the roads and parking lots with water pouring in through shattered windows. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5 - ↑ 62.0 62.1 He could feel his power rippling under his skin. Against Leviathan, he’d waited hours before engaging the beast, had fought longer than he ever had. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y
- ↑ I think core identities to keep in mind are that Behemoth is the herokiller, Leviathan levels cities, and Simurgh creates long-term problems that last beyond the fight.
For Leviathan, I honestly wouldn't make it a chart, but like, various effects that could come in at different stages. So you could have one fight defined by the heavy rain followed by the periodic waves smacking buildings by the coast, and another where he opens with ripping up the streets and geysers everywhere. - Comment by Wildbow on Parahumans Discord - ↑ 64.0 64.1 They're children, they're unpredictable, and only at the end do they unleash their full potential. Their flaw is the fact that they're fundamentally hollow, naive, illusory. They're only really playing a game for reasons that don't matter at the heart of things. - Worm Tarot Deck
- ↑ One was in the thick of things, creating different types of forcefield to try to mitigate the damage Scion was doing to our side. Capes had baited Scion out over the water, but the fact that there were less targets in range was counterbalanced by the fact that Scion was more focused on those who were there, and he was hitting harder. When he hit the water, waves crashed against the shore, doing nearly as much damage as any of his attacks might. A Leviathan with one arm, one leg, and most of its head missing was perched on the shoreline, apparently mitigating the damage. - Speck 30.4
- ↑ And then Leviathan was in view, entering the same street I was on. As if to herald his coming, a massive wave crashed hard against the barrier of ice Eidolon had erected around the wrecked Boardwalk, the spray seemingly reaching nearly to the stormclouds above. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4
- ↑ The time freezing effect of Clockblocker’s power lasted anywhere from thirty seconds to ten minutes. How long had we spent, here, since Clockblocker had given us this momentary reprieve? It was hard to judge the passage of time with the adrenaline, the frenetic pace of the ongoing battle. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3
- ↑ For several long seconds, Leviathan didn’t move.
“Delaying, buying time for a tsunami?” Armsmaster laughed, and Leviathan cocked his head at the display of emotion. “No. Three point four minutes before the next big wave breaks through the ice. Dragon’s probes are giving me the data on that. This will be over before then.” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4 - ↑ The roads beneath us were damaged, shattered. When Leviathan had shifted the position of the storm sewers, he’d gone all out, and he’d gone a step further than just the storm sewer – he’d also torn up the water supply network for the city. The occasional pipe speared up between the slats in the sidewalk, fire hydrants were dislodged, and the water that poured from these was barely a trickle now. That might have meant too much was leaking from the damaged pipes to give the water any pressure. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ Water sprayed in the truck’s wake as we cut a path through the flooded streets.
It was a military vehicle. I wasn’t one to know much about cars, and I knew even less about stuff like military vehicles, so I couldn’t put a name to the truck that was carting me and eight of Coil’s workers through the Docks. It was like a sturdy pickup truck, but the rear section was wider and it was hidden beneath a green tarp that had been stretched over a framework of metal bars. The tires were massive, with deep treads allowing the truck to navigate all but the most cracked sections of road where Leviathan had brought the underground pipes and drains through the surface. - Infestation 11.2 - ↑ Leviathan hopped backwards to create some distance, staggered a little as the more injured of his two legs failed to take his weight, used his smaller hand to stop from falling a second time, poising himself on three limbs.
Armsmaster used his grappling hook to haul himself close, readying to make another slash for the neck. He changed his mind as the ground rumbled, pulled the hook free to latch it on a garage door. Countering his forward momentum, he swung himself to one side of the road, staying out of Leviathan’s reach.
The ground rumbled again, brief, intense, stopped.
Armsmaster touched a hand to the side of his visor, and I thought I saw his lips crease in a frown before he turned his head away from me.
Another fierce rumble, and a crack appeared like a seam down the center of the street, a straight line as far as I could see in either direction.
Leviathan raised his claw, and the road suddenly split, heaving upward as a concrete pipe wide enough to fit a man crested from the pavement like a whale rising from the waves. A second later, water gushed forth, veering toward Armsmaster.
The storm sewers. - Extermination 8.4 - ↑ * Geyser - The water running underground is manipulated. The ground cracks, the water level temporarily drops one step if necessary. Ground becomes difficult and anyone pushed or pulled at ground level has a chance to be dragged or thrown into hazardous terrain. Geysers shoot temporarily into the air, which may catch fliers or target defensive fortifications. Further 'Ground' effects may, for the duration, affect 1-3 individuals in the air, as well. Water level regenerates to where it was prior to the ground cracking after ~3 rounds. - Comment by Wildbow on Parahumans Discord
- ↑ The television screen showed a cross section of Brockton Bay as seen from ground level. The West end of the city was bordered by hills, and the terrain sloped gradually from the base of the mountain down to the water. Directly below the image of the buildings that marked the city’s location, there was a large cavern, bordered by rock on all sides except the part nearest the beach, which was sand. It was marked blue – filled with water.
“Brockton Bay, this location, is a soft target. The city was originally founded at this location because of the proximity to the coastline for trade routes and an aquifier that provided the first settlers with access to fresh water. This aquifier, essentially an underground lake beneath the city, is our weak point. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2 - ↑ From the moment Leviathan shows himself, we expect Leviathan will stir and manipulate this underground reservoir to erode the surrounding sand, silt and rock. Add the tidal waves from above, with the resulting tremors and impacts…”
I doubted anyone failed to understand what would follow. A section of the city, perhaps most of the city, could collapse into the aquifier. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2 - ↑ More than anything else, though, the two of them had the look of people who had seen half their immediate family brutally and senselessly torn apart over the course of one terrible hour. As though they’d had their hearts torn out of their chests and were somehow still standing. It wasn’t that I had seen anyone in those circumstances before, but that look existed, and they had it. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ That top-heavy body of his toppled forward, and it was only his right claw, slamming down to the pavement, that stopped his face from being driven into the ground. The impact of his claw striking the ground rumbled past us.
The rumble didn’t stop.
“Run!” I shouted, my cry joining the shouts of others. I turned, sloshed through the water to get away, not sure where to get away from, or to.
Leviathan and the ground beneath him sank a good ten feet, and water swirled and frothed as it began pouring to fill the depression. He used his arm to shield himself as Purity fired another blast from above. As the ground beneath him continued to sink, the water lapped higher and higher around him.
The Endbringer descended, and the area around him quickly became a massive indent, ten, fifteen, thirty, then sixty feet across, ever growing. The force of the water pouring into the crater began to increase, and the ground underfoot grew increasingly unsteady as cracks spread across it.
I realized with a sudden panic, that I wasn’t making headway against the waves and the ground that was giving way underfoot. The growing crater was continuing to spread well past me, rising above me as the ground I stood on descended.
“Need help!” I screamed, as water began falling atop me from a higher point, spraying into me with enough force that I began to stumble back, fall.
The ground in front of and above me folded into a massive fissure. The movement of the cracked sections of road created a torrent of water that washed over me, engulfed me and forced me under. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5 - ↑ 77.0 77.1 77.2 We hadn’t set down for more than ten seconds before the building shuddered and began to collapse. The ground beneath the building cracked and tilted, no doubt because the underlying soil and rock was being drawn away by churning water. The flooding in the streets was diverted into the deepening bowl-shaped cavity Leviathan was creating, filling it. It was almost a lake, now, three city blocks across and growing rapidly. Only fragments of the taller buildings in the area stayed above the waves; some buildings were already toppled onto their sides, others half-collapsed and still breaking apart as I watched.
[...]
I could sense the Endbringer through the bugs that had made their way deepest into his wounds, the ones that had found spots where his afterimage couldn’t flush them out each time it manifested. With my power, I could track him beneath the water. He was moving so fast that it was almost as though he were teleporting, finding the drowning and executing them.
[...]
As it stood, he was entirely in his environment, in the heart of the city, where he could continue to work whatever mojo he needed to bring more tidal waves down on our heads. To my bug senses, Leviathan was deep beneath the waves, moving rapidly, acting like he was engaged in a fight. Against Eidolon? I couldn’t tell. Every darting, hyperfast movement dislodged a few bugs, made him harder to detect. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5 - ↑ Our boats weren’t out on the ocean. We traveled through the area downtown where Leviathan had collapsed a section of the city. It was now more or less an artificial lake. The water was fairly still, lapping gently against the ruined roads and collapsed buildings that surrounded the crater, but with the speed these boats were capable of going, even waves a half-foot high made us ramp slightly off one and then crash down onto the next with a sudden spray. - Plague 12.2
- ↑ 79.0 79.1 “Newfoundland,” he spoke.
I knew exactly what he was speaking of, and mouthed the date as he spoke it, “May ninth, 2005. Nearly half a million dead. The Canadian island simply gone, after the shelf of land holding it up cracked in the face of what we now understand were incredible pressures beneath the water level. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2 - ↑ There was no guarantee they wouldn’t use Dodge’s technology to visit the United Kingdom or Africa or even shattered, half-sunken Kyushu. - Excerpt from Interlude 26.x
- ↑ It was in that same moment that the Simurgh descended.
Descended was the wrong word. She fell. It was as though she’d stopped lifting herself into the air, and let herself drop. Her wings moved to control her descent, keep her facing towards the ground as she plummeted. In the gloom of the rain and the heavy stormclouds above, her silver-white body was the easiest thing to make out. If the assembled capes hadn’t already been keeping a wary eye on her, the movement would have turned heads anyways.
A white streak, plummeting from the sky, striking Leviathan. - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.5 - ↑ Legend paused, glanced out the window. The storm clouds had reached the beach, and torrential rain stirred the water into a froth. Not just rain, but buckets of water. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2
- ↑ I saw what she was watching. A stormcloud in the distance. It hung over the water with an opaque curtain of rain descending down from it. It was gradually getting closer.
[...]
As daunting as the approaching clouds were, what drew my attention was the crowd. There were people filling the lobby. Only a few were local. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.1 - ↑ Turning on the spot, Leviathan moved his claw, creating a wave with all of the water he’d generated since entering the alley, driving it into one of the two gathered groups. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3
- ↑ And then Leviathan was in view, entering the same street I was on.
[...]
I didn’t have another second to worry – Leviathan was extending one claw in my general direction.
The water that had pooled shallowly beneath the carport trickled his way, as if it were moving downhill, gathered in a rising bulge of water on the street in front of the carport, swelling to five feet in height, fifteen feet across.
Unsure what to do, I remained absolutely still.
A movement of his claw, and the bulge broke, spilled to one side as an onrushing wave. It swept beneath the rusted van, suddenly rose to heave the vehicle in Leviathan’s direction. The van rolled once, skidding toward the Endbringer, threatening to strike one leg out from under him. He stopped it by punching it through the roof, into the front end of the van. He stabbed the other claw through at the same point, tore the van into two halves that he tossed to either side of him. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4 - ↑ There was no impact as he landed, no great splash or rumble of the earth. Leviathan didn’t even seem to notice the hero’s arrival.
[...]
Scion raised one hand, and a ball of yellow-gold light slammed into Leviathan from behind, sent the Endbringer skidding across the length of the street, past Bitch and I.
Leviathan leaped to his feet, reared around, swung his claws at the air ferociously. Water around him rose, rushed towards Scion, a wave three times as high as Bitch was tall. Three times as tall as I might be if I could stand.
Scion didn’t move or speak. He walked forward, and ripples extended from his footsteps, soared past us with some strange motive force. The ripple touched the wave, and the tower of water collapsed before it got halfway to us, dropping straight down. Liquid as far as the eye could see was being flattened out into a disquieting stillness by the ripples of Scion’s footsteps, like a great pane of glass. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5 - ↑ 87.0 87.1 Leviathan lunged, swiped with the oversized claw. Armsmaster rolled to one side, then swung both Halberds behind him to intercept the wave that was coming from behind, vaporize it. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4
- ↑ A flick of his tail, and he sent a blade of water slashing through the air at the rain barrel, slicing through the swarm and stilts. The barrel crashed to the rooftop, and water cascaded out. A twisting movement of his claw, and that cascade of water flowed off the roof in a small, controlled wave, moving like a speeding car, straight towards the carport on the other side of the street, toward me.
I caught a glimpse of Leviathan rearing back in reaction to something as I legged it, left my swarm behind as I ran perpendicular to the wave’s direction, away from Leviathan. I leaped as I felt it make contact with the swarm, felt it slam into my legs a fraction of a second after.
I’d cleared enough ground that the angle of the hit didn’t throw me straight into the side of the building. I was thrown a distance, rolled on my side, on top of and over my probably-broken arm. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4 - ↑ Eidolon was fighting now. He hurled globes of energy the size of small houses at Leviathan, and each one was sufficient to knock the creature away, flaying away the thing’s skin and simultaneously slowing it. The hero’s own hydrokinesis deflected the lizard’s ranged attacks, diverting them skyward or off to one side. Leviathan couldn’t attack from range, and couldn’t get close without getting pummeled. He attempted to run, only for Japan’s foremost team, the Sentai Elite, to step into his way, blocking his progress. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y
- ↑ Legend fired a salvo of lasers at Leviathan, and the beams turned at right angles to strike Leviathan in precise areas, knocking his feet from under him, slamming him down into the road, catching him under the chin. Leviathan raised a hand, and a geyser of water rose to block more incoming lasers. Legend’s lasers simply turned at angles to circle around Leviathan, strike the Endbringer from behind. They left Leviathan so hot that his flesh glowed a yellow-orange around the areas they struck him. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3
- ↑ Eidolon froze the water around Leviathan’s four claws, giving Scion the opportunity to land another blast. Leviathan turned, raised a spraying wall of water to cover his retreat. Scion sent out one blast of his golden light to strike the wave, following up with a second blast before the first even made contact with the water. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ “One hundred and eighty integers of longitude to the west,” Defiant said. “Leviathan just arrived. That’s what got her attention. We expected one to appear there, so Chevalier ordered us to put crews there with cameras for monitoring. They’re there right now, reporting to me.”
A monitor shifted, depicting Leviathan, standing on the water’s surface in the midst of a heavy rainstorm. The water around him was rippling, though he was utterly still. - Cockroaches 28.4 - ↑ DeluxeTable: Is the whole 'making people explode' thing fanon or does he actually not have a Manton limiter?
Kyakan: it is fanon
[Wildbow reacted with :point_up_two:] - Reaction by Wildbow on Parahumans Discord - ↑ 94.0 94.1 94.2 “What sets him apart is his focus on water. You’re likely aware of his afterimage, his water echo. This is no mere splash of water. At the speeds Leviathan can move, surface tension and compressibility make water harder than concrete. He also has a crude hydrokinesis, the ability to manipulate water, and there will be water on the battlefield. We believe that this is what lets him move as fast as he does when he is swimming. Faster than he is normally, far faster than any speedster we have on record.” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2
- ↑ Khonsu and Leviathan, and capes I recognized as the ones Cauldron had taken. A whole army.
[...]
A cape flung Leviathan. Scion floated to one side to avoid the incoming Endbringer. Leviathan, in response, extended the fins the Simurgh had given him, arresting his forward momentum, and then swam through his own afterimage as it crashed into him, changing direction in mid-air.
He crashed into Scion, his fins tearing through the golden man. Golden mist billowed away as Leviathan found a grip on Scion and continued the assault.
Leviathan was blasted away, heaved into the ground with a force that made everyone present stumble. Scion then retaliated, striking first the cape that had thrown Leviathan, then Leviathan himself. - Venom 29.9 - ↑ Gallons of water poured around him in the wake of his movements, roughly the same amount of mass as the body part that had just occupied the space. This ‘afterimage’ streamed down him and splashed violently against the water he waded through. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2
- ↑ Leviathan’s echo added surprising quantities of water to the battlefield. Every step and movement he made, he filled the space he’d just left with water. How much water did it take to displace something as big as he was? However much it was, he created something like three times that amount when he took a single step forward, when you accounted for the space his body moved through. A hard amount to eyeball, because it had the same momentum his movements had, and some of it crossed great distances as he lunged and clawed his way through the front line of capes. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3
- ↑ Leviathan charged forward as if to meet the heroine in a head on collision, then stopped abruptly. His ‘echo’, like a model of himself shaped out of water, continued forward with the same momentum he’d had while sprinting forward. - Excerpt from Interlude 8.y
- ↑ 99.0 99.1 There was a crash as Leviathan whipped his tail toward Legend, a blade of water soaring through the air to strike the hero out of the air. The onslaught of lasers interrupted, Leviathan shifted from a crouch on one side of the road to being the midst of the defending heroes in one fluid motion, resuming the carnage in the span of a heartbeat. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3
- ↑ Leviathan whipped his tail around, slamming it through the ranks of capes. Immediately after, a lash of water followed in the wake of his movement, cutting down yet another line of gathered heroes and villains. The armbands announced the losses to the defending side with every attack Leviathan made. - Excerpt from Interlude 8.y
- ↑ Standard superman could probably drive Leviathan into submission. Maybe not kill, and hurling Leviathan is harder than one might imagine with the water echo materializing matter between the grip and the giant, variably hyperdense scaled beast, but for all intents and purposes the end result is the same: the fight might go worse initially, especially if Superman tries frost breath, but Leviathan is down and out, Brockton Bay doesn't take a fraction of the damage it did in-story. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles
- ↑ Legend caught him square in the chest, and Leviathan slowed long enough for Alexandria to catch him by the tail.
She flew straight up, holding the monster by the tail. Between Leviathan’s dark scales and Alexandria’s black costume, they disappeared in the gloom.
Leviathan fell, and the resulting impact was oddly out of sync with his mass. The water in particular seemed to react, a single ripple extending outward, clearing an area around him of any and all water. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y - ↑ Egleris: Leviathan, on the other hand, increases his speed by manipulating his own water echo, and we've seen how that allows him to deliver hits more powerful than his body frame would grant. Despite not being much bigger than a T-rex would be, he can demolish buildings and cut people apart with a single slash of his tail, which T-rexes wold not have the strength to do, while Leviatan does: it's his (hydrokinetically granted) speed (and hyperdurable body) that allows him to.
Mook: That sounds like fanon. Where was it stated that Leviathan used hydrokinesis for that? It seems more like he just has super strength and super speed in addition to his hydrokinesis (and durability).
Wildbow: It is fanon. - Comment by Wildbow - ↑ Dandas52: Why isn't Clockblocker a free out to the entire fight? At one point during the fight, he demonstrates the ability to freeze Leviathan, but only manages to do so after considerable losses from the capes, and has to be rescued after. Why doesn't he simply have a flying hero or teleporter pick him up, fly/teleport him to Leviathan and freeze him immediately? This gives the capes a chance to set up as comprehensive a trap as possible for Levi. If he unfreezes before they're ready, another tap will freeze him again.
All they have to do at this point is rinse and repeat. Freeze Levi, set up trap, Levi unfreezes, unleash trap, freeze Levi again, etc. etc. until he's too damaged to continue.
Wildbow: Generally speaking, the fact that CB doesn't know for certain when his power will wear off makes this unsustainable - It's minutes (of standing in churning/flowing water) of waiting, trusting that when the power wears off, he'll notice and react before the super-speed Endbringer with enhanced reflexes moves.
What ends up happening, should you try to chain it, is that he stands there, poised and ready to use his power, then all at once, the Endbringer is pulling away, clock reaches out and fails to make contact and then he dies.
Flying isn't protection against Leviathan (see Shielder), cape-generated protection (a la Othala) tends to be provided by people who can't provide the granted protection to themselves (and who then get taken out of the picture), so the person giving CB a ride dies and CB dies with them, or the person granting protections dies and then CB dies after.
If you don't chain it, if you're trying to tag him, set up a trap, tag him, set up a trap, then actually getting close is really dangerous - as the story demonstrates with how CB got injured. Injury is likely because there's a split second where things kick in (which is why he was hurt in the first place), and the water echo provides a kind of snare when it is frozen as well (see how he was trapped and needed Trickster's help to get away). Getting close is difficult, because so long as you're there and watching, you're in danger of being hit by a water whip or Levi going after you like he did Shielder. If you're not present, then by the time your side communicates his location and the opportunity to move in, well, he's a speedster and by the time you get there he's a distance away or the situation has changed.
Psychologically, keep in mind that he probably didn't seriously anticipate fighting Leviathan before that day - the people in charge of him weren't even ready to start discussing the possibility he might participate until after he'd turned eighteen, and even then it would have been preliminary, and in an ideal world they would've wanted to get him more intensive training. But Leviathan attacked his city, so he participated in the here and now.
Could they have discussed it with him beforehand? Yes. But that's a lot of organization and such to stake on 'if Leviathan attacks and you participate', 'if you can get close', and, finally, 'if your power even works on him' - if it doesn't then you've just got a dead CB. - Conversation with Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles - ↑ 105.0 105.1 Leviathan is a thirty-foot tall monstrosity with enhanced speed, enhanced strength, a watery afterimage that follows after his every movement and macrohydrokinesis. He killed forty six parahumans during his attack on Brockton Bay, leaving many others wounded or crippled. Most see him as the weakest of the three. Has shattered islands and coastlines in the course of his attacks. - Cast (In Depth)
- ↑ The man with the jetpack gripped her wrists and carried her up a dizzying height to the roof of the nearest building, five stories tall.
[...]
The building shuddered, one wall of the building began to crumble, and Leviathan climbed fast enough that his momentum carried him twenty feet above the rooftop. - Excerpt from Interlude 8.y - ↑ It was Alexandria who speared forward to confront Leviathan. He saw her coming, ceased his onslaught to rear back and then lunge ahead to meet her. When they were only fifteen feet apart, he stopped, let his water echo rush forward to meet her.
Anyone else might have been staggered in the face of several tons of water moving forward at the speed of a locomotive. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ Another afterimage of a claw swipe sent out to strike at me.
Water crashed into me, hard as concrete, fast as a speeding car. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5 - ↑ I’d seen him fight Endbringers in that suit, seen how he could move as fast as anyone who wasn’t a speedster, turning his spinning weapon and those shield-like extensions on his armor into a whirling flurry of nano-thorns, cutting through seventy to eighty percent of the Endbringer’s flesh before they reached material too dense to penetrate. - Excerpt from Sting 26.2
- ↑ Leviathan slapped his tail at Armsmaster’s legs, and Armsmaster leaped over it, swiped out with the blurry Halberd. It carved a chunk out of Leviathan, left a cloud of dust that the rain quickly drove down into the expanse of water beneath them. The Endbringer reared back in pain, and Armsmaster stepped forward, leaped up higher than any normal human could, and caught Leviathan just above the knee with the Halberd, driving the blade nearly a third of the way to the bone.
Leviathan retaliated, swiping at Armsmaster, but the hero planted a foot on the uninjured part of the knee, and kicked himself back and out of the way. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4 - ↑ Some remains of the afterimage struck his armor, but he slid back and rolled with the impact, keeping his feet on the ground the entire time, enabling him to leap and roll to one side as Leviathan’s tail came down from behind and directly above him. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4
- ↑ Leviathan lunged, stopped, letting his water echo get ahead of him, then lunged again, a half second later. Armsmaster leaped out of the way of the echo, drew his knees to his chest to avoid a claw swipe while he was still airborne, and sent his grappling hook between Leviathan’s feet to pull himself to the ground in a flash. He skidded with the momentum, right between Leviathan’s legs, and raised the blurry Halberd to strike Leviathan between the legs, against the first ten feet of Leviathan’s tail. The tail was turned to dust where the blade made contact, the plumes of it briefly obscuring Armsmaster. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4
- ↑ Leviathan whipped his tail at Armsmaster. Armsmaster stepped out of the way, slapped at the tail with the broad side of the blade. More dust, another chunk of flesh gone, ichor pouring from the injury. He ducked the echo as though it were an idle afterthought. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4
- ↑ Armsmaster let the chain go slack, ducked a swipe of the tail, leaped forward and to one side to avoid the claw that followed. Another small hop and roll ensured he moved right beneath the afterimage, and he made two swipes with the blurry Halberd at the back of Leviathan’s thighs as he passed behind the Endbringer. His chain reeled in, pulled free of Leviathan’s neck wth a spray of blood, came down and across Leviathan’s hip to snap back to the top of the Halberd. He fired it off again to get himself more distance, pulling himself across the street, spinning to face Leviathan once more as he stopped. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4
- ↑ Armsmaster went on an all-out offensive, slashing as fast as his arm could move, cutting leg, knee, tail, leg again, moving out of the way of Leviathan’s attacks as though it were easy. For ten seconds he continued, relentless. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4
- ↑ 116.0 116.1 It was hard to say whether Leviathan heard the command or if Legend had spotted some tell, but Leviathan dropped to all fours at the same time Legend gave the command. With Legend’s cry still ringing in the air, Leviathan moved.
He was fast.
Fast enough that his clawed hands and feet didn’t touch the road beneath the water – after the initial push, his forward momentum was enough to let him run on the water’s surface.
Fast enough that before I could finish drawing in a breath, to scream or shout something or gasp in horror, he was already in the middle of us, blood and water spraying where he collided with the lines of assembled capes, and the armbands were beginning to announce the hopelessly injured and deceased. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2 - ↑ Tattletale grinned, turning her full attention to the Endbringer from beneath the waves. It was crouching, preparing to charge. - Excerpt from Interlude 8.y
- ↑ Leviathan didn’t make noise. I kept expecting a roar, or hiss, or something, but Leviathan was dead silent. I somehow imagined a victorious howl as he broke through the barrier, crouched, and lunged into the crowd. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3
- ↑ Leviathan turned around, lashing his tail behind him to cast three lashes of water our way, then crouched.
“He’s running!” someone called out.
Leviathan dashed away from us, fast, only to skid to a stop and turn a corner for cover as Legend, Lady Photon, Laserdream and a half dozen other heroes opened fire from the skies above. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ Another blast of golden light, and one side was stopped, stalled. A third blast was spared for Leviathan, who was getting his hands and feet firmly on the ground, crouching in preparation to run. The Endbringer was knocked squarely to the ground. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ Leviathan didn’t make noise. I kept expecting a roar, or hiss, or something, but Leviathan was dead silent. I somehow imagined a victorious howl as he broke through the barrier, crouched, and lunged into the crowd.
He stopped, and I thought he was using his afterimage, halting so it could rush forward, but even the watery echo stopped a second after it appeared, only the very edges of it continuing forward to crash violently against the sides of the alley.
For several long heartbeats, it was nearly quiet, but for the sound of rain, people’s noises of pain, mine included, and the sound of one of Kaiser’s iron columns ripping free of the wall and falling atop a pile of blades.
It took me a second to realize what had happened. Leviathan hung frozen mid-pounce, and his emerging afterimage similarly stood there, frozen in time. In the midst of the afterimage was Clockblocker, half-immersed in water. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ Leviathan lunged, dropping to all fours, as if trying to swamp Armsmaster with a huge volume of water by way of his afterimage. Armsmaster was already casting his grappling hook out, pulling himself out of the way. In the final moment before he pulled away, his other Halberd swung up and into Leviathan’s neck, making a wound mirroring the spot where Narwhal’s forcefield had cleaved deep, the one Kid Win had undoubtedly opened wider with his laser turret. Armsmaster reeled the hook back in.
The Endbringer turned, as if to run, only for the loop of the grappling hook’s chain to pass under his ‘chin’. Armsmaster heaved himself up and onto the Endbringer’s back, drove the Halberd into one side of the neck, lengthening the cut he’d just made. He stepped on the top of the Endbringer’s head, leaped down, catching the Endbringer across the face with the Halberd as he descended. Leviathan collapsed, going spread-eagle. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4 - ↑ He dropped to all fours, ran away, a loping gait, not the lightning fast movement he’d sported when he first attacked. Still fast enough. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ I gathered my bugs to me, sent some to him, to better track his movements.
[...]
Scion stopped the third wave in its tracks with a fourth blast, but the water was still there, and it still bowed to gravity. The water level around us rose by a dozen feet, momentarily, slopping as gently over us as physically possible, like a lap of water on the beach.
When the flow of water was past us, I could see a fifth blast of light following Leviathan, who had used the cresting water to swim away. He was making his way to the coast. Scion rose, flew after his target with a streak of golden light tracing his movement. Eidolon followed soon after. - Extermination 8.5 - ↑ He found handholds in the shallow wounds on Leviathan’s back and shoulders. The abomination moved, and the watery echo that followed its movements crashed into Lung. Not enough to unseat him.
The tidal wave that struck wasn’t enough either, nor Leviathan’s speed as the creature swam. Lung dug deeper, clawed flesh away. Deeper in Leviathan’s body, the flesh was only harder, the ichor making it slick.
[...]
Leviathan surfaced, and Lung found his way up to the monster’s neck. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y - ↑ Leviathan knocked him aside, and Lung rolled, putting taloned hands and feet beneath him before rushing forward, shallow leaps that carried him over the water that was knee-high to the humans. Barely halfway up Lung’s own calves.
He found handholds in the shallow wounds on Leviathan’s back and shoulders.
[...]
Leviathan surfaced, and Lung found his way up to the monster’s neck. He tried to reach around, and his arm shifted, reconfiguring to be a fraction longer. Lung’s legs, arms, and talons were growing as well.
[...]
He was only half the height of the Endbringer, but it was enough. - Excerpt from Interlude 22.y - ↑ If they go for a drive late at night, we have a flier or speedster track them. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.7
- ↑ The speedsters, acrobats, fliers, and other movers could get around or get through that gap, but they couldn’t make a lasting dent in enemy forces while they were out there. - Excerpt from Dying 15.3
- ↑ Battery and Velocity were both speedsters of a sort, giving them the ability to move at a ridiculous pace. They were very different kinds of speedster, though.
[...]
The actual act of moving at the speeds these guys could manage was an incredible strain on the body. There were only one or two parahumans on the planet who could manage that kind of movement without any workarounds or limitations, and Battery and Velocity weren’t among them. - Excerpt from Tangle 6.6 - ↑ He was a speedster, but he looked and felt a damn sight like a bio-speedster. There were breaker speedsters like Velocity, who shifted into an alternate state to access reality on a different level, there were ones who had a great deal of propulsion, ones that manipulated the environment, and then there were the ones who just had biology that alien – usually through changer powers. - Excerpt from Polarize 10.5
- ↑ Brockton Bay, May 15th, 2011 // Leviathan
Notes: Scion victory.
Target/Consequence: Noelle? See file Echidna. No contact made. - Excerpt from Scarab 25.6 - ↑ He relied on the dense lines and numbers his lenses fed him to position his body and weave through the pockets of air and air currents. He approached a tough spot where something was burning on the far wall, and he adjusted settings, drawing on his battery for a bit of extra power. The benefit was slight, as the heat reached him less and the air worked with him a little more, and the battery power raced from a hundred to sixty in those long, long picoseconds. - Excerpt from Interlude 15.y II
- ↑ “She’s as strong as Leviathan, physically,” Tattletale said, “She’s not as tough, based on what I’ve seen. - Excerpt from Queen 18.3
- ↑ I got my orders and left behind a bizarre scene where Armsmaster was working hand in hand with Kaiser, of all people. Kaiser worked to build the same sort of trap that he’d imprisoned Lung in, some time ago, creating bars of metal between and around each of Leviathan’s limbs, a cage tight to the body. Rune and another telekinetic were working to bend the metal from Kaiser’s shaken barrier around Leviathan’s limbs and face.
It wouldn’t last. Leviathan was too big, his tail extended a long distance behind him, and it was thin and supple enough to slip through almost any barrier Kaiser could erect, strong enough that it could bend metal. Leviathan would get free, there could be no illusions on that front. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4 - ↑ Leviathan used his claws to heave Hookwolf off his face, tore the metal beast in half, and then threw the pieces down to the ground, hard. One landed straight on top of Shadow Stalker, the other almost seemed to bounce, rapidly condensing into a roughly humanoid form before it touched the ground again, landing in a crouch. Hookwolf backed away, the blades drawing together into a human shape, skin appearing as they withdrew. He brought his hand over his head and pointed forward at Leviathan. A signal for the next front-liner. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ The suit collided with Leviathan a half second after the missiles exploded against his torso and shoulders, and steel claws gripped his limbs.
The ‘face’ of her armored suit opened up and began discharging a blue-white flame into his face. The ‘flames’ didn’t move like flames should, spilling off him and down into the water, where they pooled on the road and continued to burn – after a fashion – beneath the water. Leviathan, for his part, began tearing into Dragon, clawing away layers of armor with each swipe of his claws, almost uncaring as to the liquid fire that was spilling over him. - Excerpt from Interlude 8.y - ↑ A series of explosions and a massive collision marked Dragon firing a full salvo of missiles and entering close quarters combat with Leviathan.
[...]
Dragon began breathing out a stream of what might have been plasma in Leviathan’s face. From his increased struggles and frenetic clawing at her, I gathered he didn’t like it. Still, it was doing surprisingly little damage to him.
Leviathan found a point to get a solid grip on Dragon’s armor, and tore off a plate. His next swipe took off another, and it careened a good twenty feet before landing with a heavy splash, close enough to me that I was caught in the spray. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ Kaiser changed tactics, creating columns of steel instead, each three or four feet across, harder to shatter. They were slower to emerge, but they bent rather than broke.
Leviathan responded by pushing. He exerted his full strength on the barrier of blades and the columns, leaning against them. The walls broke around the base of the columns, and the pieces of steel fell. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ Whatever advantage Alexandria had gained, it didn’t last long. Leviathan’s tail snaked up and around the heroine’s neck, catching her. He whipped her into the ground, beside him, up into a wall, then back down. This time, he held her beneath the water, using one claw to help pin her. - Excerpt from Interlude 8.y
- ↑ 140.0 140.1 Legend fired a barrage of lasers at Leviathan, but the Endbringer was quick to hop to one side, landing on the roof’s edge. He made a sudden, standing leap a good eighty or a hundred feet into the air, tail extending to reach for the airborne heroes.
The whiplike tail struck Legend, and there was a firework display of light and sparks, Legend tumbling out of the sky, head over heels. In the same movement, the tail reached for Laserdream and Shielder.
Legend down, CD-6, The armbands announced, just in time to coincide with Legend hitting the ground. - Extermination 8.3 - ↑ Conversely, his enemies could try to hit him with enough speed and force that even a hundredth of a second of contact was sufficient to take him out of the fight. Leviathan and Behemoth had managed to land blows of that magnitude. - Interlude 14.y
- ↑ Leviathan heaved himself up out of the building’s remains in one motion, used his tail to pick up and fling a mess of broken wood, concrete and rebar at us. Aegis threw himself into the cluster of projectiles, but two capes were struck down by smaller chunks. A third was folded in half by the arc of water from Leviathan’s tail. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3
- ↑ The explosion made Leviathan rear back, and the water that followed in his wake moved slower in that bubble, slowed down with each passing second.
Leviathan himself wasn’t as affected, and he had one foot and an upper body outside of the bubble to help him pull himself free. He raised his leg free of the golden string goop and up out of the sphere, lashed his tail toward the crowd I was at the back of, catching three people, entwining the tip around their arms, legs and necks. He flicked them into the center of the time distortion bubble, where they got caught, unable to make their exit fast enough to avoid being frozen in time.
Jotun deceased, CD-6. Dauntless deceased, CD-6. Alabaster deceased, CD-6. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.3 - ↑ Boots, was the thought, as the tail snaked around him. The Leviathan had him, and he’d been just a little too slow to get out of the way.
If he’d infused the boots, then maybe.
He was flung, with a force he knew would kill him. He used his boots to try to slow the movement.
He didn’t die. Things around him flickered, then dissipated. - Excerpt from Heavens 12.none - ↑ A slash of Leviathan’s tail brought down two of the stuffed entities, and Hookwolf tackled him to ensure the Endbringer didn’t get a moment’s respite. Leviathan caught Hookwolf around the middle with his tail, flecks of blood and flesh spraying from the tail as it circled Hookwolf’s body of skirring, whisking blades. Leviathan hurled Hookwolf away. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ It wasn’t enough. The dogs were strong, there were six of them left, even, but Leviathan was more of a monster than all of them put together.
He heaved one dog off the ground, slammed it into another like a club, then hurled it against a wall, where it dropped, limp and broken.
With that same claw, he slashed, tore the upper half of a dog’s head off. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5 - ↑ As he’d beaten a path deeper into the city, he had found opportunities to do damage on the way. A police car had been thrown through the second story of a building. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ Leviathan grabbed a car, twisted his entire upper body to toss it in the style of an olympic hammer-throw. The car hurtled through the air, and Scion batted it aside with the back of one hand. The vehicle virtually detonated with the impact, falling into a thousand pieces, each piece glowing with golden-yellow light, disintegrating as they splashed into the water. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.5
- ↑ She hunkered down to to watch the fight, mentally opening those doors that let more information flow.
- Leviathan, nonstandard cardiac, nervous systems: irregular biology. No standard organs or weak points. No brain, heart or center of operations for rest of his body.
Irregular biology, no vulnerable organs: body divided into layers, extending down to hyperdurable core body, each layer down is slightly more than twice as durable as previous. Exterior skin is hard as aluminum alloy, but flexible, lets him move. 3% deeper in toward core of arms, legs, claws, tail, or .5% in toward core of head, trunk, neck, tissues are hard as steel. 6% in toward core of extremities or 1% toward core of main body/head, tissues strong as tungsten. 9% toward core of extremities, 1.5% toward core of main body, head, tissues strong as boron. 12%-
- Leviathan, nonstandard cardiac, nervous systems: irregular biology. No standard organs or weak points. No brain, heart or center of operations for rest of his body.
- ↑ Another try.
- Durable layers to body, no conventional organs, irregular biology: Tissues mend from the inside out, layers expanding to fill wounds and integrating into surrounding structures. Not human.
- Not human: Never was human.
- ↑ “Could it be an Endbringer?” Rain asked.
“Jesus,” Byron said. “Don’t even joke. They’ve been dormant.”
“They can’t be predicted easily with danger sense either,” I said. - Excerpt from Gleaming 9.12 - ↑ It wasn’t Jeanne who answered. Cinereal gave me my reply. “Thinkers say no. They’re either drawing blanks or they don’t like what they see.”
“Nothing specific? No details?”
“No,” Cinereal said. “But if you look at some of the other major thinker blind spots, you’re going to find yourself running into topics like Eidolon, Sleeper, the Endbringers, Valkyrie, the Island-state, the Pastor incident…”
“Concentrations of power,” I said.
Jeanne shook her head. “Complexity of power, most often. Whatever thinker powers come into play, with these cases, there’s often too many variables to fully consider, thinkers report that their powers are fuzzy, inconsistent, or blacked out.” - Excerpt from Blinding 11.4 - ↑ “Right, that wasn’t my second question. What I want to know is why the hell you haven’t used a power like yours to figure out how to beat the Endbringers.”
“My power is a form of precognition,” she said. “Unlike most such powers, other precognitive abilities do not confuse it. That said, there are certain individuals it does not work against, the Endbringers included.”
“Why?” Tecton asked.
“No way to know for sure,” she said, “But we have theories. The first is that they have a built-in immunity, something their origins granted them.” - Excerpt from Crushed 24.2 - ↑ “You dumb brute,” Armsmaster growled. He was panting for breath. “Every fight you’ve done so far, that we’ve got on camera? I’ve watched it, put it through programs. I’ve got a computer on my back that’s relaying to a supernetwork, noting your every move, using subsonic pulses to read every aspect of the street, the surrounding buildings, every feature of the terrain. I know exactly what you’re going to do next – you’re going to try to catch me from behind with a wave.” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.4
- ↑ Legend talks about underestimating Leviathan... which is a complete aside and totally unrelated to me bringing up Armsmaster vs. Leviathan. I should explain (because I think it was unclear) - Armsmaster's computer didn't let him position the others so they would die, exactly. That was secondary. He put the villains in the way (particularly the giant bruisers and the wall-creating Kaiser) and set himself up so he would be able to fight Leviathan one on one. That let the simulation program be clean of interference and outside variables.
It wasn't that Armsmaster screwed up, but that a weapon that's supposed to cut through anything gets part of the way through Leviathan's claw and stops. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles - ↑ Plendamonda: Reminder that Armsmaster's prediction software worked perfectly at predicting Leviathan
until it didn't
[...]
Wildbow: His combat analysis software did work
Xantho: The data it had was incomplete
Wildbow: Not that.
It let him land the blow just where he wanted it. But he was working on the assumption that his halberd cut through everything.
His software doesn't get into the nitty-gritty of powers or composition or figure out what can be cut through and what can't. It's about movement, attacks, counters, and tactics.
Watch how someone moves, get all the data from video footage and whatever else, gather data on mindset and habits, extrapolate.
Even if there's 50 possible moves (in a broad sense), it can still guide you to places where you're safe, and that reduce the opponent's future options for courses to take. - Conversation with Wildbow on Parahumans Discord - ↑ Sydney was destroyed but would've been rebuilt. Other areas that suffered direct or incidental damage received a great deal of international funding and support... which declined as time went on.
Sydney was early enough in the grand scheme of things to get some attention, before the decline & the crisis fatigue of the world at large. In the Wormverse notes, it doubled down on its nickname the 'The Harbor City' in that it gratefully received the international support, rebuilt, and tried to transform the negative into a positive by providing shelter and support to others (That is, safe harbor). The good was a great deal of national pride (and international pride in the country). In terms of the bad, well, I actually wrote the notes before the whole political shift and the voice xenophobia has found in politicians in recent years, but you could see new Sydney as a kind of microcosm of that sentiment. While it offered shelter to the displaced and the needy, it also was argued to be a shelter and haven for crime and shady types looking for a footing.
Dunno if you're far enough along that you can't use that note, but such is my jotted-down notes in the Worm bible, re: Australia. (I'll leave Canberra aside) - Wildbow on Reddit - ↑ 158.0 158.1 “Kyushu, the night of November second and the morning of the third, 1999. His sixth appearance. Nine and a half million killed when the region was swamped with tidal waves from every direction while Leviathan disrupted prearranged evacuation attempts. Nearly three million evacuees rendered homeless, a nation sundered. - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2
- ↑ Hyderabad, July 6th, 2001. Leviathan. - Excerpt from Interlude 24.x
- ↑ From her vantage point in Vancouver, she had watched as the island crumbled and Andrew Richter died. As authorities had dredged the waters for corpses, they uncovered his body and matched it to dental records. - Excerpt from Interlude 10.5
- ↑ He paused. “We have since classified the locations the Endbringers target as either hard targets or soft targets. The hard battlefields are where we stand our ground, buy time, wear him down. The soft ones are locations where we cannot afford to do this.” - Excerpt from Extermination 8.2
- ↑ 162.0 162.1 162.2 Comment by Wildbow
- ↑ Way I see it, having a local team of superheroes is like having a sports team. Everyone's rooting for them, they make for great media that isn't about wars or the water crisis or whatever - Excerpt from Agitation 3.6
- ↑ Shipping wasn't hurt because of boats - Leviathan tended to have periods of activity where he'd attack a city, then retreat to deep water. Boats weren't really hurt, except incidentally.
Shipping was hurt because ports in target cities and port cities near the targets were left devastated. (Also port cities visited by Simurgh/Behemoth/Tohu Bohu/Khonsu) Shipping still is a thing in the Wormverse. - Wildbow on Spacebattles - ↑ Extermination 8.1
- ↑ LacePrisonQueenBreaker: On a semi-related note, was taking a look at the map for WD Oakland campaign and Emeryville is noticeably absent as if that part of the shore fell into the bay or something. Is that intentional, and if so, what happened to wipe a(n admittedly small)town so cleanly off the map?
Wildbow: It was intentional, and there's typically one good answer to that question. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit
[]
| Behemoth † • Leviathan † • The Simurgh • Khonsu * • Tohu * • Bohu * | |
| Endbringers | Behemoth † • Leviathan † • The Simurgh • Khonsu * • Tohu * • Bohu * |
|---|---|
| Titans | The Kronos Titan † • Titan Eve † • Titan Fortuna † • The Nemean Titan † • Titan Arachne † • Titan Oberon † • The Ashen Titan † • Titan Skadi † • The Ophion Titan † • The Strange Titan † • Auger † • Titaness Amenonuhoko † • The Flowing Titan † • Drillbit † • The Liminal Titan † • Pouffe † • Valkyrie † • Morgana † • Yakshini † • Ashoka † • Ghast † |
| Groups | The Slaughterhouse Nine ‡ • Three Blasphemies • The Machine Army |
| Parahumans | Ash Beast † • Echidna † • Khepri ‡ • Nilbog • Pastor † • Scion † • Sleeper • The Tower † |