Anyone who has played any Monster Hunter game will have probably noticed at some point that the ways these so called "monsters" act are strangely familiar, with their behavior being more animalistic than monstrous. This is without a doubt the thing...
Morning light peaks over the eastern horizon behind towering mountains of basalt, their rugged blocky surfaces illuminated by the rising sun, revealing the paths, tunnels, caverns, and scars covering them, their origins greatly varying, from frequent monster activity to violent tectonic and volcanic upheaval. As some of the rays make it over the colossal structures, they connect with the millions of crystals that litter the area.
These white structures continuously grow, their expansion ripping apart the terrain and reshaping it, occasionally creating some truly incredible formations. Every crystal here is vastly different from each other, coming in a variety of shapes and sizes, with some being little more than pebbles, while others are nearly as large as the surrounding mountains. Yet despite this enormous amount of variations, every single one of these structures has an identical and very unexpected origin.
Spanning the entirety of the new world is an underground network known as the everstream which originates under the rotten vale. When animals come to this area to die, their decomposing bodies release into the ground the bioenergy they accumulated throughout their lives. This energy is subsequently redistributed across the continent, then absorbed by plants, thus entering the new world's web of life.
There is also another layer to this seemingly unending cycle. Unlike most other lifeforms, elder dragons contain a substance simply known as pure energy. Whenever these creatures of immense power take in bioenergy, a small portion of it is compacted together, converting it into pure energy. Because of the nature of this process, pure energy is much more concentrated and dense than regular bioenergy, so when it is released into the everstream, it doesn't travel very far. Instead, it accumulates in certain areas where it's absorbed into the rocks and crystallizes, thus fuelling the growth of the elder's recess's crystals. These structures still contain the properties of this incredible substance, turning them into a very valuable source of nutrition, although getting this prize isn't easy.
Since pure energy crystalizes, the only way for animals to obtain it is through eating the structures, something that's nearly impossible for most species due to how difficult breaking and digesting the crystals would be. Yet this obstacle hasn't stopped creatures from evolving ways to get this valuable prize as witnessed by the variety of lithovores that have figured out ways of handling this unusual food source.
In a chasm situated not too far away from a more volcanic area, one such creature that has adapted to this environment is gorging itself on a massive crystal. Opening its mouth and scooping out a large swath of the structure is a Dodogama, its massive, highly specialized lower jaw, allowing it to feed on this hard material with ease.
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Supported by a very muscular neck and upper body, the sharp, upwards-facing armor plates on the animal's lower jaw lets it effortlessly slice through hard materials, while the size alone is enough to take in huge amounts, maximizing the number of nutrients it takes in. Although the Dodogama is eating the crystals, it's not digesting them in the same way other lithovores do.
