Goliath of the Lagoon
TaleThe giant crab who kept the tide, and why he still rises from the water.
Out past the jungle, where the river spreads into the sea, there is a lagoon so still that the clouds look at themselves in it. Fishers say the water there is deeper than it has any right to be. They are correct. Something very large lives at the bottom.
His name is Goliath, and once upon a time he was the keeper of the tide.
Twice a day the sea breathes in and breathes out. It pushes up the beaches, then slides away again. In the old days, the story goes, somebody had to make sure it did this gently: not too high, so the crab burrows and turtle nests stayed dry, and not too low, so the little fish in the shallows were never left flapping on the sand. Goliath did that job. He sat in the mouth of the lagoon with his great violet-and-teal shell glowing softly with markings, and he held the tide in his claws like a rope, letting it in, letting it out.
Every creature on the coast knew him. The gulls rode on his back. The small crabs of the beach thought he was the most wonderful thing in the world, and tried to walk sideways exactly the way he did.
When the Gloom came down the river, it poured into the lagoon, and it settled on Goliath like a cloud on a mountain. His markings dimmed. He forgot the tide. He forgot the gulls. He sank to the bottom and lay there, dreaming murky dreams, and the sea has been a little rough ever since.
But Goliath is not quite gone. When someone walks near the lagoon, something in him remembers there's a job to do, and he rises, huge and dripping and still wrapped in Gloom, and swings those enormous claws at whoever is there.
No gator can calm him alone. Goliath is a guardian, and guardians are strong. It takes friends: some to draw his slams, some to watch for the rings he stamps into the sand, some to strike after each blow. And when at last the murk lets go, the markings on his shell glow bright again for a moment. He looks around, as if he's just woken up, and slides back into the lagoon, leaving behind treasures from the seabed and, sometimes, the tip of a claw.
The Gloom always finds him again, though. A day later he is back in his murky dream, waiting for the next visitors.
The small crabs of the beach still walk sideways, just like him. They're waiting too.
Tale: a crab who held the tide.
True: the tide really does come in and go out about twice a day, pulled mostly by the Moon. And real crabs can be giants: the Japanese spider crab has the longest legs of any crab, up to about 3.7 metres from claw tip to claw tip, as wide as a small car is long. Crabs can't grow inside their hard shells, so they moult: they wriggle out of the old shell, puff up, and wait for a new, bigger one to harden.
Goliath rises from a beach lagoon with deep water beside it, a long walk from the village, when a player comes within about 110 metres. He comes back a game day after he's calmed. See Bosses for how to face him.