The Lake Daniels Monster
By Kenneth Eliot

It was one of the enduring questions of the early settlement period in Avalon County: How can a completely artificial environment like the Avalon pseudocontinent have cryptids? There was nothing living within an astronomical unit of the spot where the pseudocontinent was constructed; everything that lives there must have been put in place by the builders.

How, then, to explain the persistent reports that something unplanned and unexpected lives in Lake Daniels?

Since shortly after construction began on the city of New Avalon, sightings of some large, strange creature have been reported by people from all walks of life. By the time the New Avalon Cornet-Scientifer began publication in 2382, the legend of the Lake Daniels Monster was firmly established in the area's fast-developing local culture, but it was in the pages of the city's first newspaper that the creature first received the nickname by which it would come to be more familiarly known. Predictably enough, the Cornet-Scientifer reporter assigned to cover the story dubbed the monster "Danny".

For twenty years, the controversy raged: Just what exactly was Danny? City planners and the people who developed the pseudocontinent swore they hadn't included anything bigger than some stocked Pescalian bladefish for gamefishing purposes, but those top out at eight feet long and don't have the long, flexible neck often reported in Danny sightings. In eyewitness reports and the odd blurry photograph, Danny appeared to be nothing so much as an ancient Earth plesiosaur.

Lake monster myths are nothing new in Earth-descended human culture. Many freshwater lakes on the homeworld have been reputed to be the home of plesiosaur-like creatures over the centuries, most famously Loch Ness in Scotland, Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, and Lake Champlain Vermont. Few of these creatures have ever been definitively confirmed or definitively debunked (with the obvious exception of the Lake Champlain monster, Champ), giving them considerable cultural staying power. Many believed that Danny was either the result of a hoax or some kind of mass delusion originally based on the preponderance of humans of Earth descent in Avalon County's early settler base.

The controversy continued until 2405, when two vacationing members of the Wedge Defense Force were shipwrecked while sailing a small catamaran not far from Great Cranberry Isle, off Waid Head at the southern end of Avalon Harbor. To their astonishment, the two WDF officers were rescued by a giant creature resembling (but not precisely) a plesiosaur. Once conveyed to shore on Great Cranberry, they took the first clear, verifiable photographs of the creature. The photos, published in the Cornet-Scientifer, Sphere magazine, and other publications around the galaxy, definitively proved that something lived in Lake Daniels.

At this point, with the cat out of the bag, officers of the Wedge Defense Force's Life Sciences Division admitted that they had created the creature, releasing it into the lake during the Foundation Day celebration on July 4, 2381. When asked why, they pointed to the division's long-standing unofficial motto, You should because you can, and added that they wanted to give the brand-new Avalon settlement a little ready-made mystery and heritage.

The origins of Danny are no longer a mystery, but the heritage part, at least, has come true. The Lake Daniels "Monster" - really a friendly and playful creature with intelligence and personality comparable to an earlier LSD creation, the engineered neocats - is often spotted plying the waters of Avalon Harbor and its environs, and often puts in an appearance for tour boats and recreational watercraft. He has become something of a mascot for the city's waterfront districts and the sprinkling of offshore islands that fall within the city's legal boundaries. A cartoon version serves as the "host" for Avalon Broadcasting Channel 17's Saturday morning children's entertainment block.

Since going public, Danny has rescued shipwrecked recreational sailors at least twice more, and there are unconfirmed rumors that he has also destroyed at least one lakegoing vessel - a launch used by members of the Kempu ninja clan during the Big Fire attack on Terminal Island in 2409. Terminal Island is hundreds of miles from Danny's usual stamping grounds in the vicinity of Avalon Harbor, leading some to conclude that either that particular story is false, or that members of the International Police security detachment at Terminal Island Penitentiary are somehow able to summon him...

... or that there's more than one, a possibility the Life Sciences Division disclaims.