The Manticore is encountered in Aria of Sorrow as the boss of the Chapel, and later as a common enemy in the Floating Garden.
Through false etymology, it was sometimes assumed that the name was an amalgamation of man and tiger. Pliny's book was widely enjoyed and uncritically believed through the European Middle Ages, during which the manticore was sometimes described or illustrated in bestiaries. Pliny the Elder followed Aristotle's natural history by including the martichoras (mistranscribed as manticorus in his copy, and thus passing into European languages) among his descriptions of animals in his Naturalis Historia. It passed into European folklore first through a remark by Ctesias, a Greek physician. The English term "manticore" was borrowed from Latin mantichora, itself derived from the Greek rendering of the Persian name, μαρτιχώρα, martichora. In Persian myth it was called "man-eater" (from early Middle Persian مارتیا martya "man" (as in human) and خوار xwar- "to eat"). It devours its preys whole and leaves no clothes, bones or possessions behind. The tail is that of either a dragon or a scorpion, and it may shoot venomous spines to either paralyze or kill its victims. It has the body of a red lion, a human head with three rows of sharp teeth, sometimes bat-like wings, and a trumpet-like voice. The manticore is a Persian legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx.