#140 - Seawyrm

[Lazarus Carter]

SEAWYRM

Name: Seawyrm
Aliases: Eel, Tunnel Shark, "WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM OH MY GOD"

Sphere: The Black Sea
Tier: Elite

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Abilities: The Seawyrm is a favoured monstrosity of Leviathan's. At any time, juvenile and baby Seawyrms can exist from diminutive to relatively normal sizes; anywhere from a few inches to up to ten feet long is most common. However, the childhood and adolescence stages of the Seawyrm's growth cycle tend to last for thousands of years; it's not uncommon for them to not truly mature until around the age of 10,000, whereupon they will swell to incredible sizes and become the fearsome creatures of Black Sea lore, monstrosities that can grow to lengths of almost three hundred feet.

Adolescent and immature Seawyrms are threats enough in themselves and tend to be scourges of the Black Sea hunting in packs; but there's a certain neural inhibitor that all Seawyrms possess at this stage that means they, for quite a while, actively seek sources of submerged combat beneath the murky depths. Their bodies, like those of all native to the sea, are tempered to the extreme pressures from birth to death: but there's a reason that true, fully mature, adult Seawyrms are so rare yet so revered. Juvenile Seawyrms are stupid. They seek out combat and almost never run away; and this leads to their lifespan hardly ever reaching beyond a few hundred years.

However; the anomalous cases are in those who possess above-average strength or innate skill for fighting beneath the seas; and as the years pass, the process of maturity lets the Seawyrm, usually battlescarred for all its time, realise that it cannot win every battle. In a physically contradictory manner, as it does, it begins to swell and grow to mammoth proportions. When true revelation of this fact dawns on the creature, it develops a silent semi-sentience: and reaches "maturity", releasing floods of growth hormones and triggering a decades-long period of deep-sea hibernation. When the Wyrm in question awakens? It is huge.

The abilities of juvenile and child Seawyrms are unspectacular. Their streamlined shape and acute senses allow them to track and take down predators one-on-one that are smaller than them; they often don't band together in groups of more than ten, so can't take down the truly fearsome superiors of the Sea alone, and if they don't fight for a period of more than a couple of months, become completely feral and turn on their own "kin". They communicate through a sort of water-borne telepathy, a hivemind group mentality, so eerily enough, one Seawyrm that's grouped with another can sense the sanity of its comrade slipping away, though in far more bestial terms.

Adult Seawyrms never band together, and are fiercely stubborn in mentality. They will attack most things that come across them or disturb them, but are not nearly as hotheaded as they once were. Usually beaten and battered, the larger of their kin possess muscular strength and tension that allows them to chew through most materials, and using the shape of their body, can perforate masses of sand, and hide beneath them, lurking underwater waiting for prey to catch them. They also seem to have, in hibernation, gained far more acute senses of smell and hearing; they can sniff out blood within the radius of a mile, and echolocate at a limited degree, best used when hiding amidst the sand.

Seawyrms are fearsome scourges of the Black Sea when they do choose to attack however; able to rise silent from within the depths, any trespassers upon the ocean waves of a smaller degree can be snapped up immediately. The Seawyrm can only move its body at around speeds of fifty miles per hour; but due to its streamlined essence it can accelerate to this speed in a matter of moments, and with an open jaw the size of a small van, it can leave little to no trace of most prey in a matter of moment. These number few: they are the smart, they are the quiet, they are the tactical: they are the true Seawyrms, those revered in the legends of the Black Sea as being the Kraken's older brother.

Miscellaneous Notes: - The number of Seawyrms to have reached adulthood is very likely to be under one hundred, and probably under seventy, with another two or three hibernating.
- One or two Seawyrms have been rumoured to have lived for so long (more than three or four hundred thousands years) that they can actually project their thoughts with limited radial telepathy in Demonic.
- All Seawyrms are infact gender-neutral. Only adult Seawyrms lay eggs; and they do so roughly once every two or three years, laying clutches of around fifty eggs at the bottom of the sea. Of its entire life, it is predicted that a Seawyrm will only leave a single successor to reach adulthood.