Session Title: Coastal Construction
Session DM: krforget93
Session Date : 11 Jan 2022 @ 02:00 UTC
Session Risk : 8 (Multiple Deaths Likely)
Characters:
- Twee (Goblinoid Gloomstalker 8/War Cleric 1/Fighter 1) (Played by RCB)
- Marcus Wellspring (Human Life Cleric 10) (Played by Genthro1) with Echo, the War Ostrich.
- Gau (Human Moon Druid 10) (Played by Konopa)
- Lysing (Air Genasi Storm Giant Soul Sorcerer) (Played by Geokhan)
- Zak Songheart (Alien 14) (Played by Carric)
- Katla Gyrdottir (Human Psy Warrior 10) (Played by Arden Christiansen)
- Valorean (Dragonborn Cursed Knight 15) (Played by Mal) with Azure, the Celestial Griffon (Author).
Below the thunders of the upper deep, Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee About his shadowy sides; above him swell Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumbered and enormous polypi Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. There hath he lain for ages, and will lie Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
In the face of the incumbent task to secure a proper harbor for Port Mirandia, our hardy bunch set sail in what some would’ve noted a hopeless task of finding out what was causing the unnatural storm besetting the coast town. Only a single sailor and his crew would take us out to sea the hurricane like winds:
A mere few miles off the town’s coast, we entered the seeming Eye of the storm, and were greeted by a group of Merfolk, their charmed sea life in the shape of sharks and megalodons plus summoned water elementals, which quickly took offense at our presence in their apparent religious ritual and coaxed their thralls to assail our ship.
We would later learn, as I dove beneath the waves, blessed by Gau with the ability to breath underwater, hasted by Lysing and riding trusty old Azure underneath the waves in pursuit of our assailants while magically adapted to it’s hazards: they were summoning a gods-damned Kraken. I will say to my shame that I was unable to singlehandedly slay the summoners before they could end their fell task. I will say that I held my own on the creature’s wrath long enough to allow my fellow team mates to deal with the threats to our vessels – buying them a few seconds more. I will say that I quickly obtained vengeance on the merfolk summoners with my icy breath. I will say that I had to make a quick magical escape from that harrowing battle to regroup and warn my team about the upcoming monstrosity, titan, what have you. I will say that my comrades fought valiantly, except for Willis and his crew, who were more than willing to leave us behind at the first sign of trouble that wasn’t weather-related. I will say that after spending our every ounce of strength, every blessing by God, Nature, Nurture or Bloodline, cursed or not, we prevailed with a final primal assault by Zak, after it had swallowed Marcus (who lived to tell of the darkness in it’s gut) and restraining me and my trusty steed and Twee blinded it. Turns out Kraken eyes are massive targets for the diminutive goblin. Lightning had suffused the creature as if it was a crossbreed of electric eel; And through our fight so Lysing blasted it with concentrated thunder, Katla was transformed into a massive shark I heard some nickname Sharkla, who finished off the remnants of the sharks assaulting us. Is it cannibalism if you were polymorphed? Magic makes philosophy hard. In the end we dove to the lowest depths and sacked it’s dominion, and it’s aberrant treasures. I will say I am thankful this wasn’t a Mandilaan*.
Mandilaan
Krakens reproduce sexually, with males able to reproduce after two centuries and females entering reproductive fertility after their first millennia. Once a female becomes fecund, she releases pheromones across the oceans for thousands of nautical miles to sexually mature males. Males who fall under the influence of the pheromones enter a state of psychosis and they immediately seek the female, with the pheromones being powerful enough to even catch humanoid males in its allure. The resulting sexual frenzy is referred to as the Mandilaan, where the krakens cluster in a single mass, the males tearing through one another to mate with the female at the center of the mass. This process utterly shreds the female kraken, whose destroyed body and fragment shells house the hundreds of eggs that have been fertilized by the destructive process.
After a year of incubation, the eggs hatch and the baby krakens, indistinguishable from mature octopi or squids, fight over the dead bodies of the mother kraken and males who did not survive the Mandilaan. Only a small number of the eggs will be female, and they will hatch much larger than their male counterparts and often feed on them before moving on to the immediate consumption of small whales and unsuspecting Mer.
The Mandilaan is viewed as a calamitous event by some and by others as well-regarded, if dangerous, erotic festival. The mixture of viscera, essentials, ink, and other liquids from a Mandilaan is an extremely high-valued aphrodisiac, although caution must be taken as the product of offspring created under it’s influence may have scaly patches, vestigal limbs, or webbed feet. The resulting surface whirlpools above Mandilaans sometimes spew gouts of this mixture, leading to the mariner colloquialism “kraken cum and bile.”
