Sea Serpent

Sea Serpents are enormous snake-like predators that patrol the deep waters of the Guardian's Sea and the Serpent Isles around Bilgewater. The greatest of them grow to dozens of fathoms, long enough to dwarf the largest ships, and sailors trade grim tales of whole vessels dragged beneath the waves in their coils. Their iridescent scales catch the sunlight, a beautiful sight that often heralds a deadly encounter. The serpents come in many breeds, and Bilgewater sailors name red fins, bile belchers, and ebony spine-throats among the swarming forms carved into the Abyssal Shrine, an altar cut from stone and hidden among the city's flotsam, ringed with hundreds of candles and the skulls of beasts and men. The most storied of all is the Ophidian, one of the great serpents said to haunt Bilgewater's deepest waters. Its legend is woven together with that of Nautilus, the Titan of the Depths, whose bond with the creatures of the deep no living sailor is brave enough to question. The serpents shape Bilgewater's trade as much as its fears. Their carcasses are hauled to the Rat Town slaughter docks and butchered there, filling the wharves with a blood-and-bile stink, and hunters like the hammerhead Bombolini carry harpoon guns built to skewer them. When a beast rises against a ship, few can answer it, but the mysterious Nilah made her name doing exactly that. Racing across the open water on a whip-blade formed from glittering, prismatic water, she launches herself at the writhing necks of serpents forty, fifty, sixty fathoms long and slays them with a calm, unbroken smile, pausing only to thank her worthy enemies. For a port that sits at the edge of civilization and the abyss, where the bold prosper and the cautious drown, the serpents are a constant threat to trade and piracy alike. Their legends run through every tavern yarn told on the water, and every sailor who works the Guardian's Sea carries some story of the beasts beneath it.