Jumping Jacks
"We thought it was a wave. Then it blinked." -Surviving lookout of the skiff Moongleam's Fall.
The Jumping Jack is no longer just a creature, it’s a whispered punctuation mark at the end of many a sailor’s tale. Native to the coastal wilds of Everwealth, Kathar, and, more rarely now, the overhunted strands of Kibonoji, this predator moves like a curse loosed from the sea itself. With a body like forged drift-iron and limbs like sculpted blades of deep-crab chitin, it launches itself skyward in jagged arcs that defy nature’s grace. There is no splash, only silence, a flicker of white-eyed hunger, and a scream lost to the tide. Once mistaken for a clever scavenger or seal-kin freak, the Jumping Jack has since revealed its true nature, an apex ambusher of magick-touched shorelines, where the ruins of drowned kingdoms crackle with old spells. Its eyes reflect moonlight like twin prayerstones, and some say to meet its gaze is to feel your breath falter, your mind still, just long enough for it to close the distance with a sound like bone and thunder. Fishermen leave silver bits on the rocks to appease it. Children carve its shape into ship rails as warding charms. But none dare follow it into the mist. For the Jumping Jack is not hunting for food. It is hunting for something beautiful. Something that moves. And something that will not be missed.
Basic Information
Anatomy
The Jumping Jack is a quadruped with a long, segmented body covered in chitinous, obsidian-blue plates that ripple like armored kelp in motion. Its front limbs are scythe-finned and ridged like a crinoid bloom, able to swim or strike with equal precision. The rear limbs are long and spring-loaded, built for incredible vertical propulsion. The tail is eel-like and prehensile, tipped with thin, slicing fins used for stability mid-leap or for whipping attacks underwater. Along its back runs a crown of jointed, bladed fins that flare when it senses danger. Most unnerving are its eyes: bulbous and milk-white, reflective and unblinking. Many believe their light is not passive, but active, projecting a faint, disorienting glammer that briefly stuns prey or onlookers.
Genetics and Reproduction
Jumping Jacks reproduce via external spawning in shallow tidal crypts or abandoned harbors. The female lays sticky, translucent eggs on barnacle-crusted walls, which the male then fertilizes. While incubation takes only 3-4 weeks, hatchling survival is poor unless born near ample carrion. Curiously, some have been found storing food near nests, a behavior rare in sea beasts.
Growth Rate & Stages
- Hatchling (0-2 weeks): Gelatinous, blind, easily devoured.
- Juvenile (2 weeks-3 months): Develop limbs and carapace patterning, begin leaping.
- Subadult (3-12 months): Eyes become reflective; begin solitary hunting.
- Adult (1+ years): Fully formed and territorial.
Ecology and Habitats
Most often seen among shattered coves, reef-choked inlets, and ruins where the sea meets the dead. Their populations thrive near forgotten docks, ship graveyards, and cavernous beach burrows. Once common across Kibonoji, their numbers there have declined drastically from overhunting, their dorsal fins not only sacred to the Elfese, their meat is also prized, as enhancing speed and reflex in certain arcane duels. Despite this, Jumping Jacks remain common in Everwealth’s southern coasts and Kathar’s northern fjords. They favor cold salt-spray air, vertical hunting grounds, and quiet shorelines littered with debris.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Obligate carnivores. Unlike other pinnipeds or fish, the Jumping Jack hunts as a solo ambusher. It will lurk in shallows or behind kelp-veiled rocks, waiting for the shimmer of fish or even humanoid movement. When it strikes, it does so with a disorienting flash of its eyes, a coil of the hindlegs, and a shriek as its body arcs through the air to crash down on prey. They favor bony, oily meat and have a peculiar fondness for magical residue and alchemical runoff, often scavenging shipwrecks or old spellsites for soaked debris.
Biological Cycle
Jumping Jacks grow more aggressive during storm seasons, when prey is abundant and light is dim enough to favor their reflective-eye tactics. They grow slowly in colder years and molt in late spring, shedding their fin-spines and facial plates. When nearing death, older Jumping Jacks have been seen beaching themselves in graveyards or shipyards, coiling into the hulls of wrecked vessels and allowing their bodies to be colonized by kelp or barnacles, blending into the tide once more.
Behaviour
Jumping Jacks are intelligent and appear to display object recognition, emotional mimicry, and tool-use (particularly in juveniles). They will hoard shiny objects, sometimes weirdly enough trading them for fish with fisherfolk in coastal towns. However most often, older adults tend toward solitude and violence, leaping down at any movement they interpret as competition or threat. They are extremely territorial and will return to the same stone outcrop or tidehole for years unless dislodged. Some claim they leap not for food, but out of ritual, maintaining dominance over hunting ground by sheer presence.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
- Heat-vision, primarily in low-light.
- Vibrational sense (through water and stone).
- Visual hypnosis (through eye reflection).
- Keen auditory reflexes despite lack of visible ears.
Scientific Name
Pinnapedictus caedens.
Origin/Ancestry
Believed to be an alchemical hybrid of deep-sea crustacean and coastal mammal engineered pre-Schism and later mutated by arcane residue..
Conservation Status
Stable but feared the Jumping Jack is heavily culled in Kibonoji. Regarded as semi-sacred by Katharan storm-tribes; But despite its dangers it is somewhat common along Everwealth's coastal regions.
Geographic Distribution
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