the Great Fin

Discovery

Up until five years ago, only one species of fresh water sharks had been identified in the lakes of the City. The Dark Fin reigned supreme in the depth of Loch Blu, terrorizing swimmers and fishermen alike.

However, a crew of four fishermen, lead by the now famous half-ogre Grobakur Strongarm, managed to haul up a larger and greyer version of the Fin from the depths of Lake Onix.
The fact that the Great Fin - as it was soon called by the fishers - had never yet been seen or caught off the lake's waters created many controversies and spilled much ink.

On that fateful day of Fogeamm, in the middle of the fiercest heat wave, the City had ever seen, Grobakur and his crew set out to their usual fishing grounds off the Blackport shore.
Blackport is a remote harbour on Lake Onix and the fishermen from this dour and hardy community are wont to go further into the length of the dark lake than your average One Prince's fisher or algae farmer.

Fishermen from Blackport have the advantage to rely on hardwon knowledge from past generations.
This knowledge is kept secret from outsiders and gives the Blackport fishers the upper hands in these dangerous reaches of the lake.

In an undisclosed location, Grobakur and his crew set out to sink the seagrass nets for what they thought would be a bumper catch - fish being more plentiful and rising to the surface during the heat wave.
Grobakur was more worried about the sightings of five fire drakes circling above the lake than what he might catch in his net.
Fire drakes often turn up in the skies above the City during heat waves and the unusual fierceness of the present wave had brought quite a few to hunt above the City.

As he was keeping an eye on the drakes swooping over the lake, he felt his sturdy boat - the Artful Grappler - listing severely port side.
From then on, it was all hands on deck. After a tense thirty minutes, Grobakur and his crew slowly but surely lifted the net out of the water and found themselves with a thrashing huge Fin at their feet.
With a quick presence of mind, Grobakur's second, a tiefling by the name of Malshoon (who in a previous life had been a pirate) grabbed the wooden harpoon still hooked on the boat's deck and managed to pierce the Fin through one of its huge black eye, killing it on the spot.
Not before the fin had time to take a bite out of another crew member: a female half-orc going by the name of Mishi Tumblefoot.

Happily, once the blood was stopped, Mishi survived and she has been drinking out of her story since then, happy to show whoever is interested and wanting to buy her a drink the huge mark of the Fin's teeth on her left thigh.

The news of the monster Fin's catch spread like wildfire throughout the City, helped by the fact that Grobakur and his family brought the specimen to the City's market on the next day in the hope to make a decent amount of money off its sale.

As expected, the Enchanters' guilds were very keen to buy and study the Fin and engaged in a bidding war to secure the beast for themselves - a few spells were cast in order to preserve the animal for as long as possible and it was the Circle of the Wind, one of the wealthiest and oldest of the mages' organisations who proudly went away with the prize.

For the Blackport fishermen, it was an unexpected godsend. Grobakur, as is traditional in Blackport, shared out his good fortune with his crew and quite a few drinks were bought to celebrate the deed.
For a week or so, the usually quiet Nifty Fish inn on Blackport's Whitie square resounded with celebratory chants and celebrations.

Physical Description 

A month after the Great Fin's catch, the Circle of the Wind published a short precis on the animal giving a detailed description and drawing of the animal. 
The writers' team was headed by none other than Sire Ponyo Goldbell, the gnomish High Mage of the circle.

Compared to the Dark Fin, quite common in Loch Blu, the Great Fin is much larger in size - estimation were possibly three times larger. The membrane-like skin was of a soft grey colour and scaly in nature.
The Fin's eyes were twice as big as the other species of Fin - one surmised that the Great Fin had to cope with much darker waters in Lake Onix. Also, instead of one giant fin on its back, the Great Fin sported two short stubby ones, but its tail was broader and larger than the other Fin species.

The scroll went over many other minutious measurements of the animal, which to be honest were lost on the general public. The drawing of the Fin, however, being of an excellent quality, became a collector's item. Many were framed to hang on living rooms' walls or inns' parlours.

Scientific Theories

One interesting fact, which was discovered when opening up the Fin, was that in the content of its stomach were remains of cave fish.
This led to a hotly disputed theory that Great Fins live in deep underwater caves and hardly if ever come up nearer the surface of the lake- which would explain why none have been caught before.

It is also supposed that the cave waters would have abnormally heated up during the fierce volcanic activities associated with the City's heat wave and this must have driven the Fin to seek cooler waters outside their usual habitat.

Since that fateful day, many Blackport fishermen have tried to catch another Great Fin in their nets, but to this day, Big Tooth - as it has been dubbed by the citizenry - remains the only specimen to have found its way to the City of the One Prince.