Tumble Mist

It was like staring into the abyss, but it did more than just stare back. There were the voices… so many voices buried in a hungry, rolling fog…

- Captain Alistair Dawnbinder, survivor of the Battle of Pearl Islands

There are tall tales told around taverns, tables, or campfires the world over. Stories of danger or bold adventure that often involve a deadly creature or supernatural threat. But there is one set of stores told only through a whisper. Cautionary tales about a supernatural creature, if not a phenomenon, that haunts the sea. A thing once thought to be myth but turned out to be all too real. A lurking predator called a Tumble Mist that stalks unwary ships and crew on the open ocean.

Discovery and Myth

The earliest reference of Tumble Mists comes from the noble house Tomia Drevez of the morasu. Explorers and cartographers by trade they are famous for the detailed records of their travels and what they encountered. Tomia Drevez explorers described in detail abandoned ‘ghost ships’ scoured clean and stripped of anything alive. Strange fog banks that didn’t move with the wind, which carried faint voices like whispers of the dead. Myth and legends at best that most thought were just a sailor’s tall tales.

After Crossing’s Fall, those legends turned real when a journal written by an unknown sailor washed ashore at Port Royal. This blue, leather-bound book contained water-logged pages filled with frantic entries that detailed an counter with a Tumble Mist. This sailor, whose fate is still unknown, explained it wasn’t sirens or poisoned fog. Instead, it was nothing less than “a hungry specter, the size of a ship, stalking the sea for prey”.

This journal begins by recounting a now lost expedition from Port Royal to ruins on the Windward Isles in the Western Caribbean. It wasn’t long after before the sailor described hearing haunting whispers in a sudden fog bank that overtook the ship. The crew mistook the noises for a siren pod swimming nearby.

After that, the ship’s navigator lost their way, with any navigational tool such as a compass refusing to work. Following that, the crew went missing one or two at a time over several days. Caught in this murderous fog, the sailor describes the ship handling slugging, almost unable to move. Even the air was stale and dead.

In the end, the ink from the final words at the bottom of the last page trailed away, as if the sailor was interrupted before he or she could try to escape using a longboat. Whether the writer survived the encounter or that journal is their last testament is still debated today.

The Shape of Death

While the sailor’s name and fate are left to legend, the Tumble Mist is not. Since that ominous journal was found, other descriptions have surfaced in the years since Crossing’s Fall. A Tumble Mist is often described as a near-sentient, supernatural fog that glides on, if not over, ocean water, flowing like a warm gelatinous ooze.

Often described as a thick, white-gray fog, some reports say that a Tumble Mist can also be a chilling, ice-blue or deep sea-green. These beasts are large, with thick fog banks said to be 80 feet long and at least 40 feet wide, with some few reaching up to 130 feet long. Height has varied with the telling. Some survivors describe a rolling wall of fog that rides the waves. Others talk about a thick, low-lying fog that seems to ‘swim’ along the ocean water, 6 feet deep at times in places. But once it surrounds a ship, the results are the same. A Tumble Mist coils around the vessel, like a giant snake ready to strike.

A Cold Touch

It took them in ones and twos. There wasn’t even a scream. It was just a gasp of surprise, then a heavy, wet thump. All we would find was damp and far too clean deck planks…

- Journal of The Unknown Sailor

Tumble Mist in the Ocean by CB Ash *

Alternate Names

• whisperwraith
• widowmaker fog
• bane shroud

Lifespan

Unknown. Legends suggest a century

Average Height

Varies, often said to be 6 feet in height when traveling or resting

Average Length

80 to 130 feet long
40 to 50 feet wide

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Game Notes

Threat - 4
Suggested Complications
Venomous. A tentacle attack can inject a non-lethal poison, often used to make its prey sluggish and easier to grab.
Up Is Down. The thick fog of a Tumble Mist disrupts standard compass, navigation instruments and confuses an opponent’s senses.
Tougher Than It Looks. Normal melee and ranged weapons are less effective than enchanted weapons such as a Ghost Blade, etc.
I’m a hugger! These creatures have dozens of stinging tendrils that can lash out from any direction in the fog to wrap around a victim in seconds. If a victim doesn’t find a way free, they may dragged off to certain doom.

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One of the few things known as fact about a Tumble Mist, is how the beast collects its prey. While supernatural, this has let to new ideas, and fresh tall tales, over the truth behind the myth of the Tumble Mist.

Reports describe slick, blue-white, rubbery tendrils snaking out of the fog to grab a victim. Translucent barbed hooks sink in from the tendrils, holding the prey in place. Then the victim often falls limp, almost as if stunned from a light shock from an Wavebinder’s spell or a malfunctioning clockwork engine. The trapped victim is then quickly hefted up and into the fog, then down below the water with barely a splash to tell the tale.

Once below the water, wrap around the victim, leaving the larger rubbery ones to seek out more prey. These thin, underwater gossamer tendrils pull the stunned victim deeper into the fog. Where the victim is swallowed into the fog’s gel-like center and slowly digested over months.

A rare few have survived those chilling tentacles, either by luck, through help from other sailors, or from unexpected help from a siren pod. Those scarred sailors who lived to tell the tale describe a massive, watery shape inside the fog. A blue-green body made of glittering slime, like a cloudy night, filled with fog and fluid, mostly submerged on the ocean’s surface. Inside were bits of skeletons, some with clothes and gear. Things the Tumble Mist couldn’t, or didn’t, choose to consume.

Predator’s Hue

Tumble Mist in the Ocean by CB Ash *

Another of the aspects of this beast is its coloration. Most stories describe the unusually thick fog bank as an ominous cloud of white or white-gray mist traveling over the water. So thick, in fact, that it blinds any Navigator from finding their way to the next port. But, while that gravestone white-gray is what most describe, it isn’t the only color a Tumble Mist will use.

The few survivors have described two other colors. Other than the common white-gray, there is a chilling blue-white. This is the next most common. Last would be an emerald sea-green.

Legends suggested the color tells the beast’s age, since most Tumble Mists can live centuries, able to survive all manner of storms, even magical. The latter comes from Wavebinders who have survived a Tumble Mist attack. They confirm these beasts are either touched, or deeply cursed, by the Etherwave Arcana. Just not in a way anyone can easily explain.

Today, based on stories from survivors, it’s accepted that the coloration is both a hunting method and age. As a Tumble Mist hunts, it often shifts its coloration to resemble fog or ocean whitecap foam. The most common is the white-gray fog. But while the beast ages, its natural coloration darkens to an ice blue and then emerald green in advanced years. The latter is the most dangerous, as they have the highest concentration of power absorbed from the Etherwave Arcana.

The sea was unnaturally calm that night. Then we saw it. A wall of fog, tinged with a faint shade of emerald green. It stalked us over the waves like a predator closing in on its prey.

- From the journal of Surgeon Johara Silvermain, sole survivor of the Ebon’s Call disaster

Voices of Misdirection

Voices. There were so many voices whispering in the fog…

- Journal of The Unknown Sailor

But the most sinister aspect of a Tumble Mist isn’t the fog or its deadly tendrils. That would be its voice, or really, how it can mimic sounds.

Even the oldest records from Tomia Drevez mention at length the “chorus of haunts that whisper in the dark”. Most survivors of Tumble Mist attacks have described hearing similar voices. A few have not. Instead, they described hearing all manner of unusual and indistinct sounds, all no louder than a whisper. As if the sound was muted by the surrounding fog that would eventually try to eat them.

But the truth is far deeper than that. Those voices or sounds are nothing short of complex instinctive enchantment at work. It’s believed that a Tumble Mist will cast the spell over a wide area, slightly wider than the best and the fog it generates. It has a hypnotic quality, which can cause anyone in range to hear a certain sound.

These could be indistinct voices, siren songs, and more. What type of sound depends on the Tumble Mist and the creatures it has devoured within the past week. It’s part of the creature’s lure to cause potential prey to either stay still or move closer to the Tumble Mist. The magical sounds also serve one other purpose. According to Wavebinders who have survived an encounter with a Tumble Mist, those sounds are how the creature can ‘see’ the world.

Ship attacked by a Tumble Mist by CB Ash *

Most believe that the beasts are sensitive to how the sounds change once this magical net encounters something nearby. This lets the Tumble Mist ‘see’ things as large as a ship, or as complex as a siren pod or a school of fish. After it ‘hears’ the change, the Tumble Mist then siphons seawater through it to ‘ride’ along the waves and surf toward that potential meal.

Silent and efficient, the beast isn’t deterred by currents of storms. The fog it generates interacts with the wind and weather, calming the air and causing most any compass to spin out of control.

Mystery of the Mist

The creature’s persistent mist is perhaps its greatest mystery. There are many theories about what the fog is that surrounds a Tumble Mist. The most prevalent, and what many take to be correct, is that the mist is magical. A natural spell generated by the Tumble Mist because of its curse or connection to the Etherwave Arcana.

This fog cloaks the beast, acting as a natural disguise to let it blend in with its surroundings. Once close, the fog disrupts the wind and clouds any normal compass. Leaving a ship lost and unable to move without power. But even then, the enchanted fog clings to the ship and its crew, weighing them down. Slowing them so they are easier to catch and pull overboard.

Hunter and Hunted

A Tumble Mist is a formidable terror, but there are a few times the hunter becomes the hunted. Chief among predators that hunt a Tumble Mist are siren pods. To sirens, the magic rich Tumble Mist is a delicacy that salt water sirens enjoy as part of their diet. Siren hunting pods will swim miles to chase down one of these mist monsters. One successful hunt will feed a siren pod for months.

They aren’t alone. Giant squid and leatherback turtles also feast on the giant mist covered threats. Leatherback turtles or a giant squid have unknowingly saved many a ship and its crew by attacking a Tumble Mist from below the water.

Not all threats to a Tumble Mist are natural, some are more dire in nature. First, there are Wavebinders who prefer a living victim to fuel their spells. Tumble Mists, even a severed tendril, are rich with magic. Power that a Wavebinder could use to fuel several spells. But rumors say that comes with a cost, as one story tells of a Wavebinder who used a Tumble Mist to power their spells once too often. In the end, they were twisted into a Tumble Mist the instant they lost control while casting.

Last would be a predator only heard of in rumors and stories. Tumble Mists have supposedly been killed in battle. Its fog melted away while a hit of a bloated, ragged shape sank below the waves. But in one case, it was said the creature didn’t stay there. Fueled from its connection to the Etherwave Arcana, and a Wavebinder it had recently devoured, one Tumble Mist is said to have survived the touch of death.

This undead Tumble Mist is said to roam the seas, willing to hunt both its own kind and any ship’s crew it finds. Unlike other Tumble Mists, as the story goes, the voices created by this fiend aren’t just noise. They are the beast talking directly to its victims, singing to them, to lull them to a peaceful and eternal sleep of the damned.

No one knows if the stories are true. There are hints and clues to the fiend, but no one has seen it. At least no one still alive. Sailors have dubbed this lich of Tumble Mists, the Killjoy.

As we sailed away from the HMS Intrepid, no one said a word. We then left her as we found her… a ghostly hulk abandoned to the sea. A floating gravestone for her crew, and another victim of a Tumble Mist.

- Lysander Riverwind, Navigator and cartographer for the Royal Institute of Otherworld Studies