Sea Serpent

The oceans of Oabos are very inhospitable. The waters are bitterly cold, and the heavy winds whip the waters into a frenzy. While these dangers have kept the Children of Radiance from settling near coastal waters, they are not the reason the oceans are feared. The few brave souls who attempted creating ships and crossing the rough seas never reached their destination. Their ships were dragged down and destroyed by enormous serpents hidden beneath the waves.

Appearance

While many who have seen the serpents from the shore have compared them to dragons, the sea serpents are not of the Eldyr. They are serpents that have been feed on core light rich foods over generations to grow them large and strong, then trained and sent to the surface to bring down anything that touches the water.

These sinuous behemoths have kept a similar appearance to their more mundane ancestors. Each breed of serpent has kept the general coloring and marking of the snakes they were bred from. The visual changes have come in the form of decreased scale size in proportion to the increased body size of the serpent, and large spines or fins around the face and along the back.

While the serpent's scales are still large, they are not as large as they should be for a creature this size. Two side effects of this shift are that their bodies are incredibly smooth to the touch and their flexibility is further increased. Any dorsal fins or spines do limit some of this flexibility so these serpents will rarely coil in such a way that the spines or fins interfere with each other. The appearance and location of spines and fins are determined by the species of seas snake the serpent was bred from.

Behaviors

Sea Serpents seen near the surface have been bred for violence. As the serpents are growing, handlers train them to react violently to any foreign matter in the ocean waters. Most commonly this is conditioning to train attacking ships or anything swimming at the surface. It can also include making the seas more violent if there is any foreign matter in the water, including strange fluids.

Near the surface of the water, the serpents are far from their handlers and any other sapient species so they kill indiscriminately. Even Mythics and Myth Touched are not safe to travel on the seas. Occasionally, large enough sea serpents will react to shadows on the water from passing airships and jump out of the water to attack the flying ships as well.