The Bakekujira

A geiststorm, what follows after the sighting of the Bakekujira.

The Bakekujira is one of the most feared monsters in the Sunken Expanse. If it is a Kaiju it is a highly unusual one, taking the form of a ghostly, flying whale skeleton as opposed to a living creature of flesh and sinew. Its attacks are also unusual in that the Bakekujira itself does not approach ships or shores and is only ever seen distantly; instead, it is the horrific omen of an imminent "storm" of ghostly, chimeric sea creatures, called geiststorms.

Geiststorms

Called such because they act less as a group of individual creatures and more as a flowing "storm" of ghostly claws, mandibles, tentacles and probosces, there is very little that can be done about geiststorms. The monstrous, crustacean-like creatures that make up these nightmarish phenomena are highly resistant to conventional weaponry and only somewhat less resistant to magic. As the Veil between Waking Materia and the Duskscape has only been slowly weakening over the past few centuries and interactions between the Waking and the Beyond remain scattered and anecdotal, knowledge around ghostslaying remains rare in the Third Age; only the elitemost ships have access to professional ghost hunters able to assist with geiststorms. Other victims of the Bakekujira are left to a grim and unknowable fate.

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In Waking Culture

The Bakekujira's prime "hunting" territory is the seas separating western Marai from eastern Khayyam, and is the primary reason why the two continents were separated for so many centuries after The Deluge. Only as the Sunken Expanse recedes and the continents grow closer together again are particularly brave seafarers (often guarded by skilled geisthunters) once again making contact between these cultures and establishing new trade routes.

It is whispered that the Shiomi necromancers and pirates of the Voidward seas of Marai are able to come and go as they please without being harrassed by the Bakekujira and its ghostly storms. Rumour-mongers claim the Shiomi's lead commander, ostensibly a Drow Matriarch named Kataviri Silinikari, is also an elder priestess of Ob'Silexia, and therefore has some power over the Kaiju. Most dismiss this as Shiomi propaganda, meant to scare their victims into compliance.