The 3.X Aquatic Database

Galloglaich said:

Ready for a little detour into Cryptozoology?
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Jaws I can handle. I'm not really afraid of sharks. Barracudas, moray eels, even jellyfish and such horrid oddities as sea snakes, mantis shrimp, sea nettles and portuguese man of war I can live with, but when I saw this
Animal Oddities - ABC News ] it was too much for me to handle. What the heck is this thing? Is this for real? Where do these horrific creatures live?

It's a four foot long worm that was 'found' eating the fish in a public aquarium, has jaws that can break coral and can permanently "numb" humans with it's stingers.

So I got really curious about this thing, it immediately reminded me of some old medieval tales of Wyrms from various Sagas and chronicles, like the Sockburn Wyrm or one of those other strange beasties, but more on that in a minute.

The first thing I ran across when searching for more information on these polycheates worms were some really evocative cryptozoological articles.

Our friend "Barry" from the aquarium could have some bigger cousins out there, namely the "Con Rit" aka Giant Sea Centipede, at least one Crypto writer posits it is related to this critter, which according to this article gets about 10' in some known variants

What Is The "Great Sea Centipede"?

Some other crypto articles

Null Hypothesis | Top Ten Animal Mysteries: The Giant Sea Centipede

Con Rit – The Great Sea Centipede

At the very least, this could make for a cool monster, paralysis stingers, very strong, up to 150' long? Whats not to like?

Here is a video of a much smaller and slimmer example of this species, maybe 3', noodling around in somebodies fish tank

YouTube - Sea Bristleworm dragon worm

But gamers and fans of DnD might be particularly interested in some other much older stories. There are many interesting old Medieval stories of "wyrms" in Europe which made it into the public records, including this story I remembered of a "wyrm" which was found as a small animal, thrown in a well, where it proceeded to grow to monstrous size and eventually became a public nuisance.

Lambton Worm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The description of the “beast” reminds me a lot of our friend Barry



Probably a very tenuous link, but interesting for gamers nonetheless, maybe fodder for some game ideas? It's got my creative juices flowing like Barry's mouth while he's sizing up a yellow tang

Next post: more cool Wyrm legends including the historical origins of Lewis Carols Jaberwock and the Vorpal blade which slew it snicker snack…

G.

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Dannyalcatraz said:

As Aeolius knows well, there have been a quite a few threads about aquatic menaces, many drawn from real life. Here are some of them, for those who weren't involved with them at the time:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/224858-underwater-shipwreck.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/202233-real-sea-monsters.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-south-pacific-islands-flavored-campaign.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/181377-aquatic-campaigns.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/homebrews/185243-giant-harpoon-snail.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/homebrews/179818-giant-shrimp.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/179402-populating-tropical-archipelago.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/179508-giant-crayfish.html

And a little post from a thread about "creepy" critters:

Dannyalcatraz
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3) Anything that eats its live prey whole...sloooooowly...creeps people out. Most people would think constrictor snake first, but they don't do the live part. Cone Snails, OTOH, use a harpoon-like radula to inject a nonlethal paralytic poison into small fish (and other prey) and eat them whole. I used a Giant sized one of these in a campaign once...the hate of the thing was almost visceral.

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Elsewhere, I had even posted about an aquatic Monk variant that, like nudibranchs, had the class ability to consume anemones and incorporate the nematocysts into their bodies...

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Dannyalcatraz said:

As Aeolius knows well, there have been a quite a few threads about aquatic menaces, many drawn from real life....

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Dannyalcatraz said:

<edit>In addition, I've jazzed up other creatures as well:

Thalassans (Sea Fey) As written, Aquatic Elves are kind of boring. Lifting a page from the Thorn Fey above, give them some twists that set them apart from other aquatic races.

Make them have a dietary preference for cnidarians- Coral, Sea Anemones, and Jellyfish- and cephalopods - squids, octopi, cuttlefish and nautilioids. Like Nudibranchs, they are capable of taking the nematocysts (stinging cells) of the cnidarians they eat and storing them in their own epidermis. Thus, when they make unarmed strikes or natural attacks, they may simultaneously release neurotoxins into their targets, possibly resulting in intense debilitating pain, paralysis or even death.

Much like their absorption of nematocysts, they also absorb the chromatophores of their cephalopod prey. This means they can be brightly- even psychedelically- colored or invisibly camoflaged. Their control is such that they even have a visual language "spoken" by using chromatophores to flash color in patterns.

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