Chauliodus

» Chauliodus the leviathan ═══════════════ . A current under sea picked his bones in whispers . Deepsea Yawner Seafood When dried or smoked, the Deepsea Yawner provides an excellent and sustaining jerky for the long haul traveler. Looks wicked gross, though. 41 4 Onyx Craylet Seafood The shell of the onyx craylet is almost indistinguishable from the dark chalcedony it's named for. This provides the creature with a great hiding spot. 40 4 code by epher #101073

Shade-ridden carcass Lazarus leviathan A monstrous hunger

Glow Star Seafood Its glow fades the moment it leaves the water, otherwise it would make an excellent decoration. 500 15

There are three stages of decomposition associated with a dragon fall:

Shadowmist Oysters Seafood To open these oysters, one need only recite a few lines of bad poetry. 20 2

Though the cold slowed its decomposition, news of a food source travels fast in such a desolate environment. The visitors tore flesh from bone, feasting on the unlucky dragon's fat stores, unaware that another scavenger lurked.

Drawn by the excitement, a dark, sinuous mass slipped free of the cracks in the sea-bed. It, too, had a feast on its mind. Subsiding off of the remnants of magic leeching into the water from the broken pillar, feeding with the worms clustered around hydrothermal vents... no longer. The shade circled the fallen dragon, testing each crevice formed by the eager scavengers until - at last - it found an entry.




Time passed.

Slowly, the sharks and hagfish surrounding the dragon’s corpse gave way to clusters of worms and mollusks as the flesh remaining dwindled. From the outside, nothing seemed amiss. This particular dragon fall continued to decompose beneath Sorineth’s oceans, unremembered and unremarked, save for the scavengers that frequented less and less. Meanwhile, the fragmented Shade burrowed within the dragon’s cavernous remains, re-building its strength as it tunneled through the remaining bone marrow.

Biding its time as it searched out the limits of this new form.

In life, the dragon had been a fearsome beast, equally at home diving down to near-abyssal depths as spreading his wings in flight. The Shade ate through the lingering memories of both with relish - nearly as substantial as the scraps of tattered, decaying flesh that remained - as it continued to leech its way through the dragon’s form. With them came a peculiar sense of wonder. How would it feel to lift itself from the seabed and spread those now-skeletal wings once more?

For now, the fragmented Shade could only grasp at the idea of the current flowing past its outstretched wings, the dizzyingly brutal drop of a dive so deep, few other creatures had ever experienced it. But for the first time, while the Shade slumbered within its hollowed-out host, it began to dream.






The dragon woke to frigid darkness.

He unfurled his tail and flexed his claws, stirring up sand and detritus and remnant flesh from no immediately apparent source. His limbs followed of their own accord, shaking off the lethargy of a long hibernation in a haze of ghostly marine snow until, with a nearly inaudible sigh, the leviathan rose.

A glowing patchwork of crystalized magic pulsed through his scales, burning feeling back into the dragon's stiff joints. He shuddered, watching in mute fascination as the arcane spellwork twisted into place beneath his skin and then burst through it, filling torn muscle and ligaments like some kind of perverse prosthetic.

He was Hungry.