Kandra

A sea serpent of great size, beauty, and longevity, the kandra was a native species of an island chain known as Norn. Once they were revered across the ocean, and those that controlled them were feared. Though powerful, it has one weakness: a distrustfulness of strange places and people. It was decided that the way to bring them down was to destroy the kandra. Because the serpents returned to the place where they themselves hatched to mate and lay their eggs, the enemy nations had no trouble catching them at their most vulnerable. Almost all the serpents were wiped out. Desperate and nearly defeated, the people of Norn engineered a new home, an entire island, that would rise every 130 years in time for the kandra's brief mating season, and then sink back into safety. After the last two eggs were laid, they stole them and brought them to the new island so that the young serpents would remember it instead.

Features:

• two forelegs, no hindlegs
• seal-like skin
• dorsal fins, anal fins, pectoral fins, tail fin
• barbels

As we watched the plane rise and disappear into the clouds, a strange disturbance in the water caught my eye. I looked into the ocean, but all I saw was a shadow slithering away, following the coast.

Besides having a size advantage of about one hundred feet in length, females are a pearly white with their fins tinged sea-foam green. Males tend toward an emerald green coloring, with white or lighter green patterns on their chests, underbellies, legs, or forehead that distinguish them from one another. Hatchlings are all white but can be told apart by the shape of their tail fin and their dorsal fin.