Shēnkaijiāo (ʂə́n kài t͡ɕjáo)

"Run Away! Flee! Aaauggh!" - From the first recorded sighting of the Shēnkaijiāo

During the Becalming, the ocean life of the Great Ring was greatly disrupted, leading to some of the stranded ships catching a glimpse of animals never before seen on the surface. The largest and most disturbing of these deep sea monsters emerged to the east of Kojima in the Northwestern Region, and is known as the Shēnkaijiāo.

An Alien from Below

The Shēnkaijiāo is unlike any other creature the Yanjin had ever seen. It is a mass of writhing tentacles that form a vast sphere larger than a ship. If there is any central body inside the sphere, it is completely hidden from view. The monster has no eyes or mouth that can be seen, and seems to feel its way through the world. When it first emerged, it destroyed several ships with its probes, and then began to pluck the debris and the sailors out of the water. Tentacles that had seized something vanished beneath the waterline, and whatever they had grasped was never seen again.

Through a Haze of Terror

Those reports that survive of the Shēnkaijiāo all agree that seeing the creature induced instant and debilitating panic. Many sailors hurled themselves into the water after only a glance, while others hid in the deepest parts of their ships. A few simply froze in terror, and it is from those who did and survived that the creature's description is known. In the centuries since, scholars have cast doubt on some of the details they reported, believing that the witnesses were too frightened to accurately report anything.

One detail that is often discarded involves discontinuous tentacles. According to the reports, the Shēnkaijiāo was surrounded by tentacles that were not connected to the sphere, but moved with it across the water. These appendages would appear and disappear as the creature moved, as though they were being extended through holes in the world and then retracted again. One witness even claimed to see a tentacle seize a ship far from the body of the creature and pull it out of the world altogether.

Another contested detail is the sound that the creature emitted. Every survivor who mentioned it gave a different account of the noise, from the sound of blood chanting curses in their ears to a choir with voices drawn from waves crashing and glass shattering. One thing they all agreed on was that the sound was coordinated and meaningful - even if the meaning could not be discerned.

Disappearance and Aftermath

The Shēnkaijiāo vanished back into the ocean after the end of the Becalming, and has never been seen since. While it was above the surface it wiped out dozens of ships and a score of villages along the eastern shore of Kojima. While it has not returned to the surface in the centuries since, its attacks left a lasting mark upon the region.

Those who directly witnessed the monster were most impacted. All of them reported nightmares of the encounter that lasted for the rest of their lives, and drove several of them into an early grave. Others became obsessed with the creature and began to worship it as a god, setting up shrines to the Shēnkaijiāo in places it had destroyed and calling on the monster to accept them as their servants. They called themselves the Hēishuǐ Huì, and are convinced that the Shēnkaijiāo wanted them to carry out violent attacks as a form of worship. Shēnkaijiāo worship has since been forbidden in the Empire of Wamato, but it is believed to still thrive in hidden places. You can read more about them here.

A Deadly Stillness

The Becalming is the single deadliest event in the history of the Million Islands, when currents and winds died for months and the waters changed to trap ships and kill fish. The exact cause of this disaster is still unknown, and its consequences helped shape the world as we know it today. You can read more about this event here.

Birth of a God

While the original monster was probably a physical creature, the worship that came later has spawned a deep-sea god based on it. Like all gods, this being is one of the Numina, the creatures of the Dream who are born of the Egregoric Force. You can read more about the Numina of the Million Islands here.

While this new god has never made an appearance in the Physical Realm, its worshippers claim to regularly see it in their dreams, where they are drawn to its lair deep beneath the sea. Attempting to understand exactly what the god wants them to do is difficult as it does not communicate directly. Among the Hēishuǐ Huì, there are two major factions based on this question; the first believes that they should be working towards the end of the world, while the second thinks they are supposed to migrate to the bottom of the ocean before the world ends on its own.