Krakens; Nightmares of the Deep made real

“Few creatures in this world are so vast and so terrible as the kraken.”
History: Krakens were first conceptualized in ancient myth. Legends of impossibly large creatures with many arms that would reach up and drag ships down to the watery depths of the sea were commonplace in the ancient world alongside all manner of sea serpents and monstrous crabs and lobsters. They were never real until near the end of the Creation War after the College of Biogenesis’ main facility was destroyed and the organization forced to relocate to an island far off in the center of the Sea of Wrath. There they worked to make use of their new island stronghold by conjuring forth a beast from mankind’s deepest nightmares of what lies beneath the sea and making it flesh and blood. It was to be the ultimate weapon of war, and at that it most certainly succeeded.
The first and smallest krakens already dwarfed even the largest of their naturally evolved kin. Able to reach lengths of up to 120 feet from head to arm-tip these monsters were capable of overturning ships at sea and destroying even the much feared for the time corpse-whales of the Reanimators with contemptuous ease. This kicked off yet another arms-race between the colleges as the Reanimators began hunting and reanimating the krakens for their own use and the Metallurgists invented their incredible iron-clad leviathans to hunt and kill the creatures in the deep sea.
The largest of the krakens, however, knew no rivals. The largest ever recorded was a tremendous 1,400 feet in length. Biological engines of destruction so massive they could not possibly hope to sustain themselves for more than a few weeks before starving to death. To counter this krakens were given the ability to go into a state of hibernation for months if not years at a time and awoke only when it sensed a ship passing over the water’s surface above it. It would then awake, ravage the offending vessel, and then return to its ageless sleep.
In time the Creation War ended and the world was irrevocably changed by the many monstrosities released upon humanity during. None, however, are as well known or feared as the dreaded kraken. For centuries after the beasts ravaged the Sea of Wrath and waters beyond uncontrolled and unchecked. The College of Biogenesis to this day go on kraken hunts to try and cull the unnatural beasts they unleashed upon the aquatic world. Yet the beasts persist. They breed and eat and grow before returning to their century long slumber only to awaken again with renewed hostility toward any large vessel or creature that might venture into what they perceive as their territory.

Description: Krakens can be anywhere between one hundred and one thousand feet long and usually have between eight and ten arms, though krakens with twelve, fourteen, and even eighteen limbs have been reported. Their skin is a greyish blue or black and they have two large, red eyes with horizontally slit pupils. They appear similar in general shape to the naturally occurring octopuses of the deep sea, though some are known to have toothy spines along their limbs designed to rip open sails and rend the hulls of ships. Their skin can change color to better conceal themselves with the ocean floor while they sleep, making them almost impossible to find through non-magical means.
Beneath their bodies and between all their many limbs is a single circular maw with rows of terrible teeth going down the beast’s esophagus. The outer-most ring of teeth protrude from the body as fangs that that are designed to rip open holes in the sides of even modern battleships with ease, making them easier to drag down into the sea.

Behavior: Krakens lie in wait for decades, even centuries, between attacks so as to conserve their energy and allow them to stay active for as long as possible. They are awake only long enough to attack ships and mate, though the latter of the two is an event that even those of the College of Biogenesis only know about in theory as it takes place at depths too far down to be witnessed.
A single kraken can lay thousands of eggs with each newborn kraken being roughly the size of a great white shark. When born they will feast upon the mother’s corpse and begin their rapid growth to reach gargantuan sizes before swimming off in all directions to find their own territory to lay claim to, then go to sleep and waiting for the next meal to happen across them. All while filter feeding with each breath to tie them over between larger meals.