Big Silence

First you hear it before seeing it,
Then you see it without hearing it,
Then you see & hear no more

— Old Rymes of Ancient Mariners

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Big Silence is a thing that can only be described with great difficulty. It is a great, monstrous thing—arguably a kaiju but alien even by their chimeric standards—that haunts the Sunken Expanse generally Voideastward of the Broken Empire, a region of vast, unbroken water somewhat understatedly called the Seas of Ill-Advisement. If it is indeed a kaiju it can be easily classified as one of the Benthic Titans, a sort of pantheon of demigodlike sea monsters, ascendant in power even above their puissant cousins.

The strangeness and horror of Big Silence lead some to theorize sea monsters are not merely natural creatures but inherently tied to the Near Umbra, taking on the bled-over essences of nightmarish beings like the Qlippoth.

Big Silence is so-named because it literally steals the sound from its surroundings. The effects are permanent: survivors are left both deaf and dumb, utterly unable to hear or make any sound. The effects are so eerie that the victims feel impossibly alienated from their peers, often themselves becoming creatures of warped, anti-social morality, nicknamed The Silent.

Attacks

Unlike some kaiju, Big Silence has no interest in stealth or surprise. The monster lets out a constant keening as soon as it aquires a target, which is does from a great distance, leaving the hapless ship no doubt as to its imminent fate. The keening rises and rises in volume & intensity until it ascends into a great, all-encompassing silence. At first you think it has simply ceased its appalling cries, until you realize your comrades' shouts have no voice, there are no great cracks of splintering wood as the monster accosts the ship, no crashing of waves, no howling of wind.

If there is one saving grace to its behaviour, it is that it seems to lead an obligate deep-sea lifestyle, never bothering to make attacks on land or near coasts; ships that hug the shores of the Voideastern Lorent can expect to avoid its wrath.

Description

Through either writing or sign language, survivors describe a great, writhing, radial thing, a massive, appalling combination of an urchin and an octopus, with flexible, toothed, screaming mouths at the end of each flexible spine-tentacle. It floats in the air as easily as it carves its way through the water, often hovering above targeted ships to chew them apart, torturously, from above. Like other kaiju(?) it is a long-lived thing, with attacks reported as early as the middle of the Lost Age, some six centuries prior.