Cold-water Snapper

The cool waters of the deepest sections of the Voda sea are host to a number of dangerous creatures, but the shores which the sea reaches are just as dangerous for unfamiliar travelers. Here enormous beasts wander, and predatory creatures stalk the sands hunting for prey. Among the native fauna however, few are as awe-inspiring and dangerous as the cold-water snapper.   An Impossible Hunt The cold-water snapper resembles a giant tortoise, but often far greater in size, and with a few key differences. A cold-water snapper is much quicker on its feet, and each of its legs is filled with enough muscle to crush a building underfoot. Unlike the giant tortoise, a cold-water snapper is unable to withdraw into its shell- not that it matters. The shell of the cold-water snapper naturally resists all forms of magic, creating a limited antimagic radius which protects the entire beast from magical effects. This along with the snapper’s size makes it nearly impossible to hunt by conventional means, and while many other systems for hunting it have been devised, none have yet succeeded. Worse still are the rare moments that a cold-water snapper attempts to move through villages or cities, as stopping them from doing so rarely works if the snapper is large enough, leaving little choice but to rebuild in the wake of the creature’s devastation.   Unlimited Growth Like many other types of tortoise, the cold-water snapper seems to be nearly immortal, mostly unaffected by old age. Unlike other tortoises though, the cold-water snapper bears much in common with dragons, continually growing as it gets older, without any apparent ceiling for its size. Many cold-water snappers which reach a certain size are unable to obtain enough food for themselves and starve to death, but a few others have managed to hold on for several hundred years, leading to some truly massive threats which the civilizations of the Vodalian Coast monitor closely. The largest of these is a creature that many aren’t sure actually exists, as records of it are few and far between, and sightings are incredibly rare. Known as Turtle Island, this single cold-water snapper is likely almost two-thousand years old, with the oldest mention of the creature from 1500 years ago placing its age somewhere in the early hundreds. Turtle Island is so large that it supposedly supports an entire ecosystem on its back, with plants and animals which grow and live while it wanders from coast to coast, surfacing its head only every few weeks. Most modern tales of moving islands are believed to be sightings of Turtle Island, though some think they might simply be exaggerations, or visions brought on by magic or heatstroke.