Maelstrom Maw

“I’ve seen the spirals once - only once, mind you - and I’ll never forget the sound. It wasn’t a roar, nor a howl, but a song, deep and cold and wrong. That’s how it gets you, see? You’re already staring into the water, searching for the source, when it pulls you under. If you’re lucky, you’ll drown before you see the teeth.”

— Marim Ghelan, retired sailor

 

The Stir of the Current

  A beast of the depths, feared by sailors and sea-dwellers alike. These creatures reside in the uncharted trenches of the ocean, where sunlight is a myth and the currents themselves bow to their strength. They are immense, serpentine beasts, their bodies coiled with sinewy muscle and covered in a leathery hide that glimmers faintly in the sparse light of the abyss. Their mouths are cavernous voids, ringed with jagged, rotating teeth hat never cease their slow, grinding motion.   What makes a Maw truly dreadful, however, is its ability to command the water. By spinning its body with terrifying speed, it creates whirlpools of such ferocity that entire ships have been pulled into the watery spiral, shattered like brittle shells upon its teeth. These whirlpools, called "black spirals" by the fisherfolk, are marked by a deep, resonant hum that can be heard long before the creature emerges.  

The Pull of the Beast

  Though predominantly solitary, Maelstrom Maws are rumoured to communicate through subsonic vibrations, a haunting hum that sailors say can be heard in the stillness before a storm. The older, larger Maws are said to generate whirlpools so vast that even coastal tides feel their pull, shifting the sands and displacing entire ecosystems. Some speculate that Maws are not mere beasts, but ancient guardians of the abyss, protecting the unknowable treasures and horrors of the ocean’s deepest trenches.   Ancient mariners carved effigies of the Maelstrom Maw to ward off its wrath, depicting it with glowing red eyes and a serpent’s forked tongue. In truth, its eyes are pale and blind, and its sense of the world is defined entirely by vibration. The faintest flutter of a fish’s tail or the ominous groan of a distant ship is enough to summon its wrath.