Lexicon:Modern/Kravoen
| Kravoen | |
|---|---|
| Stage | Modern CLT |
| Pronunciation | /ˈkɾa.vɔɪn/ |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Etymology | from middle CRT kravōnē, from Proto kravon |
| Related words | Kravoe, Volka, Stormharbor, Naev |
Kravoen — the great sea beast of the deep northern water. Hunted for Kravoe, and the most dangerous work in the Known World.
Notes
Enormous, air-breathing, and social, moving in family groups. The head is squared off at the front and takes up a third of the body, heavy enough that the animal swims front-low, and marked across the crown with seam lines where the plating grew in sections. Overlapping armor runs the length of the back. A reinforced boss sits at the front of the skull and it is used deliberately. It sees in every direction. Rows of small dark eyes run along both flanks of the skull with further clusters above and beneath, so there is no angle of approach it cannot watch. Its hide shifts to match the light around it and it is effectively invisible at depth. A ring of long jointed appendages surrounds the mouth, held furled, and they are used to hold a thing in place. It does not hunt boats and it does not pursue. It defends, and it does not stop. A Kravoen that has decided a vessel is a threat will hold position and continue long after any animal would have broken off, and crews describe this as viciousness. It is persistence, and it was specified. Hunted only in the north, from Stormharbor, in boats rowed to within a Roed of the animal. There is no safe approach and every crew knows it. The clicks are felt through the hull before anything is seen. The Kravoen was a pre-Fall living manufactory, modified from a native sea beast late in the collapse to produce a compound the refineries could no longer make. The defences were built in because a valuable and self-reproducing asset in a starving world needed to survive people. Whatever was used to harvest it safely is gone, and the defences are not. Stormharbor’s whalers are the unauthorized approach, and the animal is doing exactly what it was told to do about that.