Marelung

Fisherfolk along scattered coasts tell of the Marelung in low voices; superstitious nets are often salted or hung on stakes at night to ward them off. Legends say Marelungs were born from the drowned scraps of shipborne rituals—refuse and half-sung prayers fused by long tides into something that thinks like a pack of gulls and dreams like an undertow. Old net-makers warn that a Marelung keeps a hunting patch and returns every season to the same reed-choked inlet. Mariners of the Guild of Shorewardens have cataloged Marelung attacks for two generations, and Harbormaster Keld of Brelshore maintains a ledger of bites and lost gear, marking the tides when the creatures are most aggressive. Some scholars, notably ichthyomancer Venza Muir at the Sable Institute, argue Marelungs are a corrupted offshoot of a coastal amphibian, mutated by the stagnant blessings left at wayward shrines. Attempts to relocate a Marelung fail; they refuse deep water and will swarm together to protect a favored shallows, making them a persistent menace to small villages and solitary anglers.

About the size of a large otter but with grotesque, humanlike teeth, the Marelung's body is elongated and sinuous, covered in mottled slate-gray skin that slickly reflects moonlight. Its head is flattened, with a wide, split mouth ringed by numerous tiny, needle teeth and thin fleshy barbels that shiver like sea-grass. Pale, lidless eyes sit high on the skull; when it surfaces a pale throat sac pulses as it produces its keening call. Forepaws are webbed with short, hooked claws for tearing nets; hind limbs are muscular and slightly splayed for sudden bursts. Scales of coarse barnacle-like tubercles pock the shoulders and lower back. When drawn alongside a human, a Marelung reaches roughly mid-thigh on an average adult and favors shaded reed-beds and submerged rock ledges near estuaries.