Great White Whale & Whale

Even in fantasy seas, whales tend to be the largest oceangoing mammals.  And great white whales are creatures of truly epic proportions, likely to have folk names and personalities known to any sailor who frequents their domains.

A ship menaced by the whirlpool vortex of a charybdis is saved when a great white whale snaps it up, mighty teeth working on the monstrosity’s shell as the pair plunges below.  But when the whale returns, it casts a baleful eye on the ship it saved, and readies for a smashing breach.

The commonly hunted right whales begin to lash out at ships in the North Sea, ramming small cutters and overturning jolly boats.  They also begin to lead whalers on chases through iceberg fields and dangerous rocks.  Is some intelligence at work—perhaps a sea druid, cetaceal, or triton?  Has something awakened the whales? Or are stranger forces at work?

A globster of truly gigantic proportions is defeated on the rocks of Cape Isis.  Its remains reveal a part from the Aegis Apparatus, a technomagical artifact thought to have been lost at sea.  Finding the creature that spawned the globster—likely a great white whale known as Pale Scar—might mean finding the artifact.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 282

Remember kids, hunting whales is an Evil act.

Backlog alert: I’ve finally thrown up entries for the bugbear (rounding out September), the ceustodaemon and charybdis (knocking out October), the darkmantle and dark naga (finishing up November and thus all of 2011), and the faceless stalker (closing the book on January and all of 2012).

In other words, The Daily Bestiary is now completely caught up.  Every monster from the Bestiary and Bestiary 2 (plus Bestiary 3 from the letter E) in ABC order. 

I am thrilled about this.  I love doing this blog, but every missed entry from my early, spotty days was a canker on my enthusiasm.  It turned something that I created to be fun on my lunch break into plain old homework. Since March I’ve turned things around and posted without fail, but it’s nice to finally have all the boxes checked.

And not a moment too soon, given tomorrow’s blog birthday…