Bull & Great White Sharks

[Edit: This post should have gone up Friday, but for some reason it only saved as a draft instead.  And now since I tried to edit it, the formatting might be weird as well.  Apologies all around.]

Even in our world, bull sharks and great white sharks have an almost mythical reputation.  (Too much of one, thanks to the hash that Shark Week has become.)

That said, they still make good monsters and animal companions in your Pathfinder game.  The Bestiary 4 pulls out the real-world details that make these mundane predators good fantasy monsters: 1) Bull sharks can be found far upriver in fresh water, 2) great whites may just take an experimental chunk out of your character and swim away, but they also have the reach to chomp opponents on land, and 3) both have enough blindsense to be quite effective night predators.

Adventurers take a job running gunpowder to troops on embattled Cairn Island.  Their already hazardous night journey becomes more so when a great white shark begins taking experimental bites out of their boat.  The adventurers must drive off the shark without drawing the attention of the blockade’s bombard crews…and without letting the powder get wet, or the whole trip will have been for naught.

Bull sharks travel up the Vashinon River in autumn, making swimming, bathing, and even laundry hazardous.  When they start attacking in early spring, it is the first sign that the seasons are moving in reverse.

The Flamehair is an unlucky ship.  First reef pixies slice up the mainsail.  Then a kitsune stowaway is discovered, but not before she accidentally knocks the cook’s stash of scurvy-warding limes overboard.  Now sharks trail the ship—at first a school of bull sharks, then a great white or two—attacking the jolly boat and making fishing impossible.  The ill fortune is no accident: The figurehead of the red-haired woman that earned the Flamehair her name has been magically tampered with.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #57 84–85 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 241

This has been a terrible week on the Internet (because it’s been a terrible week in the world—here’s one example I think we as gamers should all be aware of).  Hopefully this blog has been a spot of brightness.  While we’re at it, you’ve got till midnight (about one more hour) to download last week’s show before it expires.  (It’s good!  I promise!)  And Monday we start on the letter C!