Some stuff I thought up for Flying Whales:
Flying Whale Lore
Following the events of the fracture, the ocean’s waters became heavily polluted with magical energy. This event caused mass extinctions of many species that could not withstand the pollution, and empowered those that could as seen with creatures like the Ironclad Whale. With beasts like Obolus and White Eyes running rampant in the seas, creatures had to adapt in their own ways. Some chose to blind predators to escape, some chose to work symbiotically with them, and others chose to relinquish their habitat of the ocean entirely.
This is true for the Nephelos; a species of whale that had learned how to utilize magic, primarily cloud magic, to float in the air. They can be usually be found where clouds are most dense, as they feed off the magical energy stored inside to restore their own energy. Poachers are often seen hunting down these whales for their special blubber imbued with cloud magic as it is used in a variety of noble products. These whales are typically docile and will flee if threatened, however they have no qualms over defending themselves if needed. One such way they defend themselves is by dropping onto the decks of ships to destroy them before returning back to the skies.
There are stories circulating about one of these whales being seen wielding Storm Magic, and that it easily dispatched an entire fleet of poachers that were after it. People speculate that it is the original Nephelos due to its immense size and strength, and as such it has been dubbed the Keraunarch. The Grand Navy advises sailors steer clear of any strange storms for the time being until they can acquire further information regarding this anomaly.
Flying Whale Mechanics
Nephelos would be aberrant tier, Keraunarch would be behemoth tier
Nephelos Mechanics: They would move slowly through the sky and not aggro onto you unless attacked first. They would have around 2.5k HP each and be decently rare, likely around the same rarity as Poison Jaws. When they are attacked they either decide to fly up further into the clouds to escape or they try to sink the boat[1]. They’d only have 2 attacks, their first attack is a simple blast with cloud magic that creates a zone similar to fog but will do very little damage, their second attack would be them falling onto your ship which would do around 3k damage (to the ship).
Keraunarch Mechanics: An extremely rare sea monster that will have it’s spawn broadcasted in chat by the agora. It would have 10k HP and a multitude of storm magic related attacks. It’s main gimmick is that it will near constantly hide above the storm clouds it conjures so you can only pinpoint its location through sensing or by watching where the attacks come from. Possibly also an outline of it would show every time a lightning strike occurs.
(the “decision” ingame is made based on the damage of the user’s first hit as well as their proximity to the whale. If they did a lot of damage as a first hit the whale will run, if they didn’t but they’re far away the whale will run, if they didn’t but they’re close to the whale then the whale will try to fight back. The main way to start a fight would be to approach them and use either a weak move or a ship attachment to alert them) ↩︎