The Shark King's Bones

The Statue is a monolith of an enormous titan,its vast bulk rising to dwarf any who approach it,making them feel puny and insignificant by its very presence. Even centuries after it was first brought into being,and long years of cruel neglect as well as repeated invasions by hordes of barnacles,it still inspires someting nearing awe in all those who gaze upon it.

The Shark King is the name that the Old Ones have given it. The Shura as they call themselves,do not hate it as a thing of evil created by their hated foes,the humans,oddly enough. No,to them,it is a site of the utmost sanctity,one belssed by the very presence of their baleful and bloothirsty deity,the Shark Spirit. The fact that this relic was created by the same hands that forced them from their old homelands on the islands,does not disturb them in the least. If the Shark Spirit chose to make this once empty shell of human vanity his dwelling,it is a sign that one day,the Shura people will triumph over those vile beings who evicted them just like how the Shark Spirit has triumphed over this symbol of human ego.

The elders and lore masters of the Shura say that this particular strech of sea bed where the staue now rests between huge thickets of tangled kelp,is where the great Shark Spirit first appeared to them when they were driven into the sea to fend for themselves in that hostile enviroment. Lost and bereft,the Shura would have perished as a race then and there,had it not been for his dramatic intervention. Appearing as a vast silver shark twice the size of the largest Kraken they had ever seen,he loomed over the huddled,pitiful remants of the once proud Shura people and pulled them from the brink of extinction.

Though able to breathe in water being amphibious beings,the Shura had been at best,indiffirent swimmers,sticking to the shallows. In the deep waters of the ocean,they were easy prey for the fast swimming,fearsome marine monsters that roamed the waters of Acqua. The Shark Spirit remedied this problem for them by blessing the Shura with his legacy. He made them part shark. Now they would have the same deadly speed and frightening killing prowess of those fearsome children of the great Spirit,no longer prey in their new home,but the same fierce hunters and warriors that they had been on the islands.

In return for his great gift,he demanded that the Shura accept him as their God,something to which their leaders readily aceeded,grateful for the Shark Spirit's gift. Then he vanished,promising to return to in a form that his people could worship forver.

Fifteen years later,just when the Shura had despaired of ever seeing their fearsome saviour again,the giant statue toppled into the ocean,cast down by pirates. Their curiousity aroused by this huge stone mass that had intruded into the ocean,the Shura rushed to investigate it,their tribal rivalries forgotten for the moment,racking their brains as to what it could be. Only to have their jaws drop in amazement as the ghostly projection of a pale shark issued forth from between the statue's open lips. The great Spirit had returned as promised!

So the sacred tales of the lore masters and Shamans go. The statue and the immediate vicinity are now holy,objects of reverance that are central to their worship of the Shark Spirit. He dwells there as the Shark King,splendid in his awesome bulk,awaiting the prayers and bloody soaked sacrifices of his people. Owned by no single tribe,it belongs to all of the Shura people and a ban on weapons or violence of any kind exists there,one that not even the most hot blooded of warriors will dare to violate.

Strictly forbidden to ordinary Shura on pain of evisceration,it is a place that Shamans confronted with a pressing problem,journey to in order to seek the counsel and wisdom of the Shark Spirit,that restless hunter of the deeps who knows of all life that swims in the teeming but perilous waters of the dark ocean,from the fey naiads to the dread G'Thrann that all in the ocean are terrified of,even the biggest Kraken.

But his knowledge does not come free. The Shark King's giant lips lie open perpetually,waiting greedily in anticipation of the blood that all petioners owe to the great Spirit. Through it are stuffed the remains of children abducted from ships and other naval craft wrecked by Shura warriors. Kept from drowning through the magic of the Shamans,they are carried all the way down there by their captors and then are hacked to bloody bits while they are still alive,their various body parts and organs thrown into the gaping maw of the Shark King,along with piles of Amethyst,the sacred stone used for spell casting by the Shamans and worn as symbols of power by chieftains. If satisfied by the offerings,the spectral white shark emerges from the mouth of the Shark King to guide the Shaman.

On an equally gruesome note,stacked against the massive sides of the Shark King,are the bodies of dead Shura chieftains. The Shura feel that the highest honor they could give a respected chief,is to let his body be devoured by sharks,the children of the great Spirit,in the divine presence of their Father. For this reason,the bodies of the chieftains are comepletely bare and devoid of finery,with nary an Amethyst pendant or anklet on them. The Shura do not wish to be responsible for the death of a revered shark by mischance,fearing that leaving anything indigestible on the bodies may result in the sharks gulping them down,with a premature end being the reward for the gluttony of those ravenous brutes. Any tribe that fails to do this and causes the death of a child of the Shark Spirit in the process,is doomed to suffer dire consequences. Their people will be slain by their foes and their hunting grounds and Amethyst stockpiles will be seized.