Ancardia's Greatest Monstrosities--The Amikuk
Classification: Monstrosity (horror)
Habitat: Icy waters, especially well-known in the Sea of Plates and the Sea of Spires.
A monstrosity most terrifying and dangerous to behold, the Amikuk is most known in Sostunian lands, believed to have first been the terrible servants of a powerful cult to Isrecht in the early 11th Age, now their numbers unleashed from any control but their own distorted ties to the Fallen God and free to breed and cause terror wherever they go. The Amikuk are semi-aquatic creatures, lurking often just at the edges of sea ice, or just beyond the end of stronger currents and sea breakers if ice is not around. Amikuk are generally averse to any individuals expressing strong will to live, strong motivation, strong passion or otherwise a strong desire to take an action—as a result, they very often target those native individuals at the river, bay, or seaside at their subsistence or creative activities—fishing, building fish traps, boat-building or repairing boats, or hunting of seals or other marine beasts.
An amikuk is roughly a meter long and a meter wide in legspan, appearing most like an oval, heavily-wrinkled blob of flesh with a many-eyed and wide-mouthed face. It has four limbs, all of which resemble humanoid arms, which gives it a wobbling, awkward yet swift spider-like gait. It is unusually strong for its size, likely owing to a feature of its musculature that includes a number of rigid bony struts protruding from its pectoral, trapezius, tricep and bicep tendons which enable more muscle fiber connections than in a normal animal and thus greatest muscular strength. However, the monstrous creatures is noted by Sostunian warriors and rangers to have a fairly low endurance, and if fought off aggressively from an area for longer than a half hour will retreat and not return for long periods. This generally renders all permanent and semi-permanent summer fishing and winter whaling settlements relatively safe from amikuk attack within about a quarter mile. It is not currently known how amikuk reproduce their numbers—though some theories by leading mages on the subject include the possibility of budding, a froglike reproduction in the shallow cold seas they inhabit, or a viviparous emission of several parthenogenic close offspring at a time. In any case, amikuk encounters are sporadic and rare in this day and age.
