Flukes

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"Crushing black silence. Thoughts like mud. Focus on light. Recall the surface. Recall the Surface! You are human. Three great presences. Deep as stone.

"The Drowning Feast. The greatest yet. Dishes like treasures. Gifts from above. Gold, wood, brick. Flesh, hair, eyes. Words, rhymes, thought. Why remain below? Flee far above. The wrong place. The wrong time. Abandon your plan. Or be resolved.

"WHAT HAVE YOU BROUGHT US? Voice in bones. Words in water. Answer in haste. They are hungry."

Flukes are monstrous, possibly primordial creatures that appear to be giant sea urchins.

Rubbery

The Flukes can vary largely in size, from the size of a mere lump to the size of a ship. They can be pretty friendly all things considered, hanging out around Flute Street, which is where the more benign Flukes congregate and occasionally commune with humans.

Flute Street. Art from FL

The Flukes are responsible for the creation of the Rubbery Men, which they created in an attempt to better communicate with humans. When killed, some Flukes leave behind a core which glows irrigo, the colour of forgetfulness, and is made of the souls of the creature's victims. It may be possible for individual humans to be transformed into Flukes as well. One man, The Fathomking, actually married a Lorn-Fluke; this possibly made him the "complexity" he is now.

File:Amber6.png

A Fluke-Core. Mourn the mind that has passed.

The Flukes as a whole are actually from the planet Axile; they are also formally called Axiles. It's hinted that a certain Master may be responsible for bringing them to the Neath.

The Flukes are also experts of a rather horrific practice known as the Shapeling Arts. This allows a being to warp and stretch their body however they pleases, an act both painful and pleasurable. The Starved Men are the most notorious practitioners of this art.

Some Flukes also give themselves up to become genuine Rubbery Lumps over at Mutton Island. Eating these lumps can turn people into Drownies.

What Lies Below

Among the Lorn-Flukes. Art from FL.

"The oldest Lorn-Flukes. Too vast now. Swollen with hate. Swollen with wisdom. Tendrils glisten dully. Light contracts nodules. Watch them flex.

There lurk Flukes in the waves of the Unterzee that even the most grizzled zailor will hesitate to speak of. These Lorn-Flukes can easily overwhelm ships, both by physical destruction and by terrifying the crew by speaking words of Correspondence. As the splinter faction of the more mundane Flukes, they are enemies of the Masters and seek to control or destroy the Bazaar. There are many other varieties of Flukes that menace the zee, such as the Dawn Flukes, Lorn-Flukes that fell under the spell of the Dawn Machine, and the Lornest-Flukes, found only in the blackest of depths.

There is a captive Lorn-Fluke in the Cave of the Nadir, and an enormous Lorn-Fluke is responsible for the wreck of the Fortas Kettle, leading to the creation of Aigul.

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  A Lorn-Fluke. Art from Sunless Sea.
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  A Dawn Fluke. Art from Sunless Sea.
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  A Lornest-Fluke. Art from Sunless Sea.
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  Dead Flukes. You can still hear them. Art from Sunless Sea.

What Lurks Above

"You can smell the Fluke's dying wishes, are ravaged by its regrets: the search it leaves incomplete; its fear that the search is impossible and will never end; the jagged, excruciating recollections of being outcast and the certainty that only the outcast have a chance of success."

A Scorn Fluke. Sprite from Sunless Skies.

Veteran zailors who hoped to escape the Flukes upon crossing the Avid Horizon will be sorely disappointed as certain Flukes have taken to the skies as exiles of their kind. These Scorn Flukes are even more dangerous than their Neathian counterparts, and they're beyond furious, screaming the Correspondence with unprecedented fluency as their ritualistically scarred bodies undulate through the star-maddened skies. It's implied that their rage is a result of their futile search to find Axile again and return home.

A Scorn Fluke is responsible for the strange, grotesque, and honestly hilarious phenomena at Worlebury-juxta-Mare.