Yaellar

The yaellar (pronounced /ˈjiːlɑr/) is a huge animal created by Dhaol Dwr to cement the covin's presence in the oceans of Curcalen. It serves a number of purposes for the covin: not only is it a powerful force in its own right to enforce the covin's bidding, but it also serves as a mobile base of operations; within the yaellar are air-filled chambers and passages extensive enough to be comparable to a small city.

Physical Description

The yaellar appears something like an enormous whale, a kilometer long or more, with one huge eye in the front and tentacles instead of fins. Irregularly positioned all over its body are gill slits that double as the entrances to the creature's interior. Yaellars are able to change their colors like a chameleon, but at rest they are often a mottled grey-brown, their feathery gills (which can likewise change color) dull green. A yaellar appears to have a large mouth, but it does not actually lead directly into the creature's digestive tract; rather, within the "mouth" are dozens of long, mobile tentacles each ending in a sharp beak. Each tentacle is about two meters wide and hundreds of meters long, and is easily able to swallow an adult human.

Diet

Though a creature of magical origin, the yaellar still requires sustenance to live, like any normal organism. Although it is perfectly capable of hunting for food and eating through its tentacle-beaks, obtaining enough food that way to sustain the yaellar's massive size would be a difficult proposition. Dhaol Dwr furnished the creature with a very unusual means of sustaining itself, or at least of augmenting the sustenance it gets by hunting—the yaellar summons creatures from other planes directly into its own stomach. Naturally, it expends some élan vital to perform this magic, but this is more than compensated by the amount it gains by digesting its summoned prey. The yaellar summons creatures from many different planes for its food, though its summoning is not completely indiscriminate; it does not summon into its stomach creatures made of indigestible materials or creatures with powerful natural weaponry that would be easily able to cut their ways out.

Inside the Yaellar

The yaellar is honeycombed with corridors and chambers of varying sizes that serve as living space and workspace for Dhaol Dwr agents stationed within—the largest such chamber, located almost in the creature's exact center, being more than a hundred and fifty meters long. These areas extend throughout the creature's anatomy, passing around and among its internal organs. The walls of these chambers have a firm but spongy texture, and vary in color from a bright fleshy pink to a bilious green. Sloping passageways connect areas at different altitudes. Though most of these internal passageways are bare of any "natural" adornments—and are furnished according to the uses Dhaol Dwr chooses to make of the particular yaellar—a few of them do have some built-in appointments. Four chambers in various locations each contain a large screen through which those present can see what the yaellar is seeing through its large frontal eye; twenty-two chambers contain transporter portals for quick transit between distant points in the yaellar's interior; and sixteen chambers contain built-in summoning circles specialized for various specific purposes.

Life Cycle

Artificial creations of the wizards of Dhaol Dwr, yaellars have no natural reproductive capacity. They are extremely rare, with probably no more than forty in existence in the entire world. Yaellars do grow somewhat over time, but have no juvenile stage; they are created fully formed and already hundreds of meters long. There is evidence, however, that somehow, despite the apparent intentions of Dhaol Dwr, yaellars have found a way to reproduce on their own—either that, or someone outside Dhaol Dwr has learned how to create them. At least two "empty" yaellars have been discovered, untenanted by Dhaol Dwr wizards and evidently unknown to them. The origin of these yaellars currently remains obscure.