HWE Con Rit

HWE Con Rit
Alias: Thuồng Luồng
Status: Active
Allignment: Hostile
Factions: None(?)
Rank: 2
Height: Up to 6 meters
Length: Up to 18 meters.
Race: _____
Weight: Normal

Powers:

Enigma-Stealth: While underwater, when looking above or below a con-rit, they will appear as absolutely invisible. Or looking at them when they are the surface, head-long or during an attack can they be spotted.

Venom: They inject hemotoxic venom into their victims with their bites, given their size, this is more often not immediately fatal to creatures smaller then them.

Sheet-Metal Armor: Their skin is like metal and thus immune to most weapons.

Antennae: Their Antennae have changed to allow tracking of heat, sound waves, vibrations, and electric signatures.

Semisentient: They are far more intelligent that one would expect of a giant centipede of the ocean. They know how to attack boats, and know to avoid propellers or use their mandibles to puncture larger boats to prompt them to sink so that they can feed off of those who abandon the boat.

Weakness:

Vietnamese Folk Religion: For one reason or another, one that is not properly understood, Con Rit do not attack ships or people that have been blessed by a Taoist or Buddhist priest and likewise do not attack people who adhere to the Vietnamese Folk Religions such as Caodaoism or others.

Antennae: Cutting off their antennae can disrupt their senses and drive them into a sporadic frenzy.

Beaching: They are quite sluggish on land and thus vulnerable.

Gills: They have gills as opposed to lungs, so if beached they can suffocate to death.

Decapitation: the base of the head where it meets the neck is the only place it is unarmored, therefore decapitation is a feasible way to kill the beast for good.

Enigma: Enigma powered vessels or entities drive off Con Rit.

Behavior/Personality:

Con Rit are bizarre, powerful predators that dwell in the South China Sea off of the coast of Vietnam. They are solitary, but can swarm if the amount of prey or food is abundant, dwelling out a few kilometers from shore and in deeper waters, typically where the continental shelf dips down into the abyssal plain. They are indiscriminate predators, attacking sharks, whales, or their preferred prey: people. Their hunting tactics typically involving stalking their prey either above or below so they can't be seen before doing a quick strike. Depending on the creature it either goes in for a devastating bite letting its venom do the work (or for a vessel to sink if it is a boat) or holding on and eating its victim if it is small and safe enough to hold on to. It is unknown why they specifically attack man. These Vietnamese Creatures are also completely unrelated to the creature reported off the cost of Algeria. They are likewise very elusive and when not attacking can be near impossible to track or find.

History:

The earliest recording of the beast was from a decapitated carcass that washed ashore in Vietnam in the year 1883 before the stench prompted the locals to tow the carcass back to sea. However, folkloric reports of similiar lake monsters in the Vietnamese interior describe a similar beast.

Biotext:

As the year drew to a close, the cryptid rush shown no sign of slowing down. From two varieties of the fabled Chupacabra in the Americas, who knows how many monsters in Loch Ness, man-eating worms in Mongolia, giant sharks in Mexico, honest to god giant gators in New York Sewers, and who knows what else to remain undiscovered.

In the span of a few months, the field of Cryptozoology had risen from obscure psuedo-science to an actual reality. Discussions in such circles had been broaching the idea of re-branding to specialize in enigma-dependent organisms or "Kaiju" as the media had been calling them, since such creatures aren't exactly hidden anymore and the re-branding would rid themselves of the unfortunate past-connotations of Cryptozoology.

While such discussions were starting to reach a larger audience and began to seep into academia, the discoveries and expeditions began to die down as the new year approached.

However... one such creature would not wait to be discovered. It took the initiative of contact itself... for the worst.

On the evening of Third of December, tragedy struck. A ferry containing sightseers in Hạ Long Bay suddenly and quickly sank. However, when the occupants of the vessel went into the water is when all hell broke loose. The dozens of other ferries all scrambled to take in survivors, however, they quickly found their own vessels being punctured from below and had to quickly make way for land before they too sank. However film footage from people on board those vessels shown the horror  of what was happening in the water:

The water was red with blood. People screaming and scrambling in the water before being pulled under. One such camera was met with a horrible sight as a woman boarding another ferry from the water was attacked from below and in an instant: her entire leg was severed from her body leaving her bleeding out on the deck of the ferry.
But the one that, when posted days later on a video sharing site, went viral was the one that shown the culprit:

A man was climbing aboard a rescue ferry and was seemingly home-free: until a large shape erupted from the water: a rearing shape 6 meters above the water like a great-white centipede. The creature then grabbed the man, impaling him on its pincers before diving back down into the water: the water turning red with blood.

At the end of the day, Hạ Long Bay was red with blood. Out of the 230 people on the sank ferry, only 53 were recovered. The culprits for the massacre disappearing as suddenly as they appeared. Out of the 53 people recovered, 49 were miraculously uninjured. Each of them being devoutly pious and thanking their respective faiths for protecting them from either their ancestors, their mother goddess or specific Bodhisattva.

Attempts to search for the creatures dubbed 'Con Rit' have been so far unsuccessful despite attacks on fishing boats, swimmers and other vessels increasing in numbers as well as missing peoples and vessels.

Hạ Long Bay was further banned from all vessels, although the native fishing villages refused to move. For some reason the fragile, floating villages were not attacked in the tragedy and remain  to this day unmolested by the horrors below. They cite the blessings of priests and the protection of spirits to protect them from the "Thuồng Luồng".

The Vietnamese Government is currently looking into the connection and correlation between belief and the creature... and whether or not it is indicative of other kaiju or at least... a specific group of kaiju...


Notable Dates:

December 3rd, 2033: A Ferry containing 230 people sinks in the famous Hạ Long Bay. Out of the 230 people, only 53 are recovered. Each describing a swarm of 'centipedes' rising from the ocean and devouring each person one by one. With the exception of three or four, those who survived were either Buddhist, Taoist or of a Vietnamese Folk Religion.


---
This thing is obviously a Yokai.
I ain't hiding this fact.
But until I can properly introduce them, I'm just going to leave this as vague foreshadowing.

(Yokai Justification: Has 'sheet metal skin', in the Sinosphere, is a weird swimming centipede, immense stench, and has some folkloric routes in Vietnamese culture apparently, it works.)