Yellow Jacket

Designation: One of the Hundred Wonders of Hemera
Region: The Paranthian Sea (Green Zone Territory)
Observed From: Orruvaal, the underwater city that houses the Blue Citadel

Overview

The Skywhales are apex predators native to the Paranthian Sea, vast carnivorous marine creatures roughly the size of killer whales. They are renowned for their spectacular hunting technique: launching themselves from the depths in explosive breaches, unfurling their immense winglike fins, and gliding through the air to strike flocks of seabirds before plunging back into the sea.

They are the largest known marine animals capable of controlled flight-like gliding, though far from the largest creatures in the ocean.

They are not domesticated or managed, but they are meticulously studied, tracked, and tagged by the marine research institutes of Orruvaal, the underwater megacity that houses the Blue Citadel.

Appearance

Size: 7 to 10 meters long, weighing several tonnes.

Coloration: Slate-gray backs, pale bellies, marked with old scars from territorial clashes.

Fins: Massive pectoral fins shaped like living wings, spanning wider than their bodies are long, allowing long controlled glides.

Form: Torpedo-shaped frames of dense muscle, armored skull ridges, and reinforced ribs to survive the shock of impact on reentry.

Mouth: Wide jaws lined with conical teeth to seize fish and rake birds from the air.

They are not graceful in the air. They are sudden and brutal, arcs of muscle and spray that break the horizon and vanish.

Behavior

Skywhales live in small family groups, most often a breeding pair with two or three offspring of mixed ages. Calves stay near the center of the group, shielded during hunts, while older siblings and parents take the flanks.

They display remarkable coordination. Adults work together to herd fish shoals toward the surface while younger whales drive from below, striking in seamless succession. Breaches are often timed like steps in a dance: one whale striking the surface as another begins to rise, tearing through shoals or flocks in precise, practiced waves.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

When not hunting, families travel slowly through the open sea, weaving together like drifting shadows. They surface to breathe in unison, rest close enough to touch, and calves often be seen gliding alongside adults, mimicking their dives and breaches in smaller, clumsy arcs.

Diet

Primary Prey: Large schooling fish such as silver herring, sailfin cod, and razor sprats.

Secondary Prey: Seabirds like cliff gulls, glassbeaks, and storm cranes, taken opportunistically during breaches.

Feeding Style: They are relentless hunters, consuming hundreds of kilograms of prey per day.

Bones, scales, and feathers have all been found in the currents around their feeding zones.

Research and Study

The Skywhales are one of the most intensively studied species in the Paranthian Sea.

Many individuals are tagged with tracer beacons, letting scientists track their migration paths across the sea.

Dissections of naturally deceased specimens have revealed their unique skeletal adaptations for gliding.

Behavioral observation decks are built into the upper arcs of Orruvaal's dome, letting researchers watch them hunt and breach in their natural habitat.

Their movement patterns are tracked by sonar grids anchored across the Paranthian basin.

Despite this, they are never controlled. None have survived captivity, and no attempts are made to corral or breed them.

Observation from Orruvaal

Orruvaal stands on the seafloor, encased beneath a colossal glass dome.

From within the city, the sea stretches overhead like the night sky. Schools of fish stream past the skyline. Reef-creatures glide above the towers. And sometimes, rarely, the Skywhales appear.

Tourists come from across Hemera hoping to see them. Most only witness their shadows, immense gray forms passing silently across the dome's glowing currents.

But when luck strikes, a hunt passes overhead.
A Skywhale erupts from the water far above, wings of muscle snapping wide, scattering birds like sparks. It arcs through the sunlit sea over the dome, then crashes down in a bloom of whitewater that makes the entire city tremble.

Then it is gone.

Status Among the Hundred Wonders

The Skywhales of the Paranthian Sea are counted among the Hundred Wonders of Hemera because of their majestic beauty and their unique nature as massive marine predators capable of flight.

They are the only known creatures of their size that breach the ocean and sail the air, cutting through the sky with winglike fins before plunging back into the deep.

They are studied, tracked, and tagged… yet remain wild.
They are the Paranthian Sea made flesh, powerful, elusive, and beyond control.