Modern Mythical Creatures
 

Water-Based Modern Mythical Creatures

Among the hordes of strange happenings in this world, creatures and monsters of rivers and lakes often feature prominently. Most of these stories are hoaxes and misunderstandings, but hidden in the multitude are a few true mythical creatures, few and far between, and rarely seen: The Plumber's Bane, the Invisible Shark, and the Canal Serpent. We postulate that more such creatures exist, possibly in the deep sea, but no evidence of such has been found yet.

Plumber's Bane

The Plumber's Bane is known to be a tricky creature to find. It can take the form of a hairball, a mass-less ooze, or any other kind of expected pipe obstruction. The only difference between a Plumber's Bane and a regular pipe clog is that the Plumber's Bane harbors malevolent intent, and most intensely for anyone who attempts to remove it from it's pipe. A Plumber's Bane starts it's life deep in the ground, and feasts on worms and bugs in order to grow. Once it has grown to a size it likes (which varies widely between individuals), it will seek out a pipe and excrete itself through seams into said pipe, and simply sit there and cause a blockage. When a human attempts to remove it, it will begin to fuse it's body to the insides of the pipe. This process emits a terrible smell, ruins the pipe, and also usually leads to the demise of the PLumber's Bane, as it is fused to the pipe and cannot hunt or eat anything and slowly starves to death if nothing edible comes down the pipe. Sometimes a Plumber's Bane can remain in this state for some time if it is regularly fed by scraps of food coming down the pipes, but most will perish within a month, as they don't choose pipes with regular food scraps coming down. When a Plumber's Bane dies, it's corpse further hardens into a rock-like substance known as baneite, and renders the pipe completely unusable, if it wasn't already.

It is unknown why the Plumber's Bane behaves as it does, as only a few specimens have been caught or examined. The only obvious conclusion that can be made is that it exists purely to spite humans, particular humans who upkeep pipes. It is also unknown where new Plumber's Banes come from, as they do not breed with eachother, or have any kind of reproductive system. A Plumber's Bane in the wild will also usually never interact with any other Plumber's Bane in it's lifetime, so it is once again unknown how a Plumber's Bane learns it's life's purpose is to spite plumbers. Our best hypothesis is that the Plumber's Bane was born of human frustration with the workings of pipes, and that after millenia of that frustration soaking into the ground, the Plumber's Bane was born, a being that exists solely to be a source of human frustration.

We have also recorded an excerpt of one plumber's travails against a Plumber's Bane, and he had this to say: Ya better be kiddin', the thing's stuck in the pipes! Truly, this is a testament to how adept the Plumber's Bane is at it's role.

Anyway, as far as we know, the best way to kill a Plumber's Bane is to starve it and then replace it's pipe when it dies. This assiociation however urges that any individual facing off with a Plumber's Bane instead reports it so it can be studied more thoroughly.

It should be noted that a Plumber's Bane's greatest weapon is it's ability to enrage humans and cause them to behave irrationally. Therefore, we have created some guidelines of the levels of anger that someone dealing with a Plumber's Bane might experience, and corresponding percent chance of defeating the Plumber's Bane is such a state:

As a side note, the oldest known plumbing systems date back to around four-thousand years ago in the Indus River Valley, and we believe they also were familiar with the Plumber's Bane, though they may have known it by a different name. The sculpture relief below is our principal proof:

Besides this, not much else is known about the Plumber's Bane, and research continues.

Invisible Shark

The Invisible Shark is one of the more confusing creatures we know of, as again we know we know very little of it. The principal detail that sets it apart from any other mythical creature is that sightings are very common, but only by young children, and that no specimen of Invisible Shark has ever been caught or examined. The Invisible Shark is, according to it's young witnesses, about three to four feet long, and possessed of a large dorsal fin that breaks the water in a particular pattern. No true body is ever seen, but it is indeed believed to be a physical being, at least part of the time, and it's usual appearances are in swimming pools, large ponds, and in the shallow water at the beach. Nothing is known about where it comes from, though it is hypothesized to be a spirit-like being that occasionally takes on the form of an invisible shark before returning to it's natural state and going someplace else.

The Invisible Shark is only seen by small children because it will often swim past children in water in order to frighten them, for reasons unknown. It always disappears whenever an adult or older child is near, and will never appear around adults or older children. The Invisible Shark's true intentions are unknown, and it is assumed to be something like a trickster spirit. No fatalities have ever been reported, so it is not believed that Invisible Sharks mean to harm small children, only frighten them.

Canal Serpent

Most people are familiar with stories like the Loch Ness Monster or other such lake monsters, and most generally accept them to be hoaxes or fiction in general. So, you can imagine our surprise when one of our researchers came face to face with what is now termed a Canal Serpent.

Canal Serpent vary widely in size and somewhat in coloration, are covered in long thin spines and tough, smooth skin, and live exclusively in polluted canals and riverways. They can be anywhere as long as a motorboat to a cruise ship, depending on how big the canal they inhabit is. The coloration will usually be a muted blue, green, or gray, and will blend in perfectly with the polluted water around it. Some are even brown, pink, or red, depending on the nature and severity of the pollution. The spines often serve to catch trash on them and provide added camoflage. Oftentimes a Canal Serpent can be in full sight in broad daylight and not get noticed, as it looks very much like a line of trash floating down the canal.

Canal Serpents are effective predators in their environments and often entirely deplete canals of any fish that were surviving the pollution. When this happens, the Canal Serpent becomes incredibly hungry and will go into a frenzy in which it attempts to eat everything around it, including inanimate objects such as boats, canal-side buildings and even the structure of the canal itself. Large bite marks are occasional found on boats or in parts of a canal being inhabited by a Canal Serpent. Attacks on humans are rare but not unheard of, as humans usually avoid polluted canals and riverways. After being in a frenzy for more than a few months, the Canal Serpent will become lethargic and burrow itself into the canal floor, where it hibernates for anywhere from a year to a several decades, giving the fish in the canal time to replenish their ranks, until the Canal Serpent wakes again and the process starts anew.

Of course, any discussion of water-based modern mythical creatures would be incomplete without mentioning the Loch Ness Monster. There is a great deal of information available online, so we decided to omit it from our list, but here is link if you'd like to learn more: