Sean E. Britten

All There in the (Monster) Manual are stories based on creatures from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Over 2022 I released a different story fitting the theme every single week and I’ve now expanded to Dungeons & Dragons’ Monsters of the Multiverse and even the Pathfinder Bestiary. Could be fantasy, science fiction, horror, or something else entirely! Check them out on the main page of the website.

This Week’s Inspiration: Kraken

The kraken approaches. Soon the city will be drowned in brine and blood unless the monster can be stopped by the heroic half-god, Tychon. But there may be more, or perhaps less, to Tychon and his mighty trident than meets the eye.

======

The entrance to the harbour boiled and fumed. Water cascaded as tentacles as thick as carriageways arced above the surf then crashed back down. A massive hump, in itself the size of a small island, rose from the depths and split the surface with its jagged fins.

“The kraken approaches!” a crier bellowed, as screams and warnings and horn blasts echoed across the city.

Twin statues flanked promontories overlooking the harbour entrance. Vanity projects of some ancient king, identical in their original aspects but both now weathered in unique patterns, each depicted a bearded man with a crown on his head and a sword held before his body. A tentacle seized the portside statue, wrapping its sinuous length around the figure. Slick, mottled flesh so dark green it was almost black. With a cruel and casual twist, it shattered the ancient effigy into several chunks. Boulders as big as houses tumbled out of its grasp, cracking against the shoreline and rolling into the water.

Fishermen and sailors streamed away from the harbour. The city was built in layers, roads and stone buildings climbing the hillside away from the water toward the domed palace. At the edge of the city, a tremendous temple was poised above the harbour, carved into the living rock of the cliffside. As the kraken grew near, streets thronged with chaos. People stampeded and shoved, fighting their way in and out of buildings, desperate to find real shelter. Through these rampaging carriageways, a cult of desperate believers, distinguished by their white robes, clawed their way toward the temple.

“Bring the girl, hurry!” their leader shouted.

Stringy and wasted as he appeared, the head cultist wedged his way through the anarchy with unexpected strength. A staff in one hand and an ornate sacrificial dagger in the other. Flames of fanaticism burned behind his eyes. A dozen members of his newly formed cult staggered after him, toting swords and other weapons. Slung between them, thrashing in all directions, was a young woman with dark hair and amber skin. Jewels dripped from her neck and wrists. The king and queen’s only daughter, Princess Artemisia, still dressed in her finery, stolen from her palace bedroom.

“Let me go! Let me go, help! Help!” Artemisia screamed.

The princess’ cries went unheeded. Those citizens who could have helped were too desperate to save themselves or were turned away by the cult’s crude weapons and unmistakable willingness to employ them.

Out in the middle of the harbour, the kraken found its footing. The impact sent a tremor through the city that knocked dust from eaves and sent clouds of birds shrieking into the air. A vast, humped shape began to pull free of the brine. Before it, it sent a surge of displaced water gushing into the harbour. The wave smashed wooden ships of all sizes into the docks, shattering thick planks, rippling sails, causing rigging to snap and twang like harp strings. A couple of smaller vessels were subsumed by the sudden tide. Water overran their gunwales and pulled them down to the bottom of the harbour with hardly a gurgle.

The kraken rose to its full height in the relative shallows of the harbour. Across the city, observers recoiled or went near insane at the sheer size, the scale, the impossibility of it. A living mountain. An unconquerable, anthropomorphised force of nature. A nightmarish monument to mankind’s frailty and insignificance in a cruel and uncaring universe made flesh. Incalculable streams of seawater poured from its terrible bulk. Its heartbeat, its every tiny movement, rippled through the air. The intake of its breath could have fuelled a thunderstorm and seemed to steal all oxygen from the city itself. Lungs filled thusly, at its apex it let out a keening cry that split the world in two. Across the city, thousands of pairs of hands clapped across thousands of pairs of ears as the noise reverberated through their skulls. Strong men collapsed, weeping, at the sound. Rich men swore away all their gold if it meant they would be saved. Pious men renounced their gods.

“Hurry, hurry!” The cult leader roused his cowed subjects.

Drawn by their leader’s unshakable faith, the rest of the cultists drew themselves upright and hurried on to the temple. They battered down the doors as the temple priests fled along with everyone else. The princess struggled but there were too many. Their leader licked his lips lasciviously. Just as his faith could not be shaken, his lust for sacrifice could not be quenched until his blade tasted the young royal’s tender flesh. But he had no intention of saving the city. No, the sacrifice was only intended to show his fealty to the kraken, a creature he’d heard of only a few days before, so as to save himself and his followers. The beast could have the rest, those who had scorned him and demeaned him. The kraken would drown them in seawater and blood and elevate him to a god among men. He’d be far greater than that half-blooded chump they’d snuck by back in the palace.

With a strangely humanoid body supported on a lower half shaped much like an enormous crab, step by terrible step the kraken closed in on the city. Each movement sent surges of water into the harbour, overcoming boats and swamping the lowest streets and buildings. Huge, armoured limbs fell from the beast’s shoulders. Its monstrous tentacles slid from gaps in its armour, mottled and streaked in greens and tans. A passive observer, if there were any not struck dumb with terror at the very sight of the kraken, might have wondered what the monster could possibly need so much armour for, overlapping plates and spines of it, for what could possibly threaten something so big? Above its shoulders rose the creature’s huge, domed, fleshy head, hideous in aspect, piggy eyes buried in rolls of flesh the size of sand dunes above a chasm of a mouth, a maw, a vortex shaped like a lamprey’s mouth filled with rows upon rows upon rows upon rows of teeth.

From strategic points along the cliffs, city guards wheeled enormous ballistas into place. Shaped like massive crossbows, the ballistas came loaded with bolts as long as carriages with wickedly taloned heads but they were built to deal with sea serpents and beasties far less impressive than the mighty kraken. The snap of their drawstrings cut the air. Ballista bolts hurtled above the harbour and plunged into the kraken without slowing but merely studded its armour and impossibly dense flesh. Javelin throwers hurled their spears bravely from the very lip of the cliffs. Most of the weapons dropped into the water but a few bounced off the kraken and spiralled away. Swarms of arrows filled the air and dropped down on the kraken’s head and shoulders but they meant less than raindrops to the seaborn colossus.

One of the kraken’s tentacles came around and slammed against the jutting cliff. The shattering blow permanently reshaped the lay of the land. By some miracle, none of the guards were killed as they staggered and wheeled backward, some fleeing from the battle. Another tentacle scooped an empty trading vessel out of the harbour. Its keel snapped in two as it was raised above the water and both halves plunged back to the surface. Twin geysers rose and then pattered back down as the halves floundered and sank.

A tremendous overhang, hewn from the cliff face, extended beyond the body of the temple. Drums of spiced wood burned around the edges of the space. In its centre was an altar where sacrifices, typically goats or other small animals, or other offerings might be prepared. The cult leader directed his followers to lay the princess on top of the altar. Hands clasped to her wrists and ankles they yanked her, spreadeagled, across its surface.

“Yes, yes!” the head cultist said.

The wasted man in the white robes waved the dagger above his head. The kraken’s piggy gaze swept around and actively captured the scene. The temple had been built so high above the city, and the harbour, both man and beast could actually regard one another eye to eye. Its chest heaved, filling the air with the stench of its rotting fish breath. The cult’s leader pointed and raised his terrible knife.

“For you, my lord! For you, my glorious and terrible god!”

Princess Artemisia screamed as the blade descended. Cultists held fast to her arms and legs. At the last possible second, a large, burly shape hurtled across the temple. Shouldering past the cultists, the new arrival’s hand snatched out and seized the cult leader by the wrist. Corded muscles stood out in his forearm as he arrested the knife mere fingertips from the princess’ heaving breast.

“Tychon!” the princess gasped.

Wrenching the head cultist’s arm backward, the new arrival pulled the knife back and pushed the man away from the sacrificial altar. One sandalled foot rose and booted him in the midsection, spilling him across the temple floor. The knife spiralled and clattered from his grasp toward the edge of the balcony. For several moments, the other cultists were too shocked to know what to do.

In spite of his name, Tychon had a paler caste about him than the other men, dark haired and olive skinned, which he put down to his godly lineage. He was a half-god in fact, son of the god of the seas. Tall and strapping, well muscled, long, plaited hair fell between his shoulders and a bushel of a beard fringed in gold covered the lower half of his face. His eyes were the blazing blue of a stormswept sea. The half-god wore boiled leather armour decorated with images of waves and ships and sea creatures. He carried no weapons except for a brass trident strapped to his back, ornately designed with huge jewels mounted beneath each of its three tines and down the length of its shaft.

One of the cultists recovered and threw himself at Tychon. The half-god’s fist was already in motion to intercept his face, breaking the man’s nose and tossing his head backward. Another stepped in from the side with a clumsy, overhanded swing, Tychon stepped around them with surprising speed for a man of his bulk, locking an arm around the cultist’s arm. He swung the man around, forcing him to release his sword before tossing him across the room.

The cultists holding Princess Artemisia lost their concentration. She kicked and wrenched herself free. Rolling backward across the altar, she seized another short sword from one of the cultists and left him with a shallow slash across his left forearm. The others threw themselves backward as she rounded on them with the weapon. Meanwhile, cultists surrounded Tychon but none of them wanted to be the first to throw themselves into the paths of his fists of godly righteousness. A couple did, one at a time, and he punched and kicked and knocked them backward. Even the kraken appeared to have slowed to watch the battle take place.

“Look out!” Artemisia shouted.

Behind Tychon, the head cultist recovered his sacrificial knife. He lunged to his feet, raising it above his shoulder and flinging himself at the half-god. A wild scowl carved his features. Tychon spun on his heels. He saw the madman coming and once again brought his sandaled foot up to meet him, slamming the sole of it into the cultist’s midsection. Air exploded out of his lungs as he went wheeling into the low wall that circled the temple’s balcony. With hardly a sound, the man flipped, feet flung into the air, and tumbled backward over the parapet. His tiny body plunged to the surf and jagged rocks below, coming apart in a blast of red that was immediately washed away by the waves.

As soon as their leader fell, the cultists lost heart. Picking themselves up, they nursed their injuries as they fled toward the temple exit. Princess Artemisia knelt on the altar with her sword. Her eyes grew wide as she really took in the kraken for the first time. The beast seemed to pick up its cue now that the fight with the cultists was over. It loomed toward the temple with tentacles rising behind it menacingly.

“Fear not, my lady!” Tychon said.

Reaching over his shoulder, Tychon seized the brass trident and pulled it free. Artemisia watched him raise the weapon above his head. A green jewel the size of a baby’s fist caught the light under the trident’s central tine.

“This trident was a gift from my almighty father! It can command all beasts of the sea, even this foul creature!” Tychon said. “Go back! Go back, you hideous monster, back to whence you came!”

Tychon’s voice carried across the abyss. Beyond the temple, chaos continued to consume the streets. Unbelievably, the kraken shuddered to a stop. Tentacles hung in the air, dripping, behind it. Deeply buried eyes studied the trident.

Like a mountain in slow collapse, the kraken turned. Its tentacles and massive, armoured forelimbs sank. On its crablike legs, it staggered back across the harbour. Waves lapped the shoreline. As it neared the heads again, it sank beneath the surface and swam away without any further destruction.

xXx

Days later, the man known as Tychon, or the half-god if such stories could be believed, rode out of the city at the head of four horses. Looking tired but well fed, hungover but happy, satisfied on every level, he no longer wore his signature trident but his horse and the other three animals were weighed down with bags of gold, jewels, and other precious items. The road out of the city largely hugged the coastline. Eventually, it turned and headed inland but Tychon forged his own path into the scrub.

Tychon’s path descended to a small, rocky inlet, difficult to traverse for the four horses but not impossible. Tychon crossed the beach to where a wooden carriage was disguised behind a mass of cut branches. Inside, the humble wagon was loaded with more sacks of gold and silver and precious metals, jewels and jewellery, crowns, art, gilded weapons. The riches of grateful kingdoms and nations.

Tychon unloaded the horses and heaved the bags into the back of the carriage. Among the treasures were three more brass tridents identical to the one he’d left behind with the folk who’d rewarded him so richly. In spite of their ornate appearances, the tridents were virtually worthless. Their mysterious runes were meaningless. The jewels embedded in the metal were actually coloured glass. He knew a blacksmith who could turn them out by the dozen. They had no supernatural ability. The only thing in the carriage with any magic in it, in fact, was an ancient horn wrapped in a simple hessian blanket. Curled like a ram’s horn, forged from some eldritch black metal, it was weathered and encrusted with the shells of dead barnacles.

Once the carriage was loaded, the half-god known as Tychon, who was really a man named Sundri and who hailed from the distant north, unwrapped the horn. Although it had been years since he fished it from the sea, he could still taste saltwater on the rim as he raised the instrument to his lips. The sound that came from the other end far outsized the amount of air that he blew into it. Deep and thick and rumbling across the crystal blue waters until he could see ripples in the tide.

After blowing on the horn, Sundri dropped it back inside the carriage and waited. He wasn’t waiting long. A hump of water grew beyond the breakers, split by jagged fins. Approaching the mouth of the bay, the kraken rose. The accompanying surge swamped the rocky shore. Sundri danced backward as surf splattered against the top of the dunes. The kraken shook the ground underneath it with its approach, sending fresh waves across the bay. Its impossible bulk blotted out the sun.

“CUT THAT LAST ONE A LITTLE FINE, DIDN’T YOU?’” the kraken said in a voice like the world coming apart.

“What do you mean?” Sundri said.

“THAT POOR GIRL IN THE TEMPLE, I THOUGHT HE WAS REALLY GOING TO SKEWER HER. I FELT SICK, I COULDN’T DO ANYTHING WITHOUT KNOCKING THE WHOLE BUILDING OFF THE TOP OF THE CLIFF. ALL I COULD DO WAS WATCH.”

“I had it under complete control!”

“OH, REALLY? THIS WHOLE THING IS GETTING TOO COMPLICATED. CULTS AND ROYALTY AND MAGICAL TRIDENTS. WHY NOT SIMPLY TELL THEM I DEMAND AN OFFERING OF GOLD AND JEWELS AND HAVE THEM TOSS THE SACKS INTO THE OCEAN? I COULD COLLECT IT ALL AND MEET YOU LATER.”

“There’s no art in that! And if I could speak for you, then that would make them suspicious of me!”

“HMMPH.”

The kraken crossed their enormous forelimbs and turned partially away. Tentacles swarmed from their back. Their lamprey mouth puckered, sullen.

“I KNOW THE REAL REASON YOU WANT TO DO THINGS THIS WAY. THIS WAY, YOU GET TO PLAY THE HERO, AND GET SHOWERED WITH PRAISE AND DRINK AND WOMEN FOR A FEW DAYS, AS WELL AS THE GOLD AND JEWELS, BEFORE YOU SLIP AWAY.”

“Come on now, we’ve got a good thing going on here!”

“YOU HAVE A GOOD THING GOING, YOU GET TO BE THE HERO. I’M JUST THE-, WHAT DID YOU CALL ME? THE HIDEOUS BEAST.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“MAY I REMIND YOU, THAT HORN ONLY ALLOWS YOU TO CALL ME. IT DOES NOT CONTROL ME.”

“I know that, we’re partners! Equals, in every way.”

The kraken did not look convinced. Sundri had learned to read the sea monster’s emotions pretty well and knew they were surprisingly sensitive. The two of them had been working together for a couple of years now, first running a variation of the scam on Sundri’s fellow vikings until the tribes got wise and banded together, and then they’d moved south.

“Hey, I heard a new joke. What’s a kraken’s favourite meal?” Sundri said. “Fish and ships.”

“HOW IS THAT A JOKE? THAT IS A SIMPLE STATEMENT OF FACT.”

“No, you see, there’s a meal called fish and chips. Apparently the Gaels like it, but instead of fish and-, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got a better one, how do you make a kraken laugh? You give them ten tickles. You get it? Ten tickles? Tentacles?”

With the colossus standing side on to Sundri, he could only just see what passed for a smile ghost their lamprey mouth. Sundri grinned, feeling their partnership settle into a familiar rhythm.

“HOW MANY OF THOSE STUPID TRIDENTS DO YOU HAVE LEFT?” the kraken asked eventually.

“Three,” Sundri said. “A trio of tridents.”

“ALRIGHT, FINE.”

“Look, if you’re not happy with the way we’re running things, how we’re running the switch on these suckers, well, we’ll try something else.”

“YOU MEAN IT?”

“Of course I do, because you know what they say? There are good ships, there are wood ships, but the best ships are friendships.”

“OKAY, COME ON NOW. YOU’RE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF.”

“You love it, you old monster.”

======

Sean: I think it’s pretty obvious this one is inspired by the Clash of the Titans remake from 2010, which in itself was inspired by the 1981 original. Say what you will about that remake, the creature design is absolutely spectacular, the kraken, Medusa, the big scorpions, I absolutely love it. I’m a big Ray Harryhausen fan so I love the designs in the original as well, it was a lot to live up to. You ask me, someone really needs to remake The Valley of Gwangi, that would be awesome.

Specifically, the idea for this story came about from this image by an artist by the name of hex1993 which in itself clearly draws inspiration from Clash of the Titans. I saw that and just thought how funny it would be if one of those tiny javelins struck and the kraken suddenly keeled over, which naturally led to the thought of the kraken throwing the fight in the same vein as another classic film that I loved when I was a kid, Dragonheart. Of course, it has always been a point of contention that the kraken even shows up in the retelling of a Greek myth since it is a Norwegian monster, so I’d like to think this provides some kind of explanation.

And for the record, this is only the second time two stories have been inspired by the same monster! The first repeat was ‘Ghost’ with both the stories Ghosts and Dei Gracia, but I’ve also used the Kraken for inspiration before in the story Leviathan, which is a very different story to this one. I sure love trivia when it’s about me.

This is short story NINETY-EIGHT to make it to the website so as I’ve mentioned I’m trying to make it to one hundred before the end of the year – stay tuned, keep your eyes on the website or you can always find me  on Facebook and Twitter, Reddit, Instagram or Threads for updates!

Next Inspiration: Treant