Salzger

Salzgers are massive, bipedal, filter-feeding creatures known to walk across all surface Fathom.

## Biology

An adult salzger stands around 600 feet high, half its height comprised of its two thick legs, and the rest encompassed by its radiator-shaped torso and the tall cerevinea that adorn the roof of its body. Salzgers are primarily purple in color with splotches of red, pink, white, and blue coloration. The legs are covered in many scars, particularly for older salzgers, along with blue spherical cysts wherein gloamdust mixes with water, blood, and decaying flesh to produce salzger oil.

Salzger

Salzger are seaborne titans that roam the oceans of Fathom. They resemble massive ovoid cages held up on two massive legs, crowned by a host of sensory tentacles on the ‘roof’ of their torsos. They stand roughly 600 feet high on average, and over 200 feet in width. In both scale and purpose, they are like the lovechild of a blue whale and a cargo ship.

The Salzger’s legs and feet take up roughly 70% of its height. They are thickly built even at their thinnest point, often 80 feet in diameter at the base and tapering to just under 50 at the point where they connect to the torso. Each leg terminates in a starfish-shaped foot roughly 80 feet in diameter, each of the 5 projections measuring out another 50. From both flexibility and size, the salzger’s feet allow it to travel across the ocean floor with ease, ignoring most everything in its way, whether it be environment or living creatures.

The skin of a Salzger is a sickly and pallid, grayish-purple color, mottled with dark scars and blue blotches. Scars may be cuts or wounds from various sea creatures, particularly on the legs, or small circular bruises from parasites. The blue blotches are magic-filled cysts that glow and bulge out from underneath the skin, a combination of raw magic, water, and bits of flesh giving the characteristic swirly deep blue shade.

Above the legs of the Salzger is the torso, resembling a hollow cage of sorts. Rigid bands of flesh stretch up over a hundred feet from the ‘floor’ up to the ‘roof’ of the cage, in a pattern reminiscent of a radiator. The interior of the Salzger is entirely hollow. Between the rigid bands are open spaces, where large curtains of lung-like flesh may drop down when the Salzger feeds. These curtains breathe in veranites, the plankton-like food source of the Salzger. The Salzger may walk into a slow-moving cloud, or in other cases, it may dash forward and close itself entirely, so that the veranites are trapped within its body.

Above the torso, on the ‘roof’ of the Salzger, the Salzger is crowned by a host of tentacles. The number varies significantly, but typically lies in the four to thirteen range. The size and willpower of individual tentacles generally become more significant the fewer there are - single-minded Salzgers are incredibly rare and prized, crowned with only one massive tentacle.

**Behavior**

Salzgers tend to spend most of their time towering over the sea, walking along the continental shelf of Fathom. On occasion, Salzgers walk into the deeper ocean and submerge themselves, typically either to follow an evasive school of veranites (umbrella term for the plankton-like creatures living throughout Fathom’s many realms) or to rid themselves of airborne parasites and creatures nesting on top of their bodies.

Salzgers are generally split into four main types, those being democratic, dictator, gridlock, and domesticated salzgers. These four types usually, but not always, correspond to the number of tentacles. Odd-tentacled salzgers tend to be democratic, whereas even-tentacled salzgers are more likely to be dictatorships or gridlocks.

Salzgers with a significant number of tentacles must be dealt with entirely differently. They can seem scatterbrained, particularly in their youth, because a single opinion can sweep through many minds at rapid speed. A young 30-tentacled Salzger may be incredibly erratic, but as it grows older, it becomes set in its ways, and it is likely to form an eventual political gridlock of sorts until a dictator arises; a bifurcated Salzger is incredibly unlikely at such a high number of tentacles.

Salzger