Akula

Foremost of the Akula_Alts! Akula's appearance is normally an intimidating one for most fishers and recreational swimmers. Curiously, his toothy smile usually does nothing to help. Akula is a merperson; he looks like a young humanoid man from the waist-up, but has the body of a fish from the waist-down. To be specific, that fish would be a Barracuda.

To be more specific, a very large barracuda. Akula's tail alone is over 18 meters long, or roughly 60 feet. For perspective, that is approximately the length of a double-wide mobile home. Akula's humanoid upper half is also to scale. Though he has the face of a person in his twenties, he is much larger than an average human of the same apparent age.

The scales of Akula's tail are a dazzling show of blue and silver, the blue being deepest along his back, and the silver the brightest along his belly. Additionally, the sides of his tail are marked with several flashy silver spots that glimmer when caught by the sun. Several individual lines of silver scales follow the contours of his ribs along his upper half, as well.

Being a highly predatory, carnivorous fish, Akula is possessed of a set of particularly sharp, somewhat saw-edged teeth. As the Barracuda is built for long, intense bursts of speed, so is he, his upper half reflecting this trait with its well-defined musculature. Being a water-dweller, the color of Akula's hair blends in with his environment. Short and spiky, to reduce drag though the water, and bluish silver.

Unless he is hungry, Akula is normally friendly, gentle, and sociable, often one to share his toothy smile during conversation. But, woe to the unwary swimmer that encounters him when that base need must be satisfied. Akula often cruises slowly to reduce his chances of detection, preferring to slip right under his unsuspecting victim, where he will wait to be noticed, whereupon he will strike with blinding speed to stun and disorient his target. It is at this point Akula will either rip his food into pieces, or swallow it wholesale. Being a creature of his size, swallowing a human swimmer without breaking the skin wouldn't be any trouble at all. Should his target escape, Akula will resort to boom-and-zoom tactics, striking very hard at high speed and taking off again to attack from a different direction.

Akula also sometimes chooses to romp around intimidating and causing mischief and trouble for land-dwellers as a gigantic demi-cuda with blue swim trunks and his 'Cuda tail sticking out of the back of them. Should the water in your glass start to vibrate periodically and a big orange eye peer into your window, it would probably be a toss-up between pleasant conversation, and horrible large-scale destruction and ravenous carnage. So that's nice~

Akula's strength and speed are two of his most powerful attributes. But, he reckons that his best is his smile. Cheers~!

Note from the player: For those concerned about Akula's size, worry not! I am comfortable playing him at the size of a normal person, a 100+ foot-long sea-behemoth, and anywhere in between.




An awesome sketch of Akula by Melody_A!