“While traveling across the deep waters and you hear the cries of a maiden in distress, beware your surroundings, if there be no signs of shipwreck, turn the boat around and do not look back.” -Conversation overheard in a harborside tavern.

It is not the leviathan creatures stirring deep beneath the surface that make most experienced sailors skin crawl, rather it is the soft cries of distress that pierce the calm ocean breeze.

While they may look like fair maidens suffering the terrible fate of shipwreck, sirens are nothing but cunning illusionists. Those that were saved just in the nick of time tell tales of how the beautiful woman they wished to save suddenly turned into horrible creatures of the dark depths once their head went under the surface.

A lady of fair skin, beautiful hair, and full lips turned into a terror of scales and fins. The mouth a deep dark maw with never-ending rows of teeth, and hair thick like seaweed.

Having four arms but ever only showing two above the surface, the creature would use their second clawed set to latch onto prey that got to close, prompting the pack that most certainly laid waiting beneath to do the same. Forcing the poor unsuspecting victim into the breach using their combined weight they would then begin their frenzied feast an act described as watching a particularly hungry school of shark ripping meat to shreds.

Most do not know where the sirens come from, nor how they reproduce. Some believe women caught by the sirens are turned to sirens themselves through dark and unholy rituals. And that the visage seen while the siren sits above the water’s surface is the images of the people they once were.