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Originally Posted by lwcamp
As far as the technical details of buoyancy control go (excluding magic), sharks can be nearly neutrally buoyant by having large oil-filled livers and not having mineralized bones, as well as using hydrodynamic lift while swimming. Squid likewise have no mineralized structures in their bodies. Although muscle is more dense than water (making them somewhat negatively buoyant), they can compensate for thus by using lift from their fins and active swimming. Things that live in the deep sea often significantly reduce their muscle mass, becoming largely gelatinous. While this reduces their athletic ability, it does allow them to float suspended in the water column. The giant squid is a deep sea animal but is also muscular and athletic, it keeps neutral buoyancy by replacing sodium with ammonium for its electrolytes. But for athletic things with hard, mineralized body parts (bones, shells), gas filled structures seem to be about the only way to go.
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Well, I'm imaging the creatures who are the greatest threat to humans near Rio as fey predators who have shark- or barracuda-like qualities in a bipedal, humanoid form.
The legs should be used as almost a tail when they swim, but on the surface, they should be capable of walking, albeit clumsily. Long, oddly graceful arms, with fingers capable of tool use and intricate finger gestures, as some of them are accomplished magicians.They certainly have bony structures in their bodies, as they not only have spines, shoulders, elbows and the like, but also sharp claws.
As it seems unlikely that a bipedal humanoid would evolve naturally underwater, they are presumed to be magically created or altered, perhaps a faerie race that was cursed to live apart from others, or who took refuge in the water as their original habitat was destroyed. There are even those who presume them to be analogous to werewolves in hybrid beast-form, but with the 'human' part instead some form of fey creature and the beast an unknown piscine predator from their home world, which happens to resemble sharks and barracudas in some ways.
Complicating analysis is the fact that even relatively informed sources available to the PCs are uncertain how many supernatural aquatic species exist and whether individuals that display squid-like or mammalian characteristics are examples of individual variation or a different species altogether from the piscine humanoids.
Well, one PC
does have a rather unique familiarity with the Nommo, a mammalian aquatic fey species with some seal-like characteristics and he claims unequvocally that the Nommo and the Invisible Residents near Rio are completely different species and not even remotely friendly with each other. However, he bases this on unreliable eyewitness accounts of the Rio aquatic humanoids, as he has as yet not encountered one of them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lwcamp
Also, as far as weaponizing sonar goes - if you can focus the sonar beam to the point of producing cavitation at the target, gas-tissue interfaces become moot and the cavitation bubbles will just tear the target apart. But getting sonar to this point will probably require some R&D (not necessarily getting sonar to produce cavitation - it does this all too easily, and is bad for detection so the engineers want to avoid it. But rather the ability to produce cavitation at a desired point far from the emitter, and also the focusing and targeting of the beams).
Luke
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Are we talking about writing new software and possibly tinkering with existing sonar arrays (easily possible) or would the Brazilian Navy need to develop their own sonar arrays instead of the imported ones they use in real life?