Wahrk
From MYSTlore
| Wahrk | |
|---|---|
| Carcharocetus malum | |
| Found in Riven | |
| |
| Summoned wahrk on Survey Island. | |
The wahrk (or whark, per the supposed misspelling found in Gehn's journals) is a marine-dwelling creature found in the waters of Riven. Presumably carnivorous, the wahrk resembles a large, tusked whale and can be viewed, up close and rather irritated, in an underground chamber on Survey Island.
The Rivenese people hold a particular reverence for the wahrk, a cultural respect which was later exploited by Gehn, who constantly used the wahrks as symbols of power and fear to maintain his control of Riven.
The so-called Wahrk Gallows outside the village on Jungle Island exemplify this, an area safely surmised to have been a place of public execution by way of a summoned wahrk or two. Gehn used the tusks of the wahrks to decorate and ornament his room and other places, in order to signify his power. At one point in his journal, he seems to notice the diminishing number of the wahrks, perhaps a result to this hunting.
Gehn's more frightening incarnation of the wahrk can be seen throughout the age in various forms; he has a penchant for using the animal's skull and tusks in his décor, and everything from the underlit totem in the jungle to the children's game found in the schoolhouse seem to reinforce the threat that the wahrk had become in Riven's later days.
[edit] After Riven's demise
While the collapse of Riven also implies the extinction of the wahrk as a species, at least one wahrk did make it through the Star Fissure (and presumably died soon after), as evidenced by a skeleton not far from the Cleft in New Mexico.