THE SURGERY OF THE EXOCOETIDAE
A Lore Primer for Dockwrights, Powder-Monks, & Anyone Who Thinks a Ship Can’t Grow a Second Heart
It began the way most dangerous things begin in Crownhold Sink—
with laughter, ale, and a woman eating like she was dissecting a corpse.
Dr. Mako “Redhand” did not recognize Julius Applebottom at first. Not because he was forgettable—because she is the kind of mind that files people under useful or irrelevant, and most “useful” men die before they get a second entry.
Then Julius put a list of impossible biology on her table.
Not trophies. Leverage.
Two Giant Sensory Nodes. Giant Ventral Pressure Sacs. Giant Bioluminescent Glands. A Size-8 Ember-Heart. And the real sin:
A Giant Yoto Pearl (Siddhi of Love) that didn’t feel like treasure.
It felt like a thought that learned how to breathe.
Mako’s appetite ended.
Commerce began.
The Ember-Heart was not sold in a market. Markets create rumors. Rumors create knives.
So Julius did the only smart thing: he put it in front of Mufasa.
The Pirate King bought it for 25,000 gold—not because he wanted more fire, but because he refused to let anyone else hold a war-starter. The Lion’s “protection” was offered out of habit; Julius declined out of principle.
Crownhold laughed.
Then a talking ant stepped out of the Love Pearl’s byproduct like it was perfectly normal.
And the room remembered why Julius Applebottom makes reality feel negotiable.
The Exocoetidae’s prow was not carved with a symbol.
It was built from Julius’s old lifeline:
The Axis-III Skiff, now mounted as the figurehead—an emergency craft, a memory, and a warning.
To seat the Size-16 Siddhi of Love into Axis-III wood, Orren Vale had to do something shipwrights don’t admit is possible:
He opened the skiff like flesh.
The wood fought—hunger-frequency humming in F-sharp, resin webbing evolved from years of feeding on Julius’s Yoto pearls. It thrashed like a trapped animal while Julius held the primary seal with raw resonance and stubborn hands.
Then the pearl went in.
No explosion. No rejection. No dissonance.
Just a silence so clean the cavern felt embarrassed to make noise in it.
The skiff’s carved eyes ignited with a steady violet glow—
and everyone present understood the same terrible truth:
This wasn’t a battery installed into a ship.
This was a mind seated into a body that wanted it.
Resulting Upgrade: “THE LOVING PROW” (Siddhi Integration)
The figurehead becomes a living Yoto-focus: amplifies Julius’s smoke arts and resonance shaping.
The prow gains intent-awareness: it “pulls” toward purpose, responds to Julius’s will, and stabilizes under pressure like a creature bracing itself.
The Exocoetidae’s presence changes: heavier, predatory, awake.
With the heart seated, Orren and Mako turned to the body.
The Exocoetidae had taken scars—acid scoring, heat stress, pressure fatigue. So the crew began applying Molten-Shell Chitin as external reinforcement.
Not a simple plating job—chitin doesn’t just bolt on. It must be married to froststeel with resin seals and pearl-conductive stitching, or it will shear off during high-speed turns.
Resulting Upgrade: “CHITIN BASTION” (Hull Reinforcement)
Heat-resistance increases dramatically (thermal vents, magma fauna, core bloom heat).
Impact survivability improves for reef-run turns and fissure scrapes.
Better protection during “skip-glide” maneuvers where water pressure changes like a punch.
After the heart and armor, Julius did what Julius does:
He asked why ships must accept limitations the way people do.
Titan-Forged warriors use an anchor organ to survive Great Pearls.
So Julius asked the heresy question:
Why can’t a ship have one?
With Love—the diamond-lattice ant—adding the missing logic, Julius drafted an anatomical blueprint for the Exocoetidae:
A keel-seated Anchor Organ, lead-lined heartwood chambered with conductive silver filaments, designed to buffer resonance strain the way flesh buffers pain.
Not a mount.
A second cardiovascular system.
Anchor Organ Core Functions
Acts as a capacitor for excess resonance output (prevents hull-shredding strain during dual-pearl operations).
Stabilizes pressure inversion transitions by absorbing spike-loads.
Makes “two Great Pearls aboard” theoretically survivable.
Most ships vent dangerous overflow into the sea.
That attracts beasts.
Julius designed something crueler and smarter:
Resonance Dump Tanks integrated into the glider wings—compression chambers that store excess resonance until it becomes volatile, then vent it through rear-facing exhaust ports.
Waste becomes fuel.
The harder the pearls push, the more boost the ship generates.
Resulting Upgrade: “WING-VEIN THRUST” (Secondary Propulsion)
Burst speed for evasions, impossible turns, and short “skip-glide” accelerations.
Stability during high-angle underwater banking.
Flight-capable conversion window (limited duration, unknown ceiling)—turning glide into true air movement when the dump tanks are fully pressurized.
After the work begins, Crownhold’s dockside gossip changes tone.
They no longer call the Exocoetidae “a clever sub.”
They call it what sailors call anything that stops obeying the rules:
a living weapon.
A ship with:
a Love-heart in its prow,
chitin bones on its skin,
and a second “organ” planned in its keel to hold power that should kill it.
And they say, quietly, like a prayer:
“If Applebottom finishes that Anchor Organ…
the fastest thing in the Estes Sea won’t be a shark or a storm.
It’ll be a ship that learned how to breathe harder.”