Man o' War

"Hard to starboard! All hands, brace for impact!"

- Anonymous Atlesian Dreadnought Captain

Appearance
The Man o' War is a colossal whale shark-like Grimm that can grow upwards of 300 meters in length. While there have been sightings of these creatures in water, they are also seen in-flight thanks to enormous bladders that can be inflated with an organic lighter-than-air gas that the Man o' War creates.

Man o' Wars are coated in a set of overlapping scale-like armor pieces. Unlike the small scales of a normal fish, a Man o' War's scales are massive sheets around 15 meters in diameter. This way, the creature can take advantage of both flexible plating and one-piece armor. Between these plates are the creature's "broadside cannons".

Special Traits
Man o' Wars are a rare Grimm strong enough to challenge fleets of airships thanks to their heavy armor and use of ranged weapons. Their primary Broadside cannons are organic ranged weapons that use special muscle movements to launch bone shells containing a highly corrosive mucus-like substance. The shell is thick enough to penetrate the armor of smaller airships to deal significant damage to the internals while heavier battleships often have their armor corroded away by the ooze as the shell shatters upon impact on the hull. The rate of fire on an individual cannon is low as it takes several minutes for the creature to grow another shell but the sheer number of the cannons is what makes the Grimm so deadly. Like the many guns of an old-fashioned galleon, seeing a Man o' War turn broadsides is often the last thing a foolhardy captain will witness.

Against small fighter aircraft and truly brave/crazy hunters, Man o' wars can expel a superheated vapor of their toxic internal fluids. While they themselves can survive being in this cloud, most aircraft engines do not respond well to corrosive fumes and many hunters tend to fall very quickly from either heat stroke, asphyxiation, or just being blown off by the force of outgoing gas. This also doubles as the creature's point defense system: when faced with incoming missiles or torpedoes, a good burst of the toxic vapor will often knock the projectile off course.

Finally and the most basic of the Man o' War's offensive abilities is its gaping mouth which takes up a third of the creature's length. Filled with razor-sharp teeth and the stench of often thousands of corpses and aviation fuel, the Man o' War's jaw muscles might be slow but being caught in them while flying a slow-moving vessel is a death sentence.

Weaknesses
While a Man o' War's armor is thick enough to bounce most kinetic shells fired at it while it is nose on and it possesses a massive array of organic guns, the key lies in the fact that the creature must turn broadside to get the most mileage out of its weapons. In doing so, it exposes the thinnest part of its armor. Meanwhile, a bow-on airship with forward facing main battery guns can and will penetrate the armor of a Man o' war. Likewise, the armor on the Man o' War's flight bladders is often thinner than the armor on the rest of its body. Targeting these is a quick way to bring the Grimm down where gravity does the rest.

The toxic gas cloud that a Man o' War emits, while extremely deadly, is also one of the creature's last resort attacks as it takes a significant amount of time for it to regenerate enough gas to create another cloud. Younger specimens are wasteful and expend it all when faced with only a single squadron while elder Man o' Wars will tactically use their supply, only blasting it at incoming foes as opposed to making an entire cloud.

In fact, the entire weakness of the Man o' War lies in its innate lack of speed. Even though they have great strength, demonstrated by their ability to quickly snap their bodies to fire shells before going back into nose-on tanking, they cannot escape situations where they are just simply overwhelmed. Sahali Naval doctrine dictates that fast moving Destroyer "wolf packs" be used when engaging these Grimm while the Atlesians prefer using their battleships to engage Man o' Wars head on, letting them consume all their ammunition before using fighters to flank with powerful torpedo attacks to their sides.