A trench whale, also sometimes called a trench horror (generally people more familiar with whales or less familiar with the creatures' normally-docile nature), is a lighter-than-air creature of about 20m in length, which have been emerging at night from certain abyssal trenches in the Western Dusts since the early 33rd Century AE. The creature does not appear to feed and dies naturally within a few months of emergence, but in the present they are usually hunted for their valuable oil, carapace, and lifting gases. The industry of hunting and processing the creatures is centered in Trenchtown, which was founded to exploit them, and in the Shady Deeps, founded for the same reason.