The long curved object in "The Grim Grotto"

[Alfred is Present]

Yes. Yess! The IDV wasn't possible.

So what next?

[twistedbrain]

The Sinister Duo's ship, maybe?

[Hooky]

The closest idea for me is that it is some underwater creature that may have a submarine strapped onto it.

[Jacques the Environmentalist]

Now that's a good idea.
Lemony sort of describes it as both.
On the one hand it's curling and uncurling and is said to be a monster I think. On the other hand it can clearly pick up sonar and easily defeat the incredible octupus so that indicates that it may be a machine(Olaf even said, we don't want to show up on their sonar). So the submarine on the creature could be entirely possible. And that's plenty "evil that you cannot even imagine."

[lauren]

I doubt it's a submarine on a creature,it'd more likely be a room strapped to the creature with sonar system etc. I mean why would they attach a submarine to the creature when they won't need it's driving functions

[RockSunner]

Once again, I'll suggest it could be a giant chambered nautilus. There could even be human passengers in the shell part, with sonar, weapons, etc. In answer to the objection that the shell part cannot coil and uncoil, I reply that the tentacles can and do.

[Jacques the Environmentalist]

It could still be a submarine or some sort of chamber strapped to a creature. It would uncurl and curl but it would also have sonar and the capacity to take out other subs. And humans taking over the mind of and subverting an innocent creature for their sinister purposes is certainly evil that the bauds and Fiona wouldn't imagine.

[jman]

Sounds good to me.

[indyrams]

It's so hard to speculate on what it really is.
I believe there is a bigger side out there, then the two sides that are the VFD.
And nobody knows what that side is like because they don't know of it.
So everybody is naturally afraid of it.
Ofcourse, then it could be a sea monster.
But I simply always believed it to be a bigger submarine.

[Hermes]

We may well find out more about the Great Unknown in All the Wrong Questions (though probably not what it is, as that would spoil 'unknown').

(It's generally better to start a new thread than to revive a really old one, by the way.)

[sundust]

well, now that all the wrong questions has been released, it seems most likely a giant seahorse, like the bombinating beast. it would curl and uncurl an look like a question mark (it was written somewhere in ?1)

[Hermes]

I think it's quite widely agreed that the Bombinating Beast is the same thing as the Great Unknown, in the sense that the Great Unknown is what gave rise to the legend of the Bombinating Beast. The problem is, do we actually know what the BB is? Can we be sure it is really a beast, or might it, too, be a submarine? (The statue need not be accurate. According to one story the beast was really a walrus.) At first it seemed to be totally mysterious, but now we are getting rather more detail - it looks as if Hangfire is trying to breed a BB, which suggests he at least thinks it's a beast. And of course the BB has in a sense put in an appearance, but not in such a way that you can actually see what it is. Hopefully, more will be revealed in the last book.

[sundust]

Well... I wonder if it could have something to do with the tadpoles in WDYSHL(It was featured on the cover page). But how would Hangfire breed a beast which is half seahorse(I cannot really remember what was the other half) out of tadpoles? Well if Hangfire turns out to be Armstrong Feint as some people suspect, he would be a naturalist and might know how.
(I cannot wait for the fourth book!)

[Hermes]

Well, we don't know that they are actually tadpoles (indeed they clearly aren't exactly regular tadpoles, which don't bite). But more importantly, we really don't know what the real BB is like. We're first told 'part sea-horse and part shark', and that seems to be what the statue is based on, but then we're told it might be part alligator and part bear, and also that it might really have been a walrus. So, apart from the fact that (if it is a best at all) it lives in the water, we know very little.

[sundust]

I see...