Setting My FanGirl Free

this one is late enough as is (power outage, will continue for the next weekish) so i didnt have time to write out the new classes but the hideous zippleback is the first major change! tidal no longer means aquatic; it means a dragon that uses water when it hunts, so divebombers, some undersea hunters, and fish-feeders take up the class. it allows for more diversity. not all tidal class dragons are aquatic, not all aquatic dragons are tidal class.

bonus closeup at the end bc i really enjoyed the faces!

hideous zipplebacks are able to hold their breath for extremely long amounts of time due to their doubled lung capacity. these lungs help it get off the ground considering it's titantic size, but they also allow them to be extremely effective aquatic hunters. they hunt my laying underwater, totally still, with the spots on their backs as camoflauge. thankfully, they have no interest in hunting humans, preferring to wait until a large fish swims by

while their jaws arent the strongest, simply having two heads allow them to prevent most prey from running or swimming away. the doubled heads are likely an adaptation to allow them to catch prey like sharks (lore taken from school of dragons! sorta lol)

the horn-like appendages on their heads and on their jaw are feelers, detecting motion in water and in the air—dragons that fly quietly may alert a zippleback to its presence simply by beating its wings too hard

their eyes are w-shaped when contracted, optimised for seeing underwater and interpreting distortion, but relaxed they become large circles.

the nature of their gas and spark attack isn't completely known, and despite common patterns, either head can do either—technically. all zipplebacks are intersex, with one head as the male and the other as female. they reproduce asexually, having all the parts necessary to have a hatchling without outside interference. as such, baby hideous zipplebacks will look like near-copies of their parent, with the primary difference being their scale pattern, which are all unique. the male head produces the gas, and the female sparks it.

with the exception of the typhoomerang, zipplebacks are the largest dragon native to berk

as their name implies, zipplebacks are able to "zip" their scales together, tethering the split necks and tails together temporarily. as the brains think individually, this is likely a survival mechanism to force them together; eg, if they start flailing around or hurting each other, some old instinct zips them together to avoid hurting or disorientating themselves. they can be trained to do this on command.