Project: Ozdark

DRAGON ENTRY 01 - RED-BACK HOARDER

Type: dragosia

Diet/hunting behaviour: carnivorous ambush predator

Breath type: liquidist

Dragosia rubenpondylus (commonly known as the red-back hoarder) is one of the larger flying dragons characterised by its bright red hide and its behaviour to hoard anything of interest. This species commonly lives near the base of mountains, where they hoard shiny metals and stones for its bed, carefully constructing it and laying its items to attract females who inspects various nests during mating season to find a suitable. It finds these metals and objects with its spade, which can sense slight magnetic elements in rocks.

Its skin is red to scare away any large dragon that intrudes its space, acting as an indicator of the hoarder’s powerful breath. It spews first a boiling oil that ignites by a set of teeth in its throat that snaps at such rapid speed, the generated heat ignites the oil into a powerful blast. It also uses this blast while hunting, in which it stays perched above an open clearing to then nose dive downwards to its target, blasting them with its flame to discombobulate them before they can react.

Within Aviligh’s savanna, the field mausk is a surprising beast as it originates from the simple and small field mice, evolving into a generalist piscivore that resides in near large streams and creeks. Even though they consist on a diet of fish, they commonly feed on freshly killed corpses if no major predators are about, acting as clean up before it rots and festers bacteria.

They are a sociable beast, living around certain fairy cities and memorising the layout to exact detail, where they organise a large burrow where they huddle in during winters. Humans have taken this social behaviour and domesticated the mausk to be used for two key purposes. The first purpose as guides for merchants through the more complex sections of fairy cities, the second is for entertainment as humans have tamed them for jousting tournaments, using their dangerous bite as a weapon to lock the opponents mount close or to sneakily catch the opponent’s leg and pull them straight of their mount.

The most secluded continent across Teralm, Aviligh is the most central landmass within the realm, with smaller land masses surrounding it. The land mass has little to no major mountainous regions, and is considerably flat with soft and rich soil that allowed great sustainability for major ecosystems.

Three major biomes define Aviligh, large open savannahs are found across the northeast and southwest, with large oak trees being hubs for many animals in the fields. The savannahs are also populated with a species of grass that grow bladed leaves that grow several feet in length, allowing many animals to graze several hours on a single leaf, or for predators to efficiently hide from it’s prey.

Wetlands are the second most common ecosystem to be found, located within the northern lagoon called “Okreig”, a shallow body of water that allows giant mangrove forests to shelter young oceanic wildlife while sustaining it’s own specialised creatures. Wetlands can also be found mostly across the southern islands as well, however being exposed to a different oceanic ecosystem caused most of the inhabitants to diversify differently, with reptiles being most dominant in these wetlands compared to Okreig.

The third and most unique is “Fairy cities”, large chain of gorges and gullies that spread far across the north and west. Fairy city cliff sides actually expose the soft clay and soil, allowing many creatures to feed off roots or subterranean animals. Most of these cities are actually important to most local wildlife, with many creatures relying on it as migratory road ways, or flood banks that prevent dangerous conditions during flood seasons.

The realm of Teralm is one of the more fantastical and bizarre lands to come across. it is a region that centers one core land mass called Aviligh, which is surrounded by an ocean barrier of three larger land masses, Norharc the glacial sheets of ice and permafrost, Brundekaip the tropical yet mysterious horn of a greater undiscovered land, and Ozdark, a land dominated by violent beasts of great variety.

The actual world of Teralm is currently exiting an ice age glaciation, this caused much of the weather and climate to be slightly colder than that of Earth's, leaving only two months of spring and an overlong autumn and winter. this was however countered with most of the wildlife across the realm to adapt due to the extremities, with inclusion of becoming larger in size, developing specialist niches in their ecosystems, and becoming more brutal for the sake of survival.

this includes the highly intelligent and sociable family of creatures called the hominins, who currently rule over Aviligh with culture and technology similar to Earth's 15th century Europe. This era has also sparked strong interest in the sciences, with many natural philosophers diversifying in understanding biology, evolution and the ecology of creatures most people wont even dare to approach.