#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.