Muad Dib
Paragon of Virtue
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: to create a species for the planet Siskeen, to create a companion/war mount for select allies of Muad Dib
Image Credit: 1st: Alejandro-Mirabal: https://alejandro-mirabal.deviantart.com/art/Shockmaw-Dragon-MTG-505122899
Canon: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/K%27kayeh_dragon?comments_page=1
Links: N/A
GENERAL INFORMATION
Name: K'kayeh dragon
Designation: Semi-sentient
Homeworld: originally: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Almas
Also: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Siskeen
Language: Spoken: none
Comprehend: depends on the being the creature bonds with
Average Lifespan: 4-10 years, 1,000 years (potentially)
(Most die before hatching, but the rest tend to live too around for years of age before doing either in mating related scenarios or being hunted by the alpha. Those dragons that are taken off world have the opportunity to live longer, but due to the reasons they are taken as companions life expectancy is still measured as , typically, less then a decade.)
Estimated Population: Rare
Description: The species was created from it's progenitor (who was created by Darth Rivan) and raised on Siskeen. Growing from a meter long at hatching and resembling a lizard with wings, the K'kayeh dragon grows swiftly the first year to stand four meters at the shoulder after only a year. After that the K'kayeh dragon grows roughly a meter a year until it reaches it's maximum size of two hundred meters (which takes nigh two centuries).
The points of interest is the creature's wings which serves a three fold purpose: swimming, burrowing, and flying (until the creature reaches a certain size and flight becomes impossible which is around twenty meters in height). The second obvious point of interest is the spines covering it's body. Reaching an average length of ten centimeters these protrusions can flex, assisting in burrowing, or flare out as a type of "spiked armor" defense when agitated. Once the K'kayeh dragon reaches over fifty meters the spines can and do grow in proportion to it's size, nearing a meter in length as it ages.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Breathes: Amphibious: Type 1 and water (their lungs able to filter the oxygenated water)
Average height of adults: 5-10 meters
Average length of adults: 15-30 meters
Skin color: Optional. Translucent at birth. Whatever it's surroundings are for the first several weeks determines it's color as it mimics it's surroundings like a chameleon. However, once a color is chosen in the first few weeks, it never changes again.
Hair color: N/A
Distinctions: Like it's progenitor, the K'kayeh dragon species is fundamentally different then humanoids.
The K'kayeh dragon's physical build is much like many reptilian non sentient or semi sentient species. Four thickly muscled legs that ended in claws comprised of talons in which one was an opposable thumb.
A long neck reminiscent of a snake, it's able to coil around prey constricting them or even be used as a whip-like strike against it's enemy.
From it's nostrils or mouth it can breath lightning, much like how Gurlanin and Vornskr had natural manifestations in the Force (though they were not classified as force sensitive).
The wings are attached to the K'kayeh dragon along the back, independent of it's limbs, unlike some similar winged reptilian species who's wings are attached to their forward legs. Able to take flight until it reaches a certain size (around ten meters in height) in which the size and girth of the creature grows too immense for the K'kayeh dragon to have sustained flight. However, between the strength of it's legs and the assistance of it's wings, large leaps are able to be utilized.
The tail is able to be used as counter weight in it's movement, a rudder like appendage during flight or swimming, or to assist in propelling when burrowing. Additionally the tail can be an effective weapon, especially when the spines are raised which makes a strike a bludgeoning impact as well as possible slashes/stabs from the sharp spines.
The K'kayeh dragon also have a unique respiratory system. Able to breath oxygen, the lungs also can operate as a type of gill in filtering oxygenated water before expelling the water.
It's skin is a tough hide that, as it gets older, gets more and more durable. At for years of age the hide is almost considered as tough as armor.
It's many rows of teeth are razor sharp and able to rend flesh, bone, and even steel.
Races: N/A
Strengths:
+ Natural Weapons: Sharp talons and teeth that can rend flesh and generic/sub-standard armor while both the neck and tail can be used in a whip-like attack
+ Lightning: using a natural manifestation, the creature can fire lightning from nostrils or mouth there equivalent of a (NPC) Knight. However this blast can only be used once every 5 posts and is not meant to be an end all attack
+ Hide & Seek: Despite it's size it can hide in forests, deserts, mountains, or water. Also like a Chameleon and the ability to mimic surroundings, at it's birth a trait of the animal allows it to mimic the color of it's surrounding making it harder to see. However once this occurs it is irreversible.
+ Natural Defense: the dermal exterior of the creature is rated at armor level plating
- Blasters: average
- Kinetic: average
- Lightsabers: very low
- Other: low
Weaknesses:
- Eyesight: Like many reptiles the K'kayeh dragon has weak eye sight, relying on it's other senses to compensate. Enclosed/sealed armor can overcome the sense of smell, silent stealth can overcome hearing, and regulated body heat overcoming it's sight can effectively render 'prey' invisible
- Instincts: This is a solitary, predatory, creature. You can't really command it so much as guide it. And sometimes it can bite the hand that feeds it, turn on its 'owner', or when injured act like a wounded animal that it is and attack anything/everything.
- Growing Boy: While the creature has dermal armor it's not impervious. And as it continues to grow combined with the spines attached to it's musculature it's impossible to attach armor to the creature. Also, as anything that grows it takes time to get used to it's continuingly changing body which may make it clumsy and uncoordinated at times.
- Roll Over: Like many reptiles the K'kayeh dragon has a glaring weaknesses. The underbelly has minimal dermal protection and is considered soft. This leaves the creature woefully exposed to any attack that could cripple or kill the animal
- Animal: As a semi sentient and an animal the K'kayeh dragon is susceptible to both mind trick and animal friendship which could confuse or even turn the animal against potential allies
- Hunter: the K'kayeh dragon is a hunter that likes to stalk and kill it's prey. Trying to utilize the creature in full scale combat would be filled with disadvantages. While able to fight on many fronts the creature prefers single targets.
- Cold Blooded: Again, as with many reptiles, the animal is dependent upon outside stimuli in regulating their body temperature. Too hot or too cold can affect their metabolic rates. Sluggish and impaired actions follow any massive fluctuation in temperature which can greatly decrease the effectiveness of the creature. Weather and weaponry/abilities that affect the creature can negate any positive use the K'kayeh dragon could potentially bring
- Blending: where the creature can mimic it's natural surrounding as a hatching, if taken from that particular habitat the beast cannot change skin tone again. So if it was green because of a jungle habitat and was dropped in a desert, you would have a green K'kayeh dragon in a severely different colored environment which would negate it's ability to blend into the surroundings.
CULTURE
Diet: Omnivorous
Communication: N/A
Technology level: N/A
Religion/Beliefs: N/A
General behavior: With the new K'kayeh dragon species there is an alpha male. The alpha mates with the females in which the female leaves, traveling many kilometers out of the alpha's territory to build it's nest. The alpha waits for the nesting where the eggs are laid. Once this occurs the male searchs out the nest, often fighting and killing the female, to eat the eggs. This ensures that very few of the offspring ever have an opportunity to hatch and potentially give the alpha male challengers.
However, once the eggs hatch the alpha leaves the young alone. Observing the species has made the researchers believe they have found the reason. Up until almost a year of age, the young are hermaphrodites and do not evolve into a distinct sex until this time. Observation implies that the alpha chooses to allow the young to become female before culling the males. Because of the cannibalism the species have very, very low numbers and are often considered a myth or tall tale.
Once a year of age is reached and the sex of the creature becomes determined the different sexes act differently.
Females tend to live in a communal group, hunting with one another, building their tunnels beneath the earth, and hibernating. It takes another year before the females are able to mate. At that time they seek out the alpha and the cycle begins again.
The males, once they hit their puberty at one year of age, often fight among themselves violently. Hunting one another, by the age of two when the males are able to mate, there is usually only one or two males left. At this point the alpha will kill the males when it crosses their path but once a male reaches the age of seven years of age it's normally ten meters tall at the shoulder, and at this point the alpha will actively hunt, track, kill, and eat the other males who are now viewed as an active threat to the alpha's dominance.
Just as the males are killed at around seven years of age, so too do the females die at this age. Because of the lost litters of the past the older female will stay and defend the nest from the alpha, which always ends in their demise.
The K'kayeh dragon prefers the wide open spaces and freedom of deserts, oceans, or even mountain ranges. This affinity to desolate, empty places tends to keep the creatures away from civilization. However, due to their hunter instincts they occasionally enter populated areas to hunt and gorge. They have no set hibernation cycle choosing to sleep for months as the urge hits them.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The original K'kayeh dragon was created by Darth Rivan on the planet Almas through sith alchemy. The creation of the creature, spells and genetic material used, were lost to time. The reason for it's creation was to make a creature to defend Darth Rivan's fortress from Force users, both Jedi and other Sith who might wish to pilfer the knowledge within or destroy it. As such the creature was created by the Darkside and had the ability to use the force in specific ways. In the creature's recreation the ability to harness and control the plethora of force abilities by it's force sensitive progenitor were widely lost.
Though Darth Rivan was forced to abandon Almas the beast remained behind. It was there, on one of Muad Dib's trips, that he first heard of the creature. Searching through Rivan's fortress and remaining pool of knowledge the Mad Man could not find information of how the sithspawn was created. So, before admitting defeat, he began a different avenue of creating the species.
Through careful search and investigation he finally found a specimen from the creature in one of the local museums that acted as a repository of knowledge. A meter long portion of it's tale had been removed during a conflict with Jedi on behalf of Vakin Draco during an encounter almost a millennia before. The flesh and bone was found and kept in a stasis chamber as proof that the creature truly existed.
With money not making the owner budge, Muad utilized darker tools at his disposal to collect the sample before making his way to Kamino to meet with the CEO of a company whom he knew as an ally within the ranks of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, [member="Tmoxin Temi"]. There at Morpho Pharmaceuticals the cloning process began from the preserved tissue. As the progenitor was a male, Morpho utilized genes from a Greater Krayt Dragon for the tweaking needed to create a female. With the embryos created and given life, a new species of K'kayeh dragon was on the horizon. Because of the use of the Greater Krayt Dragon genes, a genetic anomaly occurs, rarely, where an offspring is born with six legs instead of four. When this does happen the young is usually culled by the mother after hatching.
Taking the newly "born" K'kayeh dragons with him to Siskeen, Muad Dib released them and carefully watched over them until such time as they mated. Intervening occasionally to ensure that the first generation was born, Muad kept close watch on the creatures to ensure that the new species would survive.
As he watched them grow he drew up a formula though trial and error for the most effective way to train a creature to be a companion/mount. The method he found to have the most success always started at the hatching. Taking the young the being would become the surrogate mother, tending to the hatching and bonding through care. The more time spent with the hatching the greater the bond. Taking the young hunting also taught the K'kayeh dragon that the person was the alpha.
As this occurred there were two methods of training the K'kayeh dragon. One was train it to be completely obedient. Doing this works but from viewing these training methods it became apparent that eventually, and especially in male creatures, the beast would rebel and attempt to become the alpha by killing the individual. Those individuals who took necessary precaution could overcome the creature to remain the alpha, but this would repeat over the course time.
The second method was focused on the bond created between being and beast. If treated kindly and almost as a part of the family the K'kayeh dragon took on a role similar to a family pet. Loyal and steadfast. Yet instincts still remained and the creature would still test it's independence.
In studies male K'kayeh dragons bonded fiercely to a specific individual and viewed all others and potential enemy. The males also more frequently challenged the alpha role. The females of the species retained motherly instincts and when bonded to their individual, also claimed their Master's family and frequent friends as part of their nest.
In battle both genders were equally powerful and terrifying.
However attempting to bond with a creature after the first few weeks usually ends disastrously.
