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Author Topic: Shirru  (Read 4519 times)
Rick
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« on: June 23, 2010, 05:44:43 pm »

Ok. Got an idea for a creature, but I am lousy at drawing, so I'm going to describe it instead; The Shirru is an aquatic, swamp-dwelling omnivore with fairly smooth, reptilian skin that ranges from a browny-green to a sort of muddy black colour. It's quite big, standing about 4' tall, and about 8-10' long when fully grown. It has a broad, flat almost hammerhead type head, nostrils are slits on the side and eyes protrude on top (bit like an alligator). It doesn't have teeth, just parallel rows of tough cartilage that grind up pretty much anything it can find. The head is attached to a short, thick and heavily muscled neck that widens out into a broad body on two very powerful legs. It's feet are broad with 4 long webbed claws which can support it over marshy ground and help propel it through the water. The body narrows down into a vertically flattened, broad stumpy tail that acts as a rudder and also helps move it through water. Overall, it looks fairly broad and flattened, which helps it when underwater, and it can hide just below the surface and wait for prey to wander along. It can subsist on plants, but is a very fast underwater and ambush predator. It's fairly quick on dry land, but doesn't like to get too far away from water.
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Carcharoth
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« Reply #1 on: June 23, 2010, 08:47:46 pm »

Trying to visualise your creation!
Is it a biped then?
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Rick
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« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2010, 09:49:00 pm »

Definately a biped, little bit like a Grishak, but a little longer, a little more streamlined and a little flatter. I'm imagining it as a 4 stage lifecycle; eggs laid in a convenient warm pool somewhere, then abandoned; jenta living mostly in the water and emerging from the water at sempa stage; sempa and kopa stages virtually identical externally, main differences in mating calls and chemical odours. I think the legs on the jenta would be less developed and they'd live off pondweeds and each other - the strongest emerging as sempa with very few sisters left. Sempa and Kopa would be lone hunters, having a marked territory and they would have a higher ratio of Kopa:Sempa than a lot of other creatures, probably approaching about 1:2 in some areas. Highly aggressive, even towards each other, except at mating season.

If I can manage to sketch it, I'll put it up.
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Rick
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Posts: 123



« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2010, 02:58:02 am »

Just trying to sort out the details of the beastie and the head is starting to look a bit like a hippo's (without the ears), which is ok as I wanted it to be solid. I imagine it using its head as a club, battering its prey before clamping down with its jaws and clawing with its feet.
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