Trezkul are a heavily built species of dragon endemic to the Four-Faced Forest region, most well known for their venomous bite and importance to the Gren religion.
They are solitary, living primarily alone outside of the breeding season, and claim large swathes of land as their individual territory – including settled land. This leads to intense conflict with local civilizations, causing the species to become the most persecuted being in the region.
Minimal social contact and need for cooperation has led to a degeneration of social skills, causing them to be among the most 'dim' of the true dragons. While they are capable of being taught speech, it is a vestigial trait that is not used in the wild. Wild trezkul communicate primarily through body language, hisses, and growls.
Sighting a trezkul in their domain is often less common than sighting the effect they have on the environment. As greater magical beings, they have an innate connection with the aspect of nature and often utilize it in a subconscious manner. Trezkul territory is usually exceptionally lush and alive compared to nearby forests. The dragon themselves are very cryptic, blending into the forests with deep green and brown striped scales.
Physical Description
A generic trezkul adult.
Trezkul are true dragons and share the most common body plan – six-limbed, with four walking legs and two wings. Average adults stand approximately 1.9 m (6'2") at the shoulder, with the head held forward and slightly higher than the shoulder level. Males are typically slightly smaller than females.
Compared to the average dragon, they are built more heavily, with limbs built for short bursts of speed and ambush rather than chasing. Younger trezkul are more lean and can endure longer sprints than their elders.
They are scaled with moderately sized reptile-like scales, slightly rough and textured to the touch. Larger scales adorn less mobile portions of the dragon, with flexible overlapping plates lining the undersize.
Coloration is generally in hues of deep green and brown, with many shades present on the same being. The underside is usually a lighter coloration. Stripes are nearly always present, helping break up the outline in dense woodland. Trezkul that live in less wooded regions may be lacking or have reduced striping.
Ornamentation is most commonly seen as a crown of horns on the dragon's head, with the uppermost horns being the largest and oldest. Additional horns grow in as the dragon ages, with the eldest dragons having a true crest of large horns. The horns are similarly colored to the head and grow unevenly, mimicking sticks or branches.
Otherwise, larger scutes line the top of the neck, back, and tail, growing taller and larger until they converge into a line of curved spikes that line the spine.
Their eyes are slitted with very little visible sclera. The iris is generally colored a golden or brown color. The eyesight is adapted more for the darker environments of forests and can be weakened with intense direct sunlight, but are able to adjust. Long-distance vision is weaker than near and medium distance.
Hearing, in turn, is very acute; the animal is highly aware of its own noise production as well as those around it. It can detect a stick breaking three or more times further than a trezlin ever could.
Similarly, trezkul have a good sense of smell and are able to detect and track trails of prey animals for at least a day after their passing.
Special and Magical Abilities
Despite being a greater magical species, trezkul are probably most well known for their venomous bite. A bite from an adult trezkul causes paralysis in its intended prey, which are rather large-bodied animals. Full paralysis occurs within an hour, seizing the muscles and causing the prey to collapse. The effects wear off in approximately one day, with minor side effects lingering for a few days after.
Smaller beings are affected more intensely, with the paralysis spreading to critical organs like the heart and lungs, causing death from cardiac arrest or suffocation.
Beings far larger than prey, such as other dragons, often grow lethargic and have muscle stiffness. Trezkul are not immune to their own venom and use it in fights to weaken their opponents.
Magical aptitude increases as trezkul grow older and rely more on magical means to capture prey and defend themselves. They are able to effectively conform forests to their will at their height, forcing spurts of growth in plant life to ensnare foes or protect oneself.
A trezkul den is formed entirely by its magic; nearby plant growth is accelerated, forming a completely enclosed structure that provides shelter from the environment and prying eyes.
Trezkul will also use their magic to assist their own recovery from wounds, ailments, and other pains. Due to this, they often lead very long lives, if they are left to their own devices.
Behavior
Unlike many of the true dragons, trezkul are not exceptionally clever and behave mostly on instinct. If taught, they are capable of speech, but they do not have their own language; it is possible that they once did, but lost it over time due to behavioral changes.
Communication is done primarily through body language and simple vocalizations, which leads to an inability to plan or convey more than the most basic of information. Body language consists of wing and tail motions, as well as facial expressions and eye movements; generally, their body language conveys more than their vocalizations could. Vocalizations are reserved for long-distance communication, threatening, posturing, and calling.
They live primarily solitary lives outside of their breeding season. Males stake a claim over a large territory that they consider their hunting grounds. Females claim smaller, more loose territories and will wander between those of neighboring males. Males tolerate the present of females in exchange for a chance to breed.
Territories are most often set in heavily wooded areas with some cleared regions, often cleared by the dragon itself. Trezkul are by-and-large crepuscular ambush predators, lying in wait with their camouflaged scales for prey items to wander by. They stalk game trails and places rich with resources that attract prey. Younger trezkul are less patient, and with their smaller size, find it more feasible to chase prey directly through forests, hunting them down.
At a certain critical size, the thickest forests that their prey still are able to navigate is too dense for the dragon, pushing them into ambush behaviors. In this manner, the prey of adults and youth differ, allowing for some young trezkul to stay within territories of their parents or exceptionally tolerant adults until they grow too large.
The northernmost dragons, living on the border of the Frigid Frontier, find the colder winters hard to handle. This results in a massive migration of northern trezkul to the southern reaches of the Four-Faced Forests, generally occurring as a group – the only time the species is communal in any way. Arriving in the late fall, the dragons quickly establish territories, sometimes displacing existing dragons and resulting in intense territorial battles.
The dragons leave once more – again as a group – at the beginning of summer, ceding the territory they control in exchange for the great hunting grounds of the north. It can be suggested that the migratory trezkul are a subspecies, as the behavior appears to be heritable and passes from parent to offspring. Genetic exchange with the southern resident populations likely prevents any actual speciation, resulting in two subpopulations rather than subspecies.
Reproduction and Development
Breeding is a yearly event, taking place during the fall, where males will work to improve their territory through the use of enhanced plant growth with nature magic or artificial recruitment of prey items. Males will often attempt to expand their territorial boundaries during this time, clashing with neighboring males and becoming more aggressive.
Females will return to territories they favored the most throughout the year, observing the male's territorial clashes and displays. Once chosen, the female remains with the male for multiple weeks, breeding multiple times before splitting to raise her young on her own. The most successful male often lays claim to the majority of females in a region.
The gravid females will most often leave the territory of their chosen mate, finding an unclaimed or loosely contested region of her own. She builds her own den or utilizes uninhabited caves to nest, building a hidden nest that she will guard for the next few months.
A clutch consists of three to five eggs, of which most will often hatch. Within the first year, the wilds claim most young hatchlings, be it through disease or predation. The adults protect and guide their young for the first two years of their lives, allowing them to grow to a size too formidable for most predators to bother attacking. At this point, the mother begins to push her youth away. While they remain in her territory for years to come, they will soon find themselves chased out once they grow too large – at most five years old.
A two year old is approximately half the height of an adult, growing to three-quarters of an adult's height by their fifth year. True adulthood is not reached until seven or eight years of age, where their height then stagnates, and their body begins to fill out and lose its lanky baby look.
Juvenile trezkul often overestimate their strength and ability, tackling prey or taking on territorial challenges far beyond their ability and getting grievously injured. Half of those that leave their mothers' territory perish within a few years, leaving only a few adults surviving from a reproductively active female.
It is most often juveniles that get into conflict with the Gren, becoming overconfident or desperate and taking prey from their pastures or stables. Those that survive continue on with valuable lessons on messing with the settled people.
Trezkul may live for over a century, though many die far before then due to disease, conflict, or injury. The eldest trezkul are often described as a living force of nature, becoming a moving part of the forest. Their scales are often covered with magically accelerated mosses and brush, which serves as an excellent cover for ambush hunting. The greatest of the species are sometimes confused for great hills before the observer sees it move.
When death does come, the magically-infused nature of these beings results in their bodies causing a great explosion of life at their deathbed. Decay is accelerated as living matter is given an injection of energy to swiftly grow and reproduce, turning a site of death into one of life within hours. In this way, it can be rare to scavenge pieces from a trezkul corpse, as the body quickly reduces to nothing within a matter of days.
Ecology
Trezkul live in temperate and near-taiga forests, preferring deciduous greenery to evergreen. Their home territories encompass multiple square kilometers, filled with natural forests, streams, and clearings. They have been known to be mild ecosystem engineers, pushing over trees and old growth to make clearings to attract prey that live on forest edges.
Each dragon has its own preference for den sites, but they mostly den in the center of their territory in thickets or shallow caves. Their natural magical tendencies often cause these commonly-visited sites to become very overgrown and hard to navigate except for the dragon itself, which has tread a path to and fro perfectly shaped for its own form. These dens will contain the nests of females, but serve only as food storage or sleeping sites for males. Trezkul are exceptionally protective of their den and will often only leave it if forced to by forest fire.
Those that are migratory have little attachment to actual dens, not building their own, but will take over the dens of those they push out of a territory. Thickets and deeply wooded regions serve as rest sites in its stead.
Due to their immense size, adult trezkul have little in the way of predators or competition. They are the apex predator of the forests, but the same cannot be said for their youth. Juvenile trezkul are easy prey for the larger predators of the region and can even get themselves killed attempting to pick a fight with a bull woodstrider. They compete with said predators for prey, specifically the less ubiquitous thickettreader. This competition results in pushing them to conflict with settled regions as they pick off easy prey from pastures, earning the ire of the locals.
Other dragons, if forced into a conflict, are one of the two things that are known to kill an adult trezkul. The other are social humaniods like wolshaks or trezlin, working together in groups to slay a great beast.