Dragons...! (Part Four)

Here is another in my series that describes chitinous dragons (previous posts can be found here):

CHITINOUS DRAGON (Weaver)

FREQUENCY: Very Rare
NO. APPEARING: 1-2
ARMOR CLASS: 0
MOVE: 12"/36"/*20
HIT DICE: 6-8
% IN LAIR: 30%
TREASURE TYPE:  G, S, T
NO. OF ATTACKS: 3
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 2-12, 2-12, 3-18
SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Standard
INTELLIGENCE: High
ALIGNMENT: Neutral Good
SIZE: L (12' long)
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
                Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
CHANCE OF:
                Speaking: 70%
                Magic Use: 30%
                Sleeping: 30%

Weaver Dragons prefer lonely mountains and other high, remote places. Their lairs are made up of a large, dense web-like structure spun between two high points or within a crevasse, with their treasure kept in numerous (2-20), hard to reach nests.

As they spend much of their time on the wing, their attacks will predominantly come from above. Its breath weapon is a mass of sticky, web-like material 6" long, 4" wide and 5" high that rapidly contracts around a victim, inflicting 1-8 points of damage per round. This can be removed with sharp instruments or by those possessing a Strength of 17 or more. It can also bite or strike out its powerful rear legs, whose talons inflict 2-12 points of damage. If the dragon can speak and employ magic, they will know 1-3 Druid spells of 3rd to 5th level.

 

Weaver Dragons prefer to shun any form of contact and, despite their somewhat fearsome appearance, are generally quite aloof and distant in their mannerisms. However, they are generally amiable to dwarves and gnomes and might converse with any they encounter in an adventuring party. Even then, they will stay airborne unless they are met in their lair. They will have an intimate knowledge of the landscape around this lair, out to a distance of 100 miles, and thus could be a source of useful information. On very rare occasions, should decide or be convinced to assist in some way, a Weaver Dragon might offer to carry one or two individuals no further than 100 miles. They speak Common, Dwarven and Gnomish, as well as having their own language. If two are encountered, it will be a mating pair.

 

The web-like material from which their lairs are woven can be worked and formed into armour or a shield, although artificers who can perform such a task are rare and very expensive. These items are treated as if they were magical, a complete set of armour (weighing 50 gp) being +5 and shields (weighing 10 gp) +3 respectively. Unless painted, this armour is always whitish-grey. Alternatively, every 100 years a dragon will weave a suit of personalised armour or a shield for an individual who has provided them with some great service or act of friendship (it is left to the Dungeon Master to decide how this might occur). 

 

Description: Weaver Dragons are generally a rusty-red colour with patches of dark yellow. The tips of their wings and limbs are blue-green. As they reach the end of their lifespan (approximately 400 years), they become whitish-yellow.

On the Physiology of... the Otyugh - Part Four.

Eyes

As the Otyugh is a weird creature, with a pair of eyes on a stalk and an aversion to light, one idea that came to mind was whether those eyes are actually anything normal. By 'normal', I mean whether they would be like an animal eye, with a similar lens, retina, etc. My line of thinking was continuing along with the idea that bits of the Otyugh are 'solid' in some way. A few themes could follow this; namely, whether the eyes are compound and also if they might be formed from blobs or clusters.

As you can see from my previous scribbles, I've suggested that there are blobby bits at the end of the eye stalk. If we zoom in on just this area, one concept was that the eyes are within the stalk and are made up up of several smaller solid sections:

You can see the aforementioned blobs, with nerve strands leading away down the stalk. Zoom in a tad more, and things start to look like this:

The picture above shows how the blobs are clustered within the left and right sides of the stalk, and I've included a side view of one blob. When I say 'blob', the idea was really more along the lines of them being solid in some way, and sensitive to light - but perhaps too much, hence their photophobia. One visual that fed into this design was the way things look when you slice a gooseberry in half:

Note the veiny bits leading to the seeds

Why a gooseberry? I dunno. Perhaps it's the way transluscent and solid mixes together. As I've said before, this mixing is how I imagine the Otyugh's overall look.

Anyway, another approach might be that the solid parts of the eye rest on the surface of the stalk. One interesting creature that uses minerals as the basis for a kind of eye is the chiton. Perhaps the Otyugh could have something similar, at least in the sense of those blobs being more like encrusted, light-sensitive primitive eyes formed from some sort of solid matter:

The scribble above maybe has things looking a little too conventional, but with the fourth drawing I was also thinking about the ways those solid bits might work as a single cluster.

This last scribble mixes the above concepts together:

The idea with this is to have a rough faceted look, either like coal or roughly worked flint. I've drawn an individual blob just to give some impression of the idea I'm trying to get across.

Still, I've not settled on a final look - although I tend to gravitate towards the look and feel of the last scribble. I also like the idea of the being able to see the nerve strands within the eye stalk. Maybe perhaps if the tip of the stalk was a little more opaque and was pigmented with various disgusting hues, it would help with camouflage when the Otyugh is hidden away...