| Lung is the property of Blackdagger01! |
| Lung | |
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| Statistics | |
| Japanese Name | りゅう |
| Romanized Name | Ryuu |
| Features | Poisonous Saliva, Horns, Durable scales |
Lung are sea-serpents found within the rivers as well as the sea surrounding Kano Country. They are valued by fishermen for their durable and high priced scales.
Overview[]
Lung are snake-like creatures that make their home within the rivers and sea surrounding Kano Country. Lung grow up to on average somewhere between twenty and thrity feet in length with colored scales ranging most often between red, blue, yellow, and black. They are four limbed creatures, capable of exiting the water for a few hours at a time to sun bathe on the rocky shores of coasts and riversides but they spend the grand majority of their time within the water as it is there preferred hunting ground. Using their poisonous saliva to take down fish, their long, muscular, bodies wrapping around their prey items until their poison can take effect. However, while they are primarily Pescatarian, Lungs have devloped a technique that allows them to hunt birds flying over the water.
They do this by taking water into their mouths, letting only their nose and mouth breach the surface of the water and spitting the water out at high enough speed that they can knock birds from the sky and down into the water for them to eat. This method is also used to defend themselves from predators, spitting these water bullets mixed with their own poisonous saliva to hit prey with the possibility of poisoning them should any of it find its way into their eyes, mouth, or an open wound of the threat.
While Seakings and other large predators might hunt Lungs out in the open ocean, within the rivers of Kano the only natural predator of the Lung is that of the Shisa, the two predators having formed a sort of rivalry as the Shisa has evolved a resistance to the poison of the Lung and in turn the scales of the Lung are difficult for the claws of the Shisa to cut through. Each finding the other to be a delectable but hard earned food item, encounters between the two species often leading to the death of one or the other.
While Shisa may be their only natural predators within Kano itself, the Lung is highly sought after by fishermen as their meat is considered a delicacy in many dishes. But even more than that, the scales of a Lung are a rare and highly sought after resource. Durable enough to create armor yet light enough to feel as though one was wearing cloth, the scales of a Lung is said to be capable of stopping bullets and among the rich the scales are used to adorn their clothing as a fashin statement.
Though, the rarity of Lung scales is not due to them being hard to find or even necessarily difficult to capture but more that the royal family of Kano has placed a great deal of stipulations and road blocks when it comes to getting permission to capture Lungs. Lungs can only be caught during certain times of the year, and to even be allowed to do so then one must be granted written permission by the ruling family of the region in which they inhabit or intend to fish in. Then on top of that one crew of fishermen is only allowed to capture two Lung during any given season.
These stipulations are not placed upon the people out of cruelty or to create artificial scarcity but rather to prevent over fishing of the Lung as the services that it provides Kano's water supply is irreplaceable.
Lung's poison is not created natrually within their bodies but rather it comes from the body of the Lung absorbing impurities and pollution in the waters it swims through and as such, they act as a natural filtration system running through every river in Kano. By absorbing these impurities the Lung metabolizes them, generating the poison that is found in its saliva.
Unlike their natural counterpart, the Shisa, Lung are social creatures. Though they often travel alone when hunting or traveling, there are several lakes and bays in Kano in which Lungs gather to meet friends, family, and to find mates.
Lung are oviparous, laying a single egg per mating season. Within Lung pairings it is the male who is left with the egg during its incubation period, the male Lung often carrying the egg in its claws as it swims through the water. While the male is protecting the egg, the female will hunt for both parties, returning to the male with food daily until the egg hatches.
Once a Lung egg has hatched, both the male and female will leave it to fend for itself. Lung babies maturing from infancy to adulthood in just a little over six weeks. Growing from about the size of a your average human infant to anywhere from twenty to thirty feet within that small timeframe assuming it is able to hunt and gather enough food to grow and survive.