The Cavecreep

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The Cavecreep is a rare dragon that is mainly found in damp caves, though they are known to surface at night. They bury their eggs in deep mud or peat before abandoning them, the eggs hatch in twenty-five days. They primarily eat meat and are known man-eaters, though they have a particular fondness for fruit from the surface. They breathe a malodorous gas that is capable of knocking out dragons more than twice their size, fortunately it is nonfatal to humans. This gas is mostly used to scare off intruders, as they'd rather use their deadly wing-claws and venomous stinger to kill prey than to attack threats. A Cavecreep's voice sounds as if it had caught a nasty virus and nearly drowned afterwards, they will frequently cough up a foul liquid while speaking as well.

ART

a sheet depicting a bipedal, six-limbed dragon and its growth stages, it is a dull greyish yellow color. The adult dragon is gaunt and eyeless, it has two tusks emerging from its lower jaw and four pairs of horns on its head. Its posture is horizontal like a theropod dinosaur, it also has a deep chest. Only two claws are visible on its arms and legs, and its wings haven been adapted into claws and no longer have a membrane. Its tail is long and ends in a sharp stinger. Unlike the adult dragon, the larva has a pair of black eyes on its off-white facial shield, at the end of its face is a blunt horn with stink lines coming off from it. Its body is very vibrant compared to the adult, being olive green with colorful eyespots. The outer part of the eyespots is yellow, the inner part is red with a black spot in the center. It has three pairs of nubby legs that are held off the ground, and three more pairs on the ground, these walking legs are circled by thick dark claws. The egg is off-white, lumpy, and has stink lines coming off from it. In the upper left corner is a side profile of the dragon's head with its mouth open, in place of a tongue, it has a sac with a nozzle at the tip. To the right of the side profile is a front view of the dragon's head. In the lower right corner is a sketch of the dragon doing its breath attack, spewing a dark green gas from the aformentioned sac in its mouth, it is labeled as 'fetid gas'. On the lower right of the image are two more uncolored sketches, they are of a cartoon hunk of meat and an apple, they are labeled as 'Diet'.

Drawn in 2023

Notes

I got the idea for this dragon from one of the old 2018 dragons I made for this project, that dragon inspired both this one and the Nightlurker. I wanted it to look strange and sickly, hence the color scheme and gaunt body. It didn't take long for me to decide that this dragon has stink breath, something that is surprisingly rare in my monsters. For the larva, I wanted it to look very different from the adult, so I made it more colorful and gave it eyes (eyes are absorbed during pupation), the colors serve as a warning that they are very smelly, and were inspired by some real life caterpillars that use bad smell as a defense. And the egg, I basically wanted it to look (and smell) like it had already died, so nothing preys on it because they think it it's a rotting egg that was abandoned. It took me a while to figure out their name, I knew I wanted it to start with "cave" but only figured it out much later, for a while I had been calling it the "Cavebeast" which didn't feel right for it. I don't think I'd describe these dragons as beasts, but "creep" has a much more fitting sound. I made their wings gigantic claws because I didn't think a primarily cave-dwelling dragon would need them, and I thought they looked cool.