Tyranus.
- Location
- Tampa, FL.
Tyranus.
[Sketches depict a large theropod with various subspecies, featuring a variety of traits based on subspecies. The common Tyranus Packjaw is covered head to toe tail in an array of feathers, while the Carnidont is covered in rough scales and dermal armor, with the Sword Tail being the most armored and featuring a sharp, blade like tip to the end of its long tail that extends for two meters. The sketches show them hunting various prey items, including wild Oliphants or sauropod like Skynecks.]
Scientific Name Translation: Deposed Tyrant King.
[A note is attached. It reads 'Man, imagine having 'deposed' in your scientific name. Brutal.]
Average Size: Varies on Subspecies, Average Range of 20-24.61 Feet/6.096-7.5 Meters.
Average Weight: Varies on Subspecies, Average Range of 10-15 tons.
Notable Sexual Dimorphism: Females are slightly larger than the males with males having brighter colorations.
Habitat Range: Found in all biomes in Central and Western Arisa, from the Land of Giants westward. Swordtails also found in the Great Banded Desert hunting Hammertails.
Summary:
[Sketches depict a large theropod with various subspecies, featuring a variety of traits based on subspecies. The common Tyranus Packjaw is covered head to toe tail in an array of feathers, while the Carnidont is covered in rough scales and dermal armor, with the Sword Tail being the most armored and featuring a sharp, blade like tip to the end of its long tail that extends for two meters. The sketches show them hunting various prey items, including wild Oliphants or sauropod like Skynecks.]
Scientific Name Translation: Deposed Tyrant King.
[A note is attached. It reads 'Man, imagine having 'deposed' in your scientific name. Brutal.]
Average Size: Varies on Subspecies, Average Range of 20-24.61 Feet/6.096-7.5 Meters.
Average Weight: Varies on Subspecies, Average Range of 10-15 tons.
Notable Sexual Dimorphism: Females are slightly larger than the males with males having brighter colorations.
Habitat Range: Found in all biomes in Central and Western Arisa, from the Land of Giants westward. Swordtails also found in the Great Banded Desert hunting Hammertails.
Summary:
In our world's evolutionary history, there was a time period where the Saurian creatures dominated the lands of our world. This time period came to an abrupt end some 77 million years ago, when the Mesozoic era ended with the Thaumaturgical Awakening Mass Extinction occurred. The dominant eusocial insect life at the time, a native analog to the Spider-Ants that would replace them eons later, rapidly mutated to massive sizes following the mass activation of the then dormant leylines of Null's magic, the newly mutated creatures rapidly expanding outwards from their original homes to consume all biological life beyond a certain size in the super-continent of the time, Domina Secunda. However, those life forms small enough to evade the now oversized predators managed to survive, and among them were the ancestors of all modern day land life, including the Saurians and Synapisdae that continue to exist into the modern era. [A note is attached. It depicts a cartoon mini-Tyranus hiding in a hole alongside a small cat-rat mammal and a proto-bird as a massive insect prowls outside. Words follow, reading 'man, sure sucks to be outside right now.']
The Tyranus is the sole surviving descendant of the theropod family line that dominated the end of the Mesozoic period, hailing from a diminutive pygmy variant that coexisted alongside their full sized cousins of the time period. As millions of years passed and life recovered from the Mass Extinction as the Butcher Bugs starved into their own extinction, the Tyranus family line would survive and regrow over time to their current state of being, though never again would they experience the same unchallenged dominion over the land as other creatures evolved to fill in niches left behind by their larger counterparts same as themselves.
Split into several subspecies, the Tyranus is believed to have evolved in Eastern Arisa, only to be pushed back and driven out over the eons as other, deadlier predators made their homes in the recovering environments. With the exception of the heavily armed and armored Swordtail subspecies that continues to prowl and hunt its prey in the Great Banded Desert, the Tyranus is almost exclusively found to the West, from the Land of Giants onwards. The three most common subspecies are the feathered, pack hunting Packjaws, the armored, semi-aquatic jungle and swamp dwelling Carnidonts, and the previously mentioned arid dwelling Swordtails. Regardless of subspecies or life-style, the Tyranus remains an extremely efficient predator, making use of either ambush tactics when solitary or advanced pack hunting skills when together to acquire prey. [A note is attached. It reads 'The Swordtail's namesake is one of the deadliest hunting tools I've seen. They just roll lone Hammertails over and just slide that thing between the ribs into their hearts, it's brutally efficient.']
Standing at a minimum of 6 or so meters tall, the Tyranus are popular symbols of power in the societies of the West onward, with the civilizations starting with the Ogra commonly having them as heraldry for the military or old family lines. Intelligent creatures in their own right, the Tyranus of all species can be tamed by those with strong will and skill to undertake the process of earning their trust enough to become their partners in combat or as their riders, with their arsenal of strong, tooth filled maws, powerful arms and legs tipped with a trio of deadly claws, and muscular tails capable of delivering metal crushing strikes making them potent and extremely respected war steeds in pre-vehicle eras. [A note is attached. It depicts a traffic jam, with an Ogra riding a Tyranus boredly waiting in it.]
Their intelligence also sees the Tyranus develop complex 'language' of primordial growls, hisses, subsonic chimes and bellows that allow them to remain in contact with others of their kind across large distances. Each species has their own distinct 'language', which is further subdivided by various different sub-dialects that varies from region to region of different packs or communities of the creatures. Those of different species or packs have difficulty communicating with one another, which is often the lead in to combat between them over territory disputes, but it has been known on rare occasions that in locations with abundance of prey or competing predators of non-Tyranus descent that different Tyranus species or packs will actively seek to learn the other's distinct language in order to communicate with one another and coordinate extensively to avoid conflict or to form primitive defense-pacts with one another.
Though evolved to survive in the modern day alongside the bounty of other dangerous animal life, with the notable exception of the Swordtail that remained in parts of the East of Arisa, most Tyranus species are lacking in terms of lethal arsenal at their disposal. Indeed, with the exception of the typical plasma coating for claw strikes and the Swordtail 'keeping up', most Tyranus have to use their raw bulk and coordinated pack tactics to beat back other predators that can compete with them. However, in recent centuries, there has been sightings of Tyranus Packjaws developing an almost dragon like ability to spit out flame, or of the Carnidont beginning to spit out caustic, toxic bile, though whether these will become widespread or are isolated instances of mutation have yet to be confirmed.
To compensate for the higher difficulty in survival compared to their ancient precursors, the Tyranus lack a mating season and produce young all year long. Each pack is comprised of a mated male and female and their children, who are connected to other packs of blood-relatives on both sides of the family line in 'clans' across large territories, which in turn form 'alliances' with unrelated but linguistically connected clans to prevent in-breeding. The dominant female of the pack, the largest by far in a given Tyranus family, produces large number of young each 2 month gestation cycle, many of which will not survive to adulthood due to predation but of those who do are quick to become hunters and guards in their family territory, trained and taught to hunt by their father. Each litter ranges from 10 to 20, and it is expected only 2 or 3 will survive into adulthood to reproduce. [A note is attached, reading 'Man, and I thought we had it bad with our 2/5 fatality rate pre-GWC's.']
When a Tyranus reaches around 30 years old, they break off to go to an unrelated clan to integrate into it and earn the right to be paired off with a mate of their own, starting their own pack if accepted in the territory. While life expectancy is grim for these primordial giants, there is enough success in this system that the Tyranus population is always slowly, but steadily, growing rather than fatally diminishing. While never enough to out compete the other predators in the region, they are unlikely to go extinct any time soon either barring a concentrated and deliberate effort to exterminate them, an unlikely prospect as the only beings with the resources and ability to this, the various Civilized Races of their lands, view the Tyranus as creatures to be respected.
Despite the loss of their rule over the land, the capacity for adaption and their cultural impact on those civilizations living alongside them, the Tyranus is something of an unofficial mascot among the scientific community for those species that survive the destruction of the rest of their kind, managing to find a niche for themselves in the increasingly dangerous world their evolution prepared them for. While not as perfected for their new environment, the Tyranus remains a symbol of surviving against the odds. [A note is attached. It reads 'I'm rooting for these guys, they're too cool to let die.
']