Yeah I confused Aqshy with Azyr because the names and concepts are so similar.
We already have pretty good generalists, namely thé sauruses, varanus and axolotl. Imo we don't species which are good at everything, and can have fun inventing new ones. And remember that the canon OO created 6 species without counting the Lizardmen. The firstborn are the butterflies and not the elves, but we can still create them, dwarves, humans and 2 others. The golden trio is made of very good generalists who are all hominids, it would be more interesting for the last 2 species to be different than the canon ones.
we don't have Kroxigors but should make them, but the issue is what to do with the Varanus. they have natural witch sight and magic resistance, with a body that's large and fast, do we make them our anti-magic specialists that can rush down mages?
Right, I confused them with the sauruses. That's a good idea, squad of heavily armored varanuses hunting mages, or acting in concert to take down big monsters and countering enemy heavy cavalry.
Varanus' have the dexterous trait that makes them fast, not strong so heavy armor would hinder their speed due to not being muscular, they would be better acting as skirmishers that can kite large targets yeeting javelins the size of spears and running down small targets.
we aren't changing any traits, just reprogramming the behavior of new spawning's. it might take only half a turn of making a new species, we might be able to add a sixth trait to the saurus for the other half.
Kroxigors were also build to be laborers, but it didn't stop the canon lizardmen from using them in battle. There's no reason that we can't do the same with varanuses.
That plan has 6 traits, therefore making that species unstable.
That sounds overspecialized for huge immortal centaur-guys. Like, don't just think about what they're doing during a battle. Think about what they're doing all the time. They need to play a role in broader society and in peacetime, not just sit around for ??? years at a time waiting for us to fight a battle where this one squad of them "rushes down a mage."
not saying they should be anti-magic hunters, just that's a viable option if we make Kroxigors. how many "Patch Notes" can the old ones do a turn, if its more than one we can also patch the turtles. also changing more than 1 trait might count as making a new species and the Witch sight doesn't help with heavy lifting, maybe they can act as overseers to prevent magical mishaps when a slann isn't around to help, likely due to meditating or something.
The problem is that "anti-mage rushers" is too specialized a niche to support literally a whole-ass species, so it's not really a "viable option" in and of itself if we're handing over the varanus' peacetime role to the kroxigor.
Think about what "patching" actually means in practice. How do you change a species? With the servitor species it's easy enough. We recalibrate the spawning pools to create the new type of varanus, impose a bit of a selective breeding program, let the older pre-change varanus gravitate towards tasks where their lack of brute super-strength just doesn't matter as much, and let the new post-change varanus (and hybrids) handle the stuff where it does.
The obvious trait to swap out for the varanus is, in my opinion, the agility trait. That never made a lot of sense for a heavy laborer anyway. They were always supposed to be engaged with magic in a specific way, and there's no reason not to keep them that way, they just need to be more swole to do their jobs.
they had a unique interaction with the geomantic web, can we have them watch over it and try to improve it, acting as researchers or something? also the old Dragon ogres were shown to be shepherding Mammoths and Wooly Rhinos so they might have a job adding the axolotls in maintaining the animals.
so fixing the turtles that's too much effort but we can fix the Varanus', do you think we can improve the saurus, I know we gave them Keen Senses, but what does that improve again? I'm pretty sure it improved how their brains processed info to not overwhelm them but what else?
A bit more promising, but I'm just... not understanding this line of thinking. I feel like you want to create an entire new species to do what the varanus are already supposed to be doing, then relegate them to just sort of standing around doing a few weird niche jobs at the fringes of our social system because they've been superseded.
I'm not sure we need to swap anything out or change our tradeoffs for the saurus. They're warriors and guardians, so having them have keen senses is valuable in and of itself.
now that I'm thinking about it, we don't have an Engineer caste, the closest we have are Slann and axolotls, but the former were the servants that focused on magic while the latter are our clerk-caste, doing mundane jobs. in the OTL the lizardmen didn't really rebuilt what was lost, just maintaining what they had, and I'm pretty sure it was a big deal when a city was refounded. if we make the Varanus' an engineer caste that can manage/rebuild the geomantic web, ley-lines, Waystones and cities that fall during the Great catastrophe, then we can make a better worker-caste.
