Azagog

An azagog (pronounced /ˈæzəgɒg/) is a giant flying fire-breathing radiodont found in the veigur of Ufmarkt. One of the top predators of their world, azagogs are widely feared even by the veigur's undead inhabitants, though they are seldom hostile to human undead unless somehow provoked.

Description

An azagog has a long, flattened body, tapering from front to back. Its bottom bears a dozen segmented legs, each ending in a tripartite claw. Narrow plates of chitinous armor cover it, each plate spanning its back or belly from side to side but being only a fraction of a meter wide from front to back. Each segment is flanked by mobile oval "wings" that serve no mechanical purpose in keeping the beast aloft (their flight appears to be purely magical in nature), though they may aid in maneuvering. At the front the body broadens into a roughly ellipsoidal head. At the top of the head are five eyes, set on flexible eyestalks long enough for the azagog to curl one or more beneath its body and see below itself. On the bottom of the head is a mouth, rendered almost invisible when not in use by its backward-pointing direction and its anterior position. At the front of the head is the azagog's most notorious feature, a long proboscis ending in what appears to be a second mouth, complete with teeth. (Indeed, some laymen unfamiliar with the details of the thing's physiognomy assume this is the azagog's mouth, ignorant of the half-hidden orifice at the base of the head.) This proboscis is sufficiently flexible to be directed at any angle the azagog desires, a useful feature since it is from this proboscis that the thing can emit flame.

A full-grown azagog can reach lengths of up to nine meters, not counting the proboscis, which alone can measure almost three meters long. An azagog's mass can exceed ten metric tons. They are typically dark grey in color, lightly tinged with red, although a few anomalous specimens are instead a bright hot pink. (This strange color variation seems to convey to the affected individual no particular advantage or disadvantage.)

Diet and behavior

Azagogs are strict carnivores, dining on the flesh (or analogous substances) of the other thermophilic fauna that roam Ufmarkt. With their keen eyesight, they can spot prey from great distances, allowing them to hunt from high in the sky, swooping down to strike only when they've located their quarry. Further aiding their hunt is the fact that two of their eyes (those that are neither in the center nor nearest the sides of its head) are capable of penetrating vision, allowing the predator to see through the steam and smoke that often obscures Ufmarkt's vistas. The azagog's senses of smell and hearing, on the other hand, are very poor, though not entirely nonexistent; these senses are less useful for the azagog's means of living.

While the azagog can seize prey with its claws, its best known weapon is its efflammation—its "fiery breath". The azagog can expel great gouts of flame from its proboscis, capable of hitting targets up to twenty meters away. The flame of the azagog's "breath" is hot even compared to typical Ufmarkt temperatures, though still not hot enough to kill life forms native to Ufmarkt. Rather, the main purpose of its flame is to stun its prey with the concussion wave it causes. Of course, the fire can be much more dangerous to organisms not from Ufmarkt and not accustomed to such heat.

Azagogs sleep for a few scattered hours at a time throughout the day, but have no need to make landfall to do so. They are capable of flying in their sleep, and so usually sleep high in the atmosphere. A sleeping azagog can usually be recognized by its flight pattern; most azagogs while asleep turn tight circles (usually clockwise, though a few turn counterclockwise; the direction is generally consistent for a particular individual). The azagog's sense of touch is highly augmented while they sleep, however, and they will wake instantly and spring forward if they feel any disturbance in the air nearby.

The azagog molts its shell as it grows, but not all at once. Different plates of its shell come off at different, seemingly random, times. While the new shell underneath is slightly softer, it's still hard enough to leave the animal without a significant vulnerability—and in any case, little more than a slight difference in color visually marks the molted portion anyway.

Reproduction

Azagogs are duosexual, with both sexes possessing a single gonad. They generally mate for life, with each azagog on reaching maturity seeking out a member of the opposite gender to cleave to. (Their monogamy is not absolute, however, and dalliances do occur.) The azagog pair will choose a particular location, usually one high above the ground, to act as a "lair" of sorts—the azagogs don't actually spend much time there, but will meet there to mate and sometimes to share food.

Despite their bond, a mated pair of azagogs will only actually procreate about once every two years. This, like most other parts of the azagog's life cycle, takes place high in the air, the azagogs writhing around each other. The female azagog expels unfertilized eggs, which the male fertilizes as they exit her cloaca. Durable enough to withstand the pressure of the mating azagogs as they twist in each other's clutch, the eggs tend to end up scattered about the anterior ventral regions of both parents, held in place by a sticky glue they emerge coated in. After the mating is complete, the male and female each use their claws to collect the eggs stuck to them into a single clump near their genital opening; there they will carry them for the next few months until they hatch (the azagog will not molt while carrying eggs). When the eggs are near hatching, the azagog will fly over an expanse of lava, either one of the molten seas or a smaller body. On hatching, the larval azagog will then fall from the parent into the lava below.

Like the adults, azagog larvae, or nymphs, are carnivorous, preying on the other lavic life forms dwelling in the molten areas of Ufmarkt. Azagog larvae have wormlike bodies with great, lacy, winglike fins. They lack the proboscis of the adult form, but make up for it with an expandable mouth and throat lined with vicious mandibles set in an intricate structure that can grab, impale, and slice prey. After roaming the magmatic seas for years, the larva eventually climbs out of the lava and molts into an adult. (The azagog is hemimetabolous and has no pupal stage.)

Outside Ufmarkt

Though native to Ufmarkt, azagogs are now often found in other vegari as well, imported by lords and mages who capture them—or, more likely, hire adventurers to capture them—and bring them back to their own worlds. On rare occasions, they have even been brought to other planes and cosmoi entirely. Like other life that thrives in the furnace of Ufmarkt, the azagog is highly resistant to heat, comfortable in the intense temperatures of that veigur, but they are also tolerant of lower temperatures, and can survive perfectly well in more terrestrial worlds. Persuading the azagog to stay in place and to do what its new master wants it to is a difficult prospect, however, achieved either through thelxis or through an arduous training process fraught with peril.

Once an azagog is somehow turned to the purpose, it makes a formidable guardian, strong enough to deter all but the most puissant invaders. A castle or tower protected by an azagog is rendered, if not altogether impregnable, at least much harder to breach. Clever intruders will realize that it is likely to be much easier to sneak past the azagog than to confront it, but even so the possible consequences of their stealth failing and a confrontation being forced may still make them hesitate. And while the azagog does need to sleep, providing a time when it may be particularly simple to bypass it, the fact that it flies during its sleep is likely to lead those unfamiliar with the beast to assume it's still awake. (Besides, there are ways for an azagog's master to get around the sleeping issue anyway.)

The azagog's life cycle makes it very difficult to breed outside Ufmarkt—not just the fact that its larval stage lives in molten rock, but the fact that it sustains itself by feeding on other beings that also live in such a hostile environment. Thus azagogs outside Ufmarkt have almost always been captured in Ufmarkt and brought to their new locations. A small handful of entrepreneurs, however, have managed to establish small breeding populations of azagogs in large controlled areas in other vegari, most of them feeding them on artificial food rather than stocking their lava pools with whole ecosystems of lavic life. The most successful of these breeders is Ai Yenori of the veigur of Zyl, who has a mipped area of hundreds of square kilometers dedicated to raising azagogs, which he then sells (through intermediaries) to powerful buyers in other worlds.