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Description

Banana yellow and roughly six inches in length, the Regal Pipette comes across as a beautiful and seemingly innocuous gem of the remnant pillar forest and scrub bordering the mountains along the northern supercontinent’s southern coastline. While most extant wyrms are somewhat reptilian, the Pipette is especially so, spending much of its time basking on logs and rocks where its iridescent neck scales glisten in the brief sunlight. It is arboreal by nature and can go its whole life without touching the ground, maintaining a territory of a trunk or two and sleeping in a hidden crevice in the spongy “bark”. The Pipette’s long, sturdy head, tapering into a keratinous proboscis sheath, works well in chipping away at the surface of pillar trees to access the fluids and subsurface parasites below. Though conspicuous, the Pipette has few predators. Its rubbery body is littered with small, glasslike scales that, if the wyrm is grabbed or otherwise threatened, easily detach, shatter, and imbed themselves in the skin of attackers, much like the burs of many Earth weeds. Unlike burs, however, this is far from harmless, as glands below the scales had previously loaded them with a lethal toxin that can prove fatal in incredibly small amounts. It is very painful and intentionally so, allowing the Pipette to scamper to safety as the predator thrashes around in pain. Rarely does an attacker make the same mistake twice, allowing the tiny Pipette to forage at ease. The toxin and scales are demanding to produce, however, so the Pipette must feed frequently and requires richer food than most other wyrms. So, while its unique defense allows it to forage in relative safety, it must also forage much more. These kinds of wyrms were more common in the past but are declining with the pillar forests they specialized for.

Description

Banana yellow and roughly six inches in length, the Regal Pipette comes across as a beautiful and seemingly innocuous gem of the remnant pillar forest and scrub bordering the mountains along the northern supercontinent’s southern coastline. While most extant wyrms are somewhat reptilian, the Pipette is especially so, spending much of its time basking on logs and rocks where its iridescent neck scales glisten in the brief sunlight. It is arboreal by nature and can go its whole life without touching the ground, maintaining a territory of a trunk or two and sleeping in a hidden crevice in the spongy “bark”. The Pipette’s long, sturdy head, tapering into a keratinous proboscis sheath, works well in chipping away at the surface of pillar trees to access the fluids and subsurface parasites below. Though conspicuous, the Pipette has few predators. Its rubbery body is littered with small, glasslike scales that, if the wyrm is grabbed or otherwise threatened, easily detach, shatter, and imbed themselves in the skin of attackers, much like the burs of many Earth weeds. Unlike burs, however, this is far from harmless, as glands below the scales had previously loaded them with a lethal toxin that can prove fatal in incredibly small amounts. It is very painful and intentionally so, allowing the Pipette to scamper to safety as the predator thrashes around in pain. Rarely does an attacker make the same mistake twice, allowing the tiny Pipette to forage at ease. The toxin and scales are demanding to produce, however, so the Pipette must feed frequently and requires richer food than most other wyrms. So, while its unique defense allows it to forage in relative safety, it must also forage much more. These kinds of wyrms were more common in the past but are declining with the pillar forests they specialized for.