So stop me if I’ve mentioned this before, but I like to try to keep what I’ve done when it comes to designs. I don’t usually like to re-write them too much, unless I completely realize that I’ve done something clearly wrong.
So with that in mind, these were the things that I wanted to try to keep from the Blacktooth Wyrm:
- I had recently decided that it should be subterranean, and wanted to change the foreclaws to reflect this a bit more, making them broader anda more suited for digging like a mole’s paws.
- However, I think that the long neck is important to its silhouette, even though a tunneling creature or one that lives primarily underground probably wouldn’t have or need that.
- I had already gone out of my way to give it opposable non-webbed fingers in that “overwhelming” sketch, but you could make the argument that that doesn’t really count (though it did to me).
So I kind of compromised, though I’m not sure if it’s there yet. I also didn’t want it to just be this crawling thing, the uprightness of the neck and head imply that it fights at least a little with its face, and it can’t really do that if it’s hauling itself around by its forelimbs only, so it couldn’t have stumpy hind legs. Could be that it loses the hindlegs entirely and instead takes on a lindwurm-style silhouette, but I’m not sure yet. Right now, the hind legs are small, and realistically, I don’t think that they’d support enough of its weight to be relevant… this bears some thinking.
The body is thick (or it appears so– it may be pliable?). For this, you want to consider the thickest point of the body, right? The skull should be narrow, & the rest of the body should be able to be squeezed through anything the head can be.
Though…is that like, a beaver-tail?
All good points that I hadn’t considered. Thanks. The body is thick, though perhaps it could be thinner…
And I guess the tail is beaver-ish, but it’s like a wider, thicker version of the flattish tail that the D&D 3.5 blue dragon has (though that wasn’t completely intentional).