Ourea Basilisk

This is Twisted Mythology

What Is An Ourea Basilisk?

Once upon a time, there was a young gardener. Everyday, she watered the flowers. Seeing the beauty and smelling the grandeur of the garden felt more privilege than work.
One day, she came to water special roses that only wanted water once a week. A foul odor assaulted her when she stepped through the trellis. To her horror, the back half of the rose garden lay wilted. She hurried to give them water. As she worked farther back in the garden, the rose bushes grew more shriveled until they reached a large hole in the ground.
All around this hole the rose bushes lay dead and the stench burned her eyes. Wiping away the tears, she peered into the hole. Two somethings glowed amber. Suddenly, they brightened and began to rise out towards her. They were eyes!
With a scream, she dropped her water bucket and turned to run. Something snapped behind her, catching the skirt of her dress. A mighty tug felled her to the ground where she turned to see what had grabbed her.
She screamed one last time as the blue snake that was no snake glared at her with shining eyes that turned her to stone.

The Ourea Basilisk is a very long eight-legged reptilian creature with a mid-length neck and a long tail. On its head a crest with a rounded peak. Along its back is a finned frill that can be folded down flat. The basilisk is covered in scales ranging from light to dark blue with the underside scales so pale they are almost white.
Being able to fold its legs close to its body, the basilisk can undulate along in a strange paw-assisted slither. This movement is why most misktake it for a snake. The Ourea is neither lizard nor snake, but one of the various draconic species of the drake, or beastial, type.
Starting life as a tiny thing one foot when it hatches, it will eventually reach thirty feet when about three hundred years old. Every twenty years, a basilisk will lay a clutch of thirteen eggs within a nest made of a hollow, eaten-out limestone boulder. After hatching, the little ones will eat their way out of their nest, ready to terrify the world.

History

No one, not even the gods, know which of them created the basilisk. It is presumed that one of the despicable Titans are to blame but none dare to enter Tartarus to ask. Further complicating things, the rise of Jehovah, Allah, and their ilk dawned a time when the basilisks were hunted down and killed or banished to Olympus.
With the old gods weakened by the loss of the faithful who had now turned to these newer gods, they could not rid themselves of the basilisks. Instead, they moved the basilisks to the foothills of Mount Olympus, the Ourea. Only after all this were they called Ourea Basilisks.
Living in the Ourea has been tougher for the younger basilisks as the creatures here are all fantastical at least in some small way, making them harder prey to turn into stone. The Ourea are small mountains crafted from magic. They are mostly stone veined with limestone and covered with lush plantlife upon which many creature thrive.
Young basilisks have taken to eating the Ourea limestone to build lairs to hide from things that will eat them. Once it reaches twenty feet in length, though, the desire to hunt and kill drives them to hunt by turning their prey into limestone they then eat. Being able to kill young basilisks has proven a very effective way of controlling the basilisk population so they do not overrun Ourea and return to Mount Olympus.

by Pixel-mixer

A basilisk can kill by using its deadly glare to turn living creatures to stone. Its horrible breath is toxic to plants and their lairs are easily found by the dead and dying plants around it. The larger the basilisk, the faster its gaze will kill, a fact that gives others a chance to kill them before they get big.
But killing a basilisk has its own dangers. Anyone delivering a mortal blow to a basilisk will find the basilisk blood running up the weapon to poison the killer. More than one mounted warrior has killed a basilisk with a spear only to drop dead along with their mount when the blood rushed up the spear to them.
The only exception is the weasel, whose effluvium is deadly to a basilisk. However, the bigger the basilisk, the more weasels required to kill it.

by FotoEmotions