Overview
Skchyapeers - or better known to humans as skyapyres - are fire-elemental creatures living deep underground, usually near lava lakes and rivers or magma basins. They are intelligent, gentle and shy creatures, very friendly in nature. They form life-long couples and together raise offspring. They are nomadic omnivores and migrate in search of food.
The skchyapeers easily trust the dwarves and become their companions. They quickly learn to follow orders and are likely to obey the commands of their master. Usually, a tamed skchyapeer forms a life-long one-to-one bond with a single
Dwarf.
2. Appearance
Imagine a heraldic lion from a heraldic shield. Lion Rampant, they call it. Now set it on fire. Devilish hellfire all over the body. Now you have some idea what this monster is.
The skchyapeers are bipedal semi-elemental creatures similar to the heraldic image of the Lion Rampant. Skchyapeers are about one metre in height in both sexes. There is sexual dimorphism as females are bulkier with heavier hind legs and larger waists and hips. Males have better-developed upper torsos with longer and larger front paws. Also, males tend to keep their body flames hotter by a degree or two than females.
The bodies of skchyapeers are always on fire and burn with warm cold flames. They only extinguish after the animal is dead. The animal can willingly adjust the flames' temperature, intensity, colour and size. The skchyapeer uses them as a source of light and warmth.
The flames usually burn at about 45-55 degrees Celsius, but the skchyapeer heats them to 800-900 degrees or, for brief moments, even overburn up to approximately 2000 degrees. Overburning is the creature's last resort and can cause severe injuries and may lead to death. Prolonged hot fires will damage the skin, destroying its outer fireproof layer and scorching softer inner layers. Skchyapeers will regrow small to intermediate burned sections, but vast burnt areas will cause severe pain and ultimately kill them.
<Flames>
Most skchyapeers are always burning fully or at least partially. If they feel endangered, they burst into hotter fire and try to scorch the threat. When they go hunting, they almost fully extinguish all their flames beside the claws.
The body fires burn the mostly isopropanol-water mixture, which doesn't ignite the creamy coating of their bodies, and are almost cold. Their colour is usually yellowish-red.
Separate "reservoirs", usually filled with acetylene gas, fuel the claws. They burn much hotter and bright, usually in blue. Skchyapeers often hold them un-ignited
3. Diet
The skchyapeers are omnivore specie that has complex diet. They need organic matter to upbuilt their internal organs and synthesis of fuel. They also feed on different minerals, which provide them with body-construction elements. For the organic part, they usually hunt smaller animals such as amphibians (toads, frogs and small salamanders), reptiles (snakes and lizards), and elemental creatures. The lava spills and overflows of magma rivers, the so-called mineral pastures, are their preferred source of inorganic substances. However, they will feed on any native deposit, mineral formation or corpse of a mineral creature they have access. The skchyapeers split the looking for food when they are in a couple, as usually the male hunts, and the female searches for an inorganic food supply. They obtain the moisture their bodies need from their prey or fungi. In cases of extreme dehydration, they can drink (hot) water from regular rivers or springs. However, this behaviour is observed only in captivity, with no eyewitnesses confirming it in the wildness.
The skchyapeers can survive long on only one kind of food, but they need both to grow and when mating and procreating. Infants and children need mainly organic food.
4. Mating and procreation
During mating rituals, the males fight with warm but not hot claws for the female. Such duels very rarely end with severe injuries or death. Any female will reject a fratricidal male. Once a male and female form a couple, it usually lasts for life. However, if the male dies, the female mourn for a time, then may find a new partner and settle as a new couple. The male mourns lifelong and tends to become depressed. They never look for other females and never form new couples. A widowed male often loses his will to live and dies in loneliness. Dwarves call such skchyapeers "broken ones" and prefer to tame one of them when searching for a companion.
The pregnancy is two-staged: in-body incubation and egg-hatching. Shortly after impregnation, the female begins gaining weight. As the pregnancy develops, she loses more and more of her mobility until she becomes completely still and lays eggs. At about the 53rd week of the impregnation, she lays between 7 and 13 eggs with hard stone-like shells. Then she keeps them warm with her body heat for about 47 weeks until the babies hatch. During this time, the male provides all the food and protection the family needs. The skchyapeers mostly are solitary or couple-solitary animals. However, they do form small alloparental groups during pregnancy and the following babysitting. Younger males hunt and gather food, while older ones take care of defence and are ready to repel any threat against the females. Such groups contain between five and ten couples.
When the babies hatch, the mother nurses them. The female "lactates" from glands in her mouth and feeds the infants directly in their beaks for the first three to five months. Then their beaks start to harden, and the parents introduce ordinary food. The mother chews it, mixes it with her "milk", and then "vomits" in their beaks.
When the toddlers reach about four years, the parenting groups usually disband, and each family depart. The father is still the primary hunter in the family, but he also stays with the toddlers and lets the mother go hunting. When youngsters reach the age of seven years, the parents start teaching them how to hunt and search for edible fungi and minerals by themselves. At the age of ten years, they are allowed to hunt by themselves alone. Young skchyapeers grow their first teeth about their sixth year and usually have the complete set when they reach their tenth.
They are ready to depart from their parents between the twelfth and fifteenth years.
Some two or more families continue to share the care of their offspring even after infanthood. In such multi-family groups are observed bonds between the pair or pairs of babies that usually grow into a relationship at a later age. The researchers disagree if the "friendship" of families creates such bonds or if the bonds invoke closer interactions between families.
Females are ready for a new pregnancy not before 17 years of the last egg-laying.
5. Taming
The partnership between skchyapeers and dwarves dates before the dwarven written history starts. It is unclear if a
Dwarf tames a skchyapeer or if they only collaborate in the name of shared interests. In any case, both species began working together from then now. The dwarves usually tame so-called "broken skchyapeers". The ordinary profile of a tameable skchyapeer is male, reached sexual maturity, raised offspring and lost his female. Usually, such animals are about 200-400 years old.
A tamed skchyapeer served his
Dwarf lifelong. The bonds between them are more like friends and partners than the master and the servant. When the master dies, the animal returns to the wildness and mourns until its demise. However, sometimes the bonds are passed from the deceased one to the closest blood descendant - a son or a daughter. The skchyapeer continued serving its new master for a certain period. Such inherence happens only with infant children until they grow into teenagers. The skchyapeer acts more like a custodian than a pet.
However, they never have been domesticated due to their nomadic and solitary nature.
Usually, a single
Dwarf tames and earns the trust of a single skchyapeer.
However, in rare cases, a dwarven couple or twins can tame a skchyapeer couple. It happens extremely rarely and is more of an exception than a rule. Such tamed couples rarely procreate in this semi-captivity. Their obedience and day-to-day routine often suppress their mating and parenting instincts. However, if a female
Dwarf gets pregnant, and its skchyapeer is female, these e instincts kick in. She then forces her mate to copulate until she gets pregnant, too.
Giving birth and raising offspring of tamed skchyapeers is difficult and troublesome for animals and dwarves. The dwarven society takes care of the mother and infants until its time for "hunting and survival lessons". Then the entire family skchyapeers return to the wild, where children get their tuition. When the young adults left the family, tamed parents returned to their dwarves and continued their partnership.
Natural Enemies
Chaerroupheers consider the skchyapeers' eggs and infants as a fine delicacy and often attack parenting groups.
Salamanders - the fire lizards don't fear their flames and sometime salamander groups attack from siege young skchyapeer.
Snakes - some of the longest venomous snakes use skchyapeers' body heat to incubate their eggs.
