Legar

Legar by Naelín

The riversides of the archipelago owe a lot of their fame and personality to the legar, a massive creature that can be found across the islands hunting in the muddy shores of deltas and smaller water courses.

Anatomy

Legars are quadruped scaly creatures with thick and powerful tails that they drag when on land and use for diving and jumping out of the water to surprise their prey.
Their head has a relatively short jaw with incredible force, and dark teeth that protrude outwards from the mouth with a coating of the same colour as their scales. At the top of the skull on each side, they have dark-coloured segmented horns. The base of the horns and the back of their cheeks are adorned with pointy scutes, which are also found on rows of decreasing size on the back.
Their body is covered in lustrous, shiny scales that can range across individuals between maroon, dark red or magenta throughout the body except on the belly and base of the tail, where they are yellow or cream.
Each of their shoulders is adorned with five very big scutes in a concave drop shape, which may be used for defence in fights.

Behaviour

Legars are smart, pactual creatures that live alone or in small groups, though even lone individuals might socialize with other legars on their area occasionally.
They hunt and live most of their life in freshwater, though they can only breathe air.

Diet

Legars eat primarily meat from terrestrial creatures. They spend most time almost completely submerged next to the shoreline and hunt by stalking creatures that go for a drink in the river and jumping at them from below. They use the muddy water as camouflage and have a bite strong enough to pull creatures the size of an alzufhar into the water with little effort.
Common prey include all sorts of gnaw and mirkelin, licerns, lyraiks and alzufhars, and big shorebirds like the Sidrar's wader.
Occasionally, they will also hunt aquatic creatures.

Reproduction

Female legars go into estrus irregularly and several times a year, and might stay in this state for several weeks. During this period the female will navigate the rivers and meet one or more males, whom she might "date" for a short time of a day to about a week or stay with and form a longer-term relationship. They seem to prefer males with shinier scales, which can indicate a healthier individual.
The legars will mate several times and the males will need to wait for the female's advances, as they possess a set of scutes on top of their cloaca that they can shut close if uninterested.
After some weeks of mating, the female will dig a hole and lay between 7 and 30 eggs. The burrow will be covered and she will protect the nest until hatching time around two months later. The mother, and often also the father, will raise the hatchlings for about three to five years.
It is common for mated pairs of legars to bond for a long time and share territory and parenting for several years or even their lifetime, but sometimes these couples will split and the female will search for new mates.

Geographic Distribution

Legars can be found across the Haan Archipelago, save for the Red Crest Islands. They prefer deltas and small courses of water over open rivers, as they like to stay around muddy shores.
They are especially prevalent in the Delta of Many Birds, where they can be found in vast numbers.

Relationship With The Societarians

With their size and habits, legars can be a great potential danger to societarians living near rivers. Since these creatures are pactual, many societarian settlements resorted to making peacekeeping agreements with the legars, generally through mutual pacts of no aggression in more developed settlements or by some more elaborate treaties such as feeding the legars the livestock or creatures they would not eat themselves.
In some areas however, especially in south Karte, no pacts were attempted or achieved and the legar remains a significant threat for the people that approach the riversides.

Diving Saltiel by Naelin

Distribution of Legar in the Haan Archipelago

Classification

Pactual Creature

Lifespan

50~75 years

Average Height

1.20~1.70m to the shoulder

Average Length

2~3m (1~1.50m without the tail)

Geographic Distribution

Don't go by the river if you love your wife
'Cause you'll make that girl a widow
And you'll cause her pain and strife
Hell, if you go by the riverside
You'll lose your l-l-l-l-life!
People by the river
They know who's the boss
They'll get at fancy city folks
No matter what the cost
And if you go by the riverside
You'll end up l-l-l-l-lost!
— "Don't go by the river", by Voltaire