Rock Drake

Standing slightly greater than an ox, they are burly and strong creatures, but not completely the largest in the draconian or even drake family. They have large frills that help vent blood vessels, and work to also lift their hearing. Their snouts are a bit short, but ordained with a central horn that grows bigger on males. While they may be found crawling on all fours, they can easily posture and hold themselves on their legs, and actually have slightly shorter arms to begin with. Their arms are more adapted to digging with dexterous burrowing claws. Their mid-length tail is more of a stiff but firm muscle sometimes used as a cudgel against strong beast near their own measure. Males tend to be a little larger, with more color in their scales and frills, and the aforementioned larger horn. Female colors are more dull, with a horn no larger than one finger's length.

They tend to breed more seasonally in the autumn times, or early-mid Dreaming Month in Imperial calendars. Males spar for claim to a female, and one lays between 3-6 eggs from a single clutch. The eggs tend to hatch late winter or early spring. Females tend to claim the burrow for their young, and will sometimes even run their mates off once the young is hatched, and will become receptive to a new or returning male in three or four years time when the young have left the burrow.    In the domestic captivity, breeding is often stopped by surgical measures, but some wealthier ranchers have formed more docile routines of pairing one lone pair, and giving them a carefully contained field to nest in. The eggs are carefully taken to be raised away from the mother, and she'll actually become receptive to another clutch sooner, making it easier to mark one female as a breeder. However the young have to be raised away from mature males, and males on the whole are less often kept around in domestication for their difficulties.

They are primarily carnivores, but also use their horn to break open plants like cacti for water and nectar. They tend to prey on jackals, antelope, sand wyrms, and will sometimes even kill larger black wyrms. They will also eat carrion, sometimes chasing off vultures. Sentient life is not off the menu, and they've been known to kill and eat reketta, taur, sfixian, and human. They're noted as one of the common wild dangers to reketta. In captivity, they're given smaller prey in larger quantities like chicken, and mice, but in the wild they wouldn't bother the energy over smaller meats. If kept closer to the east, they are tricked to eat bone-meal powdered grains to try and put weight on them for the colder periods.

Held most frequently by reketta. Older desert tribes and kingdoms once held a few, and the process and teachings were made more known and used in the imperial period. Ranchers for rock drakes, or sometimes simplified to war drakes, was an expensive or dangerous practice. The common tradition of old was to simply dare to intrude and steal eggs from a burrow during their sleep. Then the eggs were raised with training and discipline, sometimes with males cast back completely into the wild for their temper. During imperial trial and error, there came a stronger practice of keeping special walled-off fields designated for a mating pair to breed and burrow, and the eggs would be separated to become raised like those plucked from the wild. House of Blade especially worked and cultivated the practice with a designated role of Beastmasters educated in domestication and improving war mounts. Males were still rarely used, and even dangerous to have around newborn, but a few seldom riders such as Blade Captain Senabri have been noted of using a tamed male in some circumstances. Often the ideal behind using one, would be more as a parade mount for its colors and stature, as to trust one in a battlefield would be more of a crazed experiment only a few have tried, and fewer succeed.

Their hearing and smell are their best senses. They have okay vision, but older ones may be closer to blind. In burrows they more naturally depend on scent and hearing, leading to a method where hunters may try to 'blind' them by using burning herbs to smoke up the burrow in a late and dark hour. However a young one will still see well in the dark, and sometimes there's even shafts of light created in a burrow for the more cunning ones.