Club Tailed Turtle
Five tons, fifteen feet long, six feet tall at the back, and named by southerners who have never read a book about reptile classification. The Club Tailed Turtle is not a turtle at all but an enormous mutated lizard with a spiked leathery hide that happens to resemble gator skin stretched over an armored shell. The name stuck because nobody in the Rum Coast corrects scientific errors when the subject of discussion weighs as much as a pre-Fall truck.
The animal is a passive herbivore that wants nothing to do with people. It grazes through the thick jungle-like terrain of the Rum Coast, slow and ponderous, generating ground tremors that announce its presence well before it comes into view. Travelers have learned to use Club Tailed Turtles as mobile cover, walking alongside the creatures for protection as long as they avoid provoking them. The key word is provoke. The tail, a club of hardened bone plates shaped like a sledgehammer, can split a fully grown tree in half with a single swing. Anything that threatens the animal from behind gets introduced to that tail at speed.
When critically wounded, the Club Tailed Turtle retreats into a defensive posture so thoroughly armored that most predators simply give up. Even the thirty-foot Razor Backed Anaconda, one of the few creatures capable of killing an adult specimen, has to work for the meal. The spiked hide deters casual attacks; the bone-plated tail punishes serious ones. The smartest approach, as any swamp traveler will confirm, is to leave the thing alone and walk beside it.
The animal is a passive herbivore that wants nothing to do with people. It grazes through the thick jungle-like terrain of the Rum Coast, slow and ponderous, generating ground tremors that announce its presence well before it comes into view. Travelers have learned to use Club Tailed Turtles as mobile cover, walking alongside the creatures for protection as long as they avoid provoking them. The key word is provoke. The tail, a club of hardened bone plates shaped like a sledgehammer, can split a fully grown tree in half with a single swing. Anything that threatens the animal from behind gets introduced to that tail at speed.
When critically wounded, the Club Tailed Turtle retreats into a defensive posture so thoroughly armored that most predators simply give up. Even the thirty-foot Razor Backed Anaconda, one of the few creatures capable of killing an adult specimen, has to work for the meal. The spiked hide deters casual attacks; the bone-plated tail punishes serious ones. The smartest approach, as any swamp traveler will confirm, is to leave the thing alone and walk beside it.
