Gojara

Gojara are a dragon species native to Anbri. They are an incredibly large species of dragon and are known to be the longest species of dragon. They are characterized by their centipede-like appearance and extreme length. They lack body segments or scales and have very soft, purplish skin. Over their skin is an exoskeleton that they have from birth. It grows in bands of about three feet wide. It grows with the dragon, but if it is cracked or broken, that piece of the covering will grow back though with only a fraction of the correct thickness. Luckily, the exoskeleton is about a foot thick when the dragon is at adult size, so they're extremely difficult to harm.

Gojara have millions of tiny legs, like a millipede, to propel them along. Each one of those legs is about two feet long and they're about six inches apart from each other. Naturally, with a bunch of tiny legs, gojara will just ease along slower than a snail. To help them out with walking, they also possess a few hundred centipede-like legs along their bodies. These legs actually look like useless appendages when not used and are a different color from the rest of the body. They are not covered in an exoskeleton and will regenerate when sliced off. When the gojara uses these legs, it can get along much quicker than with its smaller legs, but it's not going to break any land speed records. At most, a gojara can move at a breakneck top speed of 10 mph.

These dragons have an obvious head unlike the millipedes and centipedes they share appearance with. They have four huge eyes that can be any color from black to white and their mouths are full of several sets of tiny teeth that can grind up rocks. They also have one set of clearly-visible teeth that are so large they poke up out of the dragon's head when the mouth is closed via special sockets. When their mouths are closed, that large set of teeth coming out of the sockets makes the mouth appear stitched up. On their head, gojara have a row of iron horns down the center of their head and also possess two retractable antennae. Gojara use these antennae to communicate with one another.

In Alluum, only three pairs of gojara are known to exist. In Anbri, these dragons are very abundant and they're hunted by the dwarves there to feed entire cities. Gojara live underground in giant caves that they carve out with their teeth and horns. Some Anbrian mountains look like Swiss cheese from the gojara tunnels and many different creatures live in these tunnels.

While gojara are hunted by dwarves, it is very rare for one to actually be killed. Gojara are extremely violently-tempered dragons and they will put up a fight. They almost always have a very strong affinity for earth and can make incredible things happen when they're angry. Dwarves in Anbri know when they feel an earthquake that a group of likely-ill-fated dwarves are on the hunt. In Anbri, gojara are one of the only dragon species that they haven't put into their national defense due to the ill-nature of the dragons.

A few notable dragon riders from Evercrest - all alchemists - have managed to tame gojara from abandoned eggs. These dragons weren't nearly as ill-tempered as their wild cousins and actually made good company. They also didn't grow to massive sizes, staying to a manageable three hundred feet long and four or five feet tall. Evercrest has four gojara eggs in its nursery, but none have ever felt obliged to a rider in several hundred years.

Gojara have one of the shortest lifespans of all dragons. Being so large and growing so rapidly (sometimes up to a foot a day), they quickly run out of food and their system gets too stretched out, causing death almost always at 100 human years. They can live longer when bound with runes and in captivity. The age rune will help the gojara's growth stay reasonable and it will stay a manageable and normal size, allowing them to live much longer than they would in the wild.

Gojara reach maturity at 20 years. Females will lay hundreds of eggs, but only three or four will hatch. The eggs are fleshy and must be kept warm, so the mother will wrap herself around them to keep them warm. Males will leave immediately after the eggs hatch and the female will be left to fend for her young. Gojara leave their mothers at one or two years old.