Cavern Guards

Living tanks that cause the very earth to tremble. Know for their ability to maul, incinerate, stomp and impale their foes, these lumbering large horned beast are not to be reckoned with.

Appearance
Cavern Guards are massive bulky mountain dragons with a diamond hard and as strong as titanium hide, boulder crushing jaws and powerful rock splitting talons. Their horns are curled like a ram's but forms into broad shovel-like horns with sharp tips, Males have larger horns than females in comparison to size. They have a large thick frill that protected their neck and upper  chest when folded and can act as a shield. Their tails are muscular with a mace like structure at the end of it. Cavern Guards have large broad talons that are segmented with thick armoured hide. They have two claws on their wings that act like talons, aiding them in walking, interacting with the environment and changing directions when charging.

Weaknesses

 * A Cavern Guard's hide has weakpoints along the joints, which can be pierced if attacked correctly.


 * While Cavern Guards are dominant on the ground and in mountains, they are terrible flyers, similar to the Hercules beetle in their ability to fly and will only use it as a last ditch measure to escape, to traverse ravines & other natural obstacles or to move over large expanses of land, so many if their neighbours take flight and either wait out or escape all Cavern Guards can do is lob lava and debris and use their fire to attack their foes.


 * While Cavern Guards can conduct electricity, they can't control it and need assistance when it comes to managing a current that is too strong for them to withstand.


 * While Cavern Guards are fast, they aren't very agile, they have trouble making sharp turns and will make loops to turn direction, making them predictable, but still deadly.


 * Cavern Guards will tire easily after entering they "boiling" state as they energy is quickly converted into heat and steam.


 * They also have a narrow field of vision due to their horns blocking their line of sight and they rely mainly on scent and sounds to navigate their caverns using their eyes to analyse further.


 * As they get older, they lose the ability to fly, which leaves them more open to aerial tricks.

Diet
Cavern Guards primarily dine on rock and plant life in and around the mountain ranges. They feed on metals to add them to their hide, horns, claws, scales and tail which greatly increases their durability and strength. They will however substitute their diet with carrion and unfortunate creatures that stumble into their caverns where they are trapped and killed by the flock.

Social Structure
Cavern Guards form family groups of up to 50 or so dragons in a flock with the leader being a group being the eldest and strongest female (They subsequently have the largest horns in the flock, while lower ranking members often shave their horns to be smaller in comparison) in the flock. Dragonets are cared for by the entire flock. Only males leave after they reach maturity to find other flocks where they are treated as one of the lower members. Females are generally larger, stronger and mire aggressive than males and are higher up on the hierarchy of the flock than males. The leader is also often in menopause as they can't afford to have more dragonets when she can help support her previous batches.

These flocks are scattered across the continent and will have set territories which they protect while allowing those they allow to travel in and out, they will also work with other flocks.

All flocks bow to and follow the will of the Cavern Guard Queen, a queen is chosen from either the current monarch's clutch of dragonets or the clutch of other high ranking cavern guards through a set of criteria that the monarch uses to decide and the dragonet is trained to replaced the queen in her duties, this method of succession is common in cavern guard flocks as a method to prevent potential leaders from taking the place of the leader of a flock.

The current ruler of the cavern guard is the inferno of raging fury, headstrong metallic devil and sly deviousness; Queen Basalt

And her disciple is the stubborn, iron-hearted and timid; Princess Granite

Lifecycle
Cavern Guards lay clutches of 1 to 5 eggs at a time, these eggs resemble the rocky terrain that cavern guards grow up in. These eggs take up to a year and a half to hatch. The newly hatched dragonets have little horn nubs for that will grow into their signature horns and are relatively squishy compared to the adults, they have small frills and are extremely adorable. The young require their parents/flock to help raise them and feed them the metals that they will use for their armour. It takes up to 8 months for them to completely integrate their metallic diet into their hides and they will begin to gather and eat ore for themselves, though they still have the nubs for horns.

After the age of 6(subadult), they begin to start growing their horns and will start to replace their older metal hide with a stronger or more suitable for them metal cocktails, their horns continuous grow throughout their life, often pieces would chip off or will be snapped off, which causes unique variation of the horns per individuals.

Cavern Guards reach sexual maturity at the age of 45 for males(This is when they leave the flock) and 55 for females, female cavern guards have a period of 150 years to lay eggs, with ovulation occurring ever 5 years.

Males live until the age of 300ish, often passing of natural causes during this timeframe, will females can live for a respectable time; up to 750 years of age.

At the age of 205(elderly stage), female cavern guards will reach 'menopause' and begin to change physical, their wing membranes will begin to wither and the fingers will begin to fuse as the wings become larger and powerful, essentially turning into a third pair of talons. Their horns will also become more intricate and cancerous looking, the horns will be trimmed by the cavern guards to prevent their horns from blocking their version any further. Their frills also begin to cover more of their body and their legs become more stout and robust as well as bigger to compensate.

Relations with other tribes
They are known for being rather gentle when it comes to dragonets, but are almost murderous to other older dragons, except for Triple-Slashers and Blastscales, having a distaste for most dragon and a special hatred of Cavern Tunnellers that leads to them slaughtering entire burrows of the serpentine dragons just for being close to them. They are known to ally with Triple-Slashers and Blastscales. While being hostile to Camo-Assassins, Brain Hunters and Death Serpents. Blastscale Cavern Guards though are known for forming alliances with Bitumenaces, Doom Snakes and Lavawings.

Subclass
There are two subclasses of Cavern Guards; Metamorphic Cavern Guards and Blastscale Cavern Guards.

Metamorphics live in Vernica, while Blastscales are native to the Isles of Doom, a series of large islands over a volcanic hotspot.

Metamorphics are massive and generally stronger then Blastscales, with powerful blue fire unrivalled by anything. Their hide is extremely durable, capable of taking a serious beating.

Blastscales are more armoured then Metamorphics and they grow a special slime mould  that when matured explodes with great power, however Blastscales have a special secretion on their scales that prevent the slime from reaching maturity. When the Blastscale spreads the slime on other surfaces the slime will mature and explode, killing whatever is close by.