Tiderazors

"When the water hisses, pray it’s not the dagger tails. Pray for anything else." -Mariner Sayla Vrint, survivor of the Shoalgate Incident

The Tiderazor is an apex amphibious predator native to Everwealth’s estuaries, drowned reefs, and swamp canopied rivers. Though roughly the size of a large crocodile, it is a nightmare in scale and cruelty, a creature of unnatural grace, venom, and excruciating pain. Bearing traits both reptilian and insectoid, the Tiderazor is marked by its unnatural color pattern: a shadowy plum-purple hide, slashed with vivid orange streaks, blackened spines, and pale bone-white claws. This striking palette is not for display. It is a warning, an omen of death that comes not with roars, but with silence, acid, and anguish. It is most feared not for its bite, but for its long prehensile tail ending in a, dagger-like stinger. These barbed weapons inject a potent paralytic venom rumored to cause the most pain a living thing can survive. While rarely fatal on their own, these strikes leave even hardened warriors retching, blind with agony, their screams alerting no one fast enough. Its side-mounted bladed mandibles and insectile scythe-spurs on its hind legs allow it to carve through armor, muscle, and hardwood with surgical brutality.

Basic Information

Anatomy

The Tiderazor resembles a sleek crocodile at a glance, but closer inspection reveals something much more alien. Its body is lean, sinuous, and built for speed and ambush, with tough, oily scales that shimmer purple to black depending on moisture and angle, blending in seamlessly with its low-light hunting grounds. Thin streaks of burnt orange run across its limbs and underbelly but especially along the webbing of the Tiderazor's dorsal fins, and clusters of white splotches flicker like sickly coral along the inside of its jaws and eyes. Its skull is flatter than a typical crocodile’s, and its primary maw is flanked by a pair of sickle-like mandibles that detach from the inside of it's upper jaw when feeding, concealed when-not, used to pin prey in its mouth or slice in circular motions during death-rolls. It walks on four legs, the hind pair larger and jointed like those of an insect, each ankle crowned with a folded, serrated blade that it extends when grappling or cornered; These hind legs making for daunting bursts of speed when swimming, able to close 60-feet in the span of 3 seconds. The tail, whip-like and as long as its body, is segmented and prehensile, able to curl, grab, and even hook into wounds; Ending in a retractable stinger akin to a dagger with a hooked barb at one side ,that folds inward until ready to strike, delivering a venom that causes burning, synapse-searing agony, powerful enough to disorient Half-Giants and kill small animals outright.

Genetics and Reproduction

Tiderazors reproduce infrequently, laying clutches of 3-5 leathery eggs in submerged fungal nests, often within drowned ruins or moss-choked temple hollows. Each egg absorbs trace magick from the surrounding terrain, imbuing the hatchlings with localized resistances. Only one offspring from a clutch typically survives, the rest killed by the alpha or consumed by stronger siblings.

Growth Rate & Stages

• Hatchling (0-3 months): Soft-scaled, tail stingers undeveloped, already spitting acid in short bursts.

• Juvenile (3 months-1 year): Colors sharpen, leg blades emerge, territorial behavior begins.

• Adult (1 year+): Fully armed and venomous; tail coordination becomes lethal. Enters permanent solitary range unless mating.

Lifespan: 20-30 years in the wild; But their health seems diametrically opposed to non-wild habitats, only one captive specimen has ever been recorded lasted more than a month.

Ecology and Habitats

Tiderazors prowl the brackish thresholds of Everwealth, from drowned crypt-temples along the The Bay of Knives, to the buzzing, croaking, and screeching wetlands of The Hungering Marsh or the choked, misty riversides of the central Green-Thumb River. They require both land and water, often nesting beneath overhanging roots, sunken ships, or buried aqueducts. Territorial to the point of obsession, each Tiderazor maintains a stretch of water as a personal shrine of death, marked with flayed bones, broken hulls, and the flaking armor of those who trespassed.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Strict carnivores, Tiderazors prey on humanoids, large fish, swamp elk, and occasionally other predators. Their method is precision ambush: lying still beneath silt or mangrove shadow until prey draws close, then striking with explosive motion.

• First, it lashes with its tail, injecting agonizing venom.

• Second, it slashes with its sharpened talons or its leg-blades, disabling knees or ankles.

• Finally, it pins prey under it's massive weight, then with serrated teeth and clamping mandibles, bites with crushing force, often dragging victims beneath the surface to die if-not to eat their already slain quarryu in-peace.

They eat slowly, dismembering with patience. Corpses left behind are typically ritually posed, either curled around bones or partially submerged with skulls exposed, reasons unknown.

Biological Cycle

Tiderazors remain active year-round, but molt during moonless nights, usually every three years. During molting, their armor softens, and they become extremely reclusive, retreating to deep underwater caverns. High-magick seasons or emotional disturbance in the land cause their colors to brighten and venom production to spike. They are most aggressive during dry lightning storms, when atmospheric energy enhances their senses.

Behaviour

Tiderazors are sadistically intelligent even among ambush predators. They have been observed testing barriers, herding prey, and even stalking targets across miles of river. Despite their brutal methods, they prefer clean, efficient kills, and often punish “messy” prey by dragging them across sharp coral beds or stonework. They are solitary and fiercely territorial. No two adults have ever been seen coexisting, and attempted breeding encounters frequently end in death.

Additional Information

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

• Excellent darkvision, even in pitch-black water.

• Vibration-based “listening” through the tongue, able to detect ripples and heartbeat shifts.

• Magickal scent-tracking, particularly sensitive to fear-induced perspiration or arcane bloodlines.

Can sense magnetic shifts, allowing precise navigation in mangrove mazes or drowned catacombs.

Scientific Name

Dracohorridus geminocauda.

Origin/Ancestry

Believed to be a magickal convergence of crocodilian, cephalopod, and insectoid bloodlines, catalyzed by nature in the days before the Schism.

Conservation Status

Believed to be a magickal convergence of crocodilian, cephalopod, and insectoid bloodlines, in-ancient days.

Geographic Distribution

• Green-Thumb River
• The Bay of Knives
• The Hungering Marsh