Colossataur

If the tuskers of Tzunar are huge, and the extinct giants of Yam were towering, then the Colossataurs are these things taken to a whole other extreme.
Named ‘Taüg’ in the Empire of the Silver Sun, and often known as 'colossataurs' informally elsewhere, they are a race of extremes. Great beasts living in the great forests of Myun in their youth and the Plains of the Collosus as adults, these are the largest of not only the sentient races, but of any animal known to walk on land, making even the ancient tuskers seem slight in comparison.
Walking on pillar like legs, with a tail like a battering ram, bony skin and an upper body like some huge ape, Colossataurs don’t quite resemble any other creature in this world, though they might to a group of creatures of your own. Bigger, smarter and much more versatile than the tuskers of the Isles, they can be a terrifying sight to behold when utilised by another.
Mostly vegetarian, they are nevertheless capable of great aggression when they or their tribes are threatened, and while they can’t gallop like horses or murks, their arms can tear apart smaller trees like paper, swing them like clubs, or throw rocks like a trebuchet. Such great power makes them extremely dangerous.
Their lifestyles are rich and varied, developing powerful bonds from an early point, and using creativity and power in a combination of excellence. In a land full of harsh predators and threats from when they hatch from their eggs to when they form the iconic herds, they are have no choice but to be hardy. But even this cannot save them from the cruelty of the sapient races.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Whereas centaurs have a form that resembles that of a horse with deer feet split with a man, bar the long, thin tail, Colossataurs do not bear a significant resemblence to any known creature in Hyr’s history or mythology, with the exception of the Mayukal god of earthquakes, Ikrotyl. Looking at this race that straddles the line between beast and sapient, it is no wonder their colloquial name applies. The skin is covered in scales and bony osteoderms that act as natural armour, making them even tougher.

Lower Body

They possess an immense muscular tail like a lizard's and pillar-like legs not too different from those of the tuskers, though the feet are of a queer shape, with the front having no toes except for a lone claw above the foot and the back having large claws. Their legs may be very thick, even thicker than those of tuskers, but are long. For adults, a human wouldn’t even be able to reach their knees.
The tail is thick and muscular, and may be used for signalling others of their kind, combat if their hands are occupied, or a defensive measure against the Hellmouths, the only predator capable of posing a threat to them without tools. The lower torso itself is slightly longer than it’s withers are above the ground, and quite wide too, wide enough to park a small carriage sideways underneath it in the largest specimens.

Upper torso

The back of the upper torso is not upright like a centaur's or a man's, but haunched over at an angle naturally, typically halfway between horizontal and vertical. It is possible for them to rear up vertically like a man’s, though they can only hold this for a very short period of time, when scouting for danger, or intimidating a rival, or else they can strain their muscles. The torso, although hollower and thus lighter proportionally than that of a man or ape, containing mainly the lungs, diaphragm and gullet, is thick set and packed with muscle, particularly in the long arms, which are like tree trunks, aimed at pulling down and tearing apart large branches or even entire trees, as well as swinging great axes to cut down even larger trees. Each arm can be as large as an entire murk or carriage. The hands have thick fingers, topped with short but sharp claws, all the more useful to tear apart branches and help pull them down like an ape though far larger. Adults are so strong, they could tear a horse in half as though it were a child’s toy, and so are feared by all the smaller races.
The abdomen where the two halves of the body meet is very muscular, but having few and small osteoderms, and the skin only being half as thick as that of the sides is one of the most vulnerable regions in the animal to attack as well, even if it is still more than twice as thick as a tusker’s.
The skin of the animal is thick, ranging in adults from ten to sixteen centimetres or four to six inches in thickness on the back and legs, and has small bony pellets or osteoderms embedded throughout, acting like chainmail to protect them from fierce scythebeasts. Some bony parts are larger, acting as defence in younger beasts and display in adult males. Osteoderms can range from the size of a man’s eyeball to as large as a human shield depending on the size of the beast and the region of the body. Larger, spike like dermal plates exist on the base of the hips, used for defense in the young and display for the older. Another form of bony extension exists on the end of the tail, acting like the head of a club that they can use to bash members of their own kind or fend off predators.

Colossataur size chart by Forbiddenparadise64

A size chart comparing different stages ofTaug growth with the character Orek Steele for comparison.

The Face

The face is a curious shape indeed. Resembling an ape of some sort, with forward facing eyes, a large brow and enlarged canines, it also tortoise like lips, with the skin is tight and hard, somewhat like a crocodile’s. While ape-like in overall shape, the eyes, ears, mouth and nose are more reptilian, and in the mouth’s case, much larger in both width and length, with little in the way of cheeks. The eyes are closer together than those of a horse, but further than those of a man or ape, and tend to be bright colours such as gold, green, blue, red or even magenta.
The teeth, bar the canines, are thin and peg like for stripping leaves, with thicker teeth near the back to chew branches and entire trunks when necessary. They swallow large mouthfuls of food in a single go to sustain their huge appetites. A young adult can eat nearly a tonne of food every day, and the oldest and largest adults up to two tonnes daily.
Below the head lies the neck, thick enough to blend the head and torso together, and with a pouch to amplify the noises it makes, loud enough to project sound over miles, as the whales of the ocean do. Loud, gutteral bellows and piercing whistles cover the air, either as sheer noise, or in their own primitive language.

Biological Traits

Reaching sexual maturity around the age of twenty, Colossataurs do not stop growing in adulthood, merely slowing down to a more manageable level. Growth rates can also vary depending on nutrition throughout growth, such as hormones. Starting life no larger than a cat, it is surprising how quickly they can grow into the mighty adults.
Dimorphism between the sexes is not as much in size, more that males have a more red skin tone generally, as well as having large spike-like osteoderms around the base of the tail, much larger than those around the rest of the body or even the tip of the tail. Males often use these for display or to lock into each other, using their tails and fists to batter one another in territorial disputes.

Genetics and Reproduction

Being reptilian in their biology, Colossataurs or Taüg breed relatively easily, laying hundreds of eggs in tightly prepared nests on open plains near the great forests. Different tribes will have developed different methods to enable the survivability of their offspring, though they are too large to enter the forests themselves. This way, they do not need to waste either great resources gestating, nor time nursing underdeveloped babies.

Growth Rate & Stages

Taüg start life as hatchlings no larger than a cat, in groups of a few dozen, in nests found in concealed locations such as the Myun forests to the south, where the dense foliage keeps them safer from the many predators that dwell here.
Autonomous from an early age, they form social groups with other hatchlings after a time of solitary cooperation, thus developing their first social skills, starting with grooming each other and teaching others where to find better shoots. At this point in their life, they are more omnivorous than their adult peers.
They grow very rapidly, reaching as big as a cow within just a year of hatching. It is around this age their intelligence develops for them to start to use sticks for more than just grooming or feeding purposes, but as tools to crack open tough nuts or to scare away predators, though the osteoderms in their skin offer another form of protection. Colossataurs of this age also start to use stone tools to get into even tougher areas or hunt for fish. The protein they receive in this early part of their life helps increase their cognitive ability, creating improved social skills in their herds, with some of the first attachments being made.
Once they reach a couple of years of age, their growth starts to rapidly increase as does their aggression. Already as large as a shoveltooth, competition for resources begins and so they fight over these positions with either melee based attacks or the use of their tails as weapons against each other. The large packs they made up in youth start to break up and they go through a phase of being solitary or in small herds, where they must live autonomously and gain the skills necessary to survive predators. Just one in ten Taug manages to reach this phase due to predation, and even fewer survive it.
Away from their old siblings, they develop more cognitive problem solving skills, and as they are too slow to pursue most animal prey, bar sloths and sleeping monkeys, they turn to using javelins to get the protein they need, along with nuts and leaves. As they are starting to use more wooden tools, they also start to draw attention from centaur and human hunters, who may capture them for use as slaves.
At this age, it is easy to train the particularly aggressive individuals into war-beasts later in life, and indeed the Silver Sun and Svotz both train slave-Taug as part of their armies, albeit in limited numbers due to resources. It is at the this time their their growth rate are reaches its highest, as their lack of cooperation allows them to rapidly accumulate food and resources for themselves, as the hardier individuals survive predation from the various creatures here.
At around the age of seven, already well surpassing the largest animal in the Isles, the tusker, in bulk, they leave the thick forests of Myun and venture into the plains as subadults, as the thick lower foliage can no longer sustain them indefinitely, needing to browse from higher trees, using their arms to pull them down. Not needing to eat meat, they now transition almost entirely into herbivory, though not without scavenging or even fishing here and there. More intuitive individuals take sharpened rocks, attaching them to small wooden stumps with chewed fibers and create primitive axes to cut down trees to gain access to branches that even adults can’t reach in their own. It is during this time that they once more gather together for survival to find adequate food and shelter, regaining the social element of their species, and often going with larger and older individuals, who take a more dominant position in the social hierarchy.
While not yet sexually mature, they start to become more sexually dimorphic at this age and onward, with males growing larger, spiked osteoderms at the base of the tail, as well as a brighter colour on their bodies, a deep red or brown rather than the dulled green of females and juveniles. They remain similar in size, however. It is not too uncommon for individuals to one end up in the same herd or tribe as their parents, siblings or even grandparents, often recognizing relations through unique scents and osteoderm patterns. More commonly though, unrelated individuals form families of their own choosing, as adoption.
They first become capable of sexual reproduction at the age of twenty, by which point they have grown to an enormous size, measuring over twenty-one metres (70 feet) long and weighing as much as three bull tuskers. After this, their growth becomes much slower and more gradual, and the males, now with brightly coloured cheeks and large tail spikes, fight one another for mates, often violently and with great guttural calls they can be heard from many miles away.
The only predators capable of threatening them at this point are the dreaded hellmouths, the largest of the predatory scythebeasts of the east, and for the oldest individuals, even these are no longer a threat.
Conflicts with other tribes tend to be fought first by the young and virile males and older females, while younger females and battle-hardened males are the ones who stay to protect the younger members of the tribe. The tribe’s patriarch or matriarch, usually the oldest and largest group member, will be among this last line in the case of conflicts, defending its younger kin.
Although growth slows upon reaching sexual maturity, it never truly stops, and so these creatures can grow for many years. While it is rare, some individuals can live to more than one hundred years of age, being the very oldest and therefore largest individuals, and so are exceptionally prized, even more so than others of their kind for slavers. Being two, three or even more time’s as big as a young adult, these individuals test the limits for the size of land animals.

Ecology and Habitats

Young individuals prefer close forests to hide from predators and collect resources, though the large adults prefer sparsely wooded open regions where they can roam, as well as the peripheries of forests they can pick from. Unlike tuskers, they rarely uproot trees altogether, preferring to tear off bits or simply strip them of leaves, so they can return at a later point to harvest. As a result, they are not as destructive as one might think they would be.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Being almost entirely herbivorous as adults, they feed on whatever plant life is available, typically on trees, which can also include any animals unlucky enough to be in the trees they are feeding on at the time.
Young individuals are often more omnivorous to maintain the protein intake for more intelligence to build, and to increase growth.

Biological Cycle

Feeding and living space while growing up can affect the rate of growth, which reduces once reaching sexual maturity but does not cease altogether. The oldest adults can be as much as three times as large as adults that have only recently matured.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Living in tribes resembling a cross between wild animal herds and primitive humans, the older adults take care of sub adults as part of their adoptive group. Though biological relations between individuals are statistically rare, the adoptive relationships bare such a close resemblance that the difference is almost irrelevant.

Uses, Products & Exploitation

Due to not quite being intelligent enough to be classified as a sapient species according to scholars, they are permitted for enslavement by the cultures of the east, though this is an exceptionally difficult task for older individuals. Part of the manhood ceremony of a Vongchou prince is to go out and hunt a Colossataur with just two guards for assistance, and come back with a thumb spike as a trophy of his kill. More often though, the territory of these mighty beasts is raided for slaves, leading to a difficult process of physical and psychological beating, where adults and adolescents are forced to carry great weights or fight in the imperial arena for the entertainment of the masses. A few even drive the Emperor’s massive ceremonial chariot. Younger individuals, while less impressive and more of a long time investment, are much easier to train properly, particularly in the art of war, and as they mature, they serve as mighty soldiers complete with plate armour, studded boots, archer towers and mighty weapons and slings with rocks or balls of iron or steel, making them walking siege engines.
The armour given to the beasts tends to resemble that of tuskers [or real war elephants] but on a larger scale, with protective segments over the vulnerable abdomen and neck. The tail has segmented plates added on to it, with long blades on each side to swing as massive clubs or swords through the enemy when trained to do so. Their sheer size means that archer towers can reach considerable sizes on their backs, thus enabling up to eight centaurs or twenty humans to ride at once, with larger individuals even having a small scorpion on the back to fire at further away targets. Perhaps even more frightening than their slings and bladed tails are the great hand-held weapons granted to them by their masters. Such weapons often include clubs, maces and one handed axes, though sometimes more exotic weapons such as tridents, halberds or even specialised scythes can be used too. In control, they usually have great reigns digging into their gums, cruelly directing their path and giving them orders to kill their enemies. In the Silver Sun, they are some of the most fearsome opponents to face in armies. And that is in the east, where they at least share a common landmass. They have never been utilised in the Isles, though. At least so far...

Facial characteristics

A large nose, a larger mouth, and small, focussed eyes make these great beasts a strange mix of familiar and unfamiliar in their faces. Their ears are flat and internal like a lizard’s or birds, their skin covered in mosaic scales instead of hair, and a flattened top of the head that makes it blend in with the neck. When the mouth is closed, only the small tips of the canines are visible, but when the gums are exposed, the dozens of peg like teeth and brick like molars are overshadowed by fangs as long as sword blades, and far sturdier. As monstrous as they appear though, the fierceness of a Colossataur’s face does not spare them from the gentler emotions of the sentient races, and from what we know, they are just as capable of curiosity, fear, sadness and love as any of us.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

Found in the thick forests or the plains, human and centaur enslavement has bought them into the confines of civilization too, trained for slave labour or as war beasts. It seems that even this limitation to the eastern continent of Porpuda may not last forever, if an ambitious general has his way.

Average Intelligence

Like the Thül, their intelligence is considered less than that of human or centaur, but higher than the smart animals like apes, pigs or crows. They are smart enough to use tools and even weapons upon one another and their threats, making them truly dangerous, and giving them the potential to be even more so.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Being extremely large, they produce very low noises, and so have ears suited to hear lower pitched noises, including those of the earth itself. Or better yet, feel them in their feet. The hearing range goes from as low as five hertz to as high as fifteen thousand.
Their vision is also effective with their high eyes and large field of vision, able to spot food or threats from miles off, even things as small as individual grapes on the ground. Their sense of smell is only slightly better than that of a human, as they cannot afford to be fussy eaters, and know from other cues and intuition about the threats offered by predators and increasingly, slavers.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

Possessing a primitive language, most Taug names for one another consist of one, maybe too syllables, and to us, they are more often known by the names their slavemasters give them, for better or for worse. The rest of their language depends not just on the specific syllables pronounced, but the manners of their pronunciations, whether as loud whistles, low guttural or ear-piercing bellowing. It is perhaps possible that an attentive human could learn something about their language using this method.

Common Myths and Legends

Though any religious traditions they have are unknown, certain cultures of centaurs, particularly the Solashites on the deep interior of the Silver Sun, venerate them as avatars of the god of earthquakes, or even as gods in their own right.

Scientific Name

Taurotitan magnificens

Lifespan

This varies depending on predation and disease, but individuals can reach more than a hundred years old. It is possible individuals could approach two hundred if given long enough.

Conservation Status

Due to their size and limited resources, even the vast Plains of the Colossus can only support a few thousand individuals, for they feed not in grass as the taurolopes and stiltbeasts do, but in the tall, sparse conifer trees between the grasses. A much larger number of the beasts live as juveniles and hatchlings in the thick and unexplored forests, where the mortality rate is more than ninety-nine out of a hundred. This disadvantage is only made worse by the sapient races that raid these forests, or even the plains themselves looking for trophies or slaves. Their main saving grace is their high reproductive rate.

Average Height

New hatchlings are no larger than a domestic cat.
Depending on age, nutrition, and good growth conditions, younger adults can range from five to over six metres at the shoulder, and only slightly shorter at the hip. Older adults continue to grow, and the very oldest individuals can reach more than seven metres at the withers. Overall height with the upper body varies depending on the posture; a typical pose is about a half taller than the withers, and a fully erect back can reach over twice as tall.

Average Weight

An individual that has just reached adulthood can already weigh over thirty-two tonnes, with the upper body alone weighing almost four tonnes, despite pneumatization. Older individuals become increasingly large, and individuals a century or more in age can approach, reach or perhaps even surpass a hundred tonnes, with the upper body alone pushing twelve. Such huge individuals are rare, fortunately for their habitats. For example, a fifty year old individual may weigh in the region of fifty-five to sixty tonnes, of which seven is from the upper body alone.

Average Length

A young adult often reaches about twenty-one metres or so, and the largest and oldest can be just shy of thirty.

Average Physique

Being Saurian in relation despite their centaur-status, they are naturally lean and with low body fat levels, leading room for large quantities of muscle, particularly in the arms, abdomen, legs and tail. This grants them extraordinary strength, capable of uprooting trees or tearing apart smaller beings with their bare hands. Able to hurl rocks as heavy as men over city walls a hundred feet tall, their throwing ability can be further amplified using slingshots, allowing them to surpass even the trebuchet in missile power. Besides their upper body, their lower body’s main defenders are kicks, the thickened end of the tail, used like a mace, and a great slamming attack caused by rearing up and using its own body weight to smash through enemies.

Body Tint, Colouring and Marking

Colours tend to be duller in older individuals, with the throat pouch of males being a bright red. Colours of red, brown and green tend to be most common, though occasionally, grey or even a tinted blue can occur. Other variations such as yellow, albino or dark pink are far rarer.