Dromos

***Important note: This species was created with vore in mind so there will be references to it throughout this (both fatal and non-fatal). If you don’t like vore this species doesn’t have to be used for it but please keep this in mind when reading, thank you!***

Dromos (singular and plural) are a hybrid lizard/scorpion-like species that only exist in a small population of about 400+ members, making them one of the rarest sapient species in Faria.

Found only in Malina’s perilous Oskeli Badlands, the dromos make their home inside, above and around an abandoned research laboratory known as the Dromos Settlement. Dromos are peaceable people who only desire to help others with problems they have, but due to their overwhelming body strength, tough defences and militaristic lifestyle, they are still a dangerous species to get on the wrong side of.

## Biology

Dromos on average reach heights of 7-8ft tall. Females are taller than males, but both sexes are physically powerful and durable. They can be any colour and have a large range of horn numbers/shapes, so they are capable of a range of diverse appearances.

Dromos are an odd mixture of reptiles mixed with a scorpion, along with the basic body shape being based on humans. They have four eyes (one human-sized pair and a smaller pair above them), scaly bodies with thick armoured skin as tough as chitin and a very human-like torso. Their most prominent feature is their massive tail tipped with a stinger that injects powerful venom that can kill an animal several times their size in half an hour, and a human in much less time. This stinger requires enough pressure applied into their tail tip to inject it, so they can also use it as a stabbing weapon non-lethally.

The tail tip can open up to reveal an additional mouth, this can be used to devour prey due to a second stomach contained in the length of it, but it’s not often that dromos will use their tails for this purpose. The tail is more often used as a crop, acids can secrete from it but at a slower rate than with their main stomach, and dromos can keep it from secreting into their tail stomach for up to an hour.

Much like the scorpions that make up their genetics, dromos chitin glows in the dark by absorbing UV light. It's not certain what purpose this trait of their chitin has, but perhaps to those who originally created them, it might have been an additional benefit to keep them from escaping under dark as easily.

## History

Dromos were created 65 years ago by a group of talented scientists, researchers and bioengineers as per request for a long-term project for the human-only city, The Warren. Humans faced many challenges they could do little about in the Outer Lands, so the aim of the project was to create perfect soldiers that could tackle all environments and hazards of the Outer Lands in their stead, in particular the dry and arid regions of the world so they could be deployed there.

Project Dromos was one part of a collective project called Project Prime. Three research teams from The Warren all set out to different regions of the world to work towards creating a versatile range of foot soldiers who could survive in the Outer Lands in different climate extremes like dense jungles, dry deserts and cold regions without needing to be given weapons, armour and supplies to fulfil their duty, allowing humans to conserve precious supplies.

The construction of all labs went as smoothly as possible. Project Dromos was set up within a hidden underground laboratory in the Oskeli Badlands, the high level of danger meant few would likely venture far enough to find the facility. Project Frigis was stationed in the Northern Wastes of Reistein and failed to produce results within the given time constraint of 5 years. Project Entin, further south in Malina in the Ent Jungle, stopped reporting activity back to The Warren after 8 months, so they were assumed to have gone rogue. Scouts who tried to visit the area to learn what was going on never returned. Project Dromos was the only project to succeed at creating healthy specimens and offspring.

The researchers started with thirty males and females each, which they raised from infancy into adults to better mould them into soldiers. This was a gruelling and cruel upbringing of putting children through intensive military training meant for adults, as well as testing how their growth was developing, such as inflicting minor injuries to test that their chitin was hardening at the expected rates.

The children were still cared for and looked after, but they had little time to rest with their schedule, as well as being forbidden from leaving the laboratory, so the first generation never saw sunlight during these long years. Children were taught that the rigorous training they were put through was all done because the researches loved them and only wanted to make sure they grew up strong enough to protect people someday, exploiting the same instincts bioengineered into them to be sure they would never turn on them.

Another 40 years went by as the first generation would go on to reproduce along with the others that came along, the population climbed to 61 in total by this time due to some accidents and illnesses resulting in the death of 12 members during that time, though many dromos eggs were preserved to bring up the number via in vitro should the need arise for it.

At the 45-year mark disaster struck. A member of the staff was discovered to have been leaking the information to sources in the Outer Lands for years and someone within The Warren blew the whistle on the project, so the staff killed the traitor and set out to destroy the lab and their research as they were ordered to do if their work was ever compromised. The scientists intended to do this by burning the lab and flooding the building with poisonous gas to kill themselves and the dromos with them. Ironically, this backfired due to the dromos being designed to be 100% loyal to those they consider their masters, so they broke down the security doors to free their masters, which allowed them to inadvertently escape their extinction.

The dromos attempted to protect their masters, but they all just fled and abandoned the lab, leaving the dromos to their fate, ordering the dromos to remain at the facility. The population fell to 52 as some died in the flames and poison trying to save the laboratory, but the room containing backup specimens survived relatively unscathed.

After the fire was put out and the gas supply was shut off, the dromos were left feeling lost and confused, unsure of what to do with themselves; they had never been taught how to self-govern because they were supposed to be dependent on their human masters for guidance.

A passing human merchant arrived in the area not long after and greeted them; they didn’t know what to do with themselves as there was no one to tell them, so they fell back on this merchant hoping for him to give them orders. The merchant ended up teaching them how to live for themselves from the little he knew from camping, and taught them a method to self-sustaining via farming. This benefited him too, he got the dromos growing a rare desert fruit called poka fruit in exchange for supplies for them, something they would turn out to get very good at doing even with farming in a desert.

The dromos gradually moved out of their underground lab home as it was getting too cramped for all 150+ members at the time to live inside it. A small town was built on top of it by the dromos with building materials they were given from trade. The dromos never named it themselves, so many just called it the Dromos Settlement and they adopted that. Dromos became well known for being one of the few with access to a lot of technology due to the many machines and computers left behind that survived the fire along with other devices being traded to them. Dromos would repair and trade broken machines and give away extras they have to merchants, a valuable commodity since technology is rare and highly sought after outside The Warren, who make it illegal for tech to be exported to the Outer Lands.

In present day Malina, the dromos are almost completely self-reliant. They don't completely depend on someone to tell them what to do in order to do everyday tasks, though they still greatly enjoy having a job to do so they’re often given little odd jobs by travellers like killing dangerous monsters or something most people wouldn’t do if just asked. Their drive to protect humans, however, is basically instinct, so if they see a human in even the most minor trouble they’ll step in to help.

## Behaviour

The dromos are a very intelligent, logic driven species with quick-thinking minds and a strong sense of comradery, making them a force to be reckoned with when they band together. Due to their history of being raised as soldiers, the dromos have had next to no experience with more casual and easy-going forms of socializing, and struggle to understand it as a result which often impairs communicating with other species.

In addition to socializing, the dromos are also very new to self-governing and often need the help of visiting merchants to learn social graces and how to manage themselves. This is because of their dependence on a designated superior to tell them what to do; while they have grown away from this somewhat, merchants who visit the town help them when they get a bit directionless.

Dromos have a known tendency of being overly obsessed with wanting to help people to the extent that people often give them work with no pay to take advantage of this. They thrive on keeping busy and love nothing more than a task to complete as it engages and exercises the mind as well as the body. They are especially gifted with technology and mechanical repair, making them a valuable source for tech and tech repair in the Outer Lands, people will brave the dangerous Oskeli Badlands just to get their hands on it.

Bioengineered instincts hardwired into them make the dromos almost unable to bring themselves to hurt a human even if it’s necessary, but they are slowly learning that it’s okay sometimes for self-defense. Dromos have a strong inclination to want to do good for others and genuinely want to do the right things, but they're still learning how to decide what the right thing to do in many situations is by themselves, so they often require guidance and advice from other species.

While the dromos are talented in practical and logical skills like mathematics, science and solving puzzles, they have a very poor understanding of creative pursuits like art and entertainment. A small few try anyway but do quite poorly at understanding the point of it, even cooking is a bit beyond them as they can eat raw meat fine, though some try to learn for outsiders who visit and spend the night, though it will generally be as basic as possible. It can also mean that their preferred art forms would lean on very rigid things like photography, but only of the immediate terrain for intel and taking proper profile pictures of each other for recordkeeping purposes, rarely do their photos deviate beyond this.

## Predation

### Dromos as Predators

Dromos are fierce and terrifyingly coordinated hunters, capable of taking down prey several times their size, even the gigantic oskeli wyrms that burrow under the desert sand will struggle against a team of them. Dromos are capable of hunting and fighting alone, but work even better in groups due to the militaristic training of first gens being used to teach second gens how to hunt and work together as effectively as possible.

Dromos don’t have any particular preference with their food as long as it’s meaty and also provides the water they need from their diet for living in a desert. Although they can go a long time without water, they do need a lot of food to meet their energy needs. Dromos rarely are inclined to prey upon sentient species, but during their time of being raised by humans they had the idea driven into them that eating or hurting humans is deplorable, so dromos are instinctively protective of humans and will struggle to bring themselves to eat them. Thanks to the help of merchants and personal experience with bandits and raiders, the dromos are slowly learning that some exceptions for self-defense are okay, though they will still be reluctant to hurt them. Raiders and bandits however will be swiftly eaten to defend themselves and their town, though human troublemakers will more often just be contained in their tails placing them in the town jail, which isn't much of a punishment for a human as the dromos will still look after them well anyway.

### Dromos as Prey

It is very rare for dromos to end up prey since they are designed to be the ultimate desert predator and soldier capable of handling the hazards and dangers of their desert home, but very occasionally they might be caught by surprise of larger predators such as the endemic oskeli wyrms or aghrahns. The advantage of flight aghrahns have can make them difficult for a dromos to fight, so sometimes they may be overpowered and eaten by these predators. Injured dromos are also more prone to predation since they can’t fight at full strength, but even an injured dromos will risk going out to fight these beasts if requested.

### Diet

The diet of the dromos consists heavily of meat. Desert game and fowl will often end up in their diet, but since they live in a desert, it's common for dromos to make "rations" for themselves by way of drying excess meat from bigger kills. Oskeli wyrms, while they are immensely sized and dangerous to tackle, are a favourite prey of the Dromos Settlement in spite of them being capable of eating dromos in turn. The fresh meat from a successful wyrm kill can provide the whole settlement a decent dinner from just 5% of it's body, and the rest will be dried in the desert sun to preserve it for months, up to a year with proper storage. Dried and salted wyrm jerky is a treat to the dromos, and palatable enough to utterly starved visitors.

Dromos don’t need to eat regularly, this is because of being engineered from desert species so they are built to survive during times of little food, though they still need a good supply of food to suit their lifestyle and energy needs. If there are lean times, dromos will carefully eat from their stores of dried meat, tough desert plants and the occasional poka fruit to help themselves survive.

## Weaknesses

Dromos are a hardy species that are very physically powerful, they are built to be the ultimate creature of the desert and drylands, but this does mean that they can struggle with coping with environments outside of their preferred regions.

Since dromos are built to survive high temperatures they are very sensitive to cold. In Malina they are largely spared from this hazard, but if you were to place a dromos at the very top of Mt Gaspard’s snow-covered peak or in the northern continent of Reistein, they would almost certainly not survive there. While they could hunt prey, they wouldn’t last long in such potent cold without plenty to keep warm with and would be at a high risk of death, and would almost certainly get hypothermia from even moderately cold temperatures.

In addition to the cold, the dromos are known to hate water, though this is often down to the fact that they simply aren’t familiar with large bodies of water and tend to become anxious around them. Dromos will happily go to collect water from lakes and rivers but they certainly wouldn’t enjoy having to learn to swim in them or even being in a boat. Consequently, many dromos can’t swim so shoving one into deep water will likely lead to them drowning in a flailing panic.

The dromos’ instincts of being sworn to protect humans is also easily exploited by humans looking to keep themselves on the good side of a dromos, as well as out of trouble with them, using a feigned act of authority the dromos can be swayed by humans to not touch them and even end up helping them, even if the human is rather unsavoury or dubious in nature. It's from people like these that the merchants who look out for the dromos have to protect them from by visiting as often as they can, or someone would almost certainly exploit these instincts in the dromos for their own gain in a much more nefarious way than the merchants technically do themselves.

## Spirituality

Dromos are far too practical a species to possibly spare much moment to think about the spiritual side of life, though they would more than patiently listen to preachers if they visited the settlement. Any preacher trying to convert them would be practically assaulted with curious questions poking countless holes in the logic of such stories which would likely either drive them mad enough to leave or make them turn atheist entirely. Dromos like to use the lyres religious pantheon as a baseline for pondering the logic in religion, and use the lyres religion as a basis for this as it's all they've come to know since their human masters never taught them about religion in detail.

The closest dromos get to anything guiding them are the merchants who show them how to function with day to day life, as well as being complete sticklers to the local routine of the Dromos Settlement.

## Treating Other Species

### Overall

Dromos usually don’t have much opportunity to meet other species because of how dangerous the environment around them is, but dromos nonetheless try to make an effort to accommodate visitors to their town. Dromos have very few strong preconceptions of other species, but there are species who tend to be common visitors.

### Humans

Humans of course are always fawned over and adored by the dromos, any humans who visit the town get given the best treatment they can manage. Despite this, outside of merchants, not many humans actually visit the Dromos Settlement or make it there if they try to, so it’s considered a very special occasion for a new human face to visit. Halfkin tend to be considered a special sight to the dromos since they’re mostly human, and thus close enough to trigger the same instincts.

### Anurans

The water-dwelling anurans wouldn’t be a species anyone would expect to so much as meet the desert dwelling dromos, but the anurans of the Chomp Swarm, who also live in the Oskeli Badlands, regularly visit the Dromos Settlement to trade goods with them. Common trades are clothes/fish/broken parts/machines/medicine from the anurans and fully working machines and poka fruit from the dromos. Outside of this working relationship, anurans wouldn’t try to tackle the dromos as prey since they would prove difficult to fight even alone, and impossible when there’s more than one dromos as the chances of losing members of a swarm would be high. As anurans have few friends outside of their own species, the Chomp would be fools to squander a good relationship with such a powerful species.

### Murins

Murins live alongside the dromos in the underground lab or in the nooks and crannies of housing aboveground, providing a secure home from the dangers and heat outside. They exchange information with visiting murins who hitch a ride on merchant carts to keep the supply up, along with travellers passing through. Murins have already made the dromos familiar with their information trade, so they get food in return for the news and knowledge they teach the dromos, but the species get along fine as the dromos don’t mind their presence, but do wish they’d partake in their regiment more often. Due to sharing the settlement with the dromos, murins are a reliable source of advice when dromos struggle to work out how to tackle a moral problem, but the lack of scruples that murins have on average means that sometimes dromos may be misled or taken advantage of as murins are opportunistic creatures in that way.

### Lyres

Dromos are disliked by lyres mostly on a principle of beliefs, which then feeds into fear and mistrust of the harm the dromos could be capable of inflicting upon them. Lyres are aware from word of mouth that the dromos were created by humans from The Warren with the intention of them being used as super soldiers. This information fuels their distrust of technology, humans and worst of all (in a lyre's mind) is seen as a sin of the highest magnitude to take the gods work into mortal hands, believing the dromos' entire existence to be sinful due to being created by mortal hands, and as a tool of warfare and conquest no less. The dromos in no way reciprocate this hatred, happy to allow lyres into the Dromos Settlement if they're need of rest and provisions whether they're aware of this one-sided dislike towards them or not.

The lyre travellers and merchants who aren’t as religious have found the dromos to be an odd folk but very welcoming and hospitable, though perhaps in need of more help with distinguishing nice humans from humans trying to rope them into partaking in suspicious activity. Dromos have picked up an interest in the lyres religion, not so much because they want to practice it, but because they like to wonder what purpose religion holds when compared with logic and sciences, and use the lyres religion as a basis for this. More devout lyres don’t take this well, and the rest chalk it up to the quirks of the dromos.

## Treating Each Other

Dromos are very coordinated, organized and capable of working as a team thanks to the education of the military trained first generation dromos. This has however resulted in military lifestyle being the average lifestyle for dromos as they know of very little else to work with to learn societal norms, so military ranks are used for different age groups, roles as well as based on how effective at leadership an individual is.

The dromos look out for each other very closely. Having so few numbers compared to other races means they are trying to conserve themselves as a species as much as possible, after having this stressed as important by merchants. Although, life together can be stressful at times, since their society places a great deal of importance on military skills and expertise, as well as following a routine. Many dromos are typically content with this life of order and routine and wouldn’t have it any other way.

A small few however do long to see the outside world and other people, as well as to break away from the need to do the same thing day in and out. While their decision to leave home won’t be opposed by the rest of the town, their kin will be overly anxious over the notion of them leaving home, but the right to leave the Dromos Settlement can be granted by a superior so that a dromos may be ‘given leave’. Not doing this however will be seen in a poor light by dromos as this is seen as desertion. If this does happen, dromos will not be allowed to return to the settlement and have to live in exile, but this is a very rare occurrence.

### Regiment

Militaristic life runs so deeply in their culture that the Dromos Settlement has a town-wide regiment everyone follows, including a morning briefing at 500 hours and a curfew at 2300 hours unless there’s an emergency or exception made. Even activities done for fun are all decided strictly by regimented routine. For example, sport sessions take place at at 1800 hours. While this routine is in place and is mandatory to follow for residents, each individual dromos is allowed to also form their own routine to follow around the town routine. Visitors are not required to follow the town’s regiment, but it’s considered polite and respectful to do so.

The first generations upbringing as soldiers has been the only basis of societal norm dromos have had to work with, so they use titles, ranks and terminology found in armed forces as a way of referring to each other. Typically based on age group and life experience, the dromos do understand very well what these terms mean in a dictionary sense, but these ranks/titles are also used for social purposes. Dromos use these titles outside of their species, people who they have a lot of respect for will often be referred to with their higher ranks, and generally be treated like a superior.

### Dromos "Slang"

The militaristic lifestyle of the dromos means that terminology used by military forces is used by dromos in dictionary terms to each other and outsiders in the proper and direct. Military terminology is also used as a form of local slang, or the closest dromos could possibly get to having slang.

* **KP** - Chef/cook/kitchen work
* **Comrade** - Friend/lover (dependent on the context of the sentence)
* **Medic** - Anyone in a doctor-like role
* **CO/Commanding Officer** - General term for some who is superior to an individual
* **Private** - Children or anyone under the age of 20 are usually called this, but often in an affectionate way, this can also occur between romantic partners as a term of affection.
* **Private Second Class** - Those who reach adult age and are living average life but have no partner.
* **Private First Class** - Those who have partnered together and are living an average life, may or may not have children.
* **Specialist** - A dromos in charge of a particular role in the settlement only they or a small few can do, such as the growth of plants that don’t normally grow well in the desert, teaching or programming.
* **Corporal** - Dromos running activity and entertainment groups to maintain “social training” (IE teaching what little they know about being casual).
* **Sergeant** - Dromos who are trained to hunt and gather in the badlands, there are many in the settlement due to how essential they are for survival, most other residents have basic survival skills down but these dromos are trained to be the best at it. They are also often hired by visitors and merchants to do mercenary work.
* **First Sergeant** - Leaders of the hunter teams to help maintain teamwork and coordination with hunting groups, they are also the very best at their roles, allowing them to use their experience to lead others easily.
* **Major** - Someone in charge of the majority of political affairs, though often found doing more of the legwork.
* **Commander** - Second in command from the leader, in charge when Sergeant Major is unavailable, though are actually a dromos that is the leader of the settlement.
* **Sergeant Major** - Only merchants of Malina currently carry this title out of respect for helping the dromos establish themselves.

## Reproduction

Reproduction can be a very awkward time for the species, one part due to how rarely it occurs, and another due to the lack of experience any of them have in social graces and expectations outside of military life. But the process for them has been made simple, they do it the same way their elders did, which was by having their masters tell them who they were getting together with and to get it done as soon as possible, though this was at the time due to trying to produce the best soldiers possible, but the merchants have at least gotten them as far along as them being able to choose a partner for themselves. Unfortunately, they still won’t mate without a superior telling them to do so, so at least a few merchants who look out for the dromos will go to the length of travelling all the way to the settlement, just to tell them to go and spend some private time together in their quarters, and that’s it (though they do get some free goods for their assistance, so it’s made worth their while).

The dromos have the slowest oestrus cycle of all the species, this is due to the species being deliberately designed to have a slow-growing population to cut down on the chance of an uprising from the dromos against their creators. This means that they are only able to reproduce once every 5 years, which makes increasing the species population a slow and difficult task. Some scientists working in the Outer Lands are researching a way to increase the dromos’ fertility rate in order to help them grow as a species. So far none have been successful, but have found potential leads to go on from discovering surviving blueprints of how they were engineered.

The offspring of dromos are laid in soft, pill shaped eggs much like many kinds of reptiles. Usually only one egg is laid but twins occur occasionally and triplets rarely. Dromos mothers are fiercely protective of their eggs, even the fathers are barely allowed anywhere near them, but both parents will fight with everything they’ve got to protect their offspring and eggs, though humans tend to tentatively get a pass to handle eggs if requested.

## Life Cycle

When the babies hatch they are a pale, slightly translucent white colour, very tiny and completely dependent on their parents' care, they will cling to their parents back or be carried in arm to help the bond between parent and child. While the settlement has children to rear, randomly chosen individuals will be given “responsibility training” and be tasked with caring for every single infant in the town, meaning they have to carry all of them on their backs to still carry on with their day and care for the little ones. This is to help dromos keep their parenting skills sharp to not waste the opportunity for all dromos to learn how to be parents.

Children will develop their adult colours gradually as each year passes, their full colour comes in by the time they are about 15 years old, though their chitin will not harden enough to be trusted with jobs and tasks until they are 18 years old, which is when they have their last molt, meaning they have reached adult size and full maturity. They will not be able to reproduce for the first time until they turn 20 due to their genetic coding.

The kids are given plenty of time to play and socialize with other children as there are typically only so many every few years. Parents will help children learn how to repair machines, grow poka fruit, do some very simple combat training which will gradually increase in difficulty as they grow older and allow them time to indulge in whatever interests they pick up on, all alongside following the settlements daily routine of course.

Dromos may have one of the longest potential lifespans of all the sapient species as they are estimated to be able to live a full life of up to over 200 years. Since the species has only existed for 65 years, none have yet lived long enough to prove this is true, but the oldest surviving first gens still have their vitality and youth and have yet to show any signs of aging.