Jira

Artwork

"**I is a DRAGON, not a TURTLE**"
—Jira, who takes offense to being called nothing but a turtle

**Jira** **the Dragon Turtle** is a fan character designed by Frostybites16. Jira resides in the *Dungeons & Dragons* universe.

Jira (Pronounced Jeer-uh) is a young dragon turtle and Frost's Mount.

## Appearance

Jira is a large sized turtle-like dragon with a long tail and neck with large, taloned webbed feet for swimming in water and walking on land. His scales are generally smooth and fish-like, and his neck is very long and thin with a spiked dewlap. He has a large, heavy head, with two blunt, curving nasal horns and his bottom jaw having a sort of pouch that hangs from his chin. Two or more long whisker-like tendrils are connected to the very back of Jira’s' upper jaw, and he has two fin-like appendages on either side of his head as well with a sort of fin-mohawk starting from the back of his head to his mid-neck, he also has a small pair of Gill slits on his neck allowing him to breathe underwater.  . He has a hooked beak with serrated jaws, sharp teeth and a long forked tongue. His pupils are slitted with a starburst pattern surrounding his irises, and his eyes are also surrounded by a star-shaped arrangement of fleshy, filamentous "eyelashes”, and he has intricate scale patterns running down his arms and legs. His tail is very long and like that of a fish, helping him to swim, but unlike a fish, his tail fins are horizontal as opposed to vertical.  His shell is streamlined with jagged protrusions, possessing three dorsal ridges. one of his notable features is the lack of a bony carapace. Instead of scutes, he has thick, leathery skin with large embedded osteoderms.

He is turquoise-green in color with an elaborate pattern of water droplet shaped light green spots. His shell and flipper-scales are a little darker than the rest of his body, with splashes and swirls of light turquoise and green near the top of the shell with silvery highlights running along the raised areas.. His eyes glow bright green and his irises are lighter in color to the rest of the eye, and sometimes they glow orange. The inside of his mouth is red and he possesses the aforementioned long forked tongue, which starts out red but fades to blue as it reaches the tips.

He has a couple of starfish on his shell as well as a few barnacles. He can often be seen wearing a makeshift light brown leather saddle at the base of his neck made by Frost, as well as chain reins.

## Personality

Jira has a very childlike and innocent personality, and is extremely friendly. However, he can be very protective and quick to anger if he thinks his friends, especially Frost, are threatened. Jira is also sensitive at times, being visibly hurt or angered if someone offends or upsets him. Jira can display a bit of an attitude at times, reflecting his shared dry humor with Frost. He isn't easily intimidated, and his daring bravado can get him into trouble at times. He is also not above using violence to reach an end unlike Frost, but will usually refrain when told to do so. Despite his usually friendly demeanor, like all dragons he can be very selfish and ungrateful at times. He also has a tendency to show off and he feels like he has to prove himself, this is mostly because he's just salty about the fact that dragon turtles aren't considered "true dragons".

## Abilities

### **Natural Abilities:**

* **Amphibious:** Jira can breathe both air and water
* **Bite:** Offensively, Jira has a very strong, beaked jaw. His primary form of protection, aside from his claws and steam breath
* **Claw:** Jira has sharp claws he can use to slice a foe
* **Tail:** Jira can use his long tail to smack enemies
* **Steam Breath:** Jira, like all dragon turtles, can exhale scalding steam
* **Darkvision:** Jira can see in the dark
* **Stomach Storage:** Jira can swallow and store items in his stomach such as treasure, and then regurgitate it for later use.

### **Skillset:**

* **Scalding Water:** Jira figured out that if he condenses the steam in his mouth, he can spray boiling water at his victims
* **Bilingualism:** Jira can speak Aquan, Draconic, and can speak a smattering of common. He can also talk to animals.
* **Shell Storage:** Jira can store items in his shell

### **Unique Abilities:**

* **Withdraw:** Jira can withdraw entirely into his shell. While in his shell he is resistant to damage

## Relationships

### Family

* **Aremag:** Jira is a descendent of Aremag

### Allies

* **Frost:** Friend and Rider
* **Rhianna:** Friend
* **Ged:** Friend
* **River:** Friend

## Trivia

* I don't remember when I made Jira, but it was sometime in October of 2021
* I always like to imagine if my OCs had voice actors, but for Jira I'm still thinking about it
* Jira's Theme
* The name Jira is a reference to Gojira, or Godzilla.
* Unlike most of the other species of dragons in the world of D&D which have consistent appearances and biological designs according to their species, The appearance of dragon turtles seem to vary wildly, with some dragon turtles more visibly similar to massive snapping turtles and/or sea turtles, while others feature the more dragon-like elements of their namesake. When designing Jira I wanted a good in-between. Some of the features I was keen to add when designing Jira was to pay some homage to the species’s roots in chinese mythology, so I gave him a longer neck and tail, and even those long catfish-like whiskers that are very often seen on chinese & japanese dragons, as well as giving him a tail like that of a koi fish, all of which hopefully adding to the “Chinese Dragon” look, and I also imagine his scales being like that of a koi fish as well. Most dragon turtles have a head like that of an alligator snapping turtle but with various fins on their heads and a serrated beak and or sharp teeth, and Jira is no exception, accept for the additional nose horns and aforementioned whiskers. He still has the general body shape of most dragon turtles and by extension alligator snapping turtles, with the three dorsal ridges on the shell and all, and has legs that are mostly like that of a snapping turtle too as apposed to the sea turtle-like flippers found in some dragon turtles, but I still wanted to have some sea turtle in there so I still give him the scale patterns on his legs that green sea turtles have on their flippers. I also drew inspirations from another sea turtle, and my favorite species, the leatherback, as his shell doesn't have scutes and is leathery, which I think is a cool design and also because it's easier for me to draw
* Jira's design resembles Brian Valeza's depiction of Dragon Turtles in some ways