The first serpentine dragon form he was going to work on was a variant of river drake. Preferring as always to grow and ge existent creatures rather than make new ones from raw mana, Mordecai sent his mind searg among the small creatures that had bee part of their ecology. Snakes were obvious choices, as well as most lizards, but less reptiliaures could work as well.

  True Dragons were not mammals, birds, reptiles, or any other on animal type. Yet all of those and more were capable of being draoids, and the draoid races often had some potential to evolve into True Dragons. So what made the difference? How did things that were not reted species bee reted species like that?

  As far as Mordecai could tell, it was a case of a faith-like iion with a cept that every se race held. It reinforced itself as well, for True Dragoainly would always cim that they could reize arue Dragon pared to a mere draoid, and for something like this they ted as being on the ‘mortal’ side of the equation. It probably didn’t hurt that the primary creator deity of this reality was a dragon, creating a very strong focal point of the cept on.

  It didn’t take him long to find a sele of animals that resonated positively with the cept he had in his mind, and he drew those creatures to the fifth floor. It didn’t matter that they were not all the same species, the transformations would fix that. ging a creature was magnitudes easier thaing one, and ref them into being the exact same species was only a little harder than starting with the same base.

  The biggest issue with starting from scratch was not the physical structure, that was only a little bit harder thaing some of the items avaible as treasures. No, it was holding everything together at the same moment and filling it with synized animus and spirit while kick-starting every single chemical process at on proper harmony. He had vague memories of having tried this before, just enough to have bee as a warning of ‘don’t do this’ by his more plete self.

  Oh, if he wanted structs or somethiively simple, creatures that had animus but not true life and spirit, those weren’t too hard. The bookwyrms and biting words were examples of that. Though creating structs might bee harder soon if his suspis were right. Well, he’d have to wait and see on that.

  These thoughts only took a portion of his tration as he reworked his voluo match his vision. For these river drakes he used a cssic sea serpehan model, a long sinuous body with various frilly fins running along its length, a narrow head and snout with sharp teeth at one end and a ft tail for speed and maneuverability at the other. But that wasn’t enough to make them a real threat to travelers, even if they were three feet long.

  The first ization he made was some minor chameleon abilities. Nothing magical in this case, just the same ability to subtly shift the structure of their scales to reflect different colors of light that many normal creatures had, if slightly more effitly desighe effects were enhanced by the fact that the waterways were going to be filled with floating motes of light, making it hard to accurately measure depth and distance by vision alone.

  And of course, any quality drake needed an important draic feature, a Breath on. In this case, he gave them a powerful, narrow jet of water that could pierce many materials as well as potentially knock foes back.

  Now for mobility. They were already great swimmers of course, but he wanted more than that. He’d already made sure their scales and skin wouldn’t dry out easily, now he gave them a minor flight ability. It was closer to being a magically enhanced jump with a little bit of levitation for extra distance, a soft nding, and just a tiny bit of mid-air guidahey could do this from water or nd, and they had the sharp teeth and powerful snake-like muscuture to act as strictors, though they were too small to do so to a typical humanoid. Their nd speed retty parable to most snakes as well, though their side fins interfered somewhat.

  There was a final important touch that wouldn’t affeything in the immediate future but would e into py when they had more levels. These two to three-foot-long drakes were juveniles for the species he had designed, and he would be creating habitats for their ter life stages as the dungeon gained more levels, aually some spawning grounds ba the hidden pools along with a way for them to get there in their adult forms.

  Mordeow turned his attention to the sed serpentine form he wanted for this floor. Winged Serpents. Oh, not actual Couatl, these were not divine creatures after all, but he modeled them on the famous celestial serpents, giving their snake-like bodies both rainbow-colored feathers and scales as well as growing a pair of powerful, wide wings. They wouldn’t be able to soar the skies elegantly, but what they needed was maneuverability and the ability to leap upward in a quick burst.

  Instead of free-roaming creatures like the river drakes, he made these pack hunters, and created a special mushroom for their s: These were low, squat structures that grew from the ceiling, with a structure that was soft enough for tuo be chewed into it, but with enough terength to tio g to the ceiling so long as the tunnels were not excessive.

  From either these s or from the tops of the mushroom trees they could keep watch for potential prey, and called out to each other with ultrasonic cries to unicate, the tooo high for most creatures to hear. They also used a separate set of clicks in that range for echolocation, allowing them to ‘see’ no matter how dark their enviro was.

  In order to capitalize on this, he gave them a pair of abilities. The first was a simple globe of darkness spell, about 40 feet in diameter that they could cast on an area about on hour. This was readily tered with any suffitly strong light-themed spell, but it could still cause problems for unprepared groups.

  The sed ability was reted, but not so easily tered. Once a day, they could release a billowing cloud of dark ‘smoke’ from underh their scales. This was a chemical rea instead of a spell, and was a strong irritant to most species, creating effeot uhat of pepper oil. The bination made it hard to see them and was extremely distrag, but also shorter-lived than the darkness spell. This was generally going to be used to ehe winged serpent to escape when injured.

  Their primary bat ability oisoned bite. These were ambush predators, and typically would dive in on prey and deliver several bites before retreating, and would repeat the tactic as needed. And for a final touch, he gave them a razor-sharp tail tip, more than capable of fying flesh and enabling them to eat prey in pieces, unlike a snake.

  Now, he knew what he wao do for the two ‘warring’ fas already, but the ‘wildlife’ didn’t feel quite fleshed out yet, and he wao nail that down first. Well, he had water and air covered, and the warring fas would cover the surface of the nd well enough, so why not something from underground?

  While snakes could fulfill this role too, Mordecai felt that it would be overdoing it at this point. And definitely nothing pnt-like, he’d done enough with the mushroom already. So a burrowing animal of some sort. Hmm. Let's see what his options were.

  Well, no burrowing birds, he already had a flying challenge in a dense forest, he didn’t need more. Rabbits and polecats have been used in other levels already before even sidering what his warring fas were going to be like. In the end he had two choices he liked, and decided that the mammal would probably work better with the warring fas, so he developed the other into a proper predator instead.

  Not that it wasn’t already, but it was a little small for humans, and he could make some other improvements as well. Mordecai began eling magito a sele of trap door spiders te them to about the size of a horse ao work ‘improving’ them. The first step was to make their poison more potent, namely into a mix of paralytic agents and digestive ehen he enhaheir silk weaving abilities, giving them differeypes by adding ‘normal’ webs, throw-webs, and the ability to y out sensory threads on the ground in addition to using webbing to reinforce their irs and create the trapdoors.

  Of course, having them only use ground irs would be b. So Mordecai made sure they could dig into some of the rger mushroom trees to create irs there too. Getting through this floor was going to require some proper paranoia. Now, while both the river drakes and the feathered serpents were going to be able to e i numbers, the giant spiders were tougher foes, so he was going to limit them to hunting in pairs. This still wasn’t normal spider behavior, but that would help make things creepier and keep people ooes.

  He had a nice sele of fungal hazards and dangerous creatures, so now it was time to start w owo war camps and their denizens.

  Zagaroth