Chiselhead

Appearance
A Chiselhead is a small Brute Wyvern with mostly olive green coloration. It has surprisingly long arms and hooked claws on all limbs. The legs are thin and nimble, the tail is quite long with a small circumference. The creature's head has a flat, triangular shape on top, whose upper edges are sharp, going up from the snout beyond the forehead. The eyes are located at the side of the shape, the mouth, which possesses small sharp teeth, beneath.

Habitat and Ecology
This terrestrial Endemic Life inhabits the muddy areas of the Relentless Stream and in the Moor where it builds hills, which are smooth on one side and uneven on the other, in between two big kinds of obstacle like rocks or logs or similar materials. The small Brute Wyvern shapes the smooth side with the unusual shape on its head by chipping away and flattening the mud. This also gave them its name. The hills are used to catch unsuspecting Neopterons that lose hold on the smooth mud falling into the fangs of the Chiselhead.

The small creatures build their nests in caves within the mud close to the water. They are unexpectedly decent swimmers and occasionally move around in the water. The hooks on their claws enable Chiselheads to climb mud with ease. The mud hill an individual built gets fixed over and over again by it, even if the structure caved in completely. The Brute Wyverns are very pedantic and try to keep the smooth side, which is closer to its nest, as smooth as possible and doesn't tolerate a singular unevenness. The nest entrance has different shapes whose build-up gets inherited from the mother to the offspring by imprinting when the youngs first take a glimpse at such an entrance. The further away two Chiselheads live, the more different their nest caves are. Alterations happen when the cave has a different shape through outside influences and weren't fixed before the offspring see them or when the terrain makes it impossible to shape the nest entrance just right.

Chiselheads don't have a mating season but are able to mate all year round. Because of their small size and short range of moving they rarely encounter other individuals, so they take every chance they get for reproduction. Both males and females built hills and after the mating both return to their own home. The female then lays several eggs in her nest, which is bigger than the nests of males and raises them until they are big enough to live on their own. Juvenile Chiselheads love to slide on the smooth side of the hills which causes the mother to fix the mud over and over again. They have a rather high reproduction rate which is due to high predatory pressure besides the aforementioned factors.

Related Endemic Life

 * Dark Chiselhead
 * Ice Sculpturer

Obtainable Rewards and Materials

 * Rewards for capture: 20 Research Points
 * Materials left behind: None

Trivia

 * This creature is loosely inspired by the Dungeon Cleaners from the manga series Dungeon Meshi (see chapter 33). They fix up broken structures and take care of detritus in the dungeon.