Weight: 25kg, Length: 80cm + 30cm tail. Solitary.
The puke dragon is totally deaf, but it has excellent, finger like, olfactory organs on the back of its head, and its two "horns" are used to determine wind speed and direction, to help determine the origin of odours. It has two pairs of eyes. The fixed, forward pointing pair provides sharp, stereoscopic detail in an octave range from yellow to UV at distances from 1 cm to 10 m. The second pair points sideways for a 360° field of vision in the IR range, by swinging its head when the head is erect, but with blind spots straight ahead and back as it tilts down to eat from the ground. This second set of eyes is more for noticing movement and temperature difference, than for detailed vision. To compensate for the blind spots, it moves and turns a lot when eating, to cover all directions with the IR eyes. This is most noticeable if the food is smelly or if there is a strong wind, since that would make its sense of smell less reliable.
The puke dragon is a slow animal. It mainly eats decomposing wood (including small protein rich reducers), but also carrion when it finds it. The dragon turns cellulose to sugars through acid-catalyzed hydrolysis. It's developed internal structures which are highly acid resistant through a glass-like inner coating of most exposed surfaces, in combination with extremely rapid regrowth of damaged tissue in the remaining surfaces. After processing cellulose, it ejects remaining acid through the nose opening.
When approached by a threat it will turn directly towards the threat, and face it. If the threat approaches, it will squirt the content of its acid gut at the threat when it gets within range, which is about 2 meters. This rapid emptying of the gut will damage the rigid, glass-like coating, and can be lethal to the animal. It can only be done once in weeks. If it survives the injuries it's inflicted on itself, it needs to regrow its damaged cellulose gut, and will be both defenceless and reliant on a carrion diet for several weeks.
The easy way to deal with a threatened puke dragons is to slowly back off until out of sight, and then either take another route, or just wait until it's left, which is usually within 10 minutes unless it was chewing wood, which could leave it in the same spot for about 30 minutes.
The reproductive system and social habits of Puke Dragons have not been properly researched. It's rare to come across more than one at a time, and most tissue will rapidly decompose when it dies, at least if it dies after ejecting the acid gut. It seems to have parallel gut systems for cellulose and other food, sorting as it swallows.
Hits: 10
Speed: 1m
Skills:
Attacks: Claws (D6), spit acid
Traits: Armour (1), Small (-1)
Behaviour:
