HORNED DRAKE, THE

Horned Drakes are among the most common of all dragonkind, and near the bottom of the dragon/drake food chain. Despised by their distant and great cousins, horned dragons, and commonly thought of as simple food by other great drakes, their lives are harsh and often cut short. They remain fairly numerous as they have taken to having many young.
The average age of Horned Drakes is around 130 years, mostly due to the many that fall victim to larger predators. If not killed by others, they can live to past two centuries. Very rarely a Horned Drake can cross the 300 years mark, most often from being the leader of a great family group, a successful raider and superior in strength to other of its kin.

Appearance.
Horned Drakes, obviously, have horns. A lot of horns. The most common and recognizable horns are groups of small to medium-sized horns on the sides of the back of their head, along with a few medium and a single large spike at the end of their tail. Often smaller horns line their back, shoulders, parts of their feet, and occasionally running from the tip of their tail up their sides till they join the middle row of horns close to the hind legs. They are most commonly dark brownish, adjusted slightly depending on its habitat, more dusty yellowish for certain mountains, more dark greenish for woodsy areas.
The body is extremely muscular and flexible, to support the tough scales and many horns. The tail is one of the primary weapons, along with the usual talons and great, big, pointy teeth. Among lesser and greater drakes, however, it is still fairly small, and even a well-built Horned Drake will be in serious trouble if cornered by a dragon, or even certain other lesser drakes. Most of its armory is used against the larger prey it hunts, less effective for defense against larger enemies.
Commonly, Horned Drakes range from 4 to 6 peds with the tail, and have wingspans of similar dimensions. They are above average fliers, good at soaring low to keep themselves from being spotted, and almost always good at finding hiding places.

Special Abilities.
Like horned dragons the Horned Drakes are fairly primitive regarding magic, speech, and such, but have one interesting special ability. They have no magic whatsoever, except the ability to morph their shape and texture to imitate a rugged mountainside or a large dead tree. This is an obvious self defense mechanism to avoid the larger drakes and dragons that prey on them. However, it is far from perfect, it takes up to a full minute for a Horned Drake to finish the transformation, and very thorough predators that get up close have a chance to detect the change. It's mostly useful if the Horned Drake spots an enemy at a distance or is warned. Often, if faster than the oncoming enemy, they will choose to flee instead. With Horned Drakes being only mediocre fliers, this ability does indeed see some use.

Territory.
Most of the Horned Drakes can be found in the northern part of the kingdom of Santharia and in large parts of the Lands of the Kuglimz, occasionally as far north as the Imlith Mountains. The greatest concentration of them can be found in the Tandala Highlands, the Warnaka Highlands, around Dragonmaw, and slightly further north. Here they are somewhat hunted by the greater drakes, and as such small amounts of Horned Drakes have moved further north, to the Mountains of Oro and the Celeste Mountains. An decent sized group also inhabits the Zeiphyrian Forests, but has no real contact to the main body of Horned Drakes; this group has been isolated since the population in what is now known as the kingdom of Santharia became great enough to push the drakes further into mountains and the occasional forest.

Habitat/Behaviour.
Paranoia is part of mostly every day in the lives of Horned Drakes; especially in mountains with many other, and larger, drakes and dragons. They hunt mostly at dusk or dawn, flying low, using their good eyesight to track down prey and spot predators in time. Often Horned Drakes live in small family groups, a bonded male and female(s) along with any young still under their protection.
Young female Horned Drakes can stay with their parents for quite a few years, up to three decades, where their growing sense of independence urges them to finally leave the nest to prove they can survive on their own. After they hit sexual maturity they develop a sense for when surrounding conditions would permit a mating migration (more on that later).
Males, on the other hand, tend to be kicked out of the nest after 15-20 years at the most. They slowly develop territorial needs, and conflict can arise between young males in the family group. Especially in larger groups with a male and multiple females, where rarely, premature sexual drive in the young males can make them approach young females born by other mothers in the group. Any behavior like this results in the immediate rejection of the male(s) involved from the family and nest. Young males rejected from the nest prematurely rarely survive long.
A family group can last for more than a century, in rare cases more than two. A bonded couple does not fly off when mating migration occurs, but does mate again every few mating cycles, after their current young have mostly left the nest.
Horned Drakes almost exclusively live in caves, they have even been known to improve on "caves" too small to truly be called that, digging deeper if possible. The few non-mountain lairs tend to be located in rocky areas in dark parts of forests and hillsides, more commonly dug out, but still mainly in rocky caves of some sort.