Ancardia's Unusual Animals--The Mishipeshu, or the Bunyip
Classification: Dragon (mishipeshu/bunyip)
Habitat: Deep areas of slow rivers, oxbow lakes, and billabongs spread throughout southern Akimmia, the northern Silver Coasts, the Southern Drakalors and in the Underground’s uppermost layer.
The Mishipeshu (known as a Bunyip in Ogrish, as it is referred to in the Underground) is a cousin of the true dragons much like the Kirin. Unlike all of its relatives, the mishipeshu is a fully carnivorous creature, known to prowl rivers and shallow lake and wetland systems in a crocodile-like fashion. Adult mishipeshu are moderately-sized animals, usually about 3 meters from nose to tail, and their preferred prey are proportionately somewhat large and include deer, sheep and goats, small aurochs, waterfowl, moose calves and large waterdog salamanders, dire flathead frogs, and deepwater rats (in the Underground), but they have been known to attack a wide range of creatures that come to the waterside, including both small and medium-sized humanoids. It is an intelligent, somewhat migratory, and long-lived species with an extremely low reproductive rate, and tends to dig out temporary dens with underwater access in the banks of clay-based rivers and pools, with an emergency exit by land some meters away under brushy cover. Their name in Sudavaan alludes to their much-feared status, as it means “water panther”.
Mostly solitary, every four years mishipeshu will seek out mates in the late autumn and pair up in adjoining home territories in order to raise their young. Much like true dragons, these creatures lay eggs in clutches of three to eight, with a few infertile decoy eggs also included, and after about four months the eggs hatch into somewhat mobile but otherwise helpless whelps. Over the course of the next year, mishipeshu whelps begin to swim, hunt small animals, and draw on their natural arcana for stealth, and after about two years they become fully independent but do tend to linger in the territory of one or more parents until they reach a certain level of experience. Mishipeshu tend to live an average of 150 years in the wild, with the record age for one being an elder female from the Buldar region who lived to be 247 years of age.
