Editing Drik (section)

=Regular Drik=
A drik is a powerful animal, built low to the ground and covered by a thick horn-encrusted shell. At birth the drik has no shell. But while growing, the young drik secretes a resin and bits of bone that form the beast’s carapace. The shell hardens as the creature matures to an adult and protects the drik from behind the head all the way to the tail. This shell is a dark gray, speckled white with bone chips. The scaly hide of the drik is a deep brown, though some appear light brown or even yellow. The drik’s heavy body is supported by four thick, stublike legs, each sporting four huge claws. The drik’s head is enormous and has two black eyes. It has a large mouth capable of swallowing a human whole. Several jagged tusks protrude menacingly from below the creature’s mouth. The drik communicates with other driks through grunts and bellows. More intelligent creatures must use psionics or magic to communicate with a drik.

Its sheer bulk gives it an awesome might, making young driks targets for beast masters from both Urik and Raam to serve in their armies. The capture of the young driks has all but depleted the wild drik.

Wild driks live in small family units dominated by a single female. Other adult females are not welcome within a family. They generally eat the grasses and shrubs of the badlands or the slower animals they can catch. Feral driks often lie still and wait for unwary creatures to wander within attack range. They drink from the Black Waters, making it fairly easy for trappers to locate them. Driks are the only animals known that can ingest Hamanu’s terrible poisons from the Black Waters and survive.

In captivity, driks are ideal animals for siege combat. Their natural ram attack is quite valuable, as is their great size and natural protection. Some driks are used to pull massive siege towers or wagons, but often they are used as individual, mobile weapons platforms (see drik war machine, below).

A drik mother lays its eggs in the Black Waters every three years. The young then find the nearest adult female (not necessarily its mother) and become part of that family. A drik reaches adulthood in two years and can live to be 30 years old.

An adult drik weighs roughly 5 tons and can carry as much as 2,000 pounds on its back before it simply refuses to move. A drik can pull as much as 10 tons on wheeled vehicles or drag 5 tons behind it on a litter or similar platform.

A drik is particularly foul-tempered in captivity. In battle, each drik has its own psionic master who directs its activities. However, in the everyday life of a captive drik, trainers must deal with them without the benefit of psionicists. Casualties among drik trainers are high. No driks have been bred in captivity.

A drik war machine is similar to the standard drik, but the shell has been reshaped to allow siege weapons to be mounted on its back. Captors reshape the shell to permit greater ramming power.

The drik’s resin shell is melted and partially reshaped. Workmen with torches flatten the surface of the shell to more readily accept ballistae and catapults. Raamese engineers have perfected a technique whereby a wooden mold is built around an immobilized young drik as its shell is forming. Though only one drik in three survives the process, the results can be spectacular. A drik so customized has siege weapons mounted on its back, the number and damage caused varies by weapon type and the type of structure being attacked.