Longxue
The longxue are a lungedic race heralding from the East of Terra Continenti. They are unknown to the majority of civilizations in the West, and those that do have a concept of them often hold a misconceived image of the longxue as creatures of myth. They are closely related to both xiaolong and lungs. Unlike many of the humanoid species, the longxue have shown a resilience to the mutating effects of magic and have changed little over hundreds of generations. That being said, there is a great amount of superficial diversity among the longxue with their scale and fur colour varying between individuals.
Ancestry
In longxue creation legends, they originated from lungs who tired of the skies and wished to walk upon the land. Conversely to the humanoid race’s knowledge of them, the longxue have always been aware of the existence of humanoid species and believe that the lungs chose their form, while retaining the beneficial aspects of their lungedic ancestors. This ancestry is also likely to explain the stability of their race, lungs being creatures of innate and potent magical ability and certainly capable of such a feat. The original longxue were only of three types, ruby (or red), sapphire (or blue), and emerald (or green), with the other colourations appearing afterwards.
Physiology
Longxue are a warm-blooded, bipedal creatures. They stand taller than most humanoid races, many broaching six feet in height, and clustering toward a mean average. They have a scaly skin covering most of their body, with prominent scales on the neck, spine, feet and snout. Their feet and hands are both taloned, or these are less pronounced on the hands, and they do not have tails, unlike their naxidairen cousins. Contrary to much Western mythologising the longxue are incapable of breathing fire, except by magical means. Longxue are only minorly sexually dimorphic, with longxu (males), retaining a far greater lustre to their scales as they mature than longxuni, (females). This has lead to another myth in the West that an ‘emerald’ longxue would be different to a ‘green’ longxue, when actually the likely difference would be gender.
In addition to their scales, longxue have facial fur along the underside of their elongated snouts and sometimes have manes on their spines too. These are both less prominent in the longxuni. The ‘whiskers’ of a longxue grow throughout their life and can be a reliable indication of age, they will reflect the colour of the longxue’s skin, and are used for navigation in dark spaces, they have also developed a role in emotional expression as the species civilised. While called whiskers, they are thin strands of muscle and nerve. It is only a handful of longxue bloodlines that have retained the antlers that the lungs also posses.
Despite being warm blooded, as they are unable to sweat, thermo-regulation is difficult for longxue. Cold temperatures are tolerable, if somewhat easier to avoid, but overheating is the true danger for the longxue. While they have a higher threshold for temperature than most humanoids, once that threshold is reached the consequences can easily become fatal, with the onset of exhaustion rapid. In colder temperatures an improperly insulated individual can appear sluggish and drowsy, reaction time slows and shivering occurs.
Diet
Longxue are adapted to a carnivorous lifestyle, with teeth designed to tear flesh, however are perfectly able to sustain themselves on vegetables as well, leading most to an omnivorous or even herbivorous lifestyle. As agriculture has boomed, it has only lead to further diversity in diet.
Reproduction
Longxue are oviparous, with the longxuni laying usually laying only one at a time, and only after mating. The eggs have a tough, leathery exterior and will only hatch under certain conditions. In normal conditions, an egg will incubate for at least half a year, allowing the clutch to hatch together and during a favourable time of the year, (spring, summer, or second spring), when food is more likely to be plentiful. As the longxue civilised it became possible to artificially induce hatching by imitating those conditions, even when the full incubation period has not passed. The incubation period was also determinist on the colour of a longxue, alongside genetic factors. Gold longxue and black scale colouration only occurs in prematurely birthed longxue, gold in conditions of a consistent temperature throughout incubation and black where the temperature has been inconsistent. In longxu, gold colouration can appear as bronze or copper instead and black may present as silver. A fully incubated egg will produce ruby, sapphire, or emerald longxue, depending on heritage, whereas an egg incubated for a period exceeding a seasonal year may lack pigmentation in their scales entirely.