[Cosmosdex] The Universal Encyclopedia

[Cosmosdex]

Smooth Tiger
     

Snitchfly / Spotlights

Smooth Tiger
“While not a traditional choice, smooth tigers are related to tailmics, and despite their pushy nature, they are as protective as their relatives. A smooth tiger will alert you to any dangers, but in return, it'll make the danger just as aware of you......” — Notail's guide to picking a starter

Art by, excalibur

  • Strength-5
  • Intelligence-2
  • Charisma-1
  • Endurance-4
  • Agility-6
  • Luck-5

Danger Level: High
Likes: Stalking things it does not know, Making loud noises, Getting in the way of escape routes, Swarming, Humming, Being petted on the torso
Dislikes: Not being elevated, Invasion of territory by other of its kind, Attempts at fleeing its gaze

Attack Method: While smooth tigers are content to just view their target, they will use their powerful jaws and large size to incapacitate their opponents if forced into an attack. When escaping, smooth tigers will emit a powerful light from their tail region before darting off in a random direction.

Attributes
Environment: Cities, Towns, Anywhere with large objects to perch on and plentiful food
Lifespan: 80 years
Size: 4 ft tall, 11 ft long
Diet: Anything edible

Bodytype: Multiped
Type: Psychic Arthropod
Rarity: Rare

Original Creator: Atomic


Physical Description

Large mutated siblings of the tailmic, the lovingly named smooth tiger is a black centipede-like arthropod with four long wings that allow it to fly parallel to the ground and turn in the air instantly. They are black with various bright metallic markings. The "mask" of the creature is gold in both coloration and gleam if a high-ranking official owns it. The signature of its creator, the previous version of the notail leader, O-6, sits upon it, a deceiving "<:3c".

Six legs allow it to attach to all but the most slippery of surfaces, though smooth tigers rarely use it for walking, preferring instead to fly or "hop" even small distances. Small when hatched, smooth tigers and take over half of their lifespan to reach their full size. The longest one has been recorded at 22 feet long, but most of them average six to 11 feet in length.

The fauna is most notable for its bright bioluminescence. Its eyes, antenna tips, mandibles, and gold markings all passively glow in the dark while the tip of its tail(s) only glows in response to viewing an interesting subject. The bulbs at the end of these appendages are actually modified eyes, and as such, when lit up, they become blinded by their own light. The tailpieces come in two shapes, stinger and cone. The former acts as a free-hanging light bulb, and the latter as a spotlight. Depending on the heritage of the smooth tiger, they may have two stingers, two cones, one of each, or just one in general.

Behavior

The leader who created the smooth tiger was considered one of the worst in notail history. His "children" enforced his harsh rule. With him killed by his opposers, the smooth tiger has been changed into a more casual attitude, protecting the skies and reporting incidents to F-classes. A nocturnal species, this insect races between buildings, shining a light on curiosities. Constant goals are necessary for a smooth tiger. If left alone to its own devices, it becomes overly nosey and wanders through large enough opened windows to grab any item not nailed down with its mandibles.

True to its tailmic heritage, it is overly friendly to notails. As long as the day is calm, it will take short breaks to land near residents on the street to hum towards and be petted.

Despite the psychic abilities of the smooth tiger, it is not a passive user. Instead, it opts to use its powers to confuse its target after its lights blind it. It intends to trap its foe within their own mind until forces can come claim them, except in the case of dealing with other fauna. Infamous for their invasiveness on other planets, these arthropods decimate populations of animals who have no defense against them.

Young F-classes are given recently hatched smooth tigers as capture creatures. While these immature insects aren't anywhere as powerful as adults, they are fiercely loyal to their owner. They scout from the sky, informing their owners of interesting objects by shining a light in the direction.

Notails who use them in childhood often specialize in becoming nocturnal officers. Crime rates on notail planets are extremely low, thus they will usually work on missing person cases, animal attacks, and invasion prevention.

Subspecies

Night stalker: Night stalkers are all black and optionally have a tail light. These graceful shadows of the night can spot and grab their targets silently. While their nighttime vision is unmatched, they become blinded in the mornings or under harsh light sources. Shining a flashlight into their eyes is enough to disable them. Most targets are unable to deploy this tactic as, more often than not, the night stalker finds them before they realize one is around.

Greater smooth tiger: Greater smooth tigers look the same as normal ones but can stop all psychic activity, even minor ones such as telepathy, around them. These are only allowed by high-ranking officials and are trained to refuse orders from anyone else.

Special

Hallucination: Smooth tigers may use their psychics to impact what their target sees. Often they begin their manipulation of the mind after blinding the victim. When they finally regain sight, they may find themself surrounded by smooth tigers, inside a cage, lost in a location they've never seen before, or within a dark void. Unlike most psychics, they are "injection-based," which means the victim will continue to see the hallucination even when the smooth tiger has left the area. The victim's brain usually recovers from the manipulation hours after the event, but in a handful of reported cases, people have ended up mentally stuck in a false reality for months.

Trivia

• The mask of a smooth tiger can have variations such as "<:3" "<=3" and even may revert to its tailmic origins with "=)".

• Tailmics are indifferent to smooth tigers. They will perk up when one starts to hum and even join in, but they lose interest in less than a minute into this interaction.

• Like the fauna they are related to, smooth tigers have the ability to look like notails to non-notails. Unfortunately for any onlookers, the form is twisted and mangled, often confused for "the most disgusting A-bomination class they have ever seen" and "a notail in only the absolute loosest sense of the word."

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