@tyrantisterror ATOM Create-A-Kaiju Contest Enntry #3: Oz and her FamilyDate Discovered: December 25

@tyrantisterror ATOM Create-A-Kaiju Contest Enntry #3: Oz and her FamilyDate Discovered: December 25th, 1960 (Oz); November 2nd, 1961 (Dorothy, Toto, and Glinda)Place of Origin: The Aboriginal Yameneon SystemNotable Stomping Grounds: The Aboriginal Yameneon System, The Australian OutbackHeight: 50 feet (Oz); 12 feet (Dorothy, Toto, and Glinda)Length: 60 feet (Oz); 15 feet (Dorothy, Toto, and Glinda)Wingspan: 100 feet (Oz); 25 feet (Dorothy, Toto, and Glinda)Biology:Despite resembling the Flying Tyrant subclade of carnivorous retrosaurs from a distance, “Oz” (short for “Ozdactylus”, a corruption of her genus name of Australodactylus) and her children are in fact predatory flying mammals. For a time, their placement in the mammal family tree was uncertain, with a resemblance to primates and the ability to fly like bats. The only instance of close observation of these kaiju has revealed however that their closest relatives are modern marsupials, which ironically includes their favorite food - kangaroos. Convergent to the flying tyrants in form and function, the membranous wings of Oz and her family are supported by elongated, flexible spurs of bone mounted upon their wrists rather than actual fingers, allowing them to soar effortlessly and then swoop down on prey with prehensile foot claws and shearing teeth not unlike those of the marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex.As with other Australian kaiju, how Oz and her pups survived the extinction of much of the megafauna of Australia is not yet known, but most hypotheses point towards the Yamaneon tunnel system under much of the outback. Notably, an opening to the tunnel system was discovered shortly after Victoria was shaken by a magnitude 5.3 earthquake on Christmas Day of 1960 - while no major damage was reported, it is likely that this geological disruption caused a chain reaction in one or more of the Yamaneon tunnels nearby, eventually resulting in at least one of the tunnels close to the ground level opening up and its inhabitants escaping. Oz herself was originally thought to have been heavily pregnant when she was first sighted flying near Melbourne the day after the quake, but it is more likely that she was instead carrying her still-developing young in a pouch at the time, though how she was able to conceive a whole litter of “marsupial bats” despite atomic fossilization supposedly reducing fertility rates is uncertain.Oz and her family sport the standard kaiju power set:Super strengthAn enhanced healing factorImmunity to radiationHistory and Personality:While Oz herself was sighted regularly since her emergence into the surface world, her children would not make their debut until almost a year later. Strange disappearances of livestock and bits of kangaroo falling from the sky had been coming in from much of southeast Australia’s rural areas, and the identity of the perpetrator was eventually revealed when a retrosaur-sized “winged monkey” swooped down upon the streets of Sydney. The creature was followed by two more of its kind and they soon went about terrorizing the pedestrians unlucky enough to be outside at the time. However, the intervention of a traveling circus led to the three of them being captured with only a few fatalities - humans turned out to be too bony for their taste, at least compared to kangaroos.The city soon had bigger things to complain about, however, when word soon came of Oz - who, strangely, looked almost identical to the smaller fliers except much bigger - making a beeline for the city as well. What surprised onlookers was that despite taking down multiple aircraft and causing quite a bit of collateral damage during her visit, she wasn’t actually interested in causing destruction, instead attempting to reach the circus grounds where the smaller fliers were being held captive. Once it became clear that these were in fact her offspring, the military backed off and let her leave the city with the pups in tow. It was a well-earned lesson for both sides, with humanity getting to know more about a few of their monsters, and Oz’s family in turn now knowing better than to blunder haphazardly into human civilization.Despite fearful comparisons by the public to Ahuul at first, Oz’s demeanor is more akin to a caring but frequently bereaved single parent; scientists have theorized that her ancestors were social creatures, with both parents taking care of the young. Shy and retiring by nature, Oz tends to avoid humanity and more violent kaiju whenever she can - many “attacks” by her are often preceded by her children happening upon a random small town or farmstead and inciting mayhem until she intervenes, and given her harrowing albeit brief experience with the Australian military she knows better than to stick around any large city for very long. If her often exasperated-sounding calls while looking for her litter are any indicator, she presumably wishes they felt the same way. That being said, she loves her children and will throw her all into protecting them; as willing as she is to socialize with like-minded individuals at her size range, the grudges she holds towards anyone who attempts to hurt her pups are long-lasting and most such kaiju bear more than a few telltale bites and scars.Oz’s children were named after characters from the same book as the one whom Oz herself is named after. Unlike Oz herself, her children are full of youthful energy, spunk, and a propensity for mischief. Though they do cause unintended carnage when dealing with cities or other kaiju, they aren’t malicious in nature - rather, their intelligence among marsupials often leads to them being easily bored from a lack of stimuli. When that happens, they tend to make their way towards the nearest herd of standard-sized animals, scattering and harrying them but not actually hurting them (unless they’re chasing after food sources like grazing animals, which inevitably leads to complaints from ranchers and wildlife conservationists). They also enjoy buzzing skyscrapers, chasing vehicles, startling and teasing other monsters, and pelting structures with debris just to see what will happen - though unless kangaroos are involved, any fatalities they may cause in the process are purely accidental.Though they’re always seen together, each of the triplets has its own color and personality quirks, with the trio operating as a sort of “squad”. The reddish-furred Dorothy is the de-facto leader of the three, and seems to behave the most sensibly - the other two seem to follow her around and will wait for her assent before commencing their mischief-making. The gray-colored Toto is the only male of the three, and also the physically strongest and most headstrong, stubbornly pushing his luck against other monsters and harassing military forces even after his sisters retreat, though any spirited defense will eventually ward him off before long. The pale-hued Glinda seems to be the “nicest” of the three, though that isn’t saying much; she merely prefers to keep her distance from conflict, using her ominous shadow to scare smaller creatures into stampeding. She is also known to preen herself frequently - she could almost be described as vain, and her glossy, almost silken fur doesn’t help much, either.While the three of them do tend to bicker over food, roles in pranks, and sleeping space in their mother’s pouch, these triplets’ united spirit is likely to remain unbroken even after reaching adulthood. Wherever these triplets go, trouble tends to follow - as does their mother.Super super late, but here’s my third entry for this contest! I was a bit sad that the original version of Oz got cut from the “main” storyline, due to being too similar, character-wise, to Ahuul. I decided to change up the character in its entirety, in terms of species, behavior, and role. Oz is now a she, and has little baby Oz-es to go with her - the backstory being an homage to Gorgo and his mom. I’m pretty sure something similar was done with another entry, but I felt that a passive creature would still be distinct enough from Ahuul to work well on its own.Oz’s new look, the fact that she’s now a mammal and from Australia specifically, is based almost entirely on the obsolete hypothesis that pterosaurs were flying carnivorous marsupials - a notion that’s been explored before in monster artwork. I decided to take that particular concept and slap on a monkey/cuscus-ish head with the teeth of a marsupial lion, because most depictions in artwork have a long narrow snout based on the original Pterodactylus skull and I didn’t want to accidentally plagiarize. The wings are based on the patagium of a sugar glider, which is supported by a bony strut on the wrist; I expanded it into something that could make a conceivable wing, looking suspiciously similar to pterosaur wings but in fact being far more unique. I considered giving it another wing strut on the elbow like Otachi or Aerodactyl, but in the end I felt that the design looked a little better without it. Plus it helps distinguish the wing structure from all those the cartilaginous “bat-wing” struts on Ahuul’s wings. Another design idea was to give them colorful facial patches like a mandrill, but those were dropped too due to complicating the design a tad and being a bit too much of a stretch even for the evolutionary standards of their home universe of sorts. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! :DI hope submitting these fellers all in one single entry doesn’t mean I can’t send in two more entries - they’re all the same species, treated as a group, and virtually inseperable as the people of ATOM’s Sydney can tell you - but then again, Tyrantor and Tyranta got their own entries compared to Tyrantis. Hmm… -- source link

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