Threadtail

[Ren Vikarson]

Species name: Threadtail



Class: Strike



Images:
 


Physical Description: Long and often colourful dragons Threadtails have strong necks and tails and a broad wingspan built to take full advantage of the winds and updraughts. They have a prominent frill on the back of their long jawed head and a ridge of spines along their backs and tails. Their legs are slender and built for running with shorter and denser claws than many dragons of similar size.



Typical Behaviour: Observant dragons Threadtails like to discover and investigate new things or changes to the world around them and can seem easily distracted or even obsessive with keeping things in the same places giving the impression that they don't like change. Young Threadtails can often be seen scratching and rolling around trying to sooth their itches from excreting venom when scared or in danger. Like most strike class dragons Threadtails are intelligent and wilful usually living in lairs away from other dragons so there isn't anything to upset how they like to keep their homes.



Abilities: One of a Threadtails most notable abilities is its poison which it can secrete through its skin on almost any part of its body. Contact with this poison causes severe itching and rashes that can last for weeks without treatment. Getting Threadtail venom in the eyes can cause temporary or even permanent blindness if not treated quickly. The effects of their venom can be countered by dragonberry oil and its always smart to keep this on hand when working with these dragons. Like most Strike class dragons Threadtails have a method to help them navigate their environments, the frill on a Threadtails head is full of magnetic receptors allowing the dragon to perceive magnetic fields, along with their strong geographic memory a dragon can tell where it is even in pitch black conditions and remember where any previously perceived obstacles are.



Shot Limit: Threadtails unleash eight blazing torrents of heat in a continuous linear blast. These beams of flame can burn through solid steel and cut down a tree in a clean swipe. some examples have been seen of these dragons holding their jaws closed and firing this beam through their teeth causing it to scatter into smaller shots over a wide area.



Drawbacks: Threadtails are not immune to their own venom, its effects just cause them to itch but since it soaks through their skin they can need a prolonged wash to remove it. Powerful magnetic fields can throw off a Threadtails natural senses and make them disoriented and unable to discern direction with their magnetic receptors. Sometimes these dragons can rely too heavily on their environmental memory and attempt to navigate by it even when the environment has changed and can lead to them crashing into obstacles it didn't know was there.



Blind spot: A Threadtail has difficulty looking at its own shoulders, its neck usually craning too much to see where it begins.



Training Methods: Threadtails are observant and curious dragons and its best to keep their stables the way they like them otherwise they can spend hours righting everything obsessively. Long flights help them commit their territory to their powerful memories and make them feel more confident in new locations.  



Habitat: Threadtails usually live in reach of water or dragonberry bushes where they can self treat their poison and the itches it can cause. They prefer their lairs to face north and always orient themselves to face north when idle or sleeping. Usually these dragons nest in high mountains or coastal cliffs where updraughts mean they can fly for long periods with little effort and reach dizzying heights to survey large areas and dive on possible prey.



Diet: Threadtails feed off fish like most dragons using their long jaws to skim the ocean and their serpentine bodies to swim in pursuit of shoals. The don't turn their nose up to most other kinds of meat and seem to have a fondness for frogs.



Created by: Dreamworks

[PIME2]

Hey Edge, I'll review this application since you've mentioned some interest in playing this dragon. Obligatory apologies in advance for post length, kind of need to learn to write less when I'm in review mode. Anyway;

I guess the most important detail that needs to be discussed is this dragon's class. While there are sources which state them to be 'Strike' Class (the only one i know if is a RoB staff member saying it in a comment, which is not a viable source tbh), I cannot see in any of the 'official' information on them any characteristics which indicate this fact. Unless you have a source we can't find, every strike class characteristic you have written in the app has been inferred from the class listed, not found from any material (which is very thin of the ground).

As such, we are unsure whether we should agree with what RoB says or go with our personal opinion on what the class should be. If either Red or I looked at the official material and weren't told it was Strike Class, we would say it would either be a Stoker or Mystery dragon, though more inclining towards the latter. This is because we view the defining characteristic of mystery dragons are they use avant-garde abilities to either defence themselves (Changewings or Bonenappers), lure prey (Death Song, Sweet Death) or combat threats in a way that minimises combat (Flightmare and Death Song again). So basically they are dragons that try to avoid direct confrontation and instead use their strange abilities to win, rather than speed, strength or firepower. The sole characteristic of note for Threadtails is their ability to secrete poison and are coloured like poison dart frogs to scare threats away from attacking them. That sounds pretty in keeping with what I just described.

A defining characteristic of Strike class dragons, as well as speed, intelligence etc., is that they are all ambush predators. They all hide in skies/clouds/blizzards and then use their speed to cheetah-style spring on their prey before it can flee. No predator needs poisonous skin and definitely no fast, strong, intelligent ambush predator. It’s a trait that prey would have to make predators leave it alone. They do not feel like Strike class dragons.

The other thing to talk about is all of the information you have added to Threadtails. As already mentioned, there is very little official info on them, it’s pretty much only their physical description, a bit on how they flew in HTTYD2, the fact that they do breathe fire or some kind and the pros and cons of their poison. That’s kind of it.

While yes the material needs to be expanded on a bit to be able to be used on this site, we would really prefer it if expansions were kept to a little as is necessary. For this app that means we don’t particularly like your addition of magnetic receptors, it doesn’t really fit what’s in canon and just generally feels off. I recognise this comes from the whole ‘strike class dragons are good navigators’ but a. We don’t agree it’s a strike class and b. it’s still an unneeded addition even then.

Similarly, if you accept our call that it should be a Mystery dragon, it would be good if you could remove all of the Strike based additions and instead try to think about what they best ways to expand on Threadtails with Mystery in mind. It’s got secretes poison, why does it need to? Is it physically weak or have some flaw that leaves it wide open and thus tries to scare away threats rather than fight them? Does it have any predatory tendencies itself, if so how does it hunt without getting into conflict?

Hope you understand where we’re coming from and are willing to change this app accordingly . Btw, if you do decide to debate the whole Strike Class thing, do remember, we assume all Strike class dragons (especially canon ones) are rare unless they have a sufficiently large flaw to compensate for the OPness of Strike class. There is no way you could make this dragon Strike, true to canon and non-rare. Just thought that was worth pointing out.

[Ren Vikarson]

I'm pretty sure there was never any mention of Strike class being ambush predators, in fact that was entirely the position of the now defunct Fear class and therefore passed to the Mystery class. As for the legitimacy of their class the wiki places them as strike class and thats more position on the matter than the rest of us really have. As for the additions, well odds are we'll never know all the facts and I pride myself on making an interesting dragon out of so little information, better we have a good base even if its largely additions. For a Strike class they seem less powerful than others and with their being a fair number in the second movie compared to one Nightfury, one Skrill and three Snowwraiths in any material thus far they likely aren't as rare, probably they are weaker. Either way its your choice whether its rare or not but it is Strike.
Frankly if you want to make all these changes you can write an app yourself, I took time to make these with all the consideration that it needed so I could be sure I was giving a complete and detailed base, more than what we seem to have for most of the dragons that do have the full facts available. 

[PIME2]

Let’s look at the other four Strike class dragons. Night Furies have dark colours and fire precise shots from the night sky where they can’t be seen. Skrills are coloured so they can hide in thunderclouds and fire their lightning from there, Snow Wraiths are able to hide in blizzards and stalk their prey from there before ambushing them. Woolly Howl’s underbelly is coloured so it can blend in with clouds. Threadtails are brightly coloured to scare predators away from attacking them. It is not ‘stated’ that by dreamworks that all Strike class dragons are ambush predators, but every single one is fast and can camouflage themselves in their favoured area so they have the element of surprise on their prey. Ambush predator probably wasn’t the best word for what I meant, but what i meant was they can all be compared to a cheetah pretty well, Threadtails can’t.

As for the whole “the wiki says it is so it must be true” remember wikis are not maintained by dreamworks or anyone who actually is a reliable source, they’re maintained by people like you or me, just look about for any information they can and add it in. The question is “Where did they get that information from?”, and when red tried to look it up, the only evidence she could find was that Rise of Berk’s FB page commented it was Striker when someone asked what class it was. And in case you didn’t already know, RoB is notoriously bad at adding new information that fits in with what the movies and TV show set up, hence why we prefer to take our info from the former two.

Also, the fact that they seemed to not be rare in the movies is kind of another strike against them being Strike, because Dreamworks has defined their rarity as a characteristic of Strike class dragons. The only reason we even allow the possibility of non-rare custom strike class dragons is because when if someone has made a well-balanced strike we feel like people should be allowed to use them as a whole. But Dreamworks itself has ALL Strikes as rare, so any canon dragon that is strike should be rare on our site.

If you don’t want to rewrite this dragon that’s fine, I or someone else will get round to rewriting it when we have time. I was just giving my frank review of the dragon like I would give any other application.

[Ren Vikarson]

It seems pretty largely that you're denying it on personal opinion and self decided rules rather than legitimate reasons, and I recall this not being the first time. I appreciate any advice but this is just crucifying my efforts to make a decent dragon and therefore wasting a good few hours of careful work and research. Also your theory on Strike class dragons being ambush predators falls flat when you consider most of their prey is irrelevant to that ability. How many sheep is a Skrill going to find in clouds? How many fish are their in the night sky? And now that this irritation has put me off bothering to play one you can do what you want with it.

[PIME2]

It is not a personal opinion to say that all strike class dragons (other than Threadtails) have a particular area which they like prefer to hide in.
It is not a personal opinion to say that all strike class dragons (other than Threadtails) are coloured to blend into that area (be it clouds, the night sky or blizzards).
It is not a personal opinion to say that all strike class dragons (other than Threadtails) to be fast, intelligent, with a powerful, accurate, fire breath and strong jaw.
And it’s not my opinion to say that in the all of the descriptions as provided by Dreamworks and RoB, Threadtails do not have any of these features described, nor is it an opinion to say that Threadtails are brightly coloured dragons.

All of those points are facts which lead us to the opinion that Threadtails do not fit in as Strike class. ‘Ambush predator’ was probably the wrong phrase to use, but the point still stands that every single strike class dragon (except Threadtails) share speed, camouflage and visual perception to hide and observe their enemies/prey before they suddenly ‘strike’ (hence the name of the class), just like (for example) a Cheetah.

I gave a detailed and well thought out explanation as to why we have come to the decision to ignore ‘Rise of Berks’ proclamation that Threadtails are Strike class (which, as a side point only happened in February, before then there was no defined class) and gave as much evidence to back up our reason as I could. So for you to just dismiss what I’ve been saying as ‘personal opinion and self decided rules rather than legitimate reasons’ kind of really insulting.

I am sorry you feel frustrated with us and that we’ve made you feel like you don’t want to use Threadtails. We should have had a look at them before you started and given you the heads up that Rise of Berk had messed up and I should have thought to remind you that we are going to be tough reviewing an application for a canon dragon, because it has to both our understanding of the movies' and TV show's lore and the descriptions you found.

This has also reminded us of something we’ve always needed to add to this site. A questionnaire about every class of dragon which people making applications can read so that they can combat the ‘this doesn’t fit the class you’re saying it’s in’ questions before we even read your app, thus cutting down on time reviewing and would have meant you wouldn’t feel like you’d wasted a couple of hours working on this. Red and I have now written that up and are now just editing it before we publish it.

[Ren Vikarson]

Probably a frustrated and irritable choice of terms. Still it feels like a bad precedent to set. Whatever we think of it the statement that Threadtails are Strike class dragons was made with more authority than any of us have and if we can just say that we don't want to follow it then we're at risk of doing that with a ton of dragons. I mean I still don't like the idea of a Nadder being a Tracker class but I'm not challenging it.