ALL LORE

Those living near the surface often look more like humans with very tame scaling on their skin. They are also smaller in size and usually have a very slim and androgynous build. Many of them are noted to look somewhat fragile, but this is because vetehi generally prefer strangling their victim with their tails, hence not needing much muscle mass on their upper body.

Those living deeper (deep sea vetehi) are often more feral-looking and might have glowing parts and even extra arms. They generally look more monstrous than their smaller surface variants but still clearly resemble humans when it comes to their humanoid half. The very oldest deep sea vetehi look considerably more dragon than human and are said to be many, many generations old.

Vetehi children have very small horns usually blending under their hair, but the horns start growing larger when they are teenagers. They usually resemble corals in terms of shape but sometimes other variations can be seen. Horns are rarely perfectly symmetric.

More about appearance can be read from the trait list

Vetehi tend to mature slower than humans with 25-30 usually considered an adult, but they can mature earlier too. Their life span is anything between 30 to 400 depending entirely on their lifestyle. The most common cause of death for vetehi are humans and their traps. 

→ Babies are born from eggs and are around 0.5m in size
→ Children are 2-3m
→ Teenagers closing 5-8m
→  Adults go from 5-10m

→  However, their length can dramatically differ, same for their size.  Please don’t make yours longer than 10m unless it’s specifically sold as “large adoptable”

→  Those who live near surface are generally smaller than deeper sea counterparts, and they are long rather than large (as in their tail is long and their human half is around the size of an average human)

Because they are not mammals, vetehi lack human-like secondary sex characteristics. Gender is usually hard or even impossible to tell by the looks (often even vetehi don’t know each other’s gender by default, and their own language doesn’t have gender pronouns) and can basically be told only by the scent they emit when they are ready to mate. Their mating resembles snakes. They tend to be aware of their biological sex, but not always!

Vetehi generally don’t care much about gender aside from mating.

Both parents take care of the children due the fact usually only one is born, and they need to protect the egg and the young vetehi until it can hunt on its own. 

Especially surface vetehi like to show their own rank with gems. They place gems on their scales before maturity when the scales are still somewhat soft. The more different decorations the vetehi has the higher it is in rank. High ranked often also have accessories such as pendants and other jewelry, and surface vetehi especially are also known to take good care of their looks. Deeper sea vetehi don’t necessarily have ranks as they don’t communicate much with anyone.

Ranks are established by their territory: those who travel are seen as commoners while those who have claimed a treasure ship or some other place are seen as high ranked. However, their ranking can sometimes be very loose, and it’s known sometimes high ranked vetehi start travelling too, either because they’re bored or they can no longer live within their territory.

Gem stealing also sometimes happens, so vetehi can’t always be entirely sure who is an actual high ranked vetehi and who isn’t simply based on their decorations.

If anything, gems and ranks are something they use as an attempt to form a society, but it’s not actually as crucial part of their life as some like to think. Especially in adopt making gem ranking is mostly for character inspiration, and doesn't need to be followed. 

The species are generally divided to those who stay in deep waters, and those who are drawn towards the surface. However, due to their location, there is sometimes more variation even among common vetehi! This list is going to update! Only deep sea vetehi are considered UR, all other types of vetehi are not tied to traits but instead to location / special skill needed to survive in their environment. 

READ MORE FROM THE VISUAL SUBSPECIES GUIDE

Vetehi children start out as omnivores and opportunistic scavengers, meaning they can eat almost anything as a way to ensure their survival. However, when vetehi mature, they become entirely carnivores and develop a natural dislike for everything else. Although adult vetehi can eat other things than meat too, they do it only in their times of desperate need: their bodies do not digest other things very well and can cause pain and stomach problems, and the pain is tolerable only as a way to avoid starvation to death.

Vetehi diet normally consists of large mammals (humans included, it’s one of their main prey if they aren’t domesticated), fish and other sea creatures, even other merpeople if they get desperate.

Their human-looking half has developed to lure in humans so they can catch them and usually either strangle them or drown them. Each vetehi has their own hunting and prey preference, but generally they have learned to appeal to humans similar to some bloodthirsty mermaids in legends, and prefer human meat.

Vetehi can use weapons like swords and lances, but most often rely on their tail for strangling. Some also have long and sharp claws, and their teeth are rather strong too, even though the human face limits the jaw's movement and thus biting a lot. Their weapons vary greatly: they can be rather simple and self-made, or weapons found from abandoned ships etc. 

Vetehi can live in many different ways. Generally they live together with others, usually from three to ten members in one group, often consisting of family members. New vetehi can join too but they are most often relatives, friends or mates. Being in a group means there is always protection for them and (surface) vetehi are generally in need of social interaction. However, it also means they need to share their food sometimes with the elder vetehi, those who can’t hunt on their own and the children.

There are, however, many vetehi who choose to live either alone or with their friend/partner/sibling. Smaller group/being alone means higher risk of danger, but also means you don’t really need to share your food with the others and in general being alone or in a small group gives you more freedom.

There might be some conflict if unfamiliar vetehi meet. They need to travel a lot due to their large consumption of meat and they generally don’t like it if some other group or vetehi is trying to intefere when they have already claimed the hunting area. However, since they are able to communicate like humans do, they often manage to sort it out somehow - especially when they know their kind is slowly dying out due to being hunted and running out of safe spaces in the sea because of humans.

(That being said, while they usually travel a lot for food, the most high ranked ones sometimes live in the same area for years in old ships or caves, similar to how human nobles live in mansions. They have territory large enough to hunt on their own and they also send servant ranked vetehi to bring food from further away).

While vetehi tend to live rather deep in the ocean because of their big size, they generally do prefer to swim where it’s much lighter too (see: closer to the surface).

Although predators, they are highly intelligent species and have a lot of mannerisms similar to what humans have, probably caused by observing them for hundreds of years. 

Vetehi are not related to humans, even if their form might suggest so. They are ancient dragons who used to live in the seas, and in order to survive, they used magic to adapt a form that could help them to get by.

Vetehi see humans simply as a prey, and usually don't have any feelings towards humans aside from possible feeling of superiority. However, many vetehi try not to be unreasonably cruel to their prey and they try to respect humans enough to give them a fast and quick death, but many vetehi, most notably Lucien, are known to be extremely cruel towards humans.

There are several occasions where a vetehi has gotten attached to a human, but very often their predatory instincts are too strong to give the story a happy end. It is, however, possible for a vetehi and human to coexist, but usually it requires the vetehi to have grown among or at least near humans in order to be fully used to them and control themselves well enough not to be a danger to humans.

Humans in turn often feel very aggressive towards vetehi as they feel threatened, and their pride is hurt for not being on the top of the food chain. This is also the main reason vetehi were hunted and are close to extinction if this keeps on going. Humans also taking away their living space is another reason for the specie members dying.

There is also another side to how humans feel about vetehi: similar to mermaids, they are also highly romanticized despite the trouble they can cause, and people are also very fascinated by these creatures. People often think they are capable of making friends with these creatures, only to be met with death the moment they trust a vetehi.

Vetehi are sometimes captured for various uses, often as a pet, attraction or as an underwater hunter or a soldier. As intelligent species vetehi can be domesticated, but they are often unwilling to learn and obey humans, which is why it's preffered to steal eggs or young vetehi to be able to raise them more human-friendly. 

Although not widely known or discussed, a human can turn into a vetehi if they were to ingest raw vetehi meat. However, this is a dangerous and painful transformation that can lead to unfavorable consequences when the vetehi instincts take over a human who isn’t prepared to fight back against them.

There are certain conditions to turn into a vetehi:

• The meat must be raw: it can’t be cooked or otherwise  prepared in any way
• The meat must be fresh and ingested within 24 hours of the kill
• The amount of meat must be at least a mouthful of the person eating the meat; any less will be ineffective
• The meat must be from the dragon part, thus, it must be acquired from the dragonic lower body

What follows after is nausea and feverish pain, and is then followed by unconsciousness. As the pain is great, many die during this part and never wake up from their unconscious state.

While out cold, the body will go through a painful and relatively slow transformation ranging from 1 to 3 hours (children change faster) until the subject wakes up. Most turned vetehi are animal-like and feral in behavior, not remembering their human past and instead behaving like a confused beast. The human memories and personality return within 7 days, the estimated time anywhere between one hour to 7 days. Some never regain their full personality and memories, but all turned vetehi sooner or later become capable of self identification and words.

Vetehi who used to be humans are typically no different from common vetehi when it comes to their looks, and thus it’s impossible to tell their human past based on this only. However, problems arise in behavior and social skills: humans often act and talk in different ways and don’t always understand vetehi gestures, and they normally lack the ability to understand their own shared language, instead only speaking the human language.

These type of vetehi usually come in two flavours: either they’re unable to control their predatory instincts and they attack humans more relentlessly than the surface vetehi do, or alternatively they can’t bring themselves to harm humans at all (or if they do they deeply regret and lament it).

Vetehi with human past are usually frowned upon and not viewed as “real vetehi” and some might even get aggressive towards them, as they consider humans lower than vetehi, and thus someone lower becoming one of them is often hard for them to tolerate.

Vetehi can naturally only breed with other vetehi due to their type of breeding and genetics, and as such crossbreed don’t exist naturally. However, were a vetehi acquire a human form or a humanoid form enough to breed with a human, a crossbreed can be born.

The conditions are the following:

• They must first acquire a humanoid form
• The form must be human enough to be able to breed with humans; they must have functional reproductive organs identical to humans.
• The birth to the child must be given in this human form

In most cases crossbreeds have a human mother, as most vetehi return to the sea and thus can’t give birth there in their vetehi form, killing the embryo during the transformation. However, some vetehi who can give birth have remained on land until they have given birth.

Physical traits:

Regardless of how human the vetehi’s form has been, the child always possesses vetehi features. The child always has a tail and webbed hands (even if the parent doesn’t have them) and scales on their body, but the intensity and size vary. Often other type of features are present, most typically horns that grow in childhood and paddles similar to the parent’s growing on their hips.  However, even if their body was perfect for swimming, the child can never breathe underwater, possessing human lungs. 

Behavior:

Crossbreed vetehi can usually function in a human society with little to no hunting instinct, but they often enjoy meat food as they grow up. Their upbringing influences them more than their vetehi side does, and many children act and think like humans despite their appearance.

However, they have a strange habit of wanting to be surrounded by the water, and children are often hard to get out of the water when they get in. Likewise, as crossbreed vetehi are technically unnatural, their need to be surrounded by the water and be inside often cause them to drown themselves, either because they can’t live any longer on land, or they feel so good underwater they don’t get up and drown as a result. This is why it’s important for the parents to make sure the child survives to adulthood and learns ways to cope with their need: many become sea captains and/or learn how to hold their breath longer so they can swim more underwater. 

Ironically crossbreed vetehi can’t turn into vetehi by ingesting raw vetehi meat, as it only works for humans. 

All the information that didn't quite fit the other categories!

• They express themselves with lots of gestures, especially underwater!
  
  
• They don’t have a natural ability to turn into humans nor give themselves legs, and they usually don’t know how to access this kind of magic either.  
  
  
• They like to hoard shiny things. The hoarding usually starts when they are teenagers, but sadly they often have to leave their hoard behind when they travel to a new place.  
  
  
• They are very intelligent and can learn fast. They have a good memory and can remember faces for hundreds of years.
  
  
• It’s not impossible for them to get along with humans. However, their hunting instinct is very strong and they normally grow up thinking humans as nothing but prey. Even the most friendly vetehi tend to have trouble sometimes with keeping their instincts in check.
  
  
• They can’t mate with humans unless somehow acquire a human form; their physiology is too different.
  
  
• Social and friendly when it comes to their own groups and friends. They usually mate for life.
  
  
• Variety sexuality-wise is very common, even if they find it important to breed to keep their kind alive
  
  
• They generally live in seas where they have enough space to live, but it’s not impossible to live in other water sources too if their way from sea to there can be explained!