FRIC — Viewing Species: Scale Mimic

This tiny egg is perfectly spherical, but also heavier than it looks, with a texture like corroded metal. It's hard not to feel as if one has seen a material like this before, but it's hard to tell with all the metallic creatures on this planet.

The spherical egg hatched into a disconcerting-looking, eight-legged worm-like creature. Its main body is white and segmented, but its head and legs are a deep blue which seems just as familiar as the egg it emerged from. The larva mostly seems to eat vegetation scrap it's given, especially leafy greens, but care must be taken to keep it away from metal.

The Scale Mimic is, as its name suggests, a tiny parasitic arthropod that mimics the scales of a Fulminifer. Though these creatures are herbivores as larvae, once they reach adulthood they exclusively parasitize the dragons whose scales they mimic, feeding off the same metals which would otherwise reach the Fulminifer's outer armor. Because of this, the adult Scale Mimic takes on the colour scheme of the host, to better blend in with its surrounding neighbors and avoid notice by the dragon.

Scale Mimics are able to fly long distances in search of a suitable host. When it finds one, it nestles in between the Fulminifer's scales and works away at the root of one scale in particular, trying to loosen it. When the scale is finally shed and falls away, the parasite takes position at the follicle, burying its proboscis in the empty space to feed on the oil that coats the Fulminifer's scales with metal and pigment. The dragon may experience minor irritation in the area for a time, but as the Mimic settles in, this fades. Most wild adult Fulminifers carry at least a few Scale Mimics, which are naturally weaker than real scales but otherwise almost indistinguishable.