You Find a Mysterious Bone

As you enter your stables you notice one of your pets has somehow gotten a hold of an odd bone the likes you've never seen. You manage to pry it from your pet's grip with a tasty bribe. The bones is covered in clay and dirt and must have come from one of the islands. You have no idea what part it is or what creature it came from. It is stained with brown and orange from countless generations of age. Maybe the local paleontologist will have a clue to what it is.

Go search for the paleontologist. (Will be linked)

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You find the paleontologist busy at his dig site. There are wood stakes and ribbons patterned on the ground around and in carefully dug pits. Waiting for him to finish up what he is doing you go to take a look at some excavated bones. You reach to touch what appears to be a cygon skull when you hear a sharp yell, making you jump back. You have his attention now. You show him the bone and he snatches it from your hands and dances around. He recollects himself and explains his outburst. The bone is from an extremely rare and newley discovered species of mammal-like-reptile, what he is calling a Catermaul. He has been desprate to make a complete skeleton of one and you have given him an important piece. He offers a deal to you. If you help him make a complete skeleton he will be able to get DNA from atleast one of the bones and with the help of the warlocks be able to clone you a Catermaul of your very own. You agree to help him in the exciting search for a new species. You are given  rough sketches of what each bone should look like and you are off on your search.

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With a recent monsoon the islands earth has been washed away and exposed. This is bound to have made the catermauls's bones easier to find. The monsoon hit the jungle and grasslands and that is where the bones can be found to be picked up. Guardians may also give bones when defeated if they happen to have picked one up for themselves.

A skull can only be obtained through an island buildings, temple guards, or on the battlefield.

Below are the bones that must be found to complete the skeleton.
(can be changed, I was just trying to balance number between cat and gator bones)

(20) Rib
(30) Vertabrae
(2 )Scapula
(1) Pelvis
(2) Humerus
(2) Femur
(2) Fibula
(2) Tibia
(4) Handful of Feet Bones
(4) Handful of Unidentified Bones
(1) Skull (gp cult building, temple guard, magic shop or 10 hours on the Old Mine.)

The bones should be tradeable/sellable to be able to swap extra bones for needed ones.

I think the easiest set up for this is to use the kami page and tweak it a bit. Instead of fight as the option when all objectives are complete it would be clone.
To create a clone takes 12 hours. When that time is up, another clone can be made. Only one clone is able to be created at the same time. Clones can be made until the end of the event which should last enough for everyone to get enough catermauls to breed from. The skeleton only needs to be completed once to be able to have enough genetic material to create clones, All the bones are bound to not be from the same beast so they wont be exactly the same.

The catermauls will have reduced breeding points from the extreme age of the samples.

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 (The gene's frequencies can be changed to what fitss best)

The Genes...

Gene Name    Frequency

Normal jaws         60.5%
Sharp teeth           3.5%
Weak jaws            10%
Blunt teeth              6%
Double incisors    10%
Musical larynx        10%   

Normal senses     60%
Animal instinct       5%
Scout                       10%
Acute Eyesight       10%
Poor hearing          10%
Deaf                          5%        
  


Normal wits       50%
Smart                  2%
Berserker           9%   
Genealogist       9%
Determined        8%
Fearsome look  8%
Silly                       5%
Slow-minded      9%


Normal paws      70%
Agile paws           3%
Sharp claws        10%
Clumsy paws      10%
Blunt claws          7%

Normal bones    60%
Solid bones         5%
Light bones         10%
Steel bones         9%
Fragile bones      10%
Thin bones           6%

Normal muscles  70%
Thick Tail                8%  
(Required for Stunning Charge. When combined with Bolstered Scales, replaces rush and increases its damage by 50%. )
Steel muscles    5%
Strong muscles  2.5
Gracefulness      5%
Dystrophy           5%
Weak muscles   5%

Normal organs  70%
Lionheart            10%
Regeneration    10%
Faint-hearted    10%

Normal skin                      60%
Elemental resistance     10%
Robust scales                  10%
Bolstered Scales              10%
(Required for Stunning Charge. When combined with Thick Tail, replaces rush and increases its damage by 50%. )
Elemental vulnerability 10%

White             5%
Brown           25%
Blue              20%
Green           40%
Yellow           5%
Purple           5%

Striped          22%
Normal         40%
Mottled          20%
Albinistic      15%
Melanistic     3%      

(Can be changed, I was just trying to balance each group to easily add up to 100%)                                                                 

Stunning Charge Tactic

The Colors and Patterns on pet page background... (all colors/patterns are indivisually saved as well)

Edit:

 If someone is a good cat artist (im more of a not-cat artist) feel free to play around with the design and come up with your own look. It would be great to get more ideas and visuals of how this species could look.

Edit: Edited most of above from the suggestions below.

That is extremely detailed and wonderful sounding! Sort of like a Kami event except the Catermaul will be breedable? So something like the Tundra exploration where the event lasts for one season? Perhaps like a heavy monsoon that erodes away the soil, thus exposing the bones and skeleton... Though I feel like the number of ribs or vertebrae needs to decrease so the catermaul is rare but not too rare.

Yes it will be breedable like the lykos, a new pet species. I was thinking that the pet exploring finds the bones when it digs though/collects materials that seem like they could harbor bones but a monsoon sounds like a really neat weather event to have. The skeleton only needs to be completed once and the many pieces needed are common like the roses of the last kami event were. So, many, roses, I almost went mad. The numbers can be decreased I was just balancing the number between a normal cat and alligator skeleton. It is not supposed to be easy though, actual work and effort needs to go into finding all the pieces. The pieces should be able to be traded/sold so if you have one but need another could try to swap it.

Oh, I get it. I thought you needed to complete a skeleton for each catermaul... But the once a day pet thing seems like it would lead to mass multi-accounting.

How about a complete skeleton needed to start making the catermaul and you need a pet with specific traits to craft each one similar to the activated egg but you can only make one at a time. so the possibilitiy is crafting one every four hours but the reality (if you sleep at all) is 3-4 a day... or would the site be too quickly overwhelmed with them then? 

I wouldnt want them to be overpopulated too quick which is why I suggested the once a day. The lykos are now so everywhere they are more common than throdamas in the pound. It's kind of sad since the lykos are still new. The event would last long enough for each person to get good breeding stock though. The lykos event apparently also had multiaccounting but im pretty sure Angel took good care of it. Got a good tracker of some sort for that kind of thing. Though if the event is just a week or so half a day or every four hours would be better like you said. There's so many possibilities with the introduction of the species, its fun to scheme it with ya.

I'll take 5.... 

No but seriously. I really like the idea of a pet you can explore for and craft. Especially the limit to help counter overpopulation. 

Full support :) What a unique and amazing creation. Very nice work with all the detail!

Wow, this is a really complete idea for just a couple of days!

Obviously the cloning process isn't perfect or else all the resulting pets would be identical. :) I think between imperfect cloning and the extreme age of the samples it would make sence for catermauls to be simular to lykos and have reduced breedings.

I like the gene set, although acute eyesight seems to be missing and you might want to fix the berserker frequency. I really like that the gene combo you came up isn't bite associated and that's a nastily innovative maneuver to go with it.

Artwise, I think there's a little too much gator and not enough cat. I don't know what would be better so far as anatomy goes, but it would definitely help if the patterns were more catlike.

Oh oops berserker got an extra 0 for some reason. I was setting the genes up while sleepy so I expected some mistakes. Reduced breeding is a good idea. The bones will give different catermauls each time because I was thinking the bones were taken from many different catermauls to make one complete skeleton.

I will fit that gene in. And yussss, you can ruin someones entire round set up if youre lucky enough to roll the charge on the same roll that hold the line is on, and thats the tactic it decides to negative. Heheheh.

There can always be kitty patterned custom skins as well. Hmm, maybe I can make some of the mottled cat patterned if I can draw it nicely enough. Some tiger stripes on the yellow could work. Something for me to do. The entire creature would of had some furry mane type thing going on but I couldnt make it look good enough to add it.

A mane could work but it's already been used for the deviant pumas. Maybe try basing the head on a lynx instead. The ruff and eartufts are rather distinctive and none of the puma deviants look like that.

Either way, it would definitely help if the head was more substantial because the current version looks a little too delicate/domesticated.

Yeah I did use domestic cat for the head, didnt even think of using a neater wid cat head.

-moans at the thought of redrawing and coloring the head of every catermaul-

If this is accepted as a species and Angel doesnt take over the drawing of them then I will do the wild cat head of all of them. For now I will see if I can make it work for one of them.

Edit: I can't make the wild cat head look good. Is it okay to have multiple people working on new species art? Someone with good cat drawing skills could make the head look good.

I did change the yellow stripe to tigerish though, for more cat like pattern. Thinking of others to do when im feeling inspired. Updated the big chart with the new yellow stripe.

I love it! This is a very, very good and different pet to see coming into play in the game.  I like the non-over-population-thingy-ma-jigger a lot.  I think the catermaul would be a kind of thing everybody would want to see and have.  If this happens, you wouldnt see much of me on the forums... I would probaly go hide in a cave, on an island, in the middle of the ocean, with just me and me trusty internet.

I love it! I was going to suggest a reptilian- feline species, but it looks like you beat me to it. Great job on the art. You have my full support. :) I absolutely love the lime green one.

I really like it.  a earthquake happened in my mind when i read it. I think it will be very interesting. Love the art by the way. i hope this get excepted. To much detail for it to not. :)

Whoa, whoa, whoa!! Hold on there, this is totally amazing!! I mean, I'm already in love with the species. (Although, I'd go with Lytala on making the head more of a lynx's) The genes are fine except that I find them having a lot less frequency on each than that of any other species'. In some other ways, I'd say it's very creative of you and it's totally awesome! :D

*pins this to the top of boards*

Was some pages back, and I fixed the broken images that were showing parrots >,>
Also edited some of the text, added in some of the suggestions given. Hope I didnt miss anything.

If you have an idea of your own of how the catermaul may look then sketch it up and post it! I would love to see some different ideas of its looks, and it needs more cat parts to it, especially wild cat.