Name: Dagteryx

National Dex Number: #041

Flavour Text: Dagteryx spends most of its days hiding in a nest surrounded by thick brambles with venomous thorns. This Pokémon is not a strong flier due to its undeveloped wing muscles, preferring instead to hunt on foot.

Species: Metal Feather

Type: Steel/Flying

Height: 40cm (1,3ft)

Weight: 19kg (41.9lb)

Evolution: Dagteryx (EXP w/Steel Wing) -> Skarmory

Battle Mechanics

Ability: Keen Eye (Prevents the users Accuracy from being lowered by any attack and ignores any increase in Evasiveness)/Weak Armour (A physical attack on this Pokémon chips away a piece of armour, lowering its defence as well as sharply increasing its speed)

Hidden Ability: Razor Edge (This Pokémon inflicts damage with the razor sharp edges of its body when an attacker makes contact with it)

Egg Group: Undiscovered

Signature Move(s): None

Base Stats

Characteristics

Appearance: Dagteryx is a small armour covered bird Pokémon with well-developed legs and short wings tipped with sharp curved claws. These claws are used in combination with the sickle like hook on its foot to help climb the crags of its home, and also to pin and rip apart any prey that they catch themselves. Like its evolved form Skarmory, Dagteryx has a few dark red feathers which can sometimes be found shed from its body on winding paths that lead through the mountains.

Dagteryx also has the notched tails of Skarmory, although it is far larger and used for balancing when running and jumping rather than as a rudder to help turn. It does lack the slight ridge head of its evolved form and has a long snout filled with sharp teeth that are used for pruning in addition to subduing prey.

Ecology: For much of its early life Dagteryx spends its time in the nest of its parent Skarmory who brings it scraps of meat and any berries it finds to feed on. A typical Skarmory clutch consists of up to eight eggs, but generally there is only food for one or two of the chicks, and as such Dagteryx is always aggressively competing with each other for food. Eventually Skarmory decides which chick is the weakest and kicks it out of the nest to perish on the mountain side, a process it repeats until it only has the amount of chicks it can effectively rear.

Eventually even these favoured chicks have to leave their nest, but by this time the metallic covering of Dagteryx’s body has hardened as have the claws on its hands and feet. Prey is mostly hunted on foot in the crags of its mountain home, with small bug Pokémon and carrion making up the bulk of its diet. While the top predator in this montane habitat, Mightyena, does kill Dagteryx on occasion, it is competition for resources from other Dagteryx and bird Pokémon such as Rhapsapen that prove the hardest challenge to overcome.

Falls from height are another danger, and with its underdeveloped wings, Dagteryx is generally unable to fly to gain altitude. What it can do is flap its wings to slow its descent and steer towards an outcropping of rock. From there it can crawl on all fours back up to where it fell from using the claws on its wings and the hook like talon on its foot as ad-hoc ice picks which can gain a purchase on even the most vertical of rock faces. During the summer, Dagteryx’s moults, and both humans and Pokémon gather the shed feathers due to the relative scarcity of this Pokémon, and their robustness and gleaming coloration.

Trivia

Origin: Dagteryx takes inspiration, not only from its evolutionary form Skarmory, but also from ground birds such as the Seriemas of South America, and with small Troodontid dinosaurs such as the genus Anchiornis

Name Origin: Dagteryx’s name comes from a mixture of the words dagger and teryx (the Latin word for wing or wings)