Overview
Basilisks are the scaled, gaze-wielders of the cavern. A look is a weapon, the cavern answers the look, and they consider the gaze a promise the cavern keeps for them.
Habitat
Basilisks live in The Gaze Caverns, a cavern of turned stone where the gaze is the only honest weapon. They need three things: a cavern deep enough to hold the look, a small game wide enough to feed the turn, and a stranger who is worth the stone. They are settled in caverns around the gaze-rings, with look-lines across the mapped current; a basilisk that has not kept a gaze in a season is called "the one who forgot the cavern."
Appearance
The basilisk silhouette is the broad, low, heavy shape — heavy through the ridge and claw, with the head sitting a little too low on the body, like a word that is waiting for a look. Males run 3.66 m from crown to tail-tip, 900 kg to 1.1 t, heavy through the ridge and claw, with a thick grey-green scale and a low, barked voice; they are the wall, the first look, and the ones who stand in the cavern and do not move. Females run 3.35 m, 750 kg to 850 kg, leaner and quicker, with a thinner scale and a longer memory; they are the gaze-queens, the ones whose look is the weapon, and the ones whose nod is the cavern. The base scale is a thick, wet grey-green, the color of old cavern-stone seen through a dark glass, with a faint pattern of deeper, sea-black bands along the spine and a clean, deliberate bone-white at the claw-tip that is the basilisk line's most persistent claim. The eyes are a pale, washed-out cavern-white, large for the head, with a slow, deliberate blink and a depth that makes them look like they are reading the look — and in most cases, they are, and the reading is the point. The head is the mark: a flat, broad skull with a ridge of spines along the crown, and the gaze, which is the basilisk line's most persistent claim — the look, always clean, and always pointed at something. Males carry the line in the ridge and the wall; females in the gaze and the memory. Elders are marked by a scale gone a deep, dull cavern-slate and a ridge gone pale silver — an old basilisk looks slower and holds the stone longer. They wear nothing, because the cavern is the body and the gaze is the law.
Behavior
Disposition: territorial, aggressive, cunning, solitary-leaning. In peace, a basilisk is a creature of look and turn — it does not trade, it does not talk, and it does not forget the cavern. In war it fights as the cavern fights: the wall first, the look second, and the turn the whole time. Strangers on the surface are either a meal or a stone, and the stone is the one the cavern remembers. The social unit is the cavern, 10–30 strong, around the gaze-rings — no cavern follows a wall, it follows the gaze-queen whose look turns the most to stone. Two signature quirks: a basilisk that is being lied to will not call it out — they will simply turn the liar to stone and wait, because the turning is the point. And they keep the gaze for a lifetime: a gaze the cavern has kept is a debt, and the debt is paid in stone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
Natural weapons: the claw, which closes on the size of a head and holds the way a fist holds; the fang, which closes on the size of a jaw and does not open; and the gaze, which is a weapon and a word and a debt. Defenses: the scale, which turns a blade the way a cavern turns a light; the venom, which is a defense no surface has ever reached; and the stone, which is a defense no negotiation has ever reached.
Magic Alignment
Primary domain: transmutation — basilisk magic is the turning, the stone, the patient, precise shaping of the cavern across the gaze-rings. Secondaries: death and wild. Named inborns: Cavern-Sense (a basilisk can feel the look's mood a day before it turns, and the feeling is not a choice), Dark-Sight (a basilisk sees in the dark the way a human sees in the light, and the seeing is not a choice), Stone-Carry (a basilisk's gaze carries the cavern's memory across the look, and the carrying is not a choice). Signature power: the Queen's Word — a basilisk can speak a word in the cavern tongue and let it land on a look, and the look will keep the word until the stone is done. Limitation: basilisk magic is spent on the cavern; a basilisk that has spent their queen's word must sit in the light for one day, and the day is the worst one of the cavern.
Religion
Basilisks keep Omnath, the Last Memory as their primary god — the knowledge, the record, the stone that is the cavern's own law. The cavern is Omnath's library, and the basilisk is the library's stone. Priestly class: the Gaze-Queen, who keeps the cavern-temple and speaks the turn at every rite. Heresy is not blasphemy — it is a word broken in the cavern, and there is no rite for that one; the cavern simply stops keeping the gaze with the breaker.
Society
Caverns of 10–30, led by the Gaze-Queen, rank decided by the gaze — whose look turns the most to stone. No cavern follows a wall, it follows the gaze-queen, and the queen leads not by size but by the turn: a look that turns a stranger to stone in a single blink outranks a look that turns a herd in a season, because the cavern measures stone in blinks, not in years. Outsiders who enter with a mirror are met with the wall first and the look second, and a stranger who leaves with their face in the stone leaves it there — the cavern does not keep statues, it keeps the lesson. Young are raised behind the turn-veil, the low stone ring where the look is too weak to turn, and a young basilisk who has not survived a full blink of the queen's eye does not keep a ring of its own. The one fact the surface keeps wrong: the cavern is not the brood's prison — it is the brood's library, and every statue in the ring is a page the cavern has decided to keep.
Home
They live in The Gaze Caverns, a cavern of turned stone where the gaze is the only honest weapon.
Relations
The Mole Men of The Underbrow are the neighbors who do not look — the mole folk keep their eyes shut on the mapped tunnels and pass the gaze-rings in the dark, and the cavern has never turned a closed eye, because a closed eye is not a look and a look is the only honest weapon. The Lizard Men of The Scale Pool are the rivals who wear mirrors, and a lizard man who carries a mirror into the ring does not come out wearing it; the lizard men have learned to keep the glass above the waterline, and the waterline is the whole of the treaty. Below, the ground-folk of The Forgotten keep the mirror-trade with the caverns — a mirror of the dead for a road kept stone, and the stone is the quietest thing in the war. Uaellaen has written of the trade in the wiki, and the wiki calls the gaze the only honest promise, and the line holds: a look given is a look kept.
In the Story
In the current story, the basilisks are the ring below the camp — the turned stone that Uaellaen writes about when the dark is worth more than the light. The Forgotten keep the mirror-trade with the caverns, and the trade has kept the road quiet for two seasons. This season a mirror came back up the road clean — no stone on the glass, no debt on the road — and a clean mirror is not a mirror, it is a question, and the question the ring is asking is who has been collecting the statues. The queen has not blinked in a season, and the not-blinking is the warning.
You step into our cavern and you make a sound. Good. Now we know where you are, and you have made our gaze's choice for us. The price is a look. You have one to give, or you are already stone. — Gaze-Queen Vessa the Green