Kreel

Kreel are big domesticated eels; grown ones run 4-6 feet with a girth up to a foot. Like chameleons they change color to match their surroundings: near the surface they turn blue-green above and white below, hiding them from hunters overhead and underneath, and close to the bottom they go entirely dark.

Peaceful by nature, kreel fight only in self-defense and cannot organize against predators, relying on camouflage instead. Cornered, one will strike back but bolts at the first chance, often slipping into seabed crevices too narrow for its pursuer. In open water, a shark finds one an easy meal.

A few wild kreel roam a hidden inland sea, but most belong to flocks watched by two-man teams of lizard man kreelherders, who keep them fed on the wild kelp and safe from roving predators. Veteran herders bear scars from many fights with sharks, and some claim to have seen a legendary sea monster.

Generations of breeding have stripped them of even basic cunning, since crafty animals are hard to herd, and without their keepers they would quickly be hunted to extinction. They graze the kelp found nearly everywhere in that sea. Lizard men find the meat delicious and the hides useful for many things, and kreel are the foundation of their culture there; without them the reptile folk would need another source for much of their food.