The overall concept of this CAP is as a support fighter instead of a direct combatant, meaning that the design also had to look powerful due to its emphasis on offense, but not give an air of destructiveness at the same time. After sifting through
several ideas that didn't pan out, I settled on a combination of the
naga fireball phenomenon, a strange glowing light that appears annually over the Mekong River of Southeast Asia, and the
Phaya Naga, a variety of the
naga water serpents of Hindu mythology which is
also known from the Mekong and is what the naga fireball is associated with. The fireball itself has yet to be explained scientifically, with explanations ranging from naturally generated electrified plasma to ignited swamp gas, but it was nonetheless ascribed in local folklore to the magical powers of the
naga so much that the name stuck.
Naga are synonymous with dragons in East Asian culture, so it'd be easy to ascribe a Dragon typing to one, and the Fire typing should be self-explanatory.
My initial idea for this design was a dragon-shaped fire elemental, but after the stat spread was decided such that it'd be a physical attacker, I instead made the support art reveal it to have an animal body underneath, but with fire emitted from its skin for protection. In any case, it has a serpent's head and tail, and the chest and arms of a human, based on a stylization of how nagas can turn into people (meaning that they're either pure human or pure snake most of the time, the half-human half-snake ones seen everywhere on the Internet actually being much rarer than most assume). The horn on its snout was additionally inspired by
Phaya Naga statues such as
this one, which is also what led to the armor being added along various parts of the body for visual interest, including a bejeweled mask on its face and a collar to match. Add in some fins with swirls like in various East Asian artworks and some large, vicious-looking hand claws, and you have a design that looks at once mystical and ferocious, well-suited to its intended role.