I feel like I need to make a recap addressing things that are changing behind the scenes, even if I'm quite far away from showing you any of them. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while but I'm gonna try and laser-focus this one to keep it short. Granted, with my tendency to go on tangents, that laser will be more akin to a floodlight, but...
The Wing Poll and Other Wingy Clarifications
The biggest thing all five of you are probably thinking when you hear "design/lore update" is the poll I had about wing shape a bit ago, so I'll start with that. I'm going with the "Alt" design. For anyone out of the loop, uh, I have wings!
You can't see them, don't worry about that.
But yeah if they beak-nose didn't tip you off I'm... well not a bird, a Pterosaur, but colloquially sure a Bird yeah. The idea for a while has been basically that the wings attach at the hip. This is not only my subjective preference just visually, but also kinda checks a few boxes in my head- it makes more sense for balance and aerodynamics, while also allowing me to get around the question of flight muscles by using my thighs and bum (which are huge) to store said muscle. One of the more important visual aspects is that I tend to use the wings as additional legs, like a Pterosaur would, folded up in a way that makes me look almost like a centaur except with all the good parts of humanoid lower regions intact.
The idea coming into this "phase" of the design was that they just came out of the hip, but originally this manifested as basically half a pterosaur at either hip- in the interest of preserving the accuracy of pterosaur anatomy while still maintaining humanoid legs and not going full centaur. Wing membrane ran from the arm of the wing to proxy legs- hitherto called babylegs- that were accurate to the condition seen in pterosaurs. It stopped short of the humanoid legs, as having humanoid legs in a pterosaur pose would...
Well...
I'd be spread eagle.
However, I've since come to a compromise. A pterosaur uses the membrane that goes, like, thigh-to-ankle for pitch, and its feet for yaw, under current broadly-accepted models- hence the splay. To get around anything that'd look too weird on a humanoid, I've effectively gone with the pterosaur equivalent of a V-tail- no thigh-to-ankle membrane, and the feet provide pitch and yaw by sitting at a less severe splay. This allows for more natural "flying humanoid" positions while still seeming realistic, even if still a compromise for being an accurate pterosaur (but hey the ptiddies were already a deviation so I think this is fine). This allows a direct wing-to-leg connection and the removal of the babylegs.
This option won the poll 60-40 and I honestly was probably going to go with it anyways. Some of the arguments I've heard for it from friends have suggested keeping them just to have more limbs to look intimidating, and, to go back to the concept of "phases" earlier, if you asked me that in the last phase, I'd have agreed. Earlier concepts were supposed to be shifting formless monstrosities that were impossible to make sense of in silhouette and got even more confusing with the lights on. But that's changed, and now I'm just a zombified pterosaur girl- and this seems like a big improvement to handling that.
Until the wings actually go on the biggest difference you're likely to see is that I'll probably have an extended "patch" on the legs, where temporary stitches are where the now-down-to-my-knees membrane is supposed to go, closing the wound partially so it leaks less when they aren't on.
I suppose the next thing to talk about while still in this section is actually something where the poll made the wrong choice, because this isn't a democracy. I'm maybe a little conflicted here for the same reason you can kinda tell I wish I could have it both ways with "accurate pterosaur" and "anime girl." Most pterosaurs have four digits (well my pet theory is that the Pteroid is a modified first digit and the rest are actually the second to fifth digits, but that's based on nothing so we'll go with I-IV). Digit IV is the wing one, supporting the membrane. Digits I-III are more conventional toes, except backwards- the Pterosaur hand is essentially supinated with the wing finger folding backwards, flying and walking palm-forwards.
However, there is a trend in some of the more dedicated super-flyers among Pterosaurs. Many of the species that were oceanic- actually oceanic, aquatic affinities get misattributed to many pterosaurs but these ones are real- make compromises for flight at the cost of walking. Most pterosaurs are competent on the ground by default, but by making the wings longer and thinner, these pterosaurs would end up with uneven limb proportions, making it difficult to walk, with the positive tradeoff being a more efficient wing profile. From there, the Pteranodontids took on a condition where the first three metacarpals- the bones supporting the non-wing toes of the front feet- didn't connect to the rest of the "palm" the same way, which lead to a unique condition in Nyctosaurids where the toes were entirely lost, except for that wing-finger. This would have saved drag and weight, and reduced turbulence to probably serve to increase lift over the section of the wingspan that would have been in the wake of these digits. These three adaptations were great for flying but would have probably made them absolutely (p)terrible at walking and even taking off. Like you don't have toes you little idiot what are you doing?
Which is naturally why I decided I needed this, because I want to be able to fly but when I'm not flying I'm dumb and stupid and littol and usel,ess and iidiot and,,.,
The wings being more of a burden to walking due to their high aspect ratio has been a trend and I'm fond of the idea that they're sort of a burden, and I'm a bit of a pushover- but can float around gracefully in a starkly, unusually peaceful way given my, uh, everything else. So while I have to admit I'm conflicted about presenting with a "non-standard" pterosaur anatomical trait to an audience that might take that to be the norm, I think it suits me.
And because this section isn't long enough and this totally doesn't bode poorly for the rest of the document being a slog to read, I'll also add that, initially, my calculations for Northy's body weight and wingspan were based off of an azhdarchid that had the wing area halved- the idea being I had the same 11m span as a 250kg Azhdarchid, but half the chord, so to have the same wing loading I'd halve the weight to 125kg (which is basically in the human range but including the weight of the wings themselves is pretty light) and use any efficiency improvements from the higher aspect ratio as a factor of safety rather than an excuse to increase wing loading. However, I now understand some big Ornithocheirids- which match my wing planform better- figure in at 160kg with a 9m span, though may be pushing it in some ways in terms of efficiency during takeoff and the like. This may warrant a CONSIDERABLE cut to wingspan if I keep at 125kg, or a bit of an increase to weight. Of course I've said above that I like my wingspan being encumberingly large, so, I'm not sure what to make of that yet.
Dang JRPGs and their Recolors
Probably one of the more noticeable changes you're likely to see in the near future is that I'm gonna be testing out a lot of color palette changes, likely culminating in side-by-side comparisons.
The big conflict I'm having is that I feel I've used so much teal that it clashes with any attempt to try and work in the rust motif, which of course means red colors. So the main idea I'm gonna be playing with is using teals more sparingly with hair/blood-goo likely being a more neutral or even slightly red-brownish black, like oil. At this point some changes are already kinda set in stone, like the claws being copper-colored with hints of cyan corrosion, but others are gonna need to be tested.
The problem, of course, is I'm colorblind. Yeah. I'm... I'm gonna need help. I'll probably be using references to real photos heavily in building a new palette, and while I really want to get on this soon, first I need to obviously get the greyscale drawing worked out, and while I think I'm settled on wings now, there's another order of business...
Why The Long (and spooky) Face?
While all this has been happening you might have noticed that I've been tweaking my eyes. Basically it hit me that the black sclera was sort of restrictive- the expressional range I wanted needed a lot of room for the pupil to expand and contract, and an eye shape that can go either round or sharp, allowing me to preserve the original vibe for a professional overtone while showing cracks of a more neurotic side with wider eyes.
On paper, I have it- it's trickier to work into the model, but even as far as I've gone I consider it a massive improvement, both getting a lot closer to what I want and looking much more along the lines of the reptilian/avian vibe I'm aiming for- after all, most birds and reptiles have relatively little of their scleras visible. Though, sidenote, as I am a stickler for those: technically the sclera is still black, and ideally you'd be able to see a bit of that whenever the eyes track far enough to one side, similar to how you can see some of most animals' scleras when they side-eye things.
Rethinking the eyes may require some rethinking of other facial details. I'm already thinking of going from my normal eyeshadow to a more layered approach, with the upper face overall being shaded by the hair slightly and the eyelids being almost black. It's also been an opportunity to really look into how my teeth should work, with the solution being that they're very tall- the actual jaw bones being relatively thin, and the lips being able to move up or down especially far to reveal their full length- to get the effect I want. My overall face profile may also get a bit narrower, as pictured, though I do like emphasizing the jaw angle from the side at least as a residually masculine trait that I don't mind.
I suppose this is probably where I should talk about the back stuff I've been including in recent drawings. Northy has a backpack, and that backpack has:
1) several antennas, for radio and limited radar.
2) an exhaust pipe, smoke tends to come out her mouth when she doesn't have this hooked up which is a bit uncomfortable.
3) a pair of additional, rudimentary, mechanical arms.
DEEEEP LOOOORE
I'm going to try and express this as fast as I possibly can with as few tangents as I can.
No matter how much it hurts.
So Northy is a thing that the working name for, for a long time, has started with an F and ended with a "Hey!" as in "Look! Listen!" However, this seemed to me to be kind of me decontextualizing a name to just use it on whatever the fuck so I asked around a bit and it's good I did because apparently in some places you're not even supposed to say that word. I'm open to other opinions because neither me nor the buddy I referred to are exactly experts so I might keep looking around, and there might still be a few references to the general characterization that name gave them embedded in their quirks, but as a group I need to come up with another name in that broad magical phylogeny- which SUCKS, because the PERFECT name for this kind of thing, starts with an L, was used in a show in a way that I think might get me C&D'd if I just take after that, so I need to come up with another name that I haven't already taken for something else in the setting. So let's get into that.
Human-level Intelligence and tool use and all that evolved naturally many times, but there was basically nothing around that was more humanoid than a Therizinosaur until the Jotnar showed up. Those were the first "humanoids," albeit titanic, monstrous ones that only loosely can be classified as even organic life-forms. They took to all the beastmen running around and some particularly lonely bastards tried to engineer what we'd call humanization out of them, but this never got further than, like, you know, those sort of "low-end" furries, you know the ones with the short snouts that are usually plantigrade even though they still have a little wet nose and ears and tail and fur all over.
Apparently unsatisfied with this outcome, they set out to create more humanoid races from sources that weren't so humanoid to start with, resulting in stuff like Elves, Dwarves, Trow (that's the proper spelling as far as I'm aware, turns out), Ogres, and eventually Humans. The eventual collapse of the Jotnar empires left many sects of these races to form, where some sects became very in-touch with nature, and the truth of their artificiality was now revealed to them. They felt like they got screwed. So they were gonna fix that.
First result of this- or, depending on which historian you ask, a precursor that served as the magical basis for what was gonna come- were just mages who could turn into many animal forms.
Second was an enchantment spread like a pathogen, the hosts of which could take on a single, powerful animal-like form.
Third were where catgirls came from. They are my kind- and for much of the audience reading this, it's probably safe to call them our kind.
Essentially a mix of one of the humanoids with an animal, in a manner that may superficially tempt you to start looking for stitches where the parts meet- but on a deeper brush, you'd find that our bodies are radically restructured to the point that we're really more of the animal wearing a humanoid suit- a few bits that don't fit sticking out the back- than a humanoid evolved to animal traits. And here's where things get very convoluted in a way that they honestly just are and I cannot really cut down.
First, none of us are half-human. You might see a half-human one that you think is half-human, they might even think that too, they're not. What's normally going on is, like... Let's be honest, humans are pretty vanilla, right? So many of us pass as half-human when the humanoid part either synergizes to the extent of their traits just neatly stacking on top of each other (elf+cat), or kind of cancels out (bird+dwarf), with a lot of the traits you'd identify the "base" species by (pointy ears) overwritten by default. This combined with the fact that humans like to do that thing they do to other species has created an incentive to downplay inhumanity to the extent that even some of our lineages started to believe their cover story.
Over time, we've picked up individual sub-group names like "Harpy" and "Faerie" and "Centaur" but to each other we're all just birds and bugs and horses- only outsiders seem to insist on the distinction. This gets especially cumbersome when you try and find a name for me, an animal that was never around humans enough to be given an easily pronounced name, let alone a name for a person who looks like one. Like, seriously- a subtype of Harpy? Siren? What? Of course when it comes to creatures that are naturally extinct, there's an additional layer here- the Dralikhe, Dragon-Pets, have been preserved artificially, but we don't know how and we don't know if that's effected their genome at all. Some sources would imply that the mages and wizards that made us knew that and there are hints that certain animals, especially Dralikhe, are more like they tried to make one animal out of bits of several more well-known ones, so I may have a bit more true bird in me than I let on to. I suppose it'd explain the syrinx. And the oil.
Like not the petroleum oil I have, like, uh, a fulmar, the... high calorie content, in my crop, I can sp- you know.
Aside from that, it's likely that my humanoid part is a Dwarf. We think this in general because of my overall interests in weaponry and minerals, actually being short and dense by pterosaur standards, my proportionally long claws in relation to my stubby digits (Dwarves belong to the same group as sloths, anteaters, and armadillos it turns out- Xenarthra, look it up), and the fact that the first guy who suggested I might be an Elf got punched.
This would, to Dwarven culture, make me a special subset, a "Fafn" or Fafnir- a term they reserve specifically for reptilians of Dwarven descent. You might be familiar with certain interpretations of that story, but that's where the word comes from I guess- or maybe vice-versa, come to think of it? I'm not sure where the greed aspect came in though, it's not like Dwarven cultural metal-lust and deep-mining, layered upon the hypermineralization of their bones- an adaptation which metabolically requires additional mineral intake, to the extent of occasionally eating ore, facilitated through the ability to discern relevant compounds by odor and taste, sort of compounded with Coldblood jaw systems lacking a means to chew and relying on gizzard stones, to create an obsessive-compulsive habit to hoard and occasionally consume precious minerals, in the form of processed artifacts as well as raw stone and ingots, while fauning over their flavor, texture, and appearance to an extent that would seem just a tad crazed to onlookers and makes you a nuisance to local miners, all while making bedding out of them, because we hate the feeling of linen cloth and have taken to using metal and stone under the sun or near geothermal heating for thermoregulatory purposes, layered with just a tiny bit of that crow-brained shiny lust, or anything like that. Totally didn't! I eat my priceless stolen gemstones and jewelry uncut and unpolished and kept in a well-organized bed-hoard like a mild-mannered pragmatist! I even use some of the rusty junk now that I'm undead and don't mind all the knicks and scratches.
But you know quality when you feel it. When you taste it. Almost better than... braaiiinnssss...
Anyways uhuh I suppose that covers most of the updates. There's still some lore on what a zombie actually is that I'll spare you from for now, but that's basically what I've been up to.
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