argothias-worlds

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Some Formorians

A duck, a nautilus, a pelican, a very pretty snake, and an adorable snake couple!

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Just messing about with Formorian hybrids All Formorians are genetically capable of reproducing with any other Formorian. Surprisingly though extreme hybrids like the one above are pretty rare. However things like crow/eagle hybrids are fairly common. Hybrids between dolphins and other formorians are so common that there are only small groups that are still ‘pure’ one species. I have a few characters who are mild hybrids: Seti (Byron’s cousin) is a Bearded/Egyptian Vulture (he favors the Egyptian Vulture heavily) Singer is a Clymene Dolphin/Short-Beaked Common Dolphin (he also has some shark and Orca somewhere in his ancestry).

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A few horse formorian sketches. Just trying to figure out their hands/front hooves. I didn’t want to just give them regular looking hands but it was hard to find an interesting and practical way to draw them.

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Finally came up with a decent base design for land mammal formorians! I’m still tweaking the design a bit but this is the basic idea.

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Something I drew a while back and never got around to uploading.

Eric and Singer demonstrating that length (in the case of dolphin formorians) does not equal height. much to Singer’s chagrin.

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So I have this vague idea for a world where either the people are really small or everything else is really big...

Also there are dragons for some reason... the dragons are only big enough for the people to ride.

The people ride the dragons and hunt things like insects and birds

...that’s about all I got right now.

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Chitterer!

These squirrel-like folk live in the thickest, tallest areas of the forest that grow on the Faril Chasers’ island. They almost never leave the trees on purpose and despite being incredibly skilled archers they do not eat meat. They generally use their skills to defend their home trees and to shoot down birds to make more arrows. The birds they kill are ritually dropped in a single spot far from their village where the forest’s scavengers reap the rewards. They regard black birds with a special esteem and  the acquisition of a black feather at all is considered an amazing feat. It also determines rank, the more black feathers an individual has the higher they place on the social ladder. our friend here is pretty far down the pecking order (also has a scarred lip and is missing part of their tail...)

Chitterers are all intersex, it’s hard to say if they have gender pronouns or not because (as their name suggests) they communicate entirely through chittering sounds which no one has yet deciphered or learned to imitate. Also they have an extreme dislike of the Faril Chasers as they seem to see the Faril as potential predators. No Faril Chaser has yet managed to convince them that this is not the case...

They live remarkably short lives in comparison to the other peoples of the world. Living only fifty to sixty spans in comparison to the Shie’s lifespan of hundreds of the same. Still over time the Chitterers have become less violent towards the Faril Chasers, and nowadays such visitors to the tall woods are less likely to get an arrow through the eyes for trespassing... though they might still get a pine cone bounced off their heads with uncanny accuracy.

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(This picture took me all day... well, actually just twelve hours, but that counts as just about most of a day for me. Anywho, there’s no real rhyme or reason to which riders I chose for this pic, other then Thornsky because he leads the group, Stoneflower’s just there because I wanted to draw Snowblind, aaaand Nightbreeze was a random choice... I’ve kind of decided that she’s telling Stoneflower that her Faril (Rippleshade) might be pregnant with Snowblind’s cubs, that’s about the only thing that’d get Stoneflower to smile that much)

Faril Chasers info!!!!

The Faril Chasers were the first of the Shie to break away from the original group that survived the Last Catastrophe. There were differences of opinion on the Faril themselves between the Chasers and their peers. They eventually settled, after much long traveling, on a large, eastern island, choosing a stone structure in the middle of a large field to serve as their home.

Physically the Faril Chasers have remained fairly similar to their original ancestors, their only major differences are the patches and patterns of lighter and darker skin, something which no other group of Shie possesses. Their eyes are also a little strange, being more catlike with pupils that when fully constricted resemble slits and irises that are normally green or yellow. Blue and brown also occur but only rarely. Finally their ears are much more mobile than any other shie. They can point forward, backwards, and to one side, as well as lower back until they nearly touch the shie’s shoulders. They’re used as much for that extra bit of body language indicating mood as for hearing. Many Faril Chasers often complain that their ears have minds of their own, ear flicking is a tell that is as common for Faril Chasers as smiling is for humans.

The Faril Chasers’ culture is, perhaps predictably, deeply tied to the massive saber-toothed felines, called ‘Faril’, each shie forms a deep bond with a Faril that will last until one or the other of them dies. It’s a bond that’s absolutely revered within Faril Chaser society. The Farils are just as deeply devoted to their riders and each group will follow the other wherever they may go. Faril Chasers take great pride in being so deeply connected with these creatures.

Names hold great weight among the Faril Chasers and there is a specific process by which each Faril Chaser gains their name. First a child is given their prefix name by their parents usually after their personality has begun to develop more clearly (Faril Chasers are rarely named at birth, in fact they’re most commonly named around the age of two ‘spans’). Until such point they’re usually just called ‘Cub’. After being given their prefix name, they’re generally referred to as ‘[prefix]cub’ until they bond with their first Faril. At that point the leader grants them their suffix, if the young shie goes on to become leader of the Chasers the suffix of his name is changed to ‘sky’ (some leaders changed their entire name or had it changed for them by the others). The current leader is a nice example: Thorncub -> Thornfire -> Thornsky. A chaser’s name can be changed, either by the entire group or by the leader, but it’s not something that’s done lightly. Nicknames are common, but generally only amount to a shie being called by their prefix name and, when used by older shie, often mean that they still see the younger as a cub. Leaders will never publicly refer to someone by a nickname (except in extreme cases where the nickname is pretty much the only thing a shie is known by) as they are supposed to treat all of their [still can’t decide what term to use for the Faril Chasers] with equal respect.

History is also very important to them, they know their own back as far as their third leader and know bits and pieces of the time before then as well. The position of storyteller is revered, and every shie knows the stories of their past leaders and other great figures. Further each cub is told the stories of their own ancestors passed down through the generations, so each shie can trace their family line back quite far. They have impressive knowledge of the past, which is surpassed only by the Shade’s Kin. This perhaps has also fed into them retaining a strong connection to magic and therefore retaining much more knowledge of how to control such powers when they present themselves in an individual (which is often) than Sheltered and Wave Sliders. Their skill is on par with the Shade’s Kin’s.

They are currently close allies with the Wave Sliders (though they weren’t always) and they know (very) little of the Shade’s Kin, but the Sheltered and Keep Dwellers are entirely unknown to them.

... That’s all I got.

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“Eric, let go or I’m revoking your brother privileges for a whole week!” “Shut up, you almost died!” “I didn’t ‘almost die’, you big dork.”

There’s a secret I’ve been holding on to for a bit... I’ve decided that Eric and Felix are brothers! Well, half-brothers technically (Their dad remarried after Eric’s mom died, Felix was born, Eric has been an overprotective mess of an older sibling ever since, Felix is a terrible little brother who regularly scares the tar out of Eric, you would think having lived with him this long Eric would be used to Felix being super lucky, but no, he panics every single time).

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Saved! By a... kinda creepy shark lady... don’t worry she’s nice... Also, Felix always instinctively curls up like that whenever he’s picked up in any fashion.

Shark Formorians are usually pretty creepy, but they aren’t typically a threat unless you’re a threat to them. They aren’t particularly social or not and they tend to mind their own business. This lovely lady has just had a few run ins with the dolphins that she saved Felix from so she decided to spite them...

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Felix’s first encounter with Dolphin Formorians does not go as well as Eric’s. These ladies are rather interested in what effect human bones would have on their potions... they are (unfortunately for Felix) witches, though not in a conventional sense.

Most Formorians do not practice any form of magic, though Owls are often accused of practicing some dark arts, the only places it’s prevalent are among the cetacean (specifically dolphin) and the reptilian communities (aaaaand among a small group of avians, but very few people outside of those practitioners know of it).

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Wanted to draw a faril and decided to draw my poor oft neglected/forgotten Leafstrike/sky as well.

This minor annoyance (brought on by having to venture into the deepest parts of the forest in search of herbs and thus having an inevitable encounter with the ‘Chitterers’ who live in the trees and have no use for Faril Chasers) likely occurred long before Leafstrike became Leafsky and his life became a royal, depressing mess...

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Eric really needs his glasses… unfortunately, he forgot them back at camp and there’s a clingy boyfriend sleeping on him so he can’t go get them. Singer’s getting a nice nap though.

Aside from finally naming him, I’ve also added a few scars to Singer’s design, the likelihood that these will remain consistent are unfortunately slim -_-’ The only thing that absolutely is permanent is the fact that part of his flipper/hand got cut off at some point in his past… possibly by pirates.

Dolphin Formorians usually live in tight knit, nomadic groups and are well known for being very friendly. They pretty much need social interaction like they need air. They’re generally very clever and pleasant to be around… though some groups have developed a reputation for being jerks (specifically the ‘Bottlenose’ variety, which Singer is not. Singer is a Clymene/Short-beaked Common Dolphin mix). Being social creatures, Dolphin Formorian are not often found alone, even those that for some reason break off or get separated from their birth ‘pod’ often wind up seeking out other creatures. This leads to Dolphins being mixed in with various sea going groups all across the oceans. It also leads to Dolphin Formorians rarely being ‘pure’ one ‘species’.

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This… I wasn’t gonna post this… I wasn’t even gonna line it much less finish it… but here we are… this is my life and these are my choices…

Anywho, this is Eric (another member of the scientist group who got stranded in the Formorian world with Felix) and his Dolphin Formorian boyfriend who is currently nameless.

Uuuuum, as far as it goes, Eric is an Archeologist who, once he learned that a good sixty percent of the weird (sometimes giant) monsters inhabiting this world were not going to eat him, set about finding out how in the world they came to be in the first place (’The chances of aliens looking so incredibly similar to us and our planet’s creatures are so astronomically low it’d take a super computer a full year to find them!’), so he travels about with Felix for a while and tries to find the origin of the Formorians! Along the way he steals some of Felix’s luck and meets a very nice, kind of oblivious Dolphin Formorian. Dolphin dude helps out a lot and they end up falling in love…

Romance of the century right there.

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Ah, orcas,... dealing with Orca Formorians is like playing russian roulette... not really worth it unless the odds have been meticulously stacked in your favor. They’re very friendly and helpful but about every fifth one you meet will be a major jerk... every tenth one is willing to eat you... yeah, all in all just not worth it.

Wow it’s been a long time since I’ve posted any original stuff here, but yesterday I was rereading some stuff about my original critters (called Formorians, I usually draw the avian variety, but I’ve been branching out lately) and I realized I’d never come up with a satisfactory design for any aquatic formorians.

So I drew this…

Dorsal fin differences not withstanding most cetacean formorians share this body type, they proudly have within their ranks the largest species of Formorian as well (Blue Whales, of course). This fella here’s no shirker when it comes to height and length either. He’s about average size for an Orca Formor but that puts him at six feet tall and twelve feet long.

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Tiny crow waits for her albatross girlfriend to come home from her latest voyage.

Mostly background practice, I like how it came out though.

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Last but certainly not least! The doodles that began the Formorians!

Avian Fomorians Sketches

So yeah, these are the bird people I was talking about (by the by, ‘Fomorians’ are something of an original creature named after an old Celtic mythological creature which are all just anthropomorphic creatures and … there is no quick explanation for them so I’ll just leave it there, considering a different name for them).

So yeah the large picture there on the right is a vulture type, what the other one is I’m not entirely certain.

Hm, let’s see here. Vulture types are considered very weird and creepy, they live out in the wilds in family groups and avoid civilization. They have many odd traditions and customs. Avian Fomorians are often seen as thieves and all around unsavory characters.

(Oh, also, Vulture Dude there has feathers on his head because he kinda seemed unfinished without them ^^’)