#Argothia's Bestiary: Formorians

[argothiathedreamer]

Obviously if I'm gonna be redesigning the Avian Formorians Byron's going to get the treatment first. He was basically the first Formorian after all.

Something important that I'm talking about to remind myself of it is that Formorians are SUPPOSED to look goofy. So the goofiness of the old designs were as intentional as the goofiness of the current one. As bird people they're just kinda inherently a little goofy.

[the-dreamers-art]

Some Cutesy Formorians, Shie, and Farils! I made this as a background image for my musing blog (not much interesting on there right now, just the stuff I recently posted, gonna reblog everything I can find from my main blog over there though and I’ll probably post some worldbuilding stuff over there too, so feel free to check it out).

Here we have an unnamed Orca Formorian, Byron the Bearded Vulture Formorian, Darkeyes and Rustback, Kamon the Temple Pit Viper Formorian, and Roottracer and Barkfur being sleepy down there in the corner!

[argothias-worlds]

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...

[the-dreamers-art]

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.

[the-dreamers-art]

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.

[the-dreamers-art]

When your new bird-dude buddy says, “Feel my wing! Is it not the most powerful appendage you have ever felt!?” and you don’t want to lie but you don’t know how to tell him ‘not really’ (because you once sat on a whale-dude’s bicep) without sounding rude...

[the-dreamers-art]

Local College student goes out to beach alone on spooky night runs into incredibly huge sea monster (to no one’s surprise), somehow manages to make friends with it instead of being eaten???? News at eleven.

Of course there’s no way this ‘sea monster’ would eat a human, he’s a Blue Whale Formorian, anything larger than a shrimp is strictly off the menu. I vaguely have an idea of a group of humans somehow ending up on the Formorians’ world and most of them are big time scientists, etc, but then there’s just this one guy who’s pretty much fresh out of college gets roped into all this insanity and while everyone else is freaking out, he’s walking up to GIGANTIC monstrosities and being like, “Hi, what’s your name?” The Formorians love him.

This likely won’t go anywhere and for the time being (and possibly forever) the guy’s name is Lucky McLuckPants so... yeah...

[the-dreamers-art]

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

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

[argothias-worlds]

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).

[argothias-worlds]

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’.

[argothias-worlds]

Felix’s luck (sorta) runs out. It’s still lucky in that he’s met a very friendly Boa Formorian... it’s unlucky in that he’s met a snake formorian at all... of all the things in all the worlds, snakes are the only thing he’s petrified of.

Luckily (ha ha) the snake formorian is too busy being amused by the fact that someone’s so scared of him to be insulted by it. Snake formorians generally determine rank by how venomous their bite is, Boa-buddy here is pretty low in the pecking order

[argothias-worlds]

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.

[argothias-worlds]

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.

[argothias-worlds]

Some Formorians

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

[argothias-worlds]

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).