#perytons

[claypigeonpottery]

guess what I did today?

the celestial peryton vase! that blue will be very dark and the aurora should show up brightly 🤞🏼

after carving the perytons, I covered the piece in wax, then carved the aurora through the wax. I painted underglaze over the aurora to give it some bright green, and when I wiped the excess colour away. the wax protected everything underneath. that pottery technique is called mishima

kinda wish I’d recorded it as an actual video and not just a timelapse, it goes just a little too fast imo

[littledeadling]

Perytons follow the Difference by its taste: like smoke, like fog, like a chill on the horizon.

[dduane]

From So You Want To Be A Wizard: Perytons.

(And a bit of discussion from an older Tumblr post:)

When I first started reading the Young Wizards series, I read and took on the Perytons introduced in So You Want to Be a Wizard as they were but recently started coming across other mythological Perytons — crosses between stags and birds — and so was thrown off on some of my mythology. Since they share names, I'm curious where you got the idea for the Perytons shown in SYWtBaW.                

I borrowed it from Jorge Luis Borges, as everyone else has (whether they know it or not. Many, if not most, seem not to). ...And then tinkered with the concept to suit myself: just as Borges had.

Some background under the cut...

Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings was published in the late 1960s, initially in Spanish in 1967 and then in an English translation in 1969 (my copy is the Discus/Avon paperback published that year). It is a compendium/collection of more than a hundred of Borges’ short fictional works—many written for The New Yorker, and the rest either written specifically for this collection or published elsewhere without those previous publications being cited in the book.

Now, though a lot of people have taken the title of this book at its face value, assuming that it’s a reference to earlier mythological or fantastic creatures, it’s frequently not. Many of the creatures in it show signs of being Borges’s inventions, despite being attributed to other sources, and to my eye the peryton is the most obvious of these.

It doesn’t hurt to remember that Borges as a writer is (when the mood moves him) not merely playful but often hilariously subversive, if not downright mischievous. In TBIB he’s very careful with his cites when he needs to be—his entries on “An Animal Imagined By Kafka”, “An Animal Imagined by C. S. Lewis”, “A Crossbreed”, and “The Odradek”, all carefully cite their sources and permissions in the front matter. Some other works that were apparently out of copyright he identifies without citation in the front matter (such as the wonderfully titled Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With A Few Desert and Mountain Beasts, which is now available online!). And ancient out-of-copyright resources he obviously doesn’t need to cite in too great a detail if he doesn’t want to. Which allows Borges to lull the reader into a false sense of security, and in some other articles, like the one about the peryton, leaves you susceptible to having the wool gently and carefully pulled over your eyes.

An excerpt from the full passage:

The Peryton

The Sibyl of Erythraea, it is said, foretold that the City of Rome would finally be destroyed by the Perytons. In the year A.D. 642 the record of the Sibyl’s prophecies was consumed in the great conflagration of Alexandria: the grammarians who undertook the task of restoring certain charred fragments of the nine volumes apparently never came upon the special prophecy concerning the fate of Rome.

…Now here we’ve already got a problem. Two of them, actually. First of all, Borges has just signaled the incoming wool-pulling by using the inevitably suspicious “It is said…” construction in the very first sentence. And secondly—regardless of whether there were copies of the Sibylline Books in the great Library of Alexandria or not—Borges has here told us twice that he’s pulling our legs, by giving the number of those books as nine.

This is of course pure nonsense. The best-known legend about the Books is quite clear. Six of them were burned by the Sibyl herself before King Tarquin realized he’d better buy however many books remained at whatever price she was asking. And then the remaining three were destroyed by fire in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in 83 BC. So subtle and careful a scholar as Borges does not make such mistakes by accident

So, having been doubly warned by the writer that we are now in the Classical Fibbing Department, we get the following (attributed to yet another scholar whose provenance is comically obscure):

The Perytons had their original dwelling in Atlantis and are half deer, half bird. They have the deer’s head and legs. As for its body, it is perfectly avian, with corresponding wings and plumage.

Its strangest trait is that, when the sun strikes it, instead of casting a shadow of its own body, it casts the shadow of a man. From this, some conclude that the Perytons are the spirits of wayfarers who have died far from their homes and from the care of their gods…

…they [perytons] are mortal foes of the human race; when they succeed in killing a man, their shadow is that of their own body and they win back the favor of their gods.

While a bit more about them appears in the original passage, what most strongly caught my attention when I read the book in the ‘70s was the twin issue of the creature that does not cast its own shadow (something I’ve since used elsewhere), and the part about the souls of wayfarers who die out of reach of their own gods. In the back of my mind those two concepts started running themselves together into the idea of creatures that had been human once, at least in spirit, but had taken a wrong turn somewhere—into the Lone Power’s service, specifically—and were trapped there, possibly also tormented by the idea that if they killed a human being then that human’s spirit would be forced to take their place in bondage. (Though I don’t believe that particular concept made it through into the final text of SYWTBAW. It was enough that the mere sight or smell of a human [and human spirit] not in bondage would so enrage them that they would try to kill the person on sight.)

I thought about the idea as a whole for a while, and generally it seemed to have merit. But it seemed to me that nobody was going to be particularly scared of some weird unfamiliar cross between a deer and a bird. Quickly enough, though, the answer suggested itself as the sequence started to form up in my head of [REDACTED INTERACTION WITH CHARACTER]-on-nasty-horseback as based on the Grant statue on Central Park South. Almost immediately the Wild Hunt archetype jumped up and started waving its arms shouting “Me, pick me…!” After that it was simple: for a hunt you need hounds. Except not hounds: wolves. Big wolves. With angry hating human spirits inside them.

By way of acknowledging the debt to Borges, I kept the name for the new fusion. (Also because it had the virtue of being unfamiliar to nearly everybody. TBIB had only been out for a decade and change when I was writing this sequence,and was still a bit of a specialist text). And there you have them: perytons, sort of mark II.

...That was 1983. Since then numerous sources, often associated with card- or RPG-gaming, have picked up on perytons in the Borgesian sense. As a result, scattered around the Web are various pictures of stags with wings stuck on them that make it plain almost nobody has read Borges’ full text... though many know about it, more or less, from the Wikipedia page, which does not cite the full, pertinent details. …Meanwhile others have been discussing where Borges got the word peryton (my guess is he coined it) and other issues.

So that’s how it went. Nothing’s ever simple, is it?  :)

[unbfacts]

[clovercoin]

Dragon Peryton

Such a gorgeous deer dragon! I really love how she looks and had so much fun coloring her bright opal scales! I just need to think of a name for her hm hm hm... AJD . ART

[weaselbeaselpants]

Related to my last reblog from decolonize the left but....why is it native American mythologies' get to have all the creepy deer monsterthings? I'm not saying North America doesn't have cool deer that are scary as shit it's just deer are kind of all over the world and terrifying and why is it when we only talk about deer-monsters it has to be in the context of the w*nd*go?? ((which, again, aren't even deer things in their og descriptions they're horrifying but they aren't deer))

Perytons from Argentinian mythology are pretty winged deer that also shapeshift and eat people. No really.

I'm sure the Norse have all sorts of disturbing mythos based on their red deer like the one that guards Yggdrasil (norse experts feel free to roast me for not remembering the name of the stag).

Honest thought but are people maybe confusing w*nd*gos with deer-women? That's seriously the only Indigenous American thing I can think of that makes and big mention of deer at all, horror or not. And even then I think it's best to just stay clear and away from Native cultures when you aren't native yourself.

[childoferebus]

All of you saying “oh, how majestic! How beautiful! Elder gods!” about every peryton you see have clearly never had to get a nesting brood out of a shed. It’s all filtered instagram photos and artsy mood boards of that one famous shot of the one on the hill until momma is hissing at you because you had the gall to think you might get some gardening done now that spring has arrived

Majestic my ass. You ever seen what a peryton can do to a car?  I damn near died when one nailed us on the freeway. Had to clean shit off the windshield and my pants.

[cremsie]

deer-raffle-april

This design is part of a raffle for my kofi memberships!  If you want a chance to win this guy or any other design from me in the future please stop by and join! Its just a buck!  https://ko-fi.com/cremexcoffee

Posted using PostyBirb

[deerpilled]

Wife held me at gunpoint to make a yellow submarine sona

[xensilverquill]

Where are you now? / Atlantis 🦌🪽🍁

Little Peryton Pattern by AiraliDesign!

[claypigeonpottery]

the perytons are back!

[littledeadling]

Peryton for a sticker design

[homemadehorrors]

Big fan of subtle, restrained colour pallettes. 😎

[clowncryptids]

Fluttershy!

I actually love this design so much... she was so fun to draw!!!

This Fluttershy is a Peryton which is a mythical creature described as a winged deer! Fluttershy is also a trans girl and she loves her antlers bec they are the perfect perch for her bird friends (and the occasional naughty squirrel)

the only part of this I don't LOVE is her cutie mark... idk just don't love how it looks on her but it was hard coming up with how to make it show up on her fur color :P

other fun facts! Fluttershy is the 3rd tallest of the Mane 6! she is quite tall in average standards but AJ and Twilight beat her in height bec of their extra tall species hehe

[Image ID: a digital drawing of a Fluttershy from My Little Pony redesign. She is standing with her left side showing and her has a bashful look and smile on her face. She is a Peryton, a winged deer, she has a slender body with long skinny legs, she has a fluffy deer tail, long slender wings, a pink deer nose and long flowing pink hair. Her body is light yellow with light creamy brown on her back along with white fawn like spots. Her wings are brown and pink and her eyes are teal. Her antlers and hooves are brown, and her antlers are adorned with hanging strands of gens and sone vines, 4 small birds perch on them as well. She wears two necklaces of gens around her neck and her cutie mark is three pink butterflies with white outlining them. /End ID]

[mythaura-blog]

Development Update - December 2023

Hi folks, a very Happy New Year to you!

In the spirit of new beginnings, Mythaura has entered a new chapter in its development, which we detail in our December development update. We also take time to review what was accomplished in 2023 (our first full calendar year with Mythaura!).

We've also got our color contest winners, the winning Fighter companion, and much, much more. And of course: our demo is now live! We're so excited for you to traverse the Wild Area, a procedurally generated map with monsters for your team of three Beasts to defeat.

Demo Trailer

Message From The Developers

We're thrilled to share this pivotal update about Mythaura’s development journey, which showcases many of the core features we have planned for this game. Today marks a significant transition: we're shifting from the intricate and challenging phase of game engine development to the exciting realm of feature development.

Since beginning this project, our focus has been on scoping and then crafting robust and core components. Features such as wild areas, battle, and multiplayer systems, not to mention the complex breeding system, passive effect management, player inventory system, and the beast image engine. We've also been diligently integrating these elements with complex user interfaces and ensuring they will work on most devices (an ever ongoing battle). It's been a journey of overcoming unknowns and technical challenges, and we're proud of what we've achieved.

Now, we're entering a new chapter. Our attention turns to fleshing out the game's features, with a special focus on developing an immersive questing and dialogue system, towns & shops, skill trees & progression, and tools for content development among other needed feature development. The hardest challenges have by and large been solved at this stage and our focus can now be how to best deliver an amazing gaming experience by bringing them together. This shift doesn't mean the work is done—far from it. But it's a major milestone that brings us closer to realizing our vision for the game.

We want to express our heartfelt gratitude for your unwavering support and enthusiasm, and look forward to a jam packed 2024.

Year In Review

This year has been marked by numerous milestones. Below is a recap of our key accomplishments, excluding the latest updates which have been a major focus of our efforts for the past several months.

1. Introduction of 'Supers': Enhanced breeding complexity by introducing 'Supers' as a new mechanic, making well-structured breeding projects more valuable. We started with the debut of our first Super: Tegu.

2. Special Additions: Welcomed the special Panda to our list of Specials.

3. Expressions for Beasts: Implemented expressions for beasts, a significant and ongoing undertaking that gives life to your beasts as they interact with NPCs.

4. Elements System: Introduced the Elements system, assigning each beast a pair of inherent elements. An element page was added that delves into the lore of each element.

5. Beast Sizes: Standardized beast sizes, assigning each beast a unique size within its species' range.

6. Beast Classes: Initial build of beast classes, providing each beast with a class-based playstyle and initial items.

7: Radiant Companions: Unveiled Radiant companions, rare alternate colorations for companions that are bound to be highly sought-after.

8: Deep Dive into Seasons: Explored the planned feature 'Seasons', designed to reward ongoing gameplay.

9: The Weekend Traveler: Designed the Kobold NPC known as the Weekend Traveler, who deals in ultra-rare goods, along with the Kobold non-player species.

10. New Colors on the Wheel: Established a sustainable method to introduce new colors to our color palette, allowing us to add 16 new colors this year (including the 3 contest winners).

11. Ephemeral Inks: Introduced Ephemeral Inks, a way to alter the colors of a beast.

12. Color Wheel Page: Created a dedicated page listing colors and corresponding inks.

13. PvP Battle Demo: Rolled out a demo showcasing our multiplayer technology in PvP battles.

14. Mutations Feature: Added Mutations as a rare breeding-only feature, beginning with our first Mutation: Piebald.

15. Items By You: Crafted 11 sponsored companions (excluding recolors), 5 sponsored apparel pieces, and 2 sponsored items.

16. New Game Engine: Designed a render pipeline that can create the 2.5D effects used in Wild Areas during exploration. Including, but not limited to, dynamic shadows, volumetric fog, real-time lighting, collision detection, special & particle effects, and gravity simulation, all accelerated by your GPU.

17. Granular Settings: Created a UI to manage game settings, graphics settings, audio settings, etc as well as added gamepad support with keybind remapping to Wild Areas.

18. Procedural Map Generation: Developed technology to procedurally generate bespoke Wild Areas.

19. Ongoing Production: Work on ongoing behind-the-scenes features such as worldbuilding, map design, systems design, and the exploration features we showcased on this update!

UI Update

You may notice the UI has received an update. This redesign focuses on being accessible for players using controllers, which is something we are working towards supporting on all screens and not just the Wild Area demo. The about page has also been updated. All the links to informational pages you would have found in the left-side menu of the previous design can be found on the about page with the exception of the /species page, whose contents has been moved to the about page.

We have also added an install button to the homepage that will display for users who have browsers which support Progressive Web Apps. This will add Mythaura to your taskbar/home screen for easy full-screen access.

Mobile and tablet users may enable gyroscope to interact with the parallax graphics if they would like.

Feature Spotlight: Wild Area

Wild Areas are a key pillar of Mythaura’s gameplay, and will be where you can expect to spend a lot of your time.

At A Glance

Procedurally Generated Levels

Traverse through uniquely generated levels with your trio of beasts. Control your adventure with WASD for movement and Space for jumps and shift for sprint. This can be remapped in the settings.

Each Wild Area boasts a series of floors. Your goal? Reach the top (or bottom)!

Your Safe Havens: Checkpoint Floors

Leave the Wild Area without any penalties

Choose to start from any previously reached checkpoint.

Encounter formidable bosses or minibosses at many of these checkpoints.

Prepare for the Journey: The Adventure Bag

Your Adventure Bag is your lifeline. Pack it with essential items for survival and success.

Provision Wisely: Stock up and get ready to face the unknown.

Limited inventory space for both what you bring with you and what you find along the way.

Keep Your Energy Up

Your team's energy is key. Keep it replenished with food from your Adventure Bag or found on your journey.

Running out of energy or facing defeat? You’ll black out, dropping your Adventure Bag's contents. But don't worry, you can retrieve them by returning to your last stand.

Encounter the Unexpected

From unlocking treasure chests with lockpicks to aiding NPCs, each exploration offers unique surprises.

Day and Night Dynamics: Encounter different enemies and events. A full day/night cycle completes every 12 real hours.

Wild Areas have natural water bodies, perfect for a fishing escapade.

Escalating Challenges

Increase difficulty with each New Game+ cycle and encounter new enemies and challenging secret bosses.

Multiplayer Co-Op

Up to 3 players can group up to take on a Wild Area together.

Take on enemies as a group with co-op battles.

See your friends jump and move in realtime, split up to make the most of your exploration while keeping tabs on your team-mates through the text chat and the minimap.

Fledgeling’s Forest Demo

The demo features a single floor of the Fledgeling's Forest Wild Area, with unlimited energy.

Day/Night Slider: Experience any time of day at your convenience. (Note: Creatures that spawn remain the same in the demo)

Currently Disabled: Fishing, lockpicking, loot & foraging, multiplayer, and other events are not available in this demo.

NG+ Cycle Update

In last month's update we revealed our plans for Mythaura's New Game+ system. Originally, our plan allowed players from NG+2 and beyond to create any Tier 1-Tier 3 Beast.

We have since changed it so that at the beginning of a player's NG+2 cycle they may make a Tier 1-Tier 3 Beast with up to three Specials, but NG+3 and beyond will not feature any custom Beast creation. The player will instead have access to a pool of NG+3-exclusive items that they will receive items from.

Thank you to our Discord members for all their input, it provided us with a much better direction to move forward with!

Winter Quarter (2024) Concepts

It’s the first day of Winter Quarter 2024, which means we’ve got new Quarterly Rewards for Sponsors to vote on on our Ko-fi page!

Which concepts would you like to see made into official site items? Sponsors of Bronze level or higher have a vote in deciding. Please check out the Companion post and the Glamour post on Ko-fi to cast your vote for the winning concepts!

Votes must be posted by January 29, 2024 at 11:59pm PDT in order to be considered.

All Fall 2023 Rewards are now listed in our Ko-fi Shop for individual purchase for all Sponsor levels at $5 USD flat rate per unit. As a reminder, please remember that no more than 3 units of any given item can be purchased. If you purchase more than 3 units of any given item, your entire purchase will be refunded and you will need to place your order again, this time with no more than 3 units of any given item.

Fall 2023 Glamour: Ghastly Grin

Fall 2023 Companion: Saddleback Rattlecat

Fall 2023 Solid Gold Glamour: Ryu

Custom Color Contest Winners

Last month we revealed the names of the winning colors of our first ever Custom Color Contest--now they've made their official debut in the Beast Creator!

Congratulations again to:

Xander's "Moonstone"

Rhahatl's "Wintergrass"

Andydrarch's "Trench"

We were so impressed by all the amazing entries you all submitted. We'll definitely be running more contests like this in the future, so please stay tuned for them in future updates. Thank you all for participating!

Fighter Class Companion Winner

The brutish Domestic Wolverine will be the starting Companion for the Fighter Class! These brave and hardy creatures are perfectly suited to aiding new Fighters. Next month, we will vote on the next class companion: Rogue.

Meet the Team

We've gotten to learn so much about our supporters over the past year and a half, we thought it was time to share a little bit about ourselves as well! On our About page you can find short bios on each of the devs, including their favorite Mythaura species, color from our color wheel, and other fun and (very miscellaneous) facts.

Safari & iOS Problems

At this time, iOS devices like iPad and iPhone are only partially supported. These are the issues that the dev team is aware of and actively working on:

On iOs, Safari forces a refresh if the memory usage spikes, forcing you back to the demo start page. This happens at different times on different devices dependent on its RAM usage.

Sometimes when starting a battle, battlers start shifted down, then snap to the correct position after interacting with a button.

The zoom in on a beast image is pixelated (Safari bug: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27684).

On Mac Safari, battle animations showing with a black background. iOS is fine. Solution is to disable battle animations in the settings.

You will need to be running at least iOS 15 and Safari version 15 or greater in order to use Mythaura.

Mythaura v0.25.1

Improvements to AI Behavior: Improved target selection and behavior profiles for AI enemies.

Class Infrastructure Addition: Added new class infrastructure.

Stat Effects from Classes: Implemented functionality where classes affect stats.

Glamour CMS Process and Fixes: Updated and fixed issues related to the glamour content management system process.

Ability Usage Tracking: Implemented increments in the 'ability times used' counter, enhancing tracking of abilities' usage.

Policy Code Refactor: Conducted a significant refactor of policy-related code, improving efficiency and maintainability.

Item Actions Refactoring and Rename Feature: Refactored item actions and added a new feature to rename items, allowing users to name their companions.

Book Item Type Addition: Introduced a new item type - books, adding to the game's content.

Encounter and Description Fixes: Fixed issues with encounter metadata and corrected miss descriptions.

Shadow Maps Generation: Added tools that allow the system to generate shadow assets.

PHP 8.3 Compatibility Updates: Made updates to ensure compatibility with PHP 8.3.

Queue Configuration and Fixes: Improved the configuration of job queues and fixed related issues.

Fixes and Updates for Battler State: Addressed issues in practical testing and refined the battler state management.

Refactor of Current Effects: Refactored how current effects are stored and managed. Moved current effects to state and resolved turn resolution issues.

Map Generation and Space Management: Improved the map generator to add empty spaces when out of view.

Behavior Selection and Shadow Rendering Fixes: Fixed issues with behavior selection and shadow rendering in battle states.

Party Leader Management Updates: Implemented changes for setting new party leaders upon defeat.

Stat Resolution Enhancements: Updated the resolution of stats, improving the mechanics of stat calculations.

PvP and Demo Battle Fixes: Made fixes specifically for arena PvP and demo battles.

State Management and Pruning: Improved state management, including pruning data when no longer needed by the system.

Species Data Addition: Added species data to the about page.

Rest & Defend Action Health Gain: Resting no longer increases health but does recover more stamina. Defending no longer recovers stamina.

Remade Companion Page: Used the new scene component to improve usability and performance of companion page.

Adjusted Radiant Overlay: This fixes an issue Firefox users had with viewing radiant companions.

Updated Tooltips: Tooltips have been replaced with a more modern library.

Gyroscope Support: The game can use a devices gyroscope to move parallax scenes around.

Websocket Connection Updates: Ensures websockets get cleanly disconnected at the end of every battle.

Improved Hitboxes and Rendering: Objects no longer appear to "float" regardless of their size and their hitboxes have been refined.

Added Global Sound - App can now maintain music across different pages and the settings control master, sound effects, and music seperately.

Enhanced Settings - Greatly improved the number of modular settings a user can use in both graphics and gamepad.

Wild Area Game Pad Support - Wild areas now support game pag usage. Full game pad support is in progress.

Virtual Joystick - Touch screen devices can control movement with a virtual joystick.

General Cleanups and Tweaks: Conducted cleanups and minor tweaks across various parts of the system.

Thank You!

Our first full calendar year with Mythaura has been one primarily focused on foundation-building. We're so excited to use these systems that we have built to create the content that players will engage with as they travel throughout Mythaura. Again, a heartfelt thanks to those who have supported us through all of this--we really couldn't have done it without you. We hope to deliver an experience that you'll want to revisit again and again.

As always: we'll see you around the Discord!

[dumbbanana]

Kula-ya-ku finds one of Bishaten's fruits. Bishaten does not care to share. (Please and thank you ^^)

A poor life choice, really