Phantomwing / Stormwatch / Shadowbreaker

While back I got a prompt to draw some of my Tyrkovanii as humans for a Modern Earth AU. Now that I’m back from London and trying to get back in the swing of drawing, I buckled down and finished it :D

Phantomwing shenanigans. Jokan leaves his young daughter, Torvi, in the care of her uncle, Malaanskar for a short while, but a certain visitor makes everything go a little sour.

AKA: Kid Torvi is a bundle of office-wrecking chaos and Valto is a huge asshole. Also lame title because I’m half-dead here trying to also write my prelim exam so I can actually be a PhD candidate.

“I’m busy.”

“Please. It’s exam week, and I can’t leave her alone. Not after what happened with the oven. It’ll only be for a couple hours.”

There was silence from the mass of muscle and feathers and stately stoicness on the other side of the office.

“Just a couple of hours, no longer,” Jokan repeated, almost pleading at this point.

Eventually, Malaanskar sighed, ruffling his feather crest and running a hand down his face. Claws framed the scar across his bow and nose bridge, and Jokan grit his teeth at the sight, remembering just how he’d gotten that particular trophy.

“Right. Fine,” the Stormwatch captain rumbled, shaking his head. “I’ll watch her for you.”

“Thank you-”

“You tell her to be on her best behavior, Torvalkaalos,” he continued, lips curling back slightly over an imposing set of fangs. “She’s not only your daughter, but my niece as well, and I won’t have her soiling what I’ve built, here, with her antics.”

“Understood, sir,” Jokan mumbled, nodding. “She won’t be a problem.”

“I hope so.”

***

She was a problem. A four-year-old problem shedding feathers everywhere as she climbed and hopped and flapped around Malaanskar’s office.

He checked his desk clock.

Visskhet…

It had only been half an hour.

Getting back to those crying prompts! A mourning Adil.

Very little context version under the cut (with context added):

@verdanda and @domimagetrix - yes, the birds do party!

Here are some of the more common celebrations/parties Tyrkovanii put on and how they go down!

Quick interaction for WB-June, addressing a bit of the town Torvi lived in while she was still in the Vojakantii (inspired by those cool ice pics on my dash because that is exactly Hazard’s aesthetic), as well as Adil’s hometown/the town most of the story takes place in.

“I come from a place called-” she spat out a collection of rolled syllables and harsh consonant clusters before she paused, tapping her hand talons against the counter-top. “In your speech, that is, ah, ‘Hazardous?’ No, no, it is more, ah, ‘Hazard.’ As you call ‘Geel-mahn’ your home, I call ‘Hazard’ mine.”

“’Gilman,’” Adil corrected, taking a sip of coffee. Torvi shrugged - with both sets of arms. A single, downy feather came loose from her wing-wrist, twirling in the air before coming to rest on the counter. Adil’s eyes flickered to it - a tiny sprig of brown fluff on slightly coffee-stained linoleum. “What was Hazard like?” he asked, looking back up at Torvi.

“Frozen - all the time.” She pointed to the window, to the sheets of rain beyond. “It was like that, water always falling, but always freezing on things instead of making everything…loose.” She spoke again in Tyrkovihat before stopping, clicking her teeth, and continuing in Common. “Beautiful, I think would be the word? Like glass, some of it. Icicles hanging from the cliffs, the river below would freeze, the plants-” her hands came together, cupped- “trapped? Closed?”

“Encapsulated?”

“Yes. Like a bug in sap.”

A lingering moment of silence, Adil trying to visualize the town. Towering cliffs, mantling over a canyon, everything frozen solid in ice. A quiet, still world - not quite a dead world, but a deadly one.

No wonder they called it “Hazard.”

“Sounds cold,” he said, raising his mug for another swig.

“You are an ‘obvious captain,’” Torvi chirped, baring her teeth in something that was probably supposed to be a smile.

Adil snorted into his mug, spraying coffee across his face.

“Dammit, Torvi.” He wiped a sleeve across his mouth, snorting again. “Your Common’s getting better, but you still can’t use slang for shit. It’s ‘Captain Obvious.’ Like a name, or a title.“

“Aha! I see.” Torvi clicked her teeth together again, seeming to store the phrase away in her memory. “You will have to teach me more Common-Talk slang, Adil. I do not want you to breathe in your bean-water like that again and choke.”

“And I don’t want you to have to give me CPR - not with those talons of yours,” Adil grunted, earning himself a barking laugh in response.

I’M LATE D:

Okay, quick post on something history-related.

Going with the prompt for today: People and Races!

As was said yesterday, C-Beta was build specifically to house carbon-based, oxygen-breathing species, of which three sapient ones were found in the entire galactic neighborhood; Humans, Tyrkovanii, and Suraskon.

Planets! Perhaps a more fitting introduction to the world of Phantomwing than “lol food.” I blame my hunger and forgetting lunch yesterday.

Teivas!

I only learned about this yesterday, and thought it’d be a great opportunity to expand on the world from my original novel series, Phantomwing.

For today, a look into the cuisine from the Vojakantii, Torvi’s home country.

Tyrkovanii, like Torvi, are obligate carnivores with amazingly strong digestive systems, allowing them to eat raw, cooked, and even rotten meat without getting so much as an upset stomach. In fact, many dishes will combine these three states to create something with a myriad of textures, temperatures, ect - Tyrkovanii have a blunted sense of taste, so texture and temperature are the focal points of their cuisine.

mmmmMMMMMYES I get to write Valto in all his jerk-assy glory.

From the sky, the abandoned monument looked just as unremarkable as any Human-made structure. One had to be standing on the bridge to fully appreciate its…beauty.

Valto broke his holding pattern and swooped down to light on the compass rose inlaid in the very center of the wide steel and stone structure. To the west and east, situated on the edges of the bridge, sat two decorative arches, each housing a stained glass mural. Brothers in design, each depicted a stylized sun, as was appropriate for the two groups they were built to honor.

He took a moment to appreciate his position on the grim yet hallowed bit of architecture. If he took a step to the north, he would be welcomed home with frightened screeches and averted eyes - such was the reputation of the Verkorantii. If he took a step to the south, the only thing welcoming him would be a sport rifle aimed at his chest.

This empty bridge - this monument to the deaths of hundreds suspended over the deadly, nightmarish canyon of carbon dioxide that was Stranglehold - was, oddly enough, Valto’s oasis in a world that either feared him or wanted him dead.

Added Adil in for someone to share a drink with XD - this is from his POV

Though I miss swimming, running is fine too.

The crashing of the waves.

The slight give of the packed, wet sand beneath my feet.

The huff of my own breath and the pounding of my heart in my ears.

It’s a good morning for a run across Beachhollow. Foggy, but good.

Then I hear the near-roar of my current running partner’s breath and the uneven thumping of her own feet as she struggles to keep pace with me, and I have to rethink my previous statement.

Right. Time to take a break.

I slow to a halt.

Torvi crashes to the sand.

“You alright?”

I don’t think she hears me - she’s rolled into the ocean, splashing around, her wing flipping frigid water high into the air. The sight reminds me of the birds that used to visit my bird bath, at least before it got run over and destroyed by the cable guy’s truck two years ago, and I can’t help but chuckle.

A bird in a birdbath.

Except the bird is seven and a half feet tall and the birdbath is Beachhollow Bay.

But still. A bird in a birdbath.

Belligerent bird brothers. I’m all for stained glass bg’s now - especially ones that invoke the sun b/c symbolism :D

Felt like writing a little snippet based on my original sci-fi mystery series that I’m slowly working on, Phantomwing, to try and get out of a bit of a writer’s block I’ve been having with it lately.

IDK if anyone’s interested, but here’s a bit of general background: Phantomwing takes place in an alternate near-future. Humans, along with two other carbon-based, oxygen-breathing, sentient-sapient species, the Tyrkovanii and the Suraskon, were (forcibly) transplanted to a newly-terraformed planet as part of a grand-scale sociological experiment. 200-300 years have passed since their arrival, yet the Tyrkovanii still remain culturally, geographically, and politically isolated, while the Humans and Suraskon have integrated quite well. Tensions between the two groups exist for a myriad of reasons. This serves as the background for a mystery involving a missing wing, fabricated organs, and a plot to make a very bloody point in history repeat itself.

In this snippet, Torvi takes a walk on the beach in Port Gilman (a town based heavily on Newport, Oregon, btw) and mulls over some of the differences she’s noted between her home country and the one she finds herself currently stuck in. Something, however, catches her ears along the way.