qibli said trans rights!

There is a bit of a silly story behind this one. I remember reading the graphic novel and coming across this panel in the first one, where Scarlet confronts the guardians and DoD at their cave hideout.

Going top down from seawings to nightwings:

From top left in seawing drawing to the right is 'full coverage in wet robes (especially gills), 'sun visor' 'slits for wings' 'shoes for delicate feet' underlined is 'sea commoner' 'to reduce swimming drag, most wear only a few bags and tools' next underlined is 'sea nobility ' 'lots of flowy expensive fabrics (instead of woven seaweed) + other expensive stuff like pearls'

Underlined is 'sky soldier' to the right is 'light leather and mail' below to the left is 'net and stab from above' then by the foot is 'main weapons are talons and sword'. To the upper right underlined is 'sky civilian' ->'wing "shoe " stays on during flight ' below that is 'bone jewelry and stone colors' below that is 'rarely touch ground for long+actual shoes are unnecessary weight, so they just wear "socks" '

Underlined in the upper left is 'sled merchant ' below that is pointing to the 'wings steer' to the far right is 'cloak can be pulled up or down for wings' back to the lower left near the front feet it's ' studs on shoes to replace claws for grip' pointing to the 'ground soldier (which is underlined to the right) it says 'goggles for snow glare' below that is 'stronger wing arms used to strike' near the bottom it says 'pick and grappling hook' and then in far bottom right it says 'air troops have less clothing and operate via fast, powerful dive strikes'

From top left it's ' imported jewlery' right above the underlined 'spear fisher' below that is 'hunting is done using stealthy bursts' going to the right of that us the underlined 'saltwater marsh dweller' and up pointing at the green striped clothing is 'colors help deter flies' to the right of that is the 'throw helper'

'Cowl carving of the three moons' by the head of the pink one, 'constantly changing' by their wing. To the right is the underlined 'dancer' bottom right is the underlined 'forager' underneath says 'usually only wear gathering basket for max camo'

Starting at the head of the upper sandwing says 'mask for sand' below that is 'carrying most belongings' by rhe feet is the underlined 'nomad' and to the right by their leg covering is 'meant to blend in' while the worss by the tail say 'tail and front claws exposed for climbing and hunting' going back to the left under the underlined nomad says 'some cities require citizens to bundle their tail upon entry' and directly to the right is 'nomads are more likely to use weapons to preserve their sting' the underlined bit directly to the right says 'oasis settler' under that it says 'shoes b/ of paved streets' near the wings it says 'wings only exposed for heat dispersion, relatively less used'

Upper left is 'goggles and mask because of smoke/ash' below that is underlined 'worker'. Words pointing to the white robed one's head say 'goes outside less,more jewlery/gadgets because of status' next to that is 'glasses to male up for farsightedness' upper underlined word is 'scholar', to the right is 'covered wings as a symbol of importance (they get taken places rather than flying themselves)'

Every tribe has a lot of regional variety in terms of physical appearance. For skywings, the northern ones are the most populous and have united the other major aeries under the goal of pushing for imperial expansion on the side of burn. Northern skywings have the most dimorphism between males and females as well as the brightest colors out of the skywing region types (females have a very distinct reddish orange coloring while males have duller browns and yellows, as opposed to ospreys group where it’s switched to darker brown f vs lighter brown m) This is because they have the most unbalanced parental care system, where the male raises the chicks alone while the female leaves. No matter the type of physical difference, the social separation is ever present and more or less as extreme (completely matriarchal). An aerie is a nesting area for a group of related individuals, where there is one dominant female, a pool of married-in males (one is chosen every season to be the matriarchs pair), some other female subordinates, and the matriarchs kids (including some adult males). Females are leaders, hunters, and providers while the males do menial labor or domestic, and craft tasks. Among all skywing ethnicities, there are cases of males being born with female coloring or vice versa. Males with female coloring do not have a place in society according to their rules, since they look like a female but can’t lay eggs (meaning they are ‘broken’ in the eyes of their peers. They can’t even participate in making eggs because that would look gay and I’m deciding that theyre homophobic for fun/because of the sanctity they put on the hetero-ness of their everything). They’d normally just be driven out in bigger northern aeries, but Osprey is an exception because of his slightly different culture and because his group needed every worker they could get to survive on their land (he was kinda just treated like a defective female that has to work with the males. Not fun). A female with male coloring is more tolerated ONLY if they stay celibate and out of the way of the “real” females (often, they are just put in all-female homes as an attendant). Ospreys aerie was a small and rural one that practiced subsistence herding/hunting, so it wasn’t hard for a northern recruiter to strong-arm them with a little military coercion and cash into giving up their eligible youths for the draft. He didn’t really feel a particularly strong bond with any of his family group due to their previously described sentiments towards his condition, but it’s still a blow to the ego to know that they sold him off to die for not even one iron ingot. He got lucky with the force he was taken into (they got bronze swords and leather armor, which is more than some other skywing soldiers) but not so lucky with the area he was sent to (Sandwing ambush). After being badly wounded and finding out he was the only survivor, he fled rather than going back to a northern base and has been evading capture (and execution) since. The lack of depth perception/decreased vision in general means he can seriously mess up landing and taking off in crowded areas like a forest, and can’t do a lot of complicated maneuvers anymore. Despite already being jaded and cynical at his big teen age, he’s not really equipped to be on his own at all and has been thrown off the deep end in terms of experiencing the world for the first time.

A lot of things about skywing society have changed recently. Aerie, once a term that was used to describe smaller family groups, can now be used to describe large tracts of land governed by a lead family of nobles, appointed to lead subsections of the Queens domain. The Cliff Skywings (ones from the northish mountain-forested regions) are the ones the other dragons are most familiar with and are currently the dominant group, with a Cliff skywing being the current queen, uniting disparate aeries under her newly formed military with the proposed goal of gaining more land and resources from their neighbors, drawing on the average Skywings’ desperation for better living conditions and security against famine and disease. Cliffs have a much more rigid gender divide (which they see as a reflection of their bodies’ Event-given “purposes”, the female lays eggs and more or less just leaves, leaving care of them with the males other than delivering kills), which has been reinforced further by legislation by the Queen (for example, adding “marriage” as a thing to officially lock down partners of a female rather than have it be a less formal arrangement/the males switch between partners and there wasn’t a lot of female supervision on eggs as long as new workers for the family were being made. The marriage thing was proposed to make it easier for females to ensure their eggs weren’t just being discarded/replaced with another females/their sire running off and not supporting the group, and to help make record-keeping and direct inheritance/successor stuff easier since again it makes sure that males aren’t running off with the eggs to do whatever (But the main motivation is that it helps keep property and wealth tied to the female, since she now has exclusivity with a specific pool of males to work with and can pass things directly to successors that for sure came from them. It also limits social mobility for males, keeping them reliant and in service to a female. This also allows the nobility to have a large group of suitors bound to them under threat of punishment and homelessness to raise more successors and workers for them). I’m still kinda working on this system some things may not work. It’s kind of a combo of birds of prey where females and males are different sizes for less hunting competition between each other (different prey size needs) and for the female to be able to defend the nest, except the male is the one in the nest raising eggs (having duller coloration to blend in). M are smaller because there’s usually a couple of them there in the nesting area, they work together and don’t need size because the female is providing food and defense). Plains and boreal are more monomorphic, sharing care more equally. Idk idk

Here’s a map of super generalized populations for those with very distinct groups based on appearance/environmental specialization btw. I wanted to figure out where im talking about here (does Not reflect past or present borders and is very messy I’ll need to work on it, this is just kinda where they tend to live). The text got smudged but it’s meant to say that open water seawings migrate around the continent. Technically should’ve added Icewings too since their polar guys look different but theyre found in just a very narrow strip at the very top left of land there.

They’re so relaxing to color lol. The “base” coloration usually only shows up when asleep or just very distracted, tired, sick, etc. Emotion colors+patterns are involuntary, like us they can have some control over it but often it’ll show on their skin in Some way if they’re mad, scared, etc. Getting the skin to align with the chosen color takes practice to refine into something they like, but more or less just takes some thought to keep together(kind of like remembering you’re breathing every so often). Same with complex foliage disguises, those are a bit harder since they have to focus on copying what’s around them and quickly changing colors when moving. Very skilled rainwings can move and change colors very quickly, while younger or less skilled ones keep more simple shapes and color schemes (taking a while to change).

Pet rainwings were a thing before the war, mostly in skywing and sandwing upper-class circles. Their queendoms were just starting to get into that southern area and just go crazy claiming territory and looting resources (as far as they could get into the jungle, that is. It’s very dense and deadly, a lot of it remains unexplored by anyone other than rainwings). It is generally understood NOW that rainwings are also intelligent, at the time it was thought they were some kind of pretty rainforest creature that could mimic your actions and speech, they just didn’t seem “dragon enough”: very small claws, (seemingly) no teeth, weird eyes, weird beak, short limbs, no Queen, no difference between sexes/little hierarchy, they eat fruit, they sit around for a lot of the day/don’t hunt a lot of the time, the list goes on. They realized soon enough that they weren’t animals, the rich just didn’t care. Anti-other dragon sentiments and the increased wealth gap made having another dragon as an accessory very popular and a symbol of status (especially since it costs a lot to have fruit and veggies brought in to keep them alive). Even if they don’t really care for the concept , any sandwing or skywing royal or noble of any notoriety has a collection of rainwings just to keep up appearances. It’s kind of like people who irresponsibly keep big cats, except that’s a whole person youve got in that cage.