#aviarchy

idk how i want to do this

    That one beam. There was always that one little beam of sunlight. It blazed like an arrow swiftly and accurately to strike its target. Kretchet stretched his wings. The dawn was beginning to filter through the canopy, and like every morning, there was a shaft of light aimed directly at his retina.  “I’m up, I’m up,” the gyrfalcon grumbled, and took to his wings. Kretchet landed on an adjacent lower branch. He hiked a leg over his wing and yawned as he scratched his head. He could hear the rest of Cressleigh waking to the sunlight as well.  The songbirds were stretching their voices, the partridges were beginning to shuffle about in the leaf litter, and down by the stream he could hear the kingfishers splashing into the brisk waters. With another stretch and a brisk shake of his wings, he

 which makes me feel like he's totally 2-d, which upsets me, and i'm not entirely sure what kind of quirks he might have to fix that

I just went ahead and answered all the questions, since it looked like fun, and I want to introduce my world.

It isn't that long, so no cuts for you!

WORLD-RELATED:

31. What are some of the laws of the universe your characters live in?            

The world is young, and the raw energy of creation still flows unbound. It gathers around natural features, like glaciers and mountains and waterfalls, and the primitive human settlements. Animals can speak and think, but their talent for creating is limited. (With some exceptions.) There’s no “magic” as far as wizards and mages go; mystical creatures such as dragons and griffons are nonexistent.

32. Does the universe your characters live in have a god?

It doesn’t have a God, as in a high creator entity. What it does have is ‘gods’, beings created by belief and by the concentration of that raw natural energy. Wild gods are those created by that concentration of energy, such as a wanderer may fall ill of an angry glacier being in his travels and meet a dismal fate.  Humans in their villages tend to have one or a few of their own gods, powered by belief and addicted to sacrifices and worship. Gods grow as their worship intensifies and spreads, but they also disappear and grow weak as their worship falls. Their existence depends on their followers, something that many ‘domestic’ gods know well.

33. If the place your characters live in is different from ours, what makes it different?

^^^^^

34. Do ghosts or supernatural entities exist in your characters' world?

Yes. When a human (or some animals in which the creation magic is strong) dies, a shade is left behind. When you walk into a room and feel a shiver or a presence and the hair on the back of your neck stands up—shades. Shades are not, in general, sapient beings. They’re an echo, and imitate what they once did in life.

35. What kind of species live on the planet/in the environment your characters live in?

It’s bronze age Earth-like. Mammoths, sabrecats potentially…

36. What is the climate like?

Ice Age holarctic.

37. Is there an afterlife in your story's universe?

No. Once a being dies, it’s dead. Except for the above conditions about the shades.

38. If there are supernatural entities in your universe, where did they come from?

Explained above           

39. If the world your characters live in are significantly different from ours, would you be able to live there? (If it's a place where humans are not supposed to live, imagine you've been given the ability to live there somehow.)

I DREAM of living in a hunter-gatherer society where women are as free as men. Ahhh, horticulture, why did you doom us so?

40. How safe or unsafe is the place your characters live in, and what makes it this way?

Well now that depends. There is a place where the birds have staked out a kingdom for themselves; if you are a bird, and you live there, you are very safe indeed. If you are a mammal, you are not so much. If you are a large, threatening mammal, you are actively hunted and eradicated. If you are a small lizard or fish or insect, you are food.  In other parts of the world, it’s purely about the call of the wild and the circle of life. Humans are not the top of the food chain.

41. Does your world have multiple dimensions? If so, how many, and what happens in these dimensions?

42. How technologically advanced is the place your characters primarily live in?

Humans have created bronze. In some places, some enterprising men and women are experimenting with other metals. There are one or two plants that are more or less domesticated. There exist a handful of domestic animals at this point; sheep and goats, some geese. Sharp sticks, bows and arrows, rough burlap and rawhide are in general the name of the technological game.

43. Is the place your characters live in someplace people would want to go sightseeing in, or a tourist attraction?

Perhaps, if we could bring modern technology and safety equipment.

44. Are there any other places in your characters' world that they want to travel to?

Opata will see many places in his travels.

45. If there is a pop culture, what's considered "cool"? If there's no pop culture, what are some traditions that your characters follow that have been inherited from ancestors or the culture they were raised in?

clockwise from upper right:

krechet. gyrfalcon. too young to remember when the eagle king united the birds, but his father fought alongside the eagle king in battle, and was rewarded for his valor and loyalty. krechet has been told stories of the eagle-king all his life, and is a great royalist.

???: barn owl. lord of the sky-island called Witchwood. Seclusive and not well-known by the diurnal birds of the kingdom, as Witchwood largely belongs to the nocturnal birds, and the two don't tend to mingle.

Kokko: shaman of the seperatist raven tribe. the crows and ravens were never, as a group, very interested in uniting under one banner with the other birds. the corvids regard themselves as hardly 'birds' at all, but rather beings of a higher calling, and instead of calling one sky-island home, they roam the kingdom at large. Other birds think of them as barbarians and pagans. Kokko in particular is given a wide berth.

Pelakirit: My friend's OC ;v; it makes me weak in the knees that she thinks my creation is worth RPing in~~*~~ She's a peregrine falcon. Though many of the lords of the sky-islands are birds of prey, she thumbs her nares at the world of civilization and lives on the border of the kingdom as one of the respected sentinels who keep the kingdom safe against incursions of the mammalian sort.

Hrisskar: He came from the freezing north to unite the birds of his future kingdom against those who would murder and devour them.