#pantala

SilkWing flight

In Lepidopteran (butterfly and moth) flight, the wings are mechanically coupled and always flap together. The downward stroke of the forewing propels the hindwing. Also, the hindwing aids in aerial maneuverability and generating lift, by contributing to the total surface area of the wing.

HiveWing flight

"Can fly in any direction, even upside down"

DartWings are actually the third Pantalan fantribe I made. I think. I know my sister requested them, saying she wanted to see me do a tribe based on dragonflies. I didn't think it would be that interesting, but eventually I came up with a design I liked. I wasn't super crazy about them yet, but everything changed when the fanfic ideas attacked.

A public service announcement from me halfway through writing this post: I am yapping too much. Every screenshot I am holding in a rant about all my design/lore choices and while it's funny it WILL bloat this post. So I will try to limit myself to one paragraph per image and channel those essays into fun concept art pieces for you to enjoy instead!!

Alate Atta's Ascension, as a series, has my best worldbuilding but I kinda shot myself in the foot with this post because I wanna TALK ABOUT ALL OF IT AT ONCE.

So I'll write a list and draw art about it instead. I've wanted to do something like that anyway, this is just proper motivation!

"Sturdy, quickly regenerative bones mean most injuries are not debilitating."

A DartWing's wings before and after several wingboxing tournaments. Even in this mutilated state, as long as the membranes aren't too damaged a DartWing can fly reasonably well. The severity of the wing mutilation affects how accurately they fly, though modern tournament rules are quite good at mitigating injuries in the first place.

The next thing that took a while to pin down were the scale patterns. My first version wasn't very good, but one day when I was doodling a character I found a really awesome reference of a hawker dragonfly. Yes, that's right, for those of you that read: Hawker is the reason DartWings look the way they look! I think he was originally even a dragon version of a friend's OC, or his looks /some personality traits were inspired by their OC.

ANYWAY, I really liked the way the blues and greens looked on the hawker dragonfly so I simplified the shapes and stuck them on my dragons. The face was another tough spot and took a few more tries to get right, but I really like what I ended up with.

Once I became serious about including them in the story, it was really important to me that the DartWings visually felt like a part of Pantala. I took the shared traits of HiveWings and SilkWings (beaks and the scales surrounding their eyes) and tried to put my own spin on them. The friend's OC I mentioned inspired the look of the eye scale for Hawker and I liked it so much that I made it canon. The lopsided scale in the middle of the mouth references dragonfly mandibles, and when I was looking at close-up references I noticed some of them had tiny almost-antennas right in front of their eyes. Antennas didn't feel right for DartWings, but they did inspire the weird set of scales that come off their face. I did it for fun and ended up liking the silhouette it gave them, so I made it canon too!

To make this post I opened the first planning doc I made for my fanfic. I dumped and organised in this one and it was so interesting to look back and see what I kept and discarded. For example, one of the DartWings' traits was using their tails as clubs to stun opponents before delivering killing blows with their wings. I honestly should have kept it, as it gives the tail spikes a continued use, and I genuinely don't know why I forgot it haha. But they do have a purpose, one not seen in the fics, which is in the next pic:

"Hatchlings aquatic before metamorphosis [special arm scales] increase surface area for swimming / after 1 year / wing casing [and tail fluke-scales] dry and gills fall off"

DartWings are actually hatched fully aquatic! This is the same with real dragonflies, where they begin as aquatic larvae that hunt in the places they hatch. In my quest to justify my choice I came up with a few reasons that actually shaped a large part of their culture:

1) The shells are thinner. Thinner shells means less time to make and earlier laying times 2) Dragonets hatch before their wings are fully developed. I developed this as a blanket case headcanon for SilkWings too, except where their dragonets climb DartWings' swim. In the water, they have more buoyancy and aren't weighed down before their legs are strong enough to carry their weight. 3) The extended scales on the arms (originally a nod to the spiky look of many dragonfly legs) are used to increase surface area of their limbs for swimming 4) The bone spikes at the end of their tails are a base for large swimming flukes/scales, which remain in adulthood. Again this is where I should have kept the club-use, but forgot! 5) After a year, dragonets climb out of the water to shed. In this state, they are extremely vulnerable, but once their scales are fully dry they can burst out xenomorph-style.

(Technically, there is a way I can fix the tail issue, but no spoilers! >:))

Also I am NOT a scientist, I just like having fun. Half of the time I research and half of the time I'm winging it. Pun INTENDED-

Right: I played with a series of four poses showing DartWings' joy and skill at flight. Obviously, being based on dragonflies, they are the most acrobatic of any WoF tribe or any of my fantribes. SwiftScales are good at tight turns but they can't go in any direction like a DartWing can.

Left: A fun pose with a dragonet showing the attachment of the primary and secondary wings. Primary wings are like HiveWing wings where the membrane goes to where the shoulder joint meets the body. The membranes of the secondary wings are reinforced at the ends and are detached from the body, like a real dragonfly's.

DartWings' wings come in three variations: fully transparent, fully opaque, and any variation in between.

And that's all folks!

Technically not all, but this post would have been 5000 words if I hadn't stopped myself. I saved my rants and I will come back with more lore art on the fun stuff! I'll probably come up with a specific tag to connect all the posts for easy reading.