#star warrior

Vestigial tail + spikes

A far cry from the reptile tails of old, the tails of current day are stubby with little movement, and in a few generations will likely be completely gone.

These guys are descendants of dinosaurs! The tails had been used for mobility, balance, but especially fighting. This connotation created ripples in the culture of what the vestigial tail means for avians, no matter how stubby and useless it is in present day! Since hollow bones had started to emerge in the species, anything that could possibly crush them is considered taboo, including showing off tails freely. A lot of them pretend they don’t exist!

Prehensile feathers

The feathers at the tip of the wings are modified fingers that can grab! If you were to push back the feathers, you would even see vestigial talons that are either too small to be any threat, or kept trip for proper appearance. All of the avians have thumb-like digits as well, but their grip is not a precise as our own.

Avians of high social standing often commission and wear enchanted gloves to aid with their weak grip, and it is why Dedede isn’t seen with his feathers and can use his hammer!

Spines + tail usually covered up

For this study, I focused on just the bodies themselves, but i wanna delve deeper into the culture they have! In particular clothing is important. They usually keep their tail and spines covered up for modesty and cultural norms—the spines are seen as weapons and only shown when living a life of battle! Even Dedede who gets into fights often doesn’t want to show them, but there is exceptions. The gray star warrior having their tail out is due to the position they have in the army. They dedicate their life to a battle. Other factors include needing high mobility! Some avians in gymnastics or on rescue teams, and other professions where mobility is essential are exempt from this rule, but they often have a robe or cover-up when not performing the task.

For Dedede: adapted to be a water-type bird, has flippers and webbed feet, and is unable to fly. His eyes are bigger than normal for the purpose of being able to see in dark waters with barely any light, although the trade off is his long distance vision leaves much to be lacking. His choice of hammer as a weapon is barely any thought to us, but a taboo one in avian society. His distance from any others of his kind is in part due to his refusal to put it down.

For Vul: he is a an avian capable of flight!! This is a rarer trait. He feels at home in the sky, and his eyes even in his old age are unparalleled to anyone else in his crew. Vul, like dedede, normally covers his tail, especially because even though he lives a life of battle, he is rather old fashioned and does not want to admit it, despite being captain to a crew of knights.

For the Star Warrior: a unnamed individual who would turn heads if they walked on their home planet looking like that. Metal armor in of itself is unusual because most avians hate to weight themselves down too much to fly, even if they aren’t a flying type. Under the helmet they have a bright red crest, and for the long legs I based them off of a Sandhill Crane. Their long legs are the best example of another trait I didn’t get to touch on yet: these guys have feathers covering the legs! Where in real life birds usually have scales, these guys have a gene which gives them feathers everywhere but the feet. Similar to silkie chickens or pigeons with muffs!

Most of these guys have some kind of feathered crest above their eyes! It helps keep sun and water out of their face, similar to eyebrows.

Page 2: a doodle comic with the story of how avians were created, along with a visual of them being somewhere between a dinosaur and bird