Xiketic

Grace is living on a planet of toddler sized rocks with twice his strength. If at ANY point he forgets to look where he’s going he is Going Trip Over An Ambassador. Unstoppable force vs. immovable object except Grace is very much stoppable.

Eridians either get used to talking to his shins, craning on their tippy toes to get a good look at his face, or begin forcing him to sit criss-cross applesauce for literally any important meeting. Picture him joining the Erid equivalent of a UN press conference and having to curl up his awkward water body and hug his knees for the whole thing.

He can conceivably be picked up by an alien the size of a hard helmet against his will. He’s surrounded by space roombas with perfect memories and attention spans shorter than his San Francisco classroom who can’t believe he’s incapable of solving complex math in three seconds. He has step stools around his house for them to climb so he can feel like he’s “looking them in the eye” even though Eridians think that’s stupid since they lack both eyes and directional perception.

and since that's kinda the natural way for biological things to form it wouldn't be weird if eridians also evolved like that. which means they're most likely also weirdly inefficient in a lot of things.

Eridians' perception of the world relies on something that is completely absent in space — sound. They haven't been looking at the stars their entire existence the way we have. Their concept of aliens might only be as old as their discovery of astrophage. They made a bad ship, because it was their first one ever! Rocky himself says they rushed it, and that multiple (vital) things broke. Their mission was just as much of a Hail Mary pass as ours was — they had no idea what they were doing, if they could even travel in space safely. And, as it turns out, they couldn't.

Humans are the ones who have been doing it over multiple lifetimes. Mary is state of the art. We've been space farers longer than most humans have been alive. We can actually see through space. We are more likely to survive exposure to the void. We can encase our lighter, more flexible, more mobile bodies in a material that lets us walk outside of our ship, and, to a degree, we can get our bearings out there in a way Eridians just can't.

warning: blood, and Grace frying the ever-loving heck out of his arm

PHM x WoF AU mini comic

Winged spacesuits were just not working out for them. Maybe in a few years they could perfect it but unfortunately they don’t have a few years. Sorry Grace.

(I have so many questions. Does this world have more advanced tech than canon WoF, or is the Hail Mary created somehow using animus magic? Possibly a post-Pantalan contact global technology boom? When/where does this exist in the WoF timeline, if at all? I may be overthinking this. You have almost definitely inspired me to make my own WoF/PHM AU ayyyyy)

Thanks for asking! Im glad you like it/are inspired by it :)

Heres some answers to your questions and more! Canon Wings of Fire spoiler warning :

Ryland is a rainwing, for a couple reasons A) because their scales change color depending on emotions and I feel like Grace was always pretty open about showing those in the book and movie, and B) for their connection to the sun.

For the most part both Pyrrhia and Pantala are on the same page of we-want-the-sun-to-live, but rainwings are the ones who will feel the impact first and are more vocal about a solution, followed closesly by the leafwings.

Grace is still a teacher in this AU! He works at Jade Mountain Academy.

Upon news of the Petrova prophecy reaching Jade Mountain, Grace is just thankful it doesn’t involve any dragonets as the last known ones did.

Stratt is a nightwing seer. She was made the leader of the Petrova Taskforce after she delivered the prophecy about the Hail Mary mission.

On top of procuring a way to send their combined societal knowledge on the voyage, Stratt also finds a way to send several animus-touched objects aboard that are deemed potentially useful in any way.

They try to find the Dreamvisitors but are unfortunately unable to.

Stratt continues to have visions about Grace ending up as one of the astronauts leading up to launch, but keeps it a secret since she can’t let him run away.

Haven’t 100% decided yet but Im leaning towards Ilyukhina being a seawing, Yáo being a mudwing, and Carl also being a rainwing. Rocky is still an Eridian.

Carl being a rainwing is entirely because I like the juxtaposition of a doesn’t-give-away-his-feelings Carl, and a I’m-every-color-at-once Grace

Pyrrhia and Pantala are able to communicate with each other and send dragons between continents, but for the most part the only ones who regularly go back and forth are royalty or high-ranking officers.

Part of the Sandwing Kingdom as well as a good chunk of the Pantalan desert are used to breed the astrophage for the Hail Mary. They also end up becoming large-scale sites for dragons to seek refuge as the world cools.

After attempting to run from Stratt and the mission, in a panic Grace almost melts the arm off of the doctor sent to sedate him with his venom. Carl ends up having to be the one to do it. It is one of the only times Carl’s scales change with his emotions.

One of the animus objects are the stone tablets that Turtle enchanted. So Grace is able to relay some information back to Pyrrhia from the Hail Mary prior to sending the beetles, but unfortunately he cannot recieve messages from them. A couple of the healing-focused animus enchanted objects are repurposed/fitted into this Hail Mary’s version of armando.

This takes place post Arc 3 (Book 15), theres not an exact year but it has been long enough that the events of canon Wings of Fire are all historical. I’d imagine it has also been long enough for technology to progress quite a bit, yes!

The Hail Mary is largely unchanged in this AU, just slightly larger to account for the bigger passengers and built in a way that is quadroped-friendly. Unlike the book/movie the Hail Mary in this AU is the first (and only) spaceship they’ve made.

(WoF Spoilers) Animus magic no longer exists after book 14 or 15(?), so the only animus-touched objects they have are ones that already existed.

Grace’s biodome on Erid is modeled after a coastal jungle, with large “trees” and platforms for him to sun on. He still enjoys foggy days but does require some amount of sunlight. Basically he’s a gecko with heatlamps lol.

Dubois and Shapiro were both seawings as well.

Originally the whole Hail Mary crew was going to consist of seawings/mudwings to make it easier to account for their specific needs. Those two were chosen specifically because they have the most experience underwater/pressure.

SPOILERS BELOW

SPOILERS BELOW

my notes are a MESS but here's some random snippets. we're getting there! so far i have interrogatives, pronouns, and a small list of verbs/nouns. mostly because im only really translating words as they come up (i am not making a fully fledged language here). there's a lot of shared vocabulary with Grace's English, so although it sounds as old and simlish-esque as Middle English to Simon, he can pick up on a few things.

also, this is only Future Earth's/the COI's language because i decided Simon knows that after so many years in prison. i still have semi-started notes on Eden's dialect (Martian) as his first language... yes, i am insane

this was initially based off of @ctrl-shift-alt-9's linguistics world-building, which ive kinda bastardized (sorry 🫣). op, thanks for all the meta work you've been doing for iron lung! you're a fandom godsend and i hope you don't mind that im taking inspiration from your doc