Alicornutopia

So the vampire blood-lifespan link was part of the original hybrid population?

And I find it interesting that this does not contradict vampire religion, since they include no origin story in their religion. Although, that does make me wonder: All I can see in Talyn’s reading of the Book of the Most Holy Founder about the secrecy is one paragraph on the Song of Secrets, where it mentioned that temples helped keep secrets. Why do they care about keeping their religion secret in the first place?

Yeah, the blood/lifespan thing is longstanding, shapeshifting is more recent, and the division of biological capacities between the forms (sleep as bats eat as humanoids) more recent still.

Original secrecy is part "they're just like that" and part "we're living with these ultra suspicious people who are afraid we're going to eat them, so if we want any damn privacy we'd better draw a sharp line around not letting them in our temple so they can be really sure we aren't eating any of them in there".

Alicorn wrote:Yeah, the blood/lifespan thing is longstanding, shapeshifting is more recent, and the division of biological capacities between the forms (sleep as bats eat as humanoids) more recent still.

Original secrecy is part "they're just like that" and part "we're living with these ultra suspicious people who are afraid we're going to eat them, so if we want any damn privacy we'd better draw a sharp line around not letting them in our temple so they can be really sure we aren't eating any of them in there".

huh, now that it is pointed out, I suppose it helps to create a group identity if it is a binary of religious/not-religious?

What would be the responsibilities of a new species creator towards the species? the same of a parent? Does the Dragon Council enforces anything?

The Dragon Council currently enforces "don't fucking do that". ...So to speak. In the past it was more anarchic.

Alicorn wrote:Both the wolves and riders have green-group ancestry

Wait, I thought dragon-descended species were always bipedal. Are there other exceptions? How/why are there exceptions?

That's the most unambiguous exception. It's not a rule, it's just typical for them to develop hands and the species with more limbs tended to go for more hands rather than more feet; wolves developed symbiosis with humanoids instead.

And, because (in glowfic terms) English (and our culture) are metacausally significant, would a dragon/horse hybrid tend to be something more centaurlike (assuming horses were imported from Barashi)?

Are most of the humanoid species dragon hybrids? If so, with what? Some of them, like merpeople, have obvious answers (“yes, fish (probably various types)”), but others not so much.

Elcenia's original incarnation included deertaurs, actually, but I cut them as extraneous. So yeah, probably you'd get 'taurs that way. Skyfolk added a set of limbs too.

All Elcenia's sapient species except for dragons themselves have dragon/something origins. The descendants of various primates are notable in having retained their speciation instead of blending and then racializing afterwards, unlike other cases of highly similar hybrids (both skyfolk and merfolk are descended from several original populations of fish-people and bird-people, but it was easier for them to encounter each other and form mongrelized populations than it was for purely terrestrial children of primates to overcome geographic separations, so while for instance skyfolk "ethnicities" look dramatically different from each other they all share properties like aging rates and lifespan, and elves/humans/halflings/dwarves don't, yet.)

Alicorn wrote:That's the most unambiguous exception. It's not a rule, it's just typical for them to develop hands and the species with more limbs tended to go for more hands rather than more feet; wolves developed symbiosis with humanoids instead.

Well, that is a way to get hands.

It is weird that my reaction this was "awww, cute"?

Alicorn wrote:Elcenia's original incarnation included deertaurs, actually, but I cut them as extraneous. So yeah, probably you'd get 'taurs that way. Skyfolk added a set of limbs too.

huh, weird. I mean, to me it sounds like something that you could mention once and ignore forever, is not like we have Skyfolk characters. I don't even know if they have been mentioned in story.

Alicorn wrote:All Elcenia's sapient species except for dragons themselves have dragon/something origins. The descendants of various primates are notable in having retained their speciation instead of blending and then racializing afterwards, unlike other cases of highly similar hybrids (both skyfolk and merfolk are descended from several original populations of fish-people and bird-people, but it was easier for them to encounter each other and form mongrelized populations than it was for purely terrestrial children of primates to overcome geographic separations, so while for instance skyfolk "ethnicities" look dramatically different from each other they all share properties like aging rates and lifespan, and elves/humans/halflings/dwarves don't, yet.)

The primate-descendants are more recent or it is purely the lack of movement?

Does it takes long for an species to pick up "extra" traits from a dragon ancestors? Could that be done on purpose during the span of a dragon's life?

I like skyfolk more than I liked the deertaurs, and they had more onscreen appearances in the original version, although even that may be trimmed. Cenem's egg mother Marlii can turn into a skyfolk.

Elves are among the older species, the others are newer, it's mostly lack of movement.