so my frend made a Cruel evil joke (joke) about my last post about kicking arvo while he's shapeshifting. Because fun fact the reason why basilisks are so vulnerable during shapeshifting and why its a big deal to do it with company is that if the "shell" that forms (basically the skin/feather husk of their previous form) suffers trauma and bursts before the process is over, the half-melted half-formed meat goo will just come out. and sometimes its conscious before it inevitably dies. which inspired the first image (not canon dw)...

but that made me sad to draw so i sketched up a small comic instead. idk if its fully canon but either way itd happen post-story, during a time when folke is feeling discomfort and some resentment towards arvo... but the dream disturbs him even so

shapeshifting is something that a basilisk will nearly always seek to do in solitude.

an act which temporarily blinds and numbs the creature from the surrounding world - they will be left completely vulnerable to it. defenseless. frozen inside the shell of their old form as organs and cells rearrange.

to shapeshift in front of someone is, therefore, the ultimate show of trust that a basilisk can perform.

june sillyness

various sketchbook doodles from the final school week for the spring termmm

also more maybe not super nice on the eyes creature relation diagram - many of these are kind of approximations bcs not every species is super culturally cohesive (as they live in smaller more local societies rather than big nationalistic structures). i just needed to map out a bit about thems

its been a while but new pareidolia creature!! ive been thinking of making these for a while. in case u don't know what an älgfrode is (a bit more of a niche nordic mythology creature), an älgfrode (or elgfróði in icelandic) was mentioned in hrólfs saga kraka, one of the old norse hero sagas. while the context for that was one specific character i just wanted to make moose people..

more info abt my creatures below the cut...

they wear more clothes than in the ref this is just to show their anatomy LOL. clothing is actually very important to them and textiles will almost always have a role in any tradition/significant social event. their textilework is very renowed and is one of the trades that cause some other vättar to want to trade with them as mentioned in the ref!

one potential reason for their high level of defensiveness is that their species suffers from a higher than average infant mortality rate - with time, this mortality rate has lowered from what it used to be, but when the species first appeared, it wasn't unusual for a mother to have to give birth to many calves before one even made it to adulthood. this rooted a deep set vigilance in them - even now that the rates have stabilised a bit. the high mortality rate was probably due to the affected "shift" gene sometimes activating improperly which could result in stillborns. with time and selective pressure new gene mutations would arise in the species that "counteracted" the instability of the first initial one and made the infant mortality decrease. it is, however, still a little higher than usual for similar species, and so it is traditionally encouraged to have many children.

gender roles for älgfroder are interesting - there is a strong sense of "equal strength", or "laorhgr" in älgfrode, which is important. while males are usually slightly larger than females, there is emphasis on the importance on a pair being able to stand their ground both physically and emotionally to the other and a relationship can only go ahead if a spar between two älgfroder is fair. this extends to an interesting dynamic that involves polyamory. älgfroder can be both monogamous and polyamorous, however polyamorous relationships often only arise when there is a big physical differential between two parties. the belief is that if one party is stronger than the other, that strength can be equalised if the other party is accompanied a second partner of similar strength - usually this happens between one strong male and two females on the smaller end. that way the resulting relationship has achieved "laorhgr". this ofc varies as everything does but ya. basically if you are a big strong älgfrode dating a small petite älgfrode it's seen as shameful and barbaric. there is also a bias to heterosexual relationships as it is seen as an important social duty to at least successfully raise one calf.

dhukohr are the more commonly occuring intersex condition in älgfrodar, but there is an equivalent to it for "males" where they fail to grow antlers and have very small dewlaps due to low testosterone levels - those are usually referred to as kvikohr. they are often recognised as their own gender respectively however there are many that identify as men/women too. some of these dhukohr/kvikohr are actually moreso trans than intersex - simply having utilized faerie dust in order to transition. this can be a bit of an ordeal though because usually this requires being administered it by a tomte which, depending on the settlment, can be a tense negotiation, although individuals usually have a less hard time with that.

älgfrodar and bäckahästar can hybridise and do sometimes produce fertile offspring! i would have to think more about this though erm. but i think it does and can happen. there is a sense of rare camraderie between the two species in many cases but especially so between älgfrodar and bäckahäst communities that choose to spend more time as their faun shift than their base shift - in fact a few of these bäckahästar choose to integrate into certain älgfrode settlements, but this is more of a rare occurance. most bäckahästar that possess "unishift" clothing have actually had them made by älgfrodar, or at least had the fabric sourced from them

i redesigned klint!! i was really unsatisfied with how he looked LOL. also his faun form - i dont think he has used it much at the point of the story, but is beginning to use it more as he is friends with selma, so they can hang out with folke together sometimes

bäckahäst family/reproduction loredump bcs i was hit by the desire to flesh them out a bit moar

🪓 for both Arvo & Folke, I'm curious >:)

🪓 would they make it to the end in a horror movie?

Ima be real probably not for both of them LOL. folke does poorly in high stress/high danger situations... he is analytical but definitely more of a freeze type of person when push comes to shove. arvo only manages to kill things because he has a gun and is good at working with a strong setup/ambush but when faced with actual danger/stress his 57 mental illnesses would make it difficult for him to stay stable LOL and anything unpredictable he wouldnt cope with well

🛡️for Selma

🛡️how does this character protect themself and others?

selma protects by putting herself at the steering wheel - at least to the best extent that she can. she demands to be listened to and usually believes that her way is THE right way, and when someone she cares about does something that she deems as putting themselves in danger for example, she is going to try to step in to stop it, or if she can't - insist upon her way of dealing with the problem being the best. very uncompromising in that regard - it can take a really really long time to convince her to listen to you if she deems that you're doing something risky. basically, she tries to solve the problem and she wants to solve it her way

when it comes to herself, she protects herself by avoiding connecting to the greater community around her - the world is something she finds hostile, and she's rather afraid of getting close to many others - the more people she gets close to, the more people she can lose, and she feels she's had enough of that due to her fawnhood. a part of this contributes to why she acts so aloof when mingling with other bäckahästar during their annual spring festivals (very big important cultural event for many bäckahäst cultures). she was raised a big part of her foalhood by a tomte and partly due to that kind of associates her own kind with the fact that humans tend to hunt them as that's the most impactful event from her early fawnhood with her birth parents, and therefore growing close to them is a big risk in a way.

oc ask game cuz im bored. ok to rb!!

🪷 what gives this character inner peace?

🪰 what is the worst thing this character has witnessed but not experienced?

🐁 how are this characters ethics?

🚬 smoking/drinking habits? signature brand or drink?

🌫️ how does this character feel about lying?

🐦‍⬛ fursona?

♟️describe how they would play chess, if they would.

🎲 are they lucky?

🐌 do they carry their home with them or is it a place?

🦤 are they particularly smart in any way? how so, or not?

🪽does this character believe in a higher power?

🦪 how would this character describe their gender, if asked?

🫁 yuri or yaoi?

👛 what is always with this character?

🦇 biggest material fear (ie heights, bugs etc)

🪱 would this character move a worm off the pavement or save it?

🐞 does this character have any notable accent or dialect? what about other languages?

🦑 any pets?

🛡️how does this character protect themself and others?

🪓 would they make it to the end in a horror movie?

⚖️ how do they seek justice?

some stuff involving non sapient creatures in pareidolia, first image is some animals that tomtar have domesticated, second is a remake of gloson, which is a vätte but is, contrary to most other ones ive made, not a sophont and is instead domesticated by trolls. more info below the cut...

ive already talked about the tomteget in another post, so i wont go into detail about them here, but the one shown in the picture is gullmar's goat (and he is there as well as ucan see). tomtar also keep a domesticated breed of wolverine and ermine, used for some different purposes - wolverines more as guarding/herding animals and ermines to hunt. tomtar don't actually tend to hunt a lot of large prey at all, and what they do hunt is sort of limited as a lot of game birds are sacred to them due to folklore (basically ptarmigans, corvids, grouses, capercailles and things in those veins..). therefore despite how small ermines are they can hunt most of the quarry they prefer such as hares, ducks etc - especially bcs the tomte variety of ermine is bred to be a bit larger and more robust. they can also just be kept as companion animals for many tomtar. wolverines meanwhile serve well as guarding and herding animals due to their size and strength. there is a notable regiment of wolverine fighters in the midlands front - where interested tomtar are trained for combat utilizing the power of the wolverine - the one pictured though is a regular herding/guarding animal though. there are probably some smaller tomte hunting groups that try to go for bigger game with them such as wolves etc. but its definitely pretty unusual. tomteget goats are basically universal across tomte cultures, but the tomte wolverines and ermines are a bit more limited, more occuring in northern cultures historically. although as time goes on they have been spread further south, especially as the midlands front was established and increased the communicative network between different disparate tomte societies. 2. this is just a remake of the gloson from that older post bcs i wasnt really happy with the design - its a laaaaarge animal but didnt really feel like it proportionally bcs i stuck too closely to the normal eu swine proportions... things are mostly the same about them though. the orange parts of the horns glow!

sometimes i feel as if i know you better than anyone else. yet, a part of me feels as if i don't know much at all.

i rarely ever get the Anatomy Worldbuilding Brainworm but suddenly i was struck by it bcs i had been thinking about the weirdness of basilisks and in particular how the whole Ability to change sex through shapeshifting works so. Yippe

a guy ive had in mind for a whileee its a crime i havent actually made an oc of my faeries yet so this guy!! this guy is actually the faerie that provides folke with funky fantasy hrt. more on them (and a bit about faeries) under the cut...

krillimir, or as they're known to many non-faeries, (spider's web) glasswing, is a rather newly adult faerie, having emerged about 3 years ago from their pupae. a bit of a free spirit in comparison to other faeries, they hail from the Hemarikkit Till colony to the south of vätterunda, perhaps the largest colony in the area with its main structures occupying a sunlit forest grove. due to the size and relatively stable nature of the colony, there was not a lot of pressure/demand on newly emerged faeries to take up a specific role, and krillimir preferred to keep their options open and thus chose to identify as a generalist.

generalist faeries can kind of take on less specific work than other faerie genders usually do, and especially work which involves collaboration with other species, and curious about the world outside of the colony, krillimir applied to be a participant in the colony's medical program - basically all faerie colonies have a medical program which involves a collaboration with the area's local tomtar, who will provide them with illusory magic to maintain their settlements and keep them hidden/protected. in return, the faeries offer their faerie dust, which can be finely tuned to affect an organism's hormone levels (as well as some other biochemicals) - this of course can be used to treat certain conditions, or as a way to alleviate pain, etc.

gullmar, who is folke's "tomte uncle" in a way, ended up visiting the Hemarikkit Till colony in search of a faerie that could help with folke's Trans Gender Blues (aka: provide him with hrt, after gullmar realised that folke was trans) and the freshly emerged krillimir would be assigned to him. due to the nature of the assignment, krillimir would just be permanently assigned to gullmar and comes by the granholm residence once every few months to readjust folke's hormone levels to the proper ones when the T levels start to fall off. while gullmar can find the faerie a bit neurotic and too energetic, their relationship grows to become amicable - a part of gullmar probably feels a fatherly instinct towards them hehe.

some extra faerie stuff i thought about making this guy so ill include:

faeries do not have a directly "spoken" language like we do, and communicate mostly through pheromones, body gestures and sounds like squeaking, trilling and hissing. they can communicate with other species through their pheromones, but as they communicate with said species in the target's language, things like names are often just directly translated. "krillimir" means "spider's web glass wing". how do we have the "romanization" of their name then? Well through some convoluted shenanigans. basically - tomtar have an anda-powered ability to learn the language of other species. with enough exposure and socialisation they will just naturally begin to gain an understanding of that language, and their ability has led them to be able to learn faerie language, especially helped by it also existing in a written form. while faeries don't speak this written language, it is how they conceptualise more complex ideas internally (the internal voice so to speak) - with the tomte ability, they can somewhat approximate what the language would sound like if spoken - at least filtered through the tomte brain. its most definitely not 100% accurate to what it would sound like though but most faeries accept it as close enough. this probably makes no sense but erm it sorta makes sense to me. LOL. but it means that most species that haven't learn to read faerie will only hear the literal translation when a faerie introduces themself, and thus many call krillimir by glasswing for short.

krillimir is a "generalist", which is one of many faerie genders. i made a post about it a while back! they go by they/them but generally doesn't mind he/she either.

faerie clothing is generally made of a fabric woven together by silk produced by them themselves - this silk is mainly produced by broodtenders or generalists. they also have a special way of "tanning" leaves, ending up with them having leather-like properties, which is part of what krillimir's outfit is made out of there! very popular reccuring symbols in their fabric design are "eye" "mimicry" and sometimes patterns which mimic some other animal/creature.

gonna try to make new refs for guys but it might take a bit, augh, so have these guys so far...

some folkes (1. folke during pt 2 of pareidolia 2. at ages 19 and 12)