Alora Fane

I've begun developing the barbari race for one of the additional petals, perhaps for my next game: the varnyn of the Shadowmoors. Here's some concept art, with commentary!

I started developing the world of Alora Fane way back in 2013. I still like much of what I came up with, though the six sentient 'barbari' races were blandly influenced by other popular RPG races such as those in the Elder Scrolls series. I've changed a bunch of them over the years, with the sindrels receiving the most drastic update for their use in Memody: Sindrel Song. Here's how sindrels looked way back in 2013:

They were fairly boring lizard people, like so many other lizard people in the other media that I'd consumed. I rethought them quite a lot for Memody: Sindrel Song, and now they look like this:

I didn't just rethink their appearance. Their life cycle and 'culture' are more refined and original now, with the 'imis' being required to earn a set of wings, and to 'charge' the 'gems' of the 'owas' to produce offspring once the sindrels died at the end of their six-day life cycle... and other stuff I should write about in more detail at some point. I personally feel that's a whole lot more interesting!

I've been thinking about which of the six Alora Fane 'petal' worlds I could use as the setting for my next game. I'd largely neglected the sindrels and their petal in past work, and I liked how that gave me a lot of freedom to develop new ideas. I've similarly neglected the Shadowmoors petal, and the varnyn race that inhabit it, so that's where I've turned my attention this time.

Here's what the varnyn looked like in 2013:

Again, they're clearly inspired by the stuff you'd see in other Western RPGs and generic fantasy worlds. I never really put much thought into them beyond "I like wolves so I should make wolf people!".

This time, I wanted to explore some different ideas.

This first page of sketches is a bit of a mess! Lots of experimentation going on here. I started off with a 'wolf centaur', as the number 6 is one of the major motifs in the Alora Fane world, so I wanted a race that had six limbs. I'm sure wolf centaurs have been done in many places before, but I couldn't remember any specific examples, so it seemed a bit more original than something with four arms or a typical ungulate/human centaur.

The rest is just exploring different possibilities. Most concept designers will suggest trying many new things rather than just sticking with your first idea; sometimes ideas develop that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

I've always been interested in really alien designs, with anatomy far removed from what we have as humans. The "aliens are people with makeup" thing has always irritated me. One of the wilder ideas here is a flat head with just a beak, and no space for a brain, as it's in the torso instead. Rather than eyes, it has two large, transparent 'light sensors' with a silhouette kind of like ears; I imagine they'd be transparent, even glowy, for an otherworldly look. While interesting to me, I don't think this could work well, unfortunately, because it's difficult for us as humans to empathise with creatures that lack facial features we can recognise. So much of our mental programming has evolved to interpret and react to human facial expressions, so by neglecting appealing to that, a whole lot of emotional connection is missed out on.

(The design with a horizontal wolf-life mouth is the stuff of nightmares!)

I liked the almost caterpillar-like design with three 'segments', each with a pair of limbs. That's what I continued to develop.

I like the idea of them having three poses that they could use for different purposes. While normally they could walk around on four limbs like a centaur, if they needed to flee they could go down on all six, or if they were being regal or asserting dominance in social settings, they could rise onto one pair of limbs to appear taller and give themselves four arms for holding things or gesturing.

I thought this version was a bit rodent-like and unappealing though.

While the head design had started as a wolf's, I wanted to move away from that to something more original. Using a beak kept a not-too-dissimilar face shape while giving this interesting bit of differentness. I followed that a bit further to give these more bird-like designs, with wing-inspired, fatter legs I thought had a more appealing silhouette. I also returned briefly to the 'eye sails' ideas, to see whether I could make them emote anyway. It's sort of possible? Not something I wanted to go with though.

This is where I feel it started to come together. I didn't like the stumpy leg proportions - they looked too animal-like - so I tried using human proportions, where the legs are as long as the head and torso combined (ears omitted). I liked that! In case you couldn't tell from the image. I wanted all the limbs to be identical - no distinction between arms and legs - so the 'legs' are pointed backwards compared to humans'.

The coloured, more refined drawing represents a eureka feeling; "I've got it now!". I don't know what that thing it's holding is! I like how lithe and slender it is; I imagine they'd be very quick and light on their 'feet'.

There are also some quick drawings of other creatures that could live in this creature's world, with the same hexapedal body plan. They're important for the game idea I had for this, though I'll get to that in another post.

Here, I continued to play around with the idea, refining details, exploring the poses and how the arms might be used. Emotes, too. Did you know that the primary purpose is eyebrows is likely to display expressions? It's important then that that region on this could be used to effectively emote. I'm not sure I'm there just yet, though.

I like the hands with two thumbs. I wonder if they'd be more useful than ours?

(The original varnyn had purple as their defining colour - most clearly seen in their eyes, but not, strangely, in their clothing - which is why I've been using that heavily here.)

I wasn't sure how the limbs would attach to the body; it's not as obvious as it might seem! The shoulder area in humans is really complicated, and the anatomical attachment of our legs is completely different. I used human and animal (eg canine) skeletons as inspiration for how scapulae (embarrassingly misnamed 'clavicle' in one caption here) might work. Since these are alien though, they don't exactly need to have *skeletons* as we understand them at all. Why would they? I particularly like how Kif in Futurama has a 'system of fluid-filled bladders' instead of a skeleton. Perhaps these have something else entirely?

Sindrels' skeletons are made of wood, by the way!

Since their three segments are identical, the arms have a placement in the middle, meaning that they don't have shoulders in the sense that we do. That still needs some attention, and I imagine it'd become clearer when I try to make a 3D model.

I also experimented with clothing possibilities here. Would they wear up to three 'shirts'? Emotes too; they don't look quite right yet. Also, there's a front view, where the mouth has a cat-like 3 shape, though it's supposed to be a beak. That's the shape implied by the side view though.

A note about eye placement: they're low on the head because that looks cuter (it's why you get those cutesy faces with two big dot eyes and a little u mouth in between them). They're also largely on the side, like a horse's. Did you know that horses can see almost entirely around them, unlike humans with our front-facing predator eyes? I imagined that these would have a wider field of vision as well, so their perception of the world would be fundamentally different to our own.

I'm not 100% pleased with how these are at the moment, but I enjoy the design process, so I wanted to share it as I develop them. I've not drawn anything in ages, so it was nice dusting off my skills, though I'd like to give them some proper attention and development.

For now, releasing Memody: Sindrel Song is my primary focus, but I'm also devoting some attention to things like this so then I can have another game in the works when I release that one!

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