Shattered Stars - Honour and Valour

GUYS!  I DID A THING!

Been to long since I posted art, but I figured I'd do something.  I actually had to redo a ton of this stuff on this big guy here, including the smaller wings, the second tail, and ALL the colors, which were complicated as HELL because of said four wings with transparency.  But it worked out in the end for me...

Note to self, leave autosave on.  And get a bigger boot drive so Gimp doesn't crash anymore...

Anywho, the character!  It's Kouta!  Some of you may recall his original name, Onyx, from my image of Nerida.  Sir Kouta Blackwell.  And guess what?  This is our first time seeing a Voidwing for reals!  Well, kinda.  He's a hybrid actually...

Info dump to follow:

Physical

As you may have noticed, Kouta is big.  Like, really big.  He's another half again as big as Pyrrus.  Yes, he's THAT big.  I had to think up some things to get this guy to even work.  His height at the shoulder is five YARDS.  Fifteen feet.  Normal height at head is something like twenty five feet.  Just.. wrap your head around that for a second.  That puts him at twice the height of Kiesah, and Kiesah was already quite large for a dragonelle.  That puts Kouta at TWO GORRAM STORIES GUYS.  He's wingspan is even more incredible.  The numbers are crazy, but the wingspan is my favorite.  His wingspan is 300 feet.  That means, with his wings fully outstretched, he spans an entire football pitch.

Everything about his design is to compensate for his immense size and weight.  He weighs two and a half tons, or five thousand pounds, which is around the weight of a cadillac escalade SUV or a full size pickup truck.  As such, four legs just wasn't enough.  So the front legs and back legs provide propulsion, and the middle pair provide stability and extra load capacity.  There needed to be larger wings too, so not only does he have a massive wingspan, he also has four wings, two for primary lift, and two for secondary lift and directional control.

But it's more than just that.  Dragons are built for war in general.  With flight, and tooth, and claw, and elemental powers, they are made to do battle with almost any species.  But Kouta needed more.  He has backups of a bunch of different critical systems.  Bear with me as I go all biologist nerd here.

All dragons have two lungs and two hearts.  Two lungs are normal, but unlike a normal quadruped, they run along the back, beneath the spine and rib cage for protection.  The hearts are located in the very center of a dragon's chest.  They are extremely difficult to get too.  There are two because of a dragons increased size, one to pump blood to the tail and back, and one to pump blood to the head and back.

Kouta is different.  He has four lungs.  All four lungs work together, but he can loose a single lung entirely, and still breathe just fine.  However, a nromal respiratory system just isn't enough, the airways aren't large enough for him to breath through the nose and out again, not for the volume of air he needs.  So instead, there are vents, just inside his front two legs, and two more just past his middle pair of legs for breathing in and out.  Dragonflies actually have a similar system on their back, called a trachea.  Air gets sucked in the front, circulated through the lungs, and then forced out the back.  The system can actually produce 300 pounds of thrust, which while Kouta is in the sky, allows him to fly on level or gain small amounts of altitude just by breathing.

His hearts are awesome as well.  He has six.  The increased size means that he needs at least four to survive.  One to pump blood to the tails, and one to suck blood back to the core via a vacuum.  The other two are for the head.  The last two are for backup and for non-vital systems.

He's got more backups for other systems as well.  His central nervous system has one, a secondary frontal lobe beneath his brain.  Two brains might sound weird, but this simply works like a backup hard drive, storing parts of his personality and memories in case of blunt force head trauma.

He has backups of some bone systems too.  He has two spines, one smaller backup placed above the larger one.  This reduces flexibility slightly, but drastically increases durability.  The secondary spine leads into the smaller tail that's joined to the main tail.  He also has a second rib cage too, running opposite the primary rib cage, between the two breathing vents.  This bone system runs from the collar bone all the way to the hip bones.

Beyond that, he has additional sensory input.  You'll notice the quad eyes.  This gives him a 300 degree field of vision, and it also means that since the eyes blink independently of each other, he never looses vision, even when he blinks, although the eyes can all four be closed at once, so that the guy can sleep.  His sense of smell and hearing is improved as well.  Smell runs through our nasal cavities.  His is massive.  It's actually so sensitive that he can "Smell" sound, although it's more just sensing vibrations in the air.  The olfactory sensors run inside his breathing passage.  Audio receptors on normal dragons just run through head mounted horns, which capture vibrations, and translate those vibrations into electrical impulses, sent to the brain, and decoded into sound.  Audio receptors for Kouta are also located in the spikes on the end of his legs, giving him a full surround sound reception.

Background

Kouta is a Hybrid, half Rasani(voidwing) and half Drakian(dragon).  Hybrids have some difficulty in the verse.  They run the risk of being sterile from birth.  Kouta isn't Sterile, but he is infertile, meaning he will struggle having hatchlings.  His size however comes from something different.  His sire was a Rasani, who wasn't an oversized Queltan, but carried the gene for Queltan, as all Rasani do.  A Queltan (Ka-velt-an) is the massive six winged six legged, triple tailed Rasani encountered in the dark lands and on earth during the hostile Rasani occupation.  They are basically the Rasani equivalent of the Ancients for the Drakians.  His dame WAS an ancient.  As such, he has the "Get freaking big" gene from both sides of his lineage.  The results as you can see are monstrous.

Few ancients exist today, and no Queltan are known to exist at all.

As half Rasani, half Drakian, Kouta has some of the traits from both his mother and father.  He has access to his mothers elemental powers, but they are difficult, and slow to come to him.  They truly flair up when he feels threatened, or has especially strong emotions.  On the flip side of the coin, he has the ability to bond with a creature of another race, AND has the ability to nullify elemental powers, something that comes much much easier to him.  His bonding ability however, like all Hybrids, can be chosen.  However, when he chooses to bond with another creature, the link is permanent.  There is no going back or bonding with someone else, even if the bondmate dies.  His nullifying ability comes easier to him, but it is not as powerful as a pureblood Rasani's.  It has a much smaller range, and can be broken much easier than a normal Rasani's.

Personality

Kouta is normally quite Jovial, always in the mood for a good joke.  He has a rapier wit when it comes to smart aleck remarks or practical jokes, but often times his mouth can get him in trouble.  He is impulsive and reckless, often doing without thinking, and finds he gets himself into to much trouble, screwing things up for himself rather quickly.  He loves the world around him, and the people in it, often giving them the benefit of the doubt, not wanting to jump to conclusions or be to quick to judge.  His naivety in that matter has gotten him bit in the tail on more than one occasion in the markets of his hometown, New Zion.  He's an idealist, believing in personal honor and integrity, believing in trying to make a better world.  He is Religious, although that trait is not always apparent at first.  He believes that if you are in combat, you should face your enemy fairly.  Your enemy should be armed, facing you, and should know you have the intent to kill him.

His mother has called him "Sir Knight" on more than one occasion, until the day that she appointed him the first Dragon Knight of New Zion.

He is moderately good at combat, but he specializes in Strategem more than straight up combat.  His massive size and weight means that while hs is good, he is never going to excel in combat like his younger brother and sister.  His tactics however are superb thanks to his intellectual might, enabling him to adapt lightning quick on the battlefield, far faster than most warriors.  He has a knack for getting out of no-win scenarios, and defeating numerically, logistically, or tactically superior opponents.  He is fond of siege warfare in particular from old earth.

Despite all this though, his best trait is his personality, demeanor, and finally, his sharp silver tongue.  He is the best diplomat of his age, negotiating trade deals and partnerships that Agera Krigsman could have never achieved for New Zion.  His honesty and straight forwardness mean that if he has a hidden agenda, he can often not speak it and thus not reveal it, always finding ways to tell the truth without truly revealing all his cards.  He has a personal belief that all battles, no matter how large, or how vehemently the warriors believe in the fight, have a peaceful solution.  His personal creed is that the best battles are the ones never fought.

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Thppppppppppppppppppppppt so much typing.  So much art.  As you might expect, Kouta is the main character of my next book, Shattered Sands.  That is all.  Bed...