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interstellarsystem · 8 days ago

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The Anatomy of: A Skarmory

So, we've decided we're going to start a little "series" of posts about our alterhuman identities. Specifically aimed to be about the anatomy/life cycle/biology of species that don't exist on this Earth but do exist in our system (such as Pokemon, other fictional species, mythical beings or anything else). Earthly beings may also make their own entries to explain their experiences--there isn't going to be a strict "who can" vs "who can't" rule--the point is to talk about our experiences and our species more.

Anyhow, onto the actual post!

Skarmory, the Armor Bird Pokemon--that's me! A bird made of metal, with wings as sharp as blades. But how does all of that work, exactly? Well... let's get into it!

Word count: 4,081 Warnings: Discussion of species dysphoria, discussion of animal (pokemon) harm, discussion of hunting pokemon. Archive: On our website!

Basic Anatomy:

Information about a skarmory's body! Some of these are words I've made or assigned to describe specific parts, as there's either no canon alternative or no this-world alternative.

Beak: The structure on a skarmory's face, similar to a bird beak but made of metal. It has a few teeth on the bottom jaw, while there are none on the top jaw.

Crest: The pointed blade/sail atop a skarmory's head.

Wings: The parts of a skarmory that allow it to fly--consists of roughly 4 metallic bladelike feathers (or wingblades).

Wingblades: Referring to an individual feather of a skarmory's wings, it usually has 4 per wing. These are sharp as knives. Each wingblade can be moved individually!

Armor: The hardened, metallic feathers/skin that cover a skarmory's body.

Plates: The individual metallic sheets of armor that cover a skarmory's body.

Legplates/neckplates/etc: Referring to a specific grouping of plates on a part of a skarmory.

Talons: A skarmory's feet. On each foot, it has 2 toes facing forward, and one facing backward--each tipped with a sharp claw.

Tailblade/Rudder: The tail of a skarmory, generally important for changing direction during flight. It is made out of metal, much like wingblades.

QNA:

Now, we move onto some general questions and answers about skarmory as a species.

1. What does a skarmory eat?

Like a lot of pokemon, skarmory are omnivorous. They'll eat berries, fruits, seeds, and a variety of prey. Due to our fast flying capabilities, we'd often swoop down at high speeds and snatch other smaller pokemon up from the ground.

Skarmory are also known to eat stones from certain locations, and we had gathering points where the stones and cliffs were rich in minerals that promoted healthy growth of our armor. We'd meet there, and drill at the rocks with our beaks until they were bite-sized. This possibly also helped with the digestive process, but I'm not familiar with our inner biology.

2. How does a skarmory become metallic?

As stated in some of the pokedex entries, skarmory chicks are raised in harsh conditions. Oftentimes, we'd nest in thorny bushes, brambles, sharp and rocky cliff-faces or anything similar. This would provide protection from outside predator pokemon, but also serve as our first line of training and building of our body's defenses.

Our skin and feathers have a property that makes them heal stronger after becoming damaged. Each time we'd get scratched, our body would heal it stronger than before. This meant that over time, feathers became scales attached to our skin, which became plates of armor that cover our bodies. This is supplemented by parents bringing their chicks small scraps of metal or mineral-rich stones to eat.

3. How does it move if it's made of metal?

There's gaps between our plates that enable us to move around still--much like the neck and leg plates you can see on the official artwork above! Though, skarmory from where I come from tend to have more that are visible, mainly around joints. They just look like little creases!

It really is like a suit of armor, just attached to your body. It's surprisingly moveable! Moving around normally as a chick while your feathers are hardening forms creases in the development of the armor, so when it's fully formed, it's unlikely that you'll have any restricted movement. The plates form around your movement, so if you move at all as a chick, the plates get molded to the shape of your body and how far your joints allow you to move.

So... theoretically, if a skarmory never ever moved, then its plates wouldn't be shaped to its body and it would be stuck, but I've never heard of that happening.

4. If a skarmory is made of metal, doesn't it rust?

Well... Yes, actually! Partially, at least. You won't see a skarmory rust all the way through, as we're not wholly made of metal. But our armor can and will rust if it's exposed to too much water and not able to dry properly. We tend to avoid the rain and hide wherever we can from it--usually in caves, tree hollows or somewhere similar. Particularly rainy seasons can spell disaster for us as a species, and oftentimes we do end up forced to share caves while we wait for our territories to stop being so watery.

Due to our armor often shedding its plates, rust usually isn't a permanent problem and can be shed off most of the time. Usually, it might make us itchy or sore due to crumbling bits getting stuck between plates, but that's the worst of it. However, rust can make it very hard for a skarmory to move properly if it's particularly bad, or gets in the joints between plates. This isn't too common due to how much we avoid water, but it can cause major issues if we do end up having our movement restricted. Particularly bad rust that's gotten into the plate joints can even begin to rust the new armor that grows underneath, if you're not careful. Most of us tend to avoid moisture both from water and humid air wherever possible due to the risks associated with it.

To attempt to negate this, sometimes we sunbathe after it's rained. This is usually fine to do, though on particularly hot days, it's incredibly easy to overheat. Sunbathing is best done close to a shady, dry spot you can hide in afterwards. Another method to remove as much water as possible is to fly/glide at top-speed or sit in very windy areas, basically like using a blow-dryer.

5. Does a skarmory overheat easily?

It depends on the situation, but overheating is definitely a possibility. Skarmory armor might defend us from slashing claws and biting teeth, but it's incredibly susceptible to heat--be it from fire types or from the sun itself. Our armor is generally lighter coloured, but skarmory with darker armour have a harder time staying cool.

On most days, overheating from the sun is avoidable! In the warmer months however, a skarmory may need to slip away into a cave or inbetween some foliage to escape the heat. We become more active around dawn and dusk during the middle of spring toward the end of summer in order to escape the hottest hours of the day, and focus most of our hunting at those times.

Due to the rusting problem, we don't tend to use water to cool down unless absolutely necessary. You'd have to be extremely overheated by staying in the sun too long, or under attack from fire-type moves to even consider water, though.

6. Does a skarmory have feeling in its armor?

No, a skarmory doesn't have feeling in its armor plates. However, we can feel when a plate is pressed down on! The plates are attached to our skin, so pressing on them pushes our skin too, and that's what we feel. To a skarmory, touching it feels like if you were to touch the top of your fingernail--you can't feel the surface, but you can feel the nail pressing on your actual skin below.

Our sense of touch on our body is likely duller than most other pokemon. The plates on our talons (aside from our claws) are thinner than in most places on our body, though--and those are our main means of touching and investigating things aside from our beak. The armour is still tough, but the plating is thin enough that we're able to sense things a lot better with them. Therefore, we can be more careful with what we're doing, such as holding a delicate berry, or knowing that prey we're holding is wriggling to try and escape.

We don't have feeling in most of our wingblades, most of our tailblade, or the tip of our crest, however. These parts are mostly hollow metal and are far enough away from the rest of our body that they need to be touched with a lot of pressure or from specific angles to be felt.

7. What if a skarmory's armor gets damaged or dented in a fight?

Short answer? A skarmory just.. sheds! Every so often, new armor will grow through and push the outer layer off, like someone losing a tooth as they grow. Plates will just fall off, and underneath there's new armor ready to go. This includes our wingblades! Normally, we shed one wingblade from each wing symmetrically to enable us to still fly--like a this-world bird shedding their feathers! This helps us to keep in the sky while growing our new wingblades.

Sometimes, they take a little while to fully grow back in, so we may be grounded for a week or two in some cases--but these are usually caused by injury, in which a skarmory has lost all of its wingblades at once or has lost multiple from one wing, rendering it off-balance and unable to fly. This is usually from severe damage of some sort and not a regular biological process.

8. How does a skarmory fly so fast?

Like birds of this world, our bones are hollow! Also, as stated in the pokedex entries, our wingblades are also mostly hollow too! We're able to tuck our legs in to create a more streamlined shape, and our facial structure mostly does a lot of that work for us.

Though, to reach top speeds, we normally dive. We'll exert a bit of our energy flying upward, and then soar around using the wind to our advantage. Minimal flapping, and plenty of time to survey the area without tiring out. Then, the skarmory will spot something it wants (prey, another food source, something invading its territory), and it'll dive almost head-first toward the ground, but curve to move more parallel to the ground as it gets closer. Almost like the shape of a really tall slide! Those swoops are where we reach real, true speed.

Doing this, we can maintain that speed gliding parallel to the ground for quite a distance if we dive from high enough. We just hold our wings straight out and glide like a paper plane. If a skarmory needs to glide for longer without breaking the momentum, a slight tilt of the wing-blades will change its direction to going slightly upward, and then tilting the blades again to head back downward gives a little bit of a boost. This is best done when the ground is in a downward slope, so you have room to dive a little more to keep up the speed.

9. What's a skarmory's social life like?

Skarmory tend to be pretty territorial, unless at mineral gathering spots which are usually areas of peace as everyone's too busy chipping away at rocks to eat or bring to their chicks.

Skarmory generally fight over territory. They keep to themselves, with the addition of a mate (or sometimes multiple mates) and their chicks, who leave to find their own territory once old enough. A skarmory will usually defend its territory viciously against other skarmory and other pokemon--especially other flying pokemon.

Territorial disputes aside though, skarmory have a few social gestures that are noteworthy in this section!

We have a greeting gesture that's usually an indication of friendliness--beak clacking. A skarmory will open its beak and snap it closed again in rapid succession to create a metallic clanking sound. It sounds similar to a large bell mixed with hitting a metal rod with a hammer, a constant ringing trill.

We also do a slightly different beak clack in anger or as a threat. The difference between a friendly greeting and a warning clack is how fast and hard we're snapping our beaks shut. Warning clacks are loud, strong, and generally much slower than a greeting one due to putting more force behind each snap. Greetings are closer to a softer trill or metallic rumble.

Skarmory also have another threat gesture–we fan out and slide our wingblades across each other to make a metallic scraping noise.

We preen each other (and ourselves) as this-world birds do, another friendly gesture. We pay particular attention to wings, sharpening each other's wingblades by clamping our beak down on them and sliding along it.

10. Is a skarmory at a higher risk of lightning strikes?

If a skarmory were to be flying through a storm, possibly, yes! However, when it’s raining, skarmory will try their best to stay hidden from the water. Which has the added effect of being largely protected from lightning strikes too, especially when they choose to hide in caves! Most other flying pokemon also seem to prefer to not fly through thunderstorms due to the risks associated with them.

As for attacks by electric-type moves–yeah, we’re pretty easily damaged by those. That and fire types are the main threats we face out of any of the other types. Water damage can also be an issue, but it’s rarely an issue in-fight, it’s simply a problem if there’s rusting after the fight.

11. What does a skarmory feel like?

A skarmory’s plating is smooth, and feels just like touching polished metal. It’s usually cold to the touch too, unless it’s been sitting in the sun. The wingblades and tailblade feel the same even though they’re more lightweight–its entire body feels metallic! A skarmory is also much lighter than it appears–due to our hollow bones and lightweight armor, we can look very heavy while being relatively light.

12. What is the crest used for?

The crest is occasionally used in fighting other pokemon, though the wingblades are normally used for that much more often. The crest can be used as a horn, and is useful when using iron head and similar moves. It might also help with steering while flying, though I don’t have anything definitive to say on that matter.

13. What is the tailblade used for?

The tailblade is used for steering! It’s similar to a rudder you’d find on an aircraft or a boat. A skarmory will use it to change its flight path, in combination with the angle of its wings. A tailblade isn’t really ever used for fighting. It also sheds less often than other parts, possibly due to its important role in properly controlled flight. A skarmory without a tailblade will be a clumsy flier at best, though they’re luckily not usually grounded because of it.

14. Can the wingblades be used for things other than flying?

Yes! Wingblades are used often in fighting. They’re sturdy, sharp, and kept in pristine condition by preening done either by the skarmory itself or its mate. A skarmory will swoop down and hit an opponent with the tips of its wingblades as it flies past, slicing them.

For humans of the pokemon world, they’ve been known to take feathers dropped by skarmory to fashion swords and daggers! There’s been some instances of poachers in the past, though they’re much less common in the era I’m from due to humans being easily able to create their own blades.

15. What habitats do skarmory prefer?

Skarmory are pretty adaptable, but they prefer areas with little humidity and low heat. They can live in mountains, forests, cave systems, fields, and more! Skarmory are particularly susceptible to damage from both water and overheating, so you won’t find many living near an ocean, in a swamp, or in a desert. Though, these locations don’t always spell disaster to simply cross, so you may see one flying around in areas you normally wouldn’t expect to see one as it passes through.

It’s unlikely that a skarmory provided with adequate shelter will be seen out in the rain or in the heat, in which case they usually can be found hiding in or amongst trees, or in caves.

16. Are there any subspecies of skarmory?

Kind of! Skarmory can all look a little different from each other, and our armor can definitely be different colours–our colour variation is actually pretty broad. We can also have slightly different shapes to our plating, or extra features such as more than the standard 4 wingblades per wing.

I stayed in mostly the same areas, so I only know my local skarmory and how they look. The physical variations mainly are in the colour or wingblade number–though maybe skarmory from different climates can have different shapes?

Some Colour Examples:

Notes:

Pied colour forms can have as little as a single part being a different colour. You could have a shiny with one red wingblade, or a standard with just one neckplate being lighter. I also believe there could be light/dark or dark/shiny pieds as opposed to just light/standard, dark/standard and shiny/standard, though I haven’t seen any.

I’ve never seen a full shiny, though I did see a skarmory with a single green wingblade, which I can now categorise as a pied shiny with very minimal shiny colouration.

I saw a blue skarmory once, I’m unsure if it’s another variation of a dark colouration or not, all I know is he was very territorial. He’s in his own little category for now.

In This World:

And here, I'll talk about my current, this-body experiences as a skarmory fictive. This ranges from shifting experiences, to self expression, to in-system experiences, and anything else I want to cover.

In-Body, Euphoria

While fronting, I get pretty dysphoric, so I try to express myself when I can, which does bring a lot of joy!

I've become a fan of jewellery--particularly necklaces, as having something on my neck feels right. The bulkier and heavier the better! I absolutely need to buy some more, maybe some thick bangles for my legs!

I also tend to wear greyish colours to match my own armor colour. Grey hoodies/jackets are the best, because having them unzipped feels almost like having wings attached to my sides. To match my colours even more, I like wearing a red shirt under a grey hoodie to kind of mimic my read wingblades in the best way I can.

I've been known to attempt to clack my beak at people, which unfortunately doesn't go very well for someone with human teeth. However, clicking my tongue is similar enough that it gets the point across, so I love doing that too!

In-Body, Dysphoria

I've talked about this before in another post, but I'll do it here again.

I get very, very dysphoric about my body shape. I have two wings and two legs, and having arms at all feels.. So, so wrong. My arms have hands and fingers, which are close to talons, but they're where my wings belong. My legs aren't bent at the right spots. My skin is soft and getting an injury doesn't make it tougher. So many things are different about this body, and so many things upset me about it.

Phantom Shift Map

I've made a map detailing where my skarmory parts are placed on my human body, and how frequently these parts are felt. Keep in mind, these percentages are for when I'm in control of the body/fronting.

Notes:

My phantom shifts often feel like a presence--that's the best way I can put it. You know how people can tell where their arm or leg is in space, even with their eyes closed? How you can close your eyes and hold up 3 fingers and know which you've put up, even if they're not touching each other? It's like that, but I can sense specific outlines of my body parts. Sometimes they feel more "real" and tangible than others, but most of the time, it's a presence.

My neckplates, talons, and leg/thighplates are often the most "real" feeling phantom shifts.

I almost constantly have wingblades while in the front. They often tend to "clip" through objects--right now they're through the wall as I sit here and type this. I'm able to individually move each wingblade as I would have been able to before.

My tailblade also has the same issue as wingblades, always clipping into things.

Interestingly, I get a beak more often than I get a crest. I can take a guess and say this is because the crest had very little feeling in it in general, which also lines up with my wingblades feeling more like a sense than a tangible feeling.

In-Headspace

Inside the headspace, not much has changed about my body. We have a decently realistic headspace, so all of my regular parts and physics tied to them work the same. However, I no longer need to worry about rust and I haven't shed since I got here. Other people in-system still have their hair grow with time, so either I simply don't need to shed anymore, or it hasn't happened yet.

I don't feel any territorial needs anymore, and I mostly exist around other pokemon inside. Particularly a talonflame named Thrash, and a noivern named Echo. Flying type solidarity!

I'm also very glad that there's no fighting for survival with other pokemon in-headspace either. I don't need to worry about getting hit with a fire-type attack or getting downed by rock-throw mid flight--that's always a plus!

Differences from Source Media

I’ve noticed a few differences in my anatomy vs that of souce skarmory. The differences are pretty small, but some are also fairly strange to me. The main difference I’m weirded out by, is the beak shape of canon skarmory. Skarmory where I’m from have a toothlike structure on their beak, and their bottom jaw lines up pretty well with their top jaw–very much unlike canon.

I’ve included another diagram demonstrating the differences below.

Notes:

Wingblades are generally longer than in my drawn image, but they can vary in length anyway. They do, however, often end up being quite thick and covering most of the body-length.

A skarmory in my canon can have more than the regular 3 neckplates.

A skarmory in my canon can have, as far as I’ve seen, up to 6 wingblades per wing.

In Conclusion:

That just about sums up everything I can think of! Going through all this and writing it all down has actually been immensely helpful to me, and helped me remember loads of things I didn’t think about along the way. I’ll definitely look back at this later on, when maybe I have more information, or maybe when my memory starts failing as it always does, and get a refresher when I need it. Hell, if I find out enough new information, I might add some updates to this.

Being a kinda niche pokemon species, I wanted some representation for my experiences. The pokedex entries from the games offer a bit of info–most of which I covered here–but what I remember about our world and our lives goes so far beyond just little lines of flavour text. I’ve never seen another skarmory alterhuman out there, and my experiences might not even line up with those of another skarmory, but I at least wanted a reference for myself. If it helps others, great. If it doesn’t, that’s also fine. I just wanted this to be out there.

Maybe it could be a starting point for some. Maybe it’d spur on memories in someone else? Maybe it’d help someone discover that they are a skarmory, or have another alterhuman connection to it? Maybe it’s just cool to learn about! Either way, I wanted to document my experiences, so here we are.

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