#sar'ebru

[thesunofalcoritres]

some stuff about dragon airspace law and radio visors!

on the differences between the human helms, in descending order: farah's is a pretty standard modern military helmet, nothing special going on there. collar's is an older military model from ~1-2 decades prior that she kept after she deserted and has since modified for better close-quarters protection i.e. it's functionally a football helmet. richas's is also a standard military model but it's like, super top of the line fancy, because he's The Golden Boy and they want him to look pretty for propaganda shoots. on the flipside of that, sinclair's helmet is just made of random shit he put together. it's functional and that's about it.

while the dragon visors shown vary wildly in aesthetics, the actual function of the visor 99% of the time is just radio transmission and reception and the rest is just pure optics (in fact, "visors" as a concept are way more common in military circles, most civilian dragons just use an earpiece+antenna+sign glove and thats it), aside from occasional vision enhancements and the obvious benefit of fire/chemical protection etc. that being said, since spades' visor is built specifically for stealth it's about as tricked-out as they get, which is ironic since sinclair's own helm is so shitty. you can really tell what he was putting the budget into at the time.

[thesunofalcoritres]

im currently working on a google doc containing like, actual info, but until that's slightly more done here's a relationship chart for pre-desertion collar+beowulf and richas+sar'ebru. they had some fascinating shit going on. for cliffnotes context they all grew up together at a military dragonriding school where they were trained for air combat from childhood

[thesunofalcoritres]

PLEEEEEASE TAG MORE POSTS WITH YOUR CHARACTER DYNAMICS... i need more info on your miserable little guys.

also, NEEED to know... Does Richas ever become a bearable human? With productive interpersonal relationships (or at least one healthy friend besides Sar'ebru)? Definitely not asking as someone who barely avoided his fate as a teen in a gifted program (i was snatched up by a competent therapist and freed from Golden Child Prison, but I watched helplessly as a lot of people i knew were dragged in)

omg thank you so much for the ask 🫴💖 <- for you. i know this blog has been kind of dead lately bc ive been very fixated on my batman art (obligatory plug @feartoxinjelloshot) but rest assured i still hold these little freaks close to my heart & one day they WILLLLL be a novel series i swear. one of my new years resolutions was to start outlining the story this year at some point

but to answer your question: i'm not sure i would call sar'ebru and richas' relationship healthy necessarily. they're more like... identical twins who completely despise each other but also have a permanent suicide pact if the other dies. which is not to say they think of each other as siblings but you know what i mean. they are superficially filling the same role but their core natures are actually fairly different. getting a little into the weeds here but there are like, a set of church-fueled social archetypes that rider/dragon pairs are often forced into, which most people don't take seriously outside of like really devout church circles (think of like, idk zodiac signs basically), and one of them (called maolove, after the "angry moon") is characterized by interpersonal conflict between dragon & rider and so sometimes this is like, idolized and awarded by the church, who control functionally all aspects of richas and sar'ebru's lives. it's not life or death because the institute is actually kind of moderate as far as church circles go but it's just like. another brick in the pile with regards to "things that could fuck those guys up real bad".

admittedly i can't get as deep into this as i'd like because i don't have as great of a handle on sar'ebru's character as i'd like yet, and she's inherently unremovable from the equitation, and also richas' plot arc is kind of one of my weak points thusfar, but i've always envisioned that richas does eventually get a bit better, but at great cost to himself and likely others. richas is incapable of giving up his ways unless something deeply devastating happens to shock him out of it, and unfortunately for all of us collar beating him within an inch of his life for the 5th time that week is just not going to cut it. if she died it would probably work but collar doesn't die in the story so that's right out. at risk of extremely esoteric future-spoilers i've been going back and forth for a while on wether or not elijah dies at some point because he is extremely death-coded and it would make a lot of narrative sense, but also i like him. much to ponder. i don't think i've mentioned it here outside of that one pentagon graph but elijah and richas kind of have a weird quasi-friendship that gets deeper as the story goes on - there's a weird pavlovian hatred that richas has of elijah for a while because of his (richas') insane hate/love problem with collar, but once he gets over that they kind of start to actually get along, especially since elijah is a grounded medic so he's almost always around to patch richas up. elijah is (rightfully) put off by richas' previously mentioned Collar Problem, but in the circumstance that richas ever managed to cool down about that, he wouldn't have much of a problem with richas.

collar (though it is mostly* not her fault) is also just kind of inherently a big part of richas' current mental state. he is unfortunately devastatingly in love(???) with her and his ultimate psychological goal most of the time is to "defeat" her and prove his own superiority so that the institute will lift him up and say "you're our favorite little birthday boy here's 5000 kisses and a chocolate cake and a pony" but this will never happen because when she was at the institute collar was generally a little better than him at most** things, and now that she's betrayed them all and left, EVERYONE cares about her and finding her ALL THE TIME because she's a NATIONALLY WANTED TERRORIST. or WHATEVER. richas would still have the golden child complex with or without her but she definitely isn't helping. surprisingly richas' beef is mostly with collar and not beowulf, which is funny because they're usually doing the same thing, but richas is biased and also knows that beowulf could just eat him if he pissed her off to the degree he pisses off collar. richas doesn't know this but his secret main goal is to get beaten up by a hot woman ("woman") and this is kind of hard to do when the woman in question is a dragon who weighs multiple tons and can use your bones as play-dough. i digress though. richas and collar do kind of reconcile later on which is its own 50 page paper to write quite honestly but their dynamic does.... CHANGE. i don't know if i can say it gets better but it gets different?!? beowulf has something to do with this. like i said, richas plot kind of a weak point for me atm. will come back to this. may change in future

*look i don't want to blame her for this but she is aware of it and allows it to continue because secretly deep down she is also a bit obsessed with him. she's not in love with him but she does want to shake him around like a chew toy until he bleeds out and dies pathetic & floppy style. his ego will not allow this.

**well, at fighting and stuff. richas is actually the much better talker between them and has a distinct skillset of his own, but envy blinds or whatever

[thesunofalcoritres]

new rendition of this including a spur-of-the-moment addition, collar gets a brother! they're physically identical twins except for the difference in eye color. this is unexplained. the vast majority of alcoritrés' human population is mixed so blue/grey eyes (especially ones as light as elijah's) are incredibly rare and thought of as deeply unnerving and even a sign of supernatural misdeeds.

im currently working on a google doc containing like, actual info, but until that's slightly more done here's a relationship chart for pre-desertion collar+beowulf and richas+sar'ebru. they had some fascinating shit going on. for cliffnotes context they all grew up together at a military dragonriding school where they were trained for air combat from childhood