Avians

Once they had a fledgling space empire, now they're just another of the species the LIR uses for labour and war.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Refer to image to avoid having to read this giant text blocc:

Their wing bone structure is different to that of Earth's berds, being far more like that of bats as they still have finger bones that splay out within the wing and have plenty of their own joints, which allows for more aerial manoeuvres as their wings can do all sorts of weird positions. However, they have 3 fingers that stick out of 2/3 of the way along the wings, being the thumb, index finger and middle finger that serve in tool use.

They do not have beaks so much as they have snouts, like velociraptors and T-rexes did. These snouts contain lots of sharp, serrated teeth that can be regrown if lost.

They have long-ish tails that have feathers sprouting from them at the sides and end. This is useful because: it balances out the fact that most of any Avian's bodyweight is behind its wings (ever thrown a paper airplane with a weight of some kind attached to the back), it helps for steering (can also be made into spiral shapes for spinning if that happens to be the Avian's thing), it can be used for intimidation, it can help to slow down flight and it gives extra surface area to the air for extra gliding power.

Legs are short like those of an eagle and their feet have 4 front toes and 1 back toe. Only the "middle finger" and "thumb" (being the back) toes have scary claws as the others only have smol but sharp bois. This is brilliant as these guys will use the toes of their feet as extra fingers when making things.

Finally: they have both long feathers and downing on the parts of themselves which aren't for flying. The feathers in particular are useful for sudden stopping and intimidation because Avians can control their feathers like extra limbs thanks to muscles around those feathers being able to move them around. This means that they can make their feathers all stick out from them as far as possible to make them seem bigger for intimidation or increase air resistance when flying to slow them down massively if that ever ends up being necessary.

Biological Traits

Feather colours vary greatly: literally every colour or mix of colours humans can see, as well as some ultraviolet and infrared colours. The colours will go duller when the Avian is ill or old. There are various patterns and so on.

Aside from that are things like snout length and width, eye size and yellowness intensity, head plumage size, tail lengths, and so on.

Genetics and Reproduction

Breeding season is once every 7 Earth months in their homeworld's equivalent to just before Spring (seasons are universal to both hemispheres as their planet doesn't orbit the sun in a perfect circle). Mating pairs (which are for life, except for when 1 spouse dies way before the other in which case widows will usually get together) are already established during their equivalent to late teenage years. Anything from 0-3 fertile eggs are laid 7 days after mating and then take 19 days to hatch.

Mating pairs cannot produce young if they're already raising some and for 2 years after their young become adults and leave but that doesn't mean they can't mate ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

Growth Rate & Stages

They take about 7 years to become adults and be capable of mating. They can fly at 4 years old, mastering their skills up to age 5. From there to 7 years old they're basically teenagers and spend much of this time finding their future mate and developing their colourful feathers.

Ecology and Habitats

They can fly and so go to lots of places for food but will build super-nests for lots of individuals in areas they find advantageous to live and raise young in due to there being lots of food near home or a lack of predators.

Fun fact: their home planet has 247% of the level of gravity Earth has and yet these, and many other creatures, can still fly. They can pull all sorts of crazy tricks when in Earth-like atmospheres.

Dietary Needs and Habits

They'll eat anything that isn't harmful for them to ingest (pointed out by parents... and hopefully for them said parents aren't ones trying to get post-hatch abortions) and gain cravings for things that contain particular vitamins and minerals when said vitamins and minerals are on low supply in their body.

Things they eat often: berries, meat (preferably hunted, sometimes scavenged out of easy opportunity) and bugs. However, their intelligence has allowed them to eat things they normally wouldn't be able to through things like cooking such as some parts of certain plants. They drop bones and nuts from large heights to be able to access the nutrients inside.

They store foods that take lots of time to perish in their nests, of which most (naturally) have multiple.

Biological Cycle

Outside of things which are for mating purposes and explored in genetics and reproduction: nada.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Refer to the history bit.

Domestication

Enslaved in the LIR.

Uses, Products & Exploitation

Their corpses are made into food for other races after being picked of their feathers, which are used for extravegant clothing - especially by the Toppers. Whilst alive, they're forced into labour and military roles by the government, as well as having very few rights and being exploited by companies in Capitalist zones.

Facial characteristics

You know feathered velocirapors? Yeah these are that but with longer and thinner snouts.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

They live in lots of places in the LIR, especially cities with tall buildings (although the pollution here is bad for both their health and their feathers). Their population is densest where their space empire used to be.

Average Intelligence

At a midway point between humans and dolphins.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

They have a brilliant-beyond-belief sense of vision, with a range of colours that covers twice as much of the electromagnetic spectrum as the human eye can into both ultraviolet and infra-red and the ability to see things clearly from miles away while in the sky. They can also sense air currents through their feathers for flight. Aside from that they don't have a very good sense of smell or hearing.

Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms

Fleas and ticks are a problem for them but no need to fear little fish in calm streams are here to eat them out of your feathers and then you have to wait for like 10 minutes for your feathers to be dry enough for your flight to not be insanely high-effort.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

As a youngling, they have the name [given name from parents] [maternal grandpapi's last name] [papi's last name] but then the dominant colour of their feathers gets added onto the start. Nicknames are also a thing but aren't in any way official.

Major Organizations

They live under the The LIR or League of Intelligent Races, with the Avian Directory being in charge of segregated Avians. Avians in the CHG are in glorified prisons while those in multi-race zones in the LIR are under the control of the Mixed Directory.

Beauty Ideals

Colourfulness is sexy but so is physical strength, a thin face (aerodynamics), a long tail, sharp claws and so on.

Gender Ideals

Males have higher expectations for strength whereas females are expected to be better flyers. Nobody knows where this originates from it's kinda like pink being a girl's colour when that wasn't a thing before the 20s.

Courtship Ideals

Relationships form between males and females during teenage years that stick permanently once adulthood is reached. It's not so much courtship as young males moving between areas until there's a 1:1 ratio everywhere and then everyone trying to become the favourite of their favourite.

Relationship Ideals

Having at least 2 broods of young, being very functional and happy. Wait... why do these ones have such non-distopian ideas of how relationships should be? It feels somehow wrong for it not to be distopian...

Average Technological Level

They were using railguns in space when the LIR started conquering them. Now they're in the LIR, which has more advanced tech.

Major Language Groups and Dialects

They got themselves a universal language back in the Stone Age... damn we getting outdone by birds.

Common Etiquette Rules

No defocating into/onto anything other than the toilet/bin (oh yeah they're both the same thing in the LIR), no stealing things (that includes eating someone's food without their permission), basic things like that.

Common Dress Code

Why wear colourful clothes when you already have colourful feathers? And your **** is covered anyway because it's inside a cloaca that is covered by feathers... they also don't like wearing things as, surprisingly enough, flying creatures don't like to be weighed down as that's their natural method of getting around.

However, they will wear things for practical reasons such as at work, in the military or if they've been forced to colonize somewhere that forces them to wear things for the sake of survival.

Culture and Cultural Heritage

They've managed to keep a lot of their previous culture despite its suppression by the LIR because of how it's one in which one's immediate family, friends and neighbours are more important than any ideology or nation.

Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals

Mating pairs will announce themselves as mating pairs when they become mating pairs at large parties where lots of mating pairs will announce that they're mating pairs upon becoming mating pairs. They also celebrate about a week after the egg-laying season and have a celebration just before Winter. Ha just kidding that's only on their home planet because everywhere else they're all really poor and so can only have small parties which are more like happy get-togethers.

Common Taboos

Cannibalism = bad. Murder = bad. Theft = bad but they're basically Communists within their families extending out to their second cousins. Assault = bad. Etc.

History

They would build their nests close together in village-like settlements. Males would leave once they became adults to other settlements to find mates without incesting. Now, it used to be someone chosen by the village that was in charge but then this thing called competition for resources between settlements started being a thing and the next thing you know the entire planet is unified in a stone-age empire (in defense of the idea: these dudes can fly so mobilizing forces for such a thing isn't very difficult) that kept breaking apart and then being replaced through the ages until space travel became a thing and then they found other planets and colonized them in another empire that kept having civil wars until they finally encountered other space empires and realised they had to get their shit together if they wanted to compete.

They adopted the religion of another space empire because it was one that suggested the afterlife could be anything other than just endless torment at the hands of demons (basically believing in Hell but not Heaven, whereas this new religion believed in a singular afterlife that could be good or bad depending on which part of it you were in) and this resulted in them being best buddies with this other space empire which happened to be the space empire of the Hedgers.

Then the LIR rolls up and is like "hi guys would you like to join my beautiful League of Intelligent Races as a defensive move against the Goners that will totally never be corrupted from within by greed and the lessening of the outside threats that force it to not become corrupted and awful?" and the Avians were one of the species that was like "nah but let's be allies K?". The LIR was cool with this as at least they still get the help of the Avians against the Goners.

Then the Goners are defeated by the humans and the LIR is really angry about how little territory they get despite doing most of the work. They change their position from "join or ally or we will threaten you into joining" to "you have 0 seconds to agree to join us or we conquering you".

The humans, due to things like being extremely mistaken about how the LIR worked, internal divisions, xenophobia, not wanting to be affected by outside events and the fact that the anti-LIR alliance was on the opposite side of the LIR and communications had a 10 year lag, wouldn't join the anti-LIR alliance that formed and it's partly down to that that the LIR was able to conquer all the smaller space empires one by one as a build-up to fighting the humans and their new Goner slaves. This included the Avians.

Now Avians are one of multiple flying species used by the LIR for warfare against the CHG.

Common Myths and Legends

Little Red Flying Berd and the Big Bad Stingflier (basically giant dragonflies with poisonous stings).

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

They're considered a lesser race in the LIR and regularly bullied by the "better" ones. To the CHG they're an especially dangerous species because of the habit human soldiers have of not looking up.

Bonus: a fun fact about these creatures is that if you take their eggs away during breeding season, they'll be able to breed again. The LIR does this deliberately in some dedicated Avian factories whenever they want there to be more Avians for military or slave use. If the Avians outside of these were made aware of this, they'd probably rebel. So the CHG really wants to stumble upon information like this to reveal to the Avians to start up crap in the LIR.

Scientific Name

Callidus avem

Origin/Ancestry

dino-berds that waltzed through Lokian portals. FUN FACT: the reason they have 5 "fingers" and "toes" is because their dino-rific ancestors got them from a mutation.

Lifespan

55 years on non-violent average.

Conservation Status

The CHG Military kills a lot of them and the LIR flings tonnes of them into battle. Their only protection is what few rights and legal protections they have in the LIR, as well as their own combat proficiency. They also have a decreasing population so a conservation status could be necessary in a century or 2.

Average Height

1.2 meters.

Average Weight

15kg

Average Length

1.2 meter height + 1 meter tail.

Average Physique

They're extremely strong but, despite this, most of them are not at the full potential of their species as they're weakened by pollution, space limitation, malnutrition and other things due to their containment in the LIR.