Athzurea, world of winged beasts

My lifelong personal worldbuilding project featuring a lot of magical talking animals. Sideblog of @xaeyrnofnbe

[athzurea]

drew some angels (golden foxes)

[athzurea]

some ocs! Sam (she/they, feather cat, god of smoke and illness, trickster) and Sees The Hidden Path (aka Seer, she/her, feather cat, thief and killer for hire). they keep running into each other at the same crime scenes and pissing each other off. also they're lesbians. just two girls who want each other dead and can't seem to land the killing blow

[xaeyrnofnbe]

Death Claims His Champion

(info under cut)

hrgfhvngn i went into a trance for about four hours drawing this

the drawing depicts some OCs of mine, Ifre (the god of death/time,) and Walker (or Walks On Time Itself, Ifre's champion.)

Once Walker was old enough to comprehend what was happening to them, Ifre made his presence known, revealing himself to the young cat. Walker, orphaned before their eyes were open, was promised survival by Ifre to their mother's spirit, on the condition that his champion-to-be would help him settle a cosmic bet against his sisters once they were older.

these are characters from my personal worldbuilding project, Athzurea, which has been a work of passion and love since i was a preteen. i am endlessly happy to gush about them or their world, and my asks are open to anyone who wants to hear about them!

[athzurea]

[athzurea]

for my first original post on this blog i'll share the reworked map of the continent of Vedeazura

[xaeyrnofnbe]

IM OFFICIALLY THE COOLEST EVER (3d modeled something without it turning out gross)

ITS WONKY AS HELL BUT IM SO HAPPY (it's a tree gryphon from athzurea btw)

[xaeyrnofnbe]

this won't mean anything to anybody but me BUT i was looking through my current sketchbook and i've decided to share this ketch of some very special characters of mine

from left to right is firewhirl (he/him, ash wolf,) sky (she/her, gryphon,) and radiance (he/him, unicorn.) they were the best of friends. up to a point, at least.

[xaeyrnofnbe]

working on color and pattern variation for the mountain gryphons of Athzurea

these northern mountain gryphons, or "royal" gryphons, are experimental but meant to represent the diversity present in mountain gryphon genetics. while not EXPLICITLY linked to royal heritage, blue feathers are generally considered a signifier of it.

after the age of war, entirely blue gryphons (like the center-left design pictured) became much less common, and the mad king Crevasse was one of the last truly blue kings of the Skyfeather empire.

[xaeyrnofnbe]

Do ghosts exist in/on ahtzurea?

yes! thank you for asking!!

haunted regions exist on Athzurea, mainly in areas of high magic concentration. as a side effect of wronging a god badly enough, they'll curse the surrounding land, ensuring that, supposedly, all creatures who roam there will roam there forever, even after they've died, and death will not collect their souls, forcing them to wander without end.

it is believed that spirits, appearing in silhouettes of cold bluish flame, lure more souls to the area. this is untrue, they are simply existing, and any new souls finding themselves trapped is not their fault.

ghosts can only be viewed by mortal creatures at night, either at midnight or when both moons are full. the exception to this rule being casters with high favor with the god of death, as well as his champion, Walks On Time Itself, who can see spirits always, and lives their life wandering freely alongside them in the Spirit Desert of the far northwestern corner of Azura. Walker is the only individual who can understand the strange speech of lost souls.

[xaeyrnofnbe]

reworking my Athzurea world map once again

(updates: centered Koros and froze it, removed a Zakaran-Koros island that i didn't like, adjusted the size of a forest in Kazri)

my redesign of Koros should hopefully be very helpful in future storytelling and worldbuilding, as it solves a pretty major hole i had had prior

[xaeyrnofnbe]

btwww here is the (current) (subject to change) (incomplete) map of Athzurea, for anyone who cares at all. also so when i talk about specific areas people will know what i'm talking about

(stuff like the exact arrangement of landmasses, coastlines, and general shapes are all not set in stone, i also intend on adding another major landmass or two in the future)

most of my stories take place on the west coast of Vedeazura, though i've been developing the other areas more and more lately

check out my Athzurea tag if you're curious about the creatures and/or characters ¦]

and as usual, my asks are open if you have any questions!

[xaeyrnofnbe]

MORE WALKER BECAUSE IVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THEM A LOT LATELY

[xaeyrnofnbe]

old oc art redraw time

the original drawing is probably at LEAST five years old, and Walker has come a long way since then.

here's the unshaded version

[xaeyrnofnbe]

Death Claims His Champion

(info under cut)

hrgfhvngn i went into a trance for about four hours drawing this

the drawing depicts some OCs of mine, Ifre (the god of death/time,) and Walker (or Walks On Time Itself, Ifre's champion.)

Once Walker was old enough to comprehend what was happening to them, Ifre made his presence known, revealing himself to the young cat. Walker, orphaned before their eyes were open, was promised survival by Ifre to their mother's spirit, on the condition that his champion-to-be would help him settle a cosmic bet against his sisters once they were older.

these are characters from my personal worldbuilding project, Athzurea, which has been a work of passion and love since i was a preteen. i am endlessly happy to gush about them or their world, and my asks are open to anyone who wants to hear about them!

[xaeyrnofnbe]

having fun reworking my dragon designs in relation to athzurea (my hobby fantasy/specevo worldbuilding project)

i always wanted my dragons to be more mammalian than those that are more traditionally reptilian, and ended up basing them a lot more on gorgonopsians and other early synapsids. it's not entirely obvious in the above sketch, as that image is more to represent the sheer scale of the beasts, with a mountain gryphon as reference (close in size to a lion) as well as to figure out the dragon's silhouette, which i'm starting to get more confident with.

now for more conceptual sketches as i continue to nail down the specifics for how i want these guys to look

[xaeyrnofnbe]

been thinking about my athzurea ocs pretty much nonstop the last couple days. here's some unlikely friends (vulture, sapling, and inferno) passing by a depiction of legendary heroes who once betrayed one another (firewhirl, radiant, and sky.) perhaps the scene depicted on the cave wall has some relevance to their current adventures?

[xaeyrnofnbe]

woe, oc art be upon ye

pov you died and there’s a bnuuy

[xaeyrnofnbe]

it’s like i’m eleven again drawing the pantheon of gods in my old fantasy world

these characters are so old at this point but i still love them dearly ok. big fire lion guy is Iriff, god of fire and lord of the Core (basically hell), the smaller kitty is his younger sister, Samrea. she’s nowhere near as powerful but is the physical representation of smoke and disease. and thirdly is Ifre, who started his existence as a mortal, rose to a demigod/reaper (like sam), and now lives in the Core with Iriff as the god of death.

(the two lovebirds have similar names bc in the mortal realm, it’s not uncommon to name a child after one of the gods, as that is thought to bring good luck. they don’t usually anticipate, however, their kid to get married to the god he’s named after.)

i have this whole long story about how the gods came to be and the history of their world, Athzurea, as well as stories surrounding the individual characters. (really, i could go on.) so if you have any questions about any of it, feel free to shoot me an ask ^—^

[xaeyrnofnbe]

i found my original drawings of iriff and samrea!!

these are. ancient

iriff has gone through several iterations over the years, but sam has stayed sorta the same. like. the same base visual concept has remained (black cat with a smoke tail) just with some additions