Originally posted on 15th September 2025 for my own version of Spectember 2025.
This one is technically a remake of an older piece that I made about this creature that roams around the open plains and deserts of Klagut and Pyrkos, but updated it to kind of meet newer standards as I was finally getting to do some fauna additions starting with Drachor's dominant animal lifeforms of paramammals or "dragons" (as this is a seedworld by concept - also dicynodont descendants.)
Basically they are vicious terror birds in concept but loosely look like wyverns and are a nightmare amongst ghouls who witness it. I've also decided because why not to also attach the original thing that got changed in the diagram above.
A lot of the names are meant to be phonetic in nature - that's kind of how I come up with names of Nari characters generally
Please note (as a content warning) that the image below contains some blood, though it may not be obvious as it is darkened.
The image below was posted on 29th October 2024 (a double-whammy)
A repost from what I did for my own version of Spectember 2025, originally I completed it on 23rd September 2025 and posted it elsewhere.
It is a giant whale alright, but since I realised that its gonna be autosized to 2048px, it should be easy to read if you do read it close, I'm very hesitant at times to actually bother writing down things so XD
I’m still currently working on the bigger piece, but it does look like I might have to break it up into a few parts on other platforms.
Just wanted to put this down as a baseline reference to what to expect from Naric body language specifically and just challenge myself a little bit on how I would probably draw expressions of ghouls themselves if they had to be put onto one page rather than be spread out by many expressionless faces and heads. I once had some sort of sheet like this beforehand, but it's nice to just revisit it again in a more “contemporary” context, rather than the old hive mind canon. However, all of their expressions are pretty much similar to what I would have envisioned a few years back - just updated it.
Some of the brief dialogue cues here are some glimpses into how I sort of audibly hear them speak, if they don’t have dialogue or are speaking more eloquently - and yes, they can use speech and language structures similar to humans, but ghouls/draconians would sometimes interject these frills and sounds over actually speaking proper sometimes in their speech. I was hoping to eventually get around to explaining that part at some point, as it is now an idea I wanted to explore, but maybe not now.
Usually, nari are not that expressive, which reinforces the archetypical reptilian characteristic of theirs being “cold”, although it is more so due to humans not able to read their body language properly. Nari don’t have lips that humans have, so their expressions rely more on pheromones excreted from their skin, ears and eyes focusing only on facial expression rather than the rest - which also includes their flexible tail. Pheromones are a norm of communication in terrestrial and aerial paramammals in Drachor that it is considered a “third language” at this point, though it would be the nari that have a more sophisticated system.
It is due to pheromones specifically that also make typical ghoulish communication appear subtler or colder to a human eye as one can release certain receptors at one point - including illness to try and dissuade others from coming close. Ghouls tend to appear stoic and expressionless as they could simply sniff another individual nearby if they have any issue. As a result, staring at a ghoul by another ghoul from an anecdotal perspective wouldn’t be deemed inappropriate, but rather show empathy. This is all done without verbal communication generally. It only becomes more obvious to humans in heightened situations.
Curiously enough, pheromones also give off a ripple effect to other nari that is equated to humans’ own yawning - and yes, ghouls also do yawn as well. Given that most nari rely on pheromones as a third language, not just body and verbal language altogether, they are more susceptible to sharing similar thoughts of another individual expressing intense emotions - especially in a territorial mood, which facilitates a nari pack’s ability to easily mobilise collective hunting.
Again, one thing to note is that the nari don’t have any tear ducts that control emotional regulation. For them, crying is a foreign concept.
The typical platonic relationship (so no, no romance involved) with many other ghouls, which are basically the nickname of that species that's been recently posted by me a lot over the past few days. They mostly consider themselves friends at best.
Alt text: A fictional advertisement depicting a light blue avian-like draconian with brown hair and ponytail on their scalp who holds up an aluminium can of a functional drink. She wears a teal scarf and a green shirt, with a necklace holding an ammonite pendulent. In front of her is a glass cup of the said soft drink. The text on the right is of an advertisement for the said product in its own writing that does not correspond to existing writing systems (as its for their own kind).
Also can be applied well to something from the Dracosphere, if you’d modify the depicting character to appear more humanoid than an upright obligate quadruped. But since they are the “feral” kind of Dracoghoul, it's not going to be canon-compliant.
For a few years, I already had a semifunctional language for the Nari or at least their universal language for formal/diplomatic discussion. I didn’t bother thinking of using pronunciations and sounds as their language is already so far removed from humans, so their conlang is already complete to my eyes. The only issue for me has been adding additional vocabulary into the mix, so everything stayed stagnant back then.
The text on the right in my notes (while drafting the sketch) is translated to: “Yinug: the only functional drink you’ll ever need”.
What the dragon is holding is the original flavour of this drink.
First actual new post to this blog that's not a repost and also the final piece for Spectember 2025... at the tail end of what I planned. For the text below, I just copied text from DeviantArt because I don't want to paraphrase it again for my actual thoughts.
To summarise, the lungids are just pterosaurs with either fluff (similar to picnofibers) or feathers for more specialised ones that evolved from that proto-fluff. They may as well be seen as "wyverns". Specifically, the amu are basically living anurognathids but in name. There are a myriad of species in there, not all of them have their light shone because of limitations.
I have decided that the Spectember 2025 challenge for me would end in 10 entries, but because of my mental state and reluctance to keep working on worldbuilding stuff sometimes and October is coming up, I'm most likely going to be taking my own time to finishing up the last three of the scheduled entries at some point in time - I just hope it doesn't compound all of the queued up projects that I have in mind.
The next and last three would be the gattakangeli ("skywyrm"), snognar (ogres; basically Drachor's ground sloths) and then the gelhor (or qilin/kirin). But that would be all since my mental capacity is now focused on finally venting out what I've been waiting to draw for a while now: ghouls specifically. I might get around to cultural stuff... but alas, I might be too lazy for that too XD
I do plan to get around trying to do a much more complex scene and typical settlements built by ghoulkind going (as well as finally getting my long-awaited scene coming along that has been in my head since July), but my mind is just... a bit too distant at the moment to figure things out.
Prepping priority Dracoghoul characters for Artfight 2026... Since I left it behind the dust and was supposed to work on it in May, but things got in my way, including species sheet and wrapping up my final major project that was meant to be finished at the end of last year. So now I have to play a bit of catch-up until I am unable to get through all of them.
(Ideally I would want at least 18 Dracoghoul characters of mine get V2 references or something better than that, but I realised it ain't gonna be possible and so I'll just focus on those that I like the most.)
Not much to say over here. I just wanted to finally get this “size comparison” idea that was in my head done and over with after completing the Ghoultober 2025 summary using assets from that month to cobble up a companion sheet for pretty much the lore and idea of the Dracoghouls being quite flexible in shape and size as a bipedal humanoid species.
I use the term “humanoid” in a general sense of an upright bipedal being rather than what seems to be a prevailing opinion of humanlike figures - so this would include “anthros” and “furries”.
In summary, I don’t think they’re any different from a human. The only difference is that they’re not that “muscular” and it's difficult for them to attain a stereotypical bodybuilder look with heavily muscular looking abs - to an extent, that might be possible but it doesn’t look good. It is still easy to remain skinny and lean if one can dedicate to physical activity, but one can also be stocky as well. But again, not really fussed with either side of the spectrum of either being muscular and thin or being chubby as I’ve already had too many of the same species drawn that won’t be remarkable without having draconic features included.
I’ve decided that I would create a distinction between height types in-lore (though it doesn’t affect much of the character design, I won’t go overboard with that), not that there would be something that exists in human culture. I already had a conception of this idea to begin with through Naric koboldism and titanism - extreme short and tall ends of the spectrum. I prefer to not use terms “gigantism” or “dwarfism” specifically for the nari around that time and still do. Those terms would still be treated as exonyms in the nari - “kobold” or “titan” are human terms applied to nari with short or tall stature.
Shown below are the nari "kobold" and "titan" examples to illustrate this definition - fitting in both substituted terms for dwarf and giant for humans.
It is kind of funny that “kobold” would now refer to short reptilian humanoids in fantasy rather than something from German mythos. I’d imagine that far future humans would not really think of household spirits and instead associate that term with that now… Which would kind of make it fitting for the exonym.
Would it be the same if I keep pushing the term “ghoul” for this species onto everything else though? I’m not sure. If “kobold” can be supplanted, it's probably not too unreasonable that something like this could happen too - but that is too much of a wishful thinking. I had this conundrum with the same argument over this idea, but logically like my ghouls not being true “ghouls”, I could say contemporary fantasy “kobolds” shouldn’t be kobolds because they are nowhere near the same as sprites.
Also, I have made a height growth chart - but it's too small to be read if you were to see the image from a platform that compresses sizes to 2k. Since this is meant to be the definitive “anthro” version of the original feral size chart for a different version of the nari for an alternate universe (AU) canon thing as a personal side gig, it does make sense.
