beast humans

I felt like drawing boobs and drapery upheld by bodies, and it turned into some tribal looking thing, so I ended up drawing the chief of the requis tribe next to her to try to remember how to draw him I guess! At first I was all like I’M GOING TO DRAW A BUFF MAN but in the end I just covered him up ):

I guess the woman could be a chief too, but I don’t have another tribe coming up any time soon, and I think CP has more than enough beautiful slender powerful women already, plus she’s topless LOL;;;

Wall of text brainstorm/info on beast humans in the rest of the post~

In the world of CP, spirit is the basis of everything, the atoms and particles of Maelstrom. It is a sort of power, energy, but also a building block of existence, and it itself is somewhat alive. Spirits fusing together into a single entity creates immortals, souls and conscience. Spirits in a dense and dormant form create physical things: the world, the bodies and the habitat. Mortals like humans are finite souls driving a body, so over time, the souls weaken and fall apart, returning to the air before joining once again with other spirits and return as a new soul. It is impossible for mortals to feel, see, and do anything with spirits because their bodies are made of spirits that are no longer “alive”. Beast humans are a race of mortals that are closest to the spirits, immortals; they are akin to humans, but they believe themselves to be risen from the world itself because they are able to sense and control what little spirits that are alive within the still of nature, and drive them through the elements to make them become “alive” with movements, what become known as Elemental Magic.

Being slightly more wispy in content than humans, beast-humans can transform their appearance. They generally have 2 forms, a beast form that correlates to their species, and a humanoid form. Both of these appearances can change over time as they grow, but in the end they are static and a result of the construct of each of their souls. Through immense effort, some beast humans can manipulate their looks like true shapeshifters, but even then they can only maintain a disguise for a very short time. The true form of the beast human is their human form, with their beast form being a small part of their soul that they can amplify into a physical form. Their ability to transform is an acquired skill, and some are better than others at it.

The only thing they can’t change is the horn on their forehead, one of the most vital parts of a beast human. When they are born, it is just a tiny bump, and grows into an actual horn shape as they age. Its size is reflective of the amount of spiritual prowess the individual possesses. It doesn’t necessarily make the individual skilled, smart or fluent at magic by default, but when two elementalists encounter each other in battle, the one with more control strength will actually be capable of prying the control over an element out of their opponent’s hands and claiming it, rendering their opponent useless. Therefore, despite the importance of skill and wits, being the strongest is a birthright most of the time, and these people are usually the ones chosen to be trained to become the tribes’ next leaders.

Most beast humans have one spike, but those with exceptional power can sometimes grow multiple spikes on their crown. Because the horn is the convergence of their control over the elements, they can be easily disabled if their horn is suppressed by external forces; a simple act of touching it could throw off a commoner. But some spiritual barrier usually form on its own around their horns when they are on guard or in a hostile mood, preventing others from getting close. Generally in well-mannered beast human tribes, targeting this place during a fight is a despicable move and identifies the attacker as a disgraceful member of their society. Conversely, voluntary contact of the horns between beast humans is an act of great trust and affection (credit to sepia). Its spiritual density also makes it very difficult to be damaged by external forces, but should it happen, the victim would be tremendously hurt, and recovery would take many years.

All humanoid  mortals have similar soul and body construct, so individuals from different species or races can breed. There are no half breeds; the child only takes on one parent’s traits, with an influence from the other parent. Eg. the enfelid child of an enfelid and human couple would be fully enfelid, but may be weaker at elemental magic because of the human parent. No beast human will ever be entirely incapable of using elemental magic, and no non beast human will ever be able to use elemental magic.

Beast humans live in isolated tribes around Maelstrom, far from human civilization. They have no desire to interact with humans, and most of the time see humans as inferior even though they don’t go out of their way to assert this. They dislike and disapprove the use of otherworldly magic, Demon magic and Holy magic, because they summon spirits that should not be in the mortal realms into the mortal realms, disrupting and damaging the fabric of the mortal realms in the process. They cannot use these types of magic themselves, but they don’t want to have anything to do with them either. Since the Catharsis 700 years ago, their numbers declined as they never ask for help from humans when faced with a crisis that were caused by human’s use of magic. Humans are interested in beast humans because of their unique abilities, but find it difficult to locate them and are often faced with hostility. Beast humans that do end up in human societies didn’t get treated spectacularly either until the Prohibition drastically increased the desirability of their alternative magic. For the past 4 years, many more individuals and tribes were recruited by nearby kingdoms and treated like royalty for their services, and a lot more beast humans have since chosen to move into a human society. Even then, most still adorn their tribal clothing to preserve their culture despite looking odd on the streets.