Phoenix

A coloring page featuring basic information about the Phoenix.

Birbs.

Engineered by the Pelted during their experimental phase earlier in the Alliance's history.

Vital Statistics (At a Glance)

Pronounced like the human word (fee nihcks). Singular is Phoenix. Possessive is Phoenixae. Plural is Phoenix.

• Species Type: Mammalian, Third Generation Pelted
• Origin: Engineered
• Frame Type: Bipedal Winged
• Average Height: tall
• Average Lifespan: longish
• Gravity Preference: light
• Homeworld: Phoenix-Nest
• Native Language: they ululate but I don't know if it's a formal language

Appearance and Physiology

Appearance

The Phoenix, designed by the Pelted, are digitigrade bipeds with bills and flexible crests and tails. Their wings sprout all along their arms; they do have hands, but the bones of the smallest finger have been extended to form the leading edge for those wings. They come in most metallic shades, mostly copper, gold, silver, and bronze. There are rare paler or darker Phoenix, as well. The sheen off those feathers is a result of a compound engineered into them to make them tougher… this has accidentally made them resistant as well to the Alliance’s most common distance weapon, the palmer. They are tall people, elongated by their low-gravity world, usually over 5’8”.

Physiology

The Phoenix are actually mammals; the Pelted, creating them, did not want to make such extreme modifications to the reproductive cycle. Since one of their aims was to understand their own genetic problems, they retained the mammalian template so they could continue their studies and applied what they felt to be cosmetic alterations: the wings, the tail, the long-billed head. The engineers for the project found a low-gravity world and began tailoring the species so that it could fly there, and they succeeded. Everything they’d learned from examining themselves and then making the Glaseah and Ciracaana paid off handsomely. Of the three third generation races, the Phoenix are the most polished in design, and are as viable as a naturally evolved species.

Society

Member of what nations here. Information about colony worlds here.

Customs

• A gift of feathers from a Phoenix is a significant offering, especially if the feather is long enough to decorate one's aerie, rather than one's person.

Stereotypes

The Phoenix remain ciphers to this day. They seem to glide through the Alliance, detached from its convulsions and emotional distresses in a way even the stolid Glaseah can’t emulate. While they participate in the greater culture, they are enigmatic; no one is sure why they choose their companions, their jobs, or their paths, and it’s hard for most people to even tell if they are friends with a Phoenix. Some have likened the Phoenix to real birds of prey, with the same wildness and the same lack of affection. But people who know the Phoenix well will tell you their loyalty when they give it is more satisfying than affection, somehow, and that a Phoenix will see hard truths more clearly, and tell them to you more often, than any other species in the Alliance. And they’d be right.

Common Family Structures

• An Eye-trained Phoenix is allowed to fly a banner at his aerie when he wins a battle, but he has to be given the banner by someone whose life was saved there. He needs five such banners before he can request a mate.

Religions

See Phoenix Religion.

History

Once again, however, the seeding of the race failed, and the Pelted couldn’t understand why. Unlike the Glaseah, whose esper abilities made the revelation of their creation inevitable, and the Ciracaana, who blundered into the truth, the Phoenix experiment was carried through without mistakes. It should have worked. They should never have known.

Except that from day one, the Phoenix have been more alien than some of the aliens the Pelted have met. They rejected everything implanted in them and spontaneously evolved a completely original culture and belief system. They rejected attachment—not emotion, but attachment—and developed a religion and culture around the concept of the Eye in the Center of the Void. One must remain clear, like water, so that one’s purpose can be divined. And then one must serve that purpose. In these things, the Phoenix are implacable…and tranquil. They are like arrows loosed at a target: there is only flight. One is in motion, one with the target, one is the target, one is the completion of the flight.

If the failures of the first two engineering projects dismayed the Pelted, the failure of this one flabbergasted them. They knew they’d created the Phoenix, but the Phoenix didn’t recognize that creation. The Alliance found itself in the bizarre position of sending delegations to the species they’d created to believe itself natural… to explain that they weren’t.

The Phoenix didn’t care. As far as they were concerned, focusing on how they were created was irrelevant to who they were. They served the Eye. The Pelted were welcome to continue discussions with them, so long as they understood the Phoenix had other priorities. So, helplessly, the Pelted did, and welcomed into the Alliance a species they honestly didn’t know at all.

Phoenix Characters

Bryer

Sigrdrifa