Thanks again for having us over. I'll have to try and bring some of my other friends down there sometime. I'm sure they'd love it.

Hehe I’d love to have them!

i want to see the border area where the transformation happens. that would be a good pic to see

Lol definitely agree there. But what should I show?

i imagine they have a dock island where ships and planes arrive . the small island has no magic and leaves them to prepare and keeps people from freaking out (i dont think pilots would be happy to lose their arms unexpectedly while they control a commercial jet ) . then they pass trough a border control area where they sign some legal documents and leave luggage.


and then after border control people go to a bridge that leads directly to the main island. you can show the bridge from the side and show people slowly transforming and losing their arms and top half as they walk over the bridge and get closer to the main island. or you can show a single character in multiple drawings transform while they cross. ,
you can even show a character that has always lived with no hands but has just transformed back to "normal" after going trough the bridge backwards.. they feel strange about their body and have to learn to use those "hand" things

i also imagine the elite police and security have protection gear against the magic. maybe red crystals that keep their bodies normal for emergencies. and some first aid boxes with the same crystals around for the public in case they need hands for something . the crystals are rare and expansive so only a few can use them .

finally.. i think that your city should be designed around people having no arms. for example doors dont have handles. they have pedals that you press with your legs to open the door. everything could have pedals and big buttons and be fully controllable with legs instead of hands. you could have computers where the keyboard is on the floor even . or touch screens on the ground. the possibilities are endless. maybe corridors are shorter too cause people are smaller , windows are lower and kitchens and tables end so much more are shorter so people are comfy without their usual hight

So, in a lot fewer words (hopefully lol), the magic fields extend roughly 10 - 20 km offshore from the farthest point of land in a bubble, and are very clearly visible as a blueish wall. So anyone crossing by sea very clearly knows that, either they’re about to enter halfcut territory, or they should avoid the area altogether. IE cruise ship crews and passengers.
For planes, with the exception of open air vehicles (which generally can’t reach the islands anyways due to their general remoteness), all planes naturally have a protection layer in their hulls that naturally resist magic. As well as an outright protection shield extending from their hulls in all directions. These two layers form a bubble around planes that protect from not only the halfcut magic, but any spell cast at them. So when a plane flys though halfcut airspace, they’re flying in a bubble of normalcy. It’s only once they land and are at the gate that the Captain drops these protections and the spell can take effect, as is procedure anywhere in the world.
The captains of both types of craft are also required to be specially trained to deal with this, and are often just halfcuts outright, or even Mers/nagas, who are both resistant/semi-resistant to the field’s effects. Again, these fields have been around for thousands of years. Well before human settlement on any island. You don’t go there, without knowing what’s going to happen. Unless you’ve been tricked.

Someone born as a halfcut, be it on the halfcut islands or elsewhere, will remain a halfcut for the rest of their lives without some sort of assistance, be it magical or technological, changing forms. And even then, they will have no way of really controlling the new parts without physical therapy or a lot of practice. Their brains simply won’t be wired for it. So someone leaving, say Bermuda or Reunion, by plane or boat, will remain in that form.
The same goes for any form. A taur will always be a taur, a biped always a biped, a naga always a naga, without some artificial help. And that includes magic fields like what’s around the halfcut islands.

As for security and similar things, halfcut officers, medics, firefighters, etc., are all trained from the get-go how to work with their forms. Albeit they do tend to rely on magic a bit more than the rest of the world due to its lack of physical objects to carry. But a halfcut officer, is going to be just as skilled taking down another halfcut as a biped taking down a biped. And it’s even common to see halfcuts in regular military units abroad, using their smaller size to their advantages.

And the cities are very much built for the halfcut size, having been settled with the form in place.

(Lol any other questions don’t hesitate to ask! I just ran out of energy for this single reply X-D)

i see why your fingers hurt. yeah i guess if this area is already established world wide and magic is a well known phenomenon then there is no reason for them to be unprepared and untrained for it . i was approaching this from a real life perspective of magic being limited and special . and actually your idea of the brain being wired specifically to use a body type is not wrong. in fact there are mental disorders where your body rejects body parts because it thinks they are not supposed to be part of the body and tries to make you amputate yourself, (dark i know). however i also think if there is already magic to transform someone to a new form (especially if biology is very complex )then re wiring their brain to work with and accept new body parts is not an issue since its all physical anyways. at least their brain will know how to communicate with new parts, they will mostly need training to learn how to use them correctly. so stuff like keeping balance and moving objects etc. and i imagine frequent travelers like sabrina herself already mastered using multiple body types .

i imagine for half cuts, their legs also feel like their hands. as in the sense that makes you know you have hands is merged with the sense of presence for legs. that would mean they have very precise control on their legs and toes as if they were hands.

now the question that remains is, who or what made this island. and why are people willingly living there? being half cut for the rest of your life and making your kids that way sounds really dark if you dont get any benefits from the island itself , if you know what i mean. so what makes people stay there and not outright leave and live as bipeds ?