Those who see my art on devArt have already seen this one, but I felt it was time to resume uploads here as well! These are three new character designs commissioned by  alaitallon! From the top:

Merrik, female Kyonshi
Merrik was born in a room in the City and raised by a male Rhodri. She never knew her mother, and never left that room. For a very long time, she truly believed that she was the daughter of the Rhodri who raised her. But when she started to grow up, she realized that there were many differences between herself and her “father.” As she grew older, Merrik began to understand that her father was actually the captor of her dead mother, and that her room had been a prison cell all her life. The “medicines” that her father gave her were parts of his experimentation on Kyonshi genetics, and she was just a test subject. It wasn’t until she eventually got free of him that she even knew how different his experiments had made her. Unlike normal Kyonshis, Merrik has grown a prominent set of fangs, and her wings cannot grow large enough to carry her in flight. Even her shape shifting capabilities are severely limited by her father’s experiments.

Zo, male Rhodri
Zo was always slow and strong. He was never bright or clever, and he knew it. As a cub, he’d been large, but when adolescence hit, he grew to an abnormal size. Hard work turned him into solid muscle, but nothing could make him smarter. He knew when he was getting teased, most of the time at least, but could never seem to figure out where the joke was that was being played on him. The combination of being super strong yet easily led around and controlled made him easy pickings for some of the nastier elements in Rhodri culture. Before long, Zo found himself being a thug for a Rhodri he didn’t even like, and he wondered how he’d wound up there. In a failed effort to distance himself from the gang, Zo tried to scratch out his own tattoo of the gang’s mark on his shoulder.

Tanzi, female Rhodri (cub)
Tanzi was born with more shaggy hair than most Rhodri cubs. Although she was smaller than most, when other cubs were getting their first long tufts of mane, Tanzi was already growing hers in thick and chunky, and the beginning of elbow and heel tufts were already apparent. On top of that, she was born with tiny stubby horns--unheard of in females! (As she grows up, Tanzi will lag behind the other cubs her age in development. She’ll remain much smaller than the others, never growing larger than an adolescent Rhodri.)

Since I was given free reign to design these chars, I felt like going for an anomaly theme. Of course, it's not like any part of their little stories have to stick for good. I just enjoyed coming up with some sort of basic story for each one. :D

Kyonshi and Rhodri species belong to  alaitallon and are only used with her permission. And now Merrik, Zo, and Tanzi also all belong to her, too!