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Description

The Featherhide being more fury like than its cannon design didn't sit quite right with me, so I took another shot at redesigning the dragon... and it turned out to be both easier and harder than I expected it to be. The hard part was starting over from scratch and re-figuring out what things about the cannon design had bugged me. The easy part was figuring out what I wanted to incorporate into the redesign... and redesigning the dragon itself fell somewhere around the middle of the road.

The issues I had with the original design were:

- The Featherhide had awkward proportions, such as a big head on a noodle neck...

- Despite its name, the dragon didn't exactly have many feathers, and the ones it did have hardly looked like feathers...

- Egad, its face! Awkward bulging eyes, a weird fury grin on a rounded head...

The new Featherhide is a much more feathered dragon, with the only featherless patches being the patches of bare skin on its back sail, wing membranes, backs and undersides of its arms and legs, the keratin coverings on its beak, face, and horns and the scale/armor covered stripe along its underside. The Featherhide, almost uniquely among dragons, has a single horn at the center of its forehead, which is speculated to have been fused from two horns in its ancestor species, as is the case with the Bubblehorn and the Relentless Rainbowhorn. The Featherhide bears a light resemblance to the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl in Mesoamerican Myths, the Horned Serpent in North American Myths, and the Rainbow Serpent in Australian Myths. This dragon is unusual among most dragon species not only for having feathers, but also for having iridescent integument. This iridescence is thought to help the Featherhide Camouflage among the brightly colored, and often glowing, refracting, or otherwise shining crystals abundant throughout the Hidden World. The iridescent feathers also serve as an indicator of the Featherhide's fitness- the larger, brighter, and more iridescent the feathers, the healthier the Featherhide. This dragon molts and regrows its feathers once a year, and often uses the old feathers to line its nest during the nesting season. This dragon, unlike most, has no firepower, and so relies on a disorienting sonic scream to stop would be predators from attacking. This dragon also has ears that are uniquely resistant to hearing damage, being able to repair themselves in a matter of days after hearing damage has been inflicted. This means that deaf Featherhides are extremely rare, and when they pop up, they usually hatch deaf. Since the Hidden World can be pretty noisy, most of the Featherhides communication is visual. This by the way is one of the few truly omnivourous dragons, and it can and will eat anything short of inorganic materials, allowing it to settle virtually anywhere... within reason.

Description

The Featherhide being more fury like than its cannon design didn't sit quite right with me, so I took another shot at redesigning the dragon... and it turned out to be both easier and harder than I expected it to be. The hard part was starting over from scratch and re-figuring out what things about the cannon design had bugged me. The easy part was figuring out what I wanted to incorporate into the redesign... and redesigning the dragon itself fell somewhere around the middle of the road.

The issues I had with the original design were:

- The Featherhide had awkward proportions, such as a big head on a noodle neck...

- Despite its name, the dragon didn't exactly have many feathers, and the ones it did have hardly looked like feathers...

- Egad, its face! Awkward bulging eyes, a weird fury grin on a rounded head...

The new Featherhide is a much more feathered dragon, with the only featherless patches being the patches of bare skin on its back sail, wing membranes, backs and undersides of its arms and legs, the keratin coverings on its beak, face, and horns and the scale/armor covered stripe along its underside. The Featherhide, almost uniquely among dragons, has a single horn at the center of its forehead, which is speculated to have been fused from two horns in its ancestor species, as is the case with the Bubblehorn and the Relentless Rainbowhorn. The Featherhide bears a light resemblance to the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl in Mesoamerican Myths, the Horned Serpent in North American Myths, and the Rainbow Serpent in Australian Myths. This dragon is unusual among most dragon species not only for having feathers, but also for having iridescent integument. This iridescence is thought to help the Featherhide Camouflage among the brightly colored, and often glowing, refracting, or otherwise shining crystals abundant throughout the Hidden World. The iridescent feathers also serve as an indicator of the Featherhide's fitness- the larger, brighter, and more iridescent the feathers, the healthier the Featherhide. This dragon molts and regrows its feathers once a year, and often uses the old feathers to line its nest during the nesting season. This dragon, unlike most, has no firepower, and so relies on a disorienting sonic scream to stop would be predators from attacking. This dragon also has ears that are uniquely resistant to hearing damage, being able to repair themselves in a matter of days after hearing damage has been inflicted. This means that deaf Featherhides are extremely rare, and when they pop up, they usually hatch deaf. Since the Hidden World can be pretty noisy, most of the Featherhides communication is visual. This by the way is one of the few truly omnivourous dragons, and it can and will eat anything short of inorganic materials, allowing it to settle virtually anywhere... within reason.