Skyrryks

Summary

• Size: 1-2 feet
• Genders: Male, Female, Carrier
• Homeland: Midway between reality and dream
• Singular: Skyrryks
• Plural: Skyrryks

• Known Individuals: Scribble

General

Skyrryks are an small and unusual species even for those that inhabit dream realms. They inhabit a realm of thought from which they can influence both the realms of reality and dream. They have some similarity to Serendipity, but they can be malevolent or benevolent unlike the agent of chaos that tends to side with mortals. The most common interaction that Skyrryks have with the waking world is that of a guardian spirit or a muse. In either case, the choice to attach to a mortal is entirely their own, and those that do tend to pull themselves out of their society to bond to their mortal.

Physically, skyrryks resemble draconic rabbit creatures with thick, heavy bat-like wings that are thick enough to hide all the bones. Their tails are long and tapered with a spade at the end, but the shape of the spade as well as additional fins can occur on the tail. Their ears are long and often marked by a band of color midway up the ear. Body colors are typically dark with bright colors for markings, but the nature of these colors varies widely. Thin stripes are the most common markings, but rosettes and spots are also known. These color patterns hold true for most male and female specimens. Carriers are more likely to have pale background colors, and they have the ability to alter their patterns on demand to hide themselves.

Alcohol

Skyrryks and alcohol is deserving of its own section. In general, they all love booze, and they can even be said to have a terrible thirst for it. The Balmer peak a real thing for creative spirits like them, and it tends to be a lot wider than it is for those of the Waking World. One of these little guys can easily be why the rum is gone. It takers a lot of get a skyrryks drunk, but they are willing to put in the effort. They do, however, get their own sort of hangover later on if they overdo it, which is common.

Skyrryks that Cross Over have been known to clean out bars with their drinking habits and make it seem like they can live on alcohol alone. In some cases, they can!

In general, skyrryks are rowdy but playful drunks. They are prone to making trouble and taking dares, but they are rarely angry or spiteful killjoys. Often very animated, they will wander all over the place and happily chug a lethal dose of booze, submit to being used for spin the bottle, or just about any other reckless but not malicious acts.

Skyrryks can, with effort, drink moderately. The best thing is just to limit their access. As muse-like beings, they also tend to act even more inspiring when inebriated, and the only thing better than a buzz is a shared buzz and some evidence they did something the next morning.

Abilities

In their Homelands

The home realms of skyrryks is somewhere between Dream and Reality. Like Reality, things have a sense or permanence that is creative by the collective belief that something is there, and this can generate a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps the general layout of the realm intact. It is accurate to say that as beings of thought, their world is one of thought and so belief has power to shape the world. However, it is also to some degree malleable like a dream is, and the permanence of reality is far more rigid, enough to call it physics, while a skyrryks can change their surroundings by thought alone.

In this way, skyrryks are the architects of their own realm. They shape their world with thoughts, they have to compromise on them so they can exist, and most importantly, they have to shape the thoughts of their children to help care for the realm later. The net result is what makes skyrryks look like they are telekinetic and telepathic in terms that the Waking World would use. They hold more power over their realm than visitors would which gives them a home field advantage in an attack. However, they can also reach out from their homelands into the Dreamscape or the Waking World like a dreamer would and influence those realms as well.

In the Dreamscape

Skyrryks in the dreamscape are both terrifying and vulnerable. Because they are made of thought, the effect of dreams and nightmares can alter then as much as they can alter the Dreamscape, and this means they can be more easily injured or killed in the Dreamscape. They count as powerful lucid dreamers that can alter large portions of the Dreamscape to their liking with little effort, and they can be mistaken for dreams and nightmares themselves. Most skyrryks go to the Dreamscape for adventure and exploration as well as to just let themselves dream much as those of the waking world do, but even the youngest, least experienced skyrryks can alter the local Dreamscape like a Questor class lucid dreamer.

More often, skyrryks act a little like guardian angels for other dreamers that they like by wielding their thoughts against nightmares or even undesirable dreams such that they stand between them and the dreamer.

In the Waking World

The influence of skyrryks on the waking world, short of crossing over or bonding, is very subtle. They can leave thoughts in receptive minds which makes them easy to mistake for muses, and they sometimes reach out and tweak the world in small ways for good or ill. Their influence in the Waking World is greatly diminished by the laws of physics in place as well as pure banality that dampens or crushes the fantastic from manifesting. Still, they can cause unusual effects especially in complex systems where many are willing to believe some small level of magic is involved like a common person pondering how a computer processor works on the physical level. As such, they can cause switches to trip, objects to shift, or nudge a person along at the right pace for a seemingly serendipitous event to occur.

In the event of Crossing Over, skyrryks are forced to take on the rules of the realm they inhabit, but they may still retain telepathic and sometimes telekinetic like abilities but to a much more diminished degree. Bonded skyrryks, however, keep one foot on one side of the like and one in the other which allows them greater influence but only in the vicinity of their bonded partner which can be made much stronger by the beliefs of the bonded partner.

Reproduction

Male and female Skyrryks are similar in size and build. Carriers tend to be slightly larger and have a belly pouch which male and females lack. Male and female skyrrks cannot conceive on their own and require a carrier to give form and help raise young. Carriers are born in roughly one half thew frequency of male and female, and they are generally the ones to stay in the homelands rather than venture out, but it is not unheard of them to wander or even bond. In their homeland, they are often a point of focus in an otherwise rather whimsical world that helps keep Skyrryks together. Aside form being a anchor for the family, they are also often involved in larger group politics that keeps their society together.

As one might expect form a race living in a very unconventional place, the usual concepts of male and female in this case are also different. While there are similarities in physical form to what most people would regard as male and female, in this case it is much more accurate to think of them as two complementary forms of energy and thought that must be brought together and then kept stable long enough to spark another of their kind. Alone, male and female halves cannot remain stable, and that is why the carrier is needed. The carrier's body serves as a shelter that gives the two halves enough time to fuse and then take shape over the course of several months. Only one new life is made at a time under these conditions.

Bonding

Living in the borderlands means that Skyrryks have the ability to touch the world of dream and that of mortals. However, they rarely manifest physically in the mortal world for any length of time. They are capable of manipulating the mortal realm in small ways, and they can speak to the thoughts and dreams of a mortal they bond with. Bonding causes the skyrryks to stabilize more in the mortal world although they may not show up physically. They most often act like a sort of guardian spirit that is quite capable of causing headaches and extreme harm to angels and demons alike that may also haunt a mortal. They can, though do not always do so, also act like a muse to inspire things in their bonded mortal. Some mortals even come to think of them as a sort of divinity, especially for those that don't buy into the usual religions.

Bonding involves linking the spirit of the skyrryks to a mortal. This is something they can do without a mortal knowing. While mischievous, most of those that bond this way don't do so out of malice. For the mortal, they get protection from the unseen as well as a sort of hidden companion like some see gods and saviors to be. For the skyrryks, it is a grand adventure outside their realm, and sometimes it becomes a deeper search for themselves from the reference of someone else's life. Either way, they tend to be easy going and adventurous spirits unless their bonded mortal is in danger from other unseen beings at which point they can become ferocious.

Bonding Side-effects

One of the largest effects on the Skyrryks when bonding is that they take on some aspects of the concepts that belong to their bonded partner. For instance, if it is possible to see or touch them, the bonded partner would see a male or female less as as they are naturally and more as a minor mix of their concept of gender overlaid on the skyrryks. For example, Scribble has taken on female aspects due to her bond to Jamey when in her prior unbound form her gender identity was more ambiguous or even fluid.

Bonded Twins

The ultimate expression of the bond often comes from links with mortals that don't have a faith or have fallen to seeing their bonded partner as the only thing they have faith in beyond the mortal realm. In these rare cases, a wandering skyrryks may come home bearing the spirit of a mortal that it is shielding from other afterlife beings. In this case, the mortal soul and the bonded partner take the roles male and female. If the carrier accepts, both the mortal soul and the bonded skyrryks are reborn as skyrryks in the only event that can result in twins. These events are so rare and considered so precious that the general community comes together to raise the twins. Of course, this is not without risk as any failure or weakness in the process can cause the loss of both the mortal soul and the bonded partner which lends to the gravity of any decision to follow this path.

As the pair mature, portions of their old memories and life begin to filter in, and this makes community care very important to ensure that these young ones can cope as their truth of their past and their future come to bear.

Crossing Over

Crossing over is a rare and very difficult event for any skyrryks to experience. This involves a complete transition from a being of thought to a being of physical matter. Rare supernatural events can accidentally snag them and force them into a form where their typical strengths are curbed by a physical body. Upon crossing over, most skyrryks end up unconscious and tend to be found by others because of their unusual colors and shapes. They remain 'hot' for a time before thought is forced to conform to the reality they have fallen into. This is similar to what can happen when a bonded pair induces a change in the skyrryks, but in this case the benefits of the bond are missing. This hot period is critical for their survival after crossing over as the imposition of that location's perceived laws and nature and the thoughts of such from nearby beings shapes the changes in the skyrryks allow them to eat, breath, and other basic biological functions. Failures at this stage can cause severe injury to the thought essence of those that cross over that remains even if they make it back home.

Crossing over is also traumatic for those left behind. and many of them will try to contact those lost and lead them home. The fate of a skyrryks that crosses over is always uncertain, often frightening, but can sometimes work out if the right person finds them.

At best, those that cross over might reconnect back to their kin through a bond as if the crossed over individual were part of another species.

Crossover Stages

Hot Stage

The hot stage occurs at the time of crossover when the skyrryks impacts the waking world. This is traumatic and most skyrryks that cross over do not remember it much like someone passing our from pain. At this point, their bodies are reacting subconsciously to the environment and taking on a material form that is based on the local elements that still preserves the form of the skyrryks. This could mean they are airy light or perhaps fluid like water. They might appear almost hard as stone or metal. At this point, the only thing their sleeping mind can so is react and under duress at that.

Malleable Stage

The malleable stage can exist for a prolonged period. This occur after the skyrryks regains consciousness and starts interacting with their new world. There are no truths to anything they become at this point such as eating or breathing if they aren't aware they are needed for life. Skyrryks by nature seek out other sentient life, and once they impact those thoughts, they may change more. Concepts of gender might change their body shape. Most skyrryks understand breathing and eating are required for life, but rarely do they think much else is, and so skyrryks that cross over eat and breath but may appear to be perfect in converting food to energy as they might not take in that using a bathroom is part of necessary functions.

During this period, the body is becoming more stable and integrated with the environment. Their early elemental like shapes during the hot phase fade and become more conventional flesh as that becomes how they and other perceive them, and this thought becomes reality. even more extreme for the skyrryks, their third carrier gender may actually become male or female as well in a binary gender environment that doesn't have thought space for a third gender.

In the wilds, the malleable stage may last months while the skyrryks wanders in search of others and ends up with only wild instincts to keep it company. Showing up in a vibrant place with well defined and socially enforced concepts, however, can shorten this stage down to a few weeks.

Crystallization

Crystallization refers to the locking in of the new concept of self driven by the skyrryks's older concept of itself and the influence of how it is perceived. Crystallization is usually slow and hard to differentiate from later parts of the malleable stage. The largest defining component of crystallization is the solidification of the skyrryks's new concept of self that makes it stronger and well adapted to its new home. Because of is no longer reacting and adapting chaotically to a new realm, this is also the time some aspects of their old world powers can appear. Telepathy is generally the most common ability that returns because it is the easiest to believe and execute from once source of thought to another. Telekinesis is usually the the second most common, and is, again, the concept of mind over matter. While possible thought not so far known to have occurred, conjuration and manifestation of matter into being is possible but likely only in a very old, strong skyrryks who has been in the world long enough to be so stubborn and forceful against the world that it can force its will upon it.

At this stage, skyrryks have either survived and likely become part of another society or at least paired with someone they like, or they have perished in the process. So far, the odds are even between survival and death which underscores just how difficult and dangerous crossing over is.