Vimonoyu

Edit: Head shot! www.deviantart.com/altarior/ar… /edit

Moar world building, hurray.

This is.... A rough sketch that got out of hand. It has a load of issues, but oh well. The initial idea was just to make something to give me a rough idea of what these things look like, and this certainly does the job. Might still fiddle with the markings on the large feathers and head crest, but this is definitely a good first step

So what exactly is this mf'er!? Honestly I still have loads to figure out about them. They're called Vimonoyu (singular/plural) and they're basically horses. Long horses. Long horses with feathers. They're the mounts that the deities ride on, and they're even able to fly, riding through the sky as if on invisible trails. Their main body is dark and covered in stars, as if it's made up of a piece of the sky. The stars even move around and shift in intensity. They have a fairly large torso with a slimmer waist and butt, giving them more of a triangular body shape when they're in a normal stance (think giraffe, but long?).

Every deity has one; they receive their mount as an egg on the day they're created themselves. They have to care for the egg from day one until it hatches and then they have to raise their Vimonoyu from a filly, forging a strong bond between the two. All Vimonoyu are genderless and of course unable to reproduce (there must only ever exist the same number of these things as gods who ride them). Riders typically refer to them as him/her depending on their own gender, as the Vimonoyu in a sense is supposed to be an extension of their master.

Vimonoyu are only able to speak in animalistic sounds; bird chirps, growls, howls, etc.. However, their own master can understand what they're saying as if they were speaking the same language fluently, enabling the two to have conversations (but all others listening would only be able to understand the deity, not his/her Vimonoyu). They are as intelligent as any sapient race. Their lives are tied to their master's; meaning that when the deity is destroyed their mount dies as well, and the opposite is true too. Like the deities, they do not need to sleep, eat, poop or any of that other mortal garbage. And if they did poop it'd probably be rainbows anyway.

The exact shape and size of the feathers varies a little, as do colours and patterns (they all have the dark and starry base coat though). In addition to this, all Vimonoyu are decorated with jewellery that signify things like rank and ownership. Their main purpose is to be a carrier, and in light of this they're created with the ability to carry any burden. Often times they'll be loaded up with bags full of books, potions, weapons, clothes, tools, artifacts, all kinds of cool god stuff. They can carry literal metric tons and not feel or be affected by the weight in any way.

They're also big as fuck.

Vimonoyu and art belong to me, please don't trace, all that yada-yada, you know what I mean.