mudwing headcanons
(PLEASE click on her she is so beautiful to me and tumblr kills her with hammers)
physical traits
another huge tribe; longer than ice wings, shorter, but very bulky and muscle-y (think alligator)
alligator is pretty much the keystone of my design for them, and also their design is probably the most canon compliant one i have (said moments before i go against this)
i do like the idea of giving them thicker tails, more adjacent to seawings than any other land dwelling tribe, and also just leaning into the swampy aspect of them more
depending on how aquatic of an environment they’re incubated in (and also depending on parent’s genetics) a mudwing can hatch with fins! it’s not entirely uncommon (fins smaller than seawing fins)
mudwings can have tail fins, fins running down their stomach, and their neck. this is distinct from seawings as mudwings never have fins running down their spine or fins on their limbs
mudwings have HUGE horns and ears to siphon heat away from their face
they also have a throat sac like icewings! they produce a variety of throat song, mostly akin to various frog sounds
also,,, tusks protruding from their lower jaw! (that i just realized i forgor to draw,,,,) this is used for foraging, and also agriculture (tilling soil, etc) which mudwings are particularly proficient in
mudwings also tend to have ecosystems growing from them,, algae and duckweed etc on their backs, necks, and tops of heads which helps camouflage them
speaking of camouflage,, colors,,,, well you know
mudwings only being brown is actually the most boring concept i've ever heard 😭so they’re not! brown is still the most common, green is also very common, muted reds, oranges, and yellows as accents float around as well
culture <3 (social structure)
okay i actually love the SCRAPS of culture content we have of the mudwings
so i guess i want to start out with family structure and community,,,
the whole “breeding night” is so fucking funny to me,,, and it’s staying. i will keep it. i think this can also coexist with courting and mating and committing to another dragon singularly, and maybe all mudwing communities just consist of really complicated polycules
although parents aren’t always directly and singularly involved in the raising of their clutches, the adults still communally raise/look after the hatchlings, even if it’s somewhat from a distance
also, i think clutches know their parents and vice versa, even if there’s no special connection, you have to avoid incest somehow,,,,
so sib groups grow up together and rely on one another, like how it is in canon
if a bigwings egg is a “dud” and doesn’t hatch or is,,, abducted from the nest for the purpose of a false prophecy,,,, it’s actually really detrimental to the other eggs and can put them at risk to not hatch
clay’s sibs successfully hatching and growing up is,, a miracle im saying. the bigwings is the CRUX of everything. first to hatch, fastest to develop, grows the biggest, etc etc
i also think bigwings can produce fire at a slightly wider range of temperatures in order to keep their sibs warm if they’re ever under duress
on the topic of clutches and bigwings and,, everything
one egg clutches are considered crazy bad luck, and they need a lot of maintenance from an older dragon in order to actually hatch
if it’s feasible (like a clutch of a bigger size was laid on the same day) the single egg will be transplanted into that bigger clutch asap
also a similar feeling about 2 egg clutches, but it's not as bad
single and 2 egg clutches happen VERY frequently with hybrids, so often a hybrid will be in another sib group and all of their sibs go “yes they are us. oh they’re purple? they’re literally us what do you mean”
on the topic of hybrids, seawing and mudwing hybrids are insanely common, to the point where the majority of mudwings on that border are at least a liiiiitle bit seawing
there’s a lot of communal learning and passing down traditions in agriculture, farming, and animal rearing, and oftentimes a family farm is passed down from one sib group to another
(i don’t only make humble farmer mudwings though, there’s also a lot of artisans, scholars, the equivalent of dragon environmentalists, etc)
so moving away from family groups and stuff,,,,, onto wider society, let’s start with the royal family
mudwings pass the crown down from eldest daughter to eldest daughter, through a “royal” line
basically, one group of sibs has the crown, then the oldest/first clutch will be promised the crown, but it can very easily be abdicated and passed to a different clutch if the oldest clutch doesn’t want it or seems not fit to rule
there’s not a lot of competition for the crown because sib groups rule together, and the queen position really doesn’t mean anything, at most acting as a tiebreaker
obviously, sibs never fight sibs for the crown. that’s like speed running a revolution from the mudwing commoner population. but also, cousins don’t tend to fight either because of this strong wider communal feeling
fashion, jewelry,,
i think mudwings don’t have a lot of fashion/accessories because of how swampy and wet their environment is. royals will have jewels embedded into their scales (like moorhen) but even this requires somewhat regular cleaning to actually look,, pretty and shiny? so it’s not common
other jewelry consists of tight bands of wood and clay around horns, clay earrings, rings and armbands
clay jewelry is especially common! including clay beads that represents their sibs
clay fired earrings, strings of clay beads draped across the body, etc is commonly found
jobs! (and also a rant on cuisine apparently)
briefly touched on earlier, idk how much expanding i’ll do here tbh
farming is pretty common, crops including rice, cranberries, watercress, taro, water spinach, water chestnuts,,,, you get the point. there’s a lot of crops to be grown and mudwings grow them!
not in monocultures though, there’s a lot of mixing of crops on the same farmland
also with farmers, animals are raised! but closer to the less swampy edges of the kingdom
they’re still partially wild honestly, but mudwings rear cows and boars very commonly
so much of mudwing economy revolves around food, so they have a very robust cuisine, and they grow/trade for a lot of spices and herbs (with the skywings) and they have a lot of practices surrounding food/sharing of food being sacred
oh god.,,,, the tangent is taking over,, im so sorry
marriage!! i think when mudwings want to get married there’s a long string of cooking for one another!! back and forth making beautiful dishes for one another until they make a beautiful dish TOGETHER. god i love them
aside from farmers, a lot of mudwings are artists! they carve wood and make clay sculptures and jewelry as well as weave baskets and jewelry and thatched roofs from fronds and other wide-leafed plants
pottery is also common
tanners make leather from cow and boar hide, and bookbinders make books (after contact with pantala) and trade with sandwings for dried parchment
also butchers, cheesemakers (cows milk)
as well, the typical circle of scholars and nobles that keep rigorous records on the queendom’s history
and of course, royal diplomats
religions/superstitions
less superstitious than icewings perhaps,, but i do think they have some shared beliefs
perhaps just in a “mother earth” “all mother” type of concept? a dragon that gave them swamps, and then all other life came from swamps, etc
of course, the egg superstitions from earlier
there’s a lot of superstitions/outright magic about sharing food and the etiquette around sharing food
oh, one of you dropped your utensil while eating? in the future you’re going to save each other from mortal danger
someone gifting dishware is considered a proposal,, but it can be platonic or romantic
the monarch spilled their drink? the rainy season will be rainier this year
just a lot of really niche things
yoppee, i love mudwings so much. i think there is so much untapped potential and what we have now is beautiful. love drawing them, love their color palettes, love their sib groups. yeah not much else to say here. as always, send a dm or an ask if you want to know about something further!
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Y’know I kinda wanna elaborate on the HC I mentioned, where I said that if Donald hadn’t found out what Douglas was doing and intervened, Douglas would’ve eventually cracked and fessed up
Mostly I wanna elaborate that he wouldn’t have fessed up because of ethical guilt (though I do think he may have something somewhere inside him that would give a damn about ethics. He did seem pretty excited to do good things after all) but more because he’s got the emotional strength of a wet tissue and would feel personal guilt after getting so attached
I’m gonna put most of it under a cut ‘cause it turned into a full on Douglas study I guess
Like... obviously I’m prefacing this with it being my own interpretation of the guy, but Douglas was a pretty emotional dude in the show. His entire redemption was rooted in his emotional attachment to his family. His morals never 100% improved, and the growth we did see was almost entirely motivated by “My family won’t like me if I’m a bad guy :(”
And while he’s not a particularly GOOD dad, he is a dad. Literally every kid Douglas gets more than 2 minutes of screen time with, he goes into some kind of Dad Mode
So, the way I see it, I don’t think Douglas would’ve lasted if he got to keep the Rats for longer than he did. It’s never actually said how old the kids were when Donald found out, but they couldn’t have been older than like... 3? Tops? Possibly even younger, technically. If Douglas actually got to watch those kids grow up in whatever messed up environment he had them in to keep them hidden (Which, I’ll be honest- based on comparing the brothers’ lab quality, was probably a worse environment than Donald’s lab) I don’t think he would’ve been able to commit. Not with the original trio, anyway
ALSO. I wanna bring up Donald, ‘cause he’s also a factor in of himself
Yeah, the brothers fight a lot, and did fight a lot. But I think it’s worth remembering that despite that, these two founded a company together. They invented things together. They work together seamlessly when they get in the zone. Douglas, despite all the animosity, was ecstatic at the prospect of getting to work alongside his brother again, and was genuinely sad when Donald didn’t feel the same, but chose not to fight Donald’s decision
Douglas cares what Donald thinks of him, and I bet he cared a lot more before Donald discovered what was happening and made his own judgement call. The two of them had to have been incredibly close, and that probably would’ve weighed on Douglas, too
But Donald found out on his own, and he didn’t waste time. He saw the children, he saw the conditions, the plans, the schematics. There was absolutely no way to rationalize what was happening here, Donald had to get these kids out and away. His little brother was using their assets to make deals with terrorists regarding the creation of bioweapons in the form of children
And Douglas was left ghosted by the most consistent presence in his life for the past 20+ years, locked out of the company he helped build from nothing, and separated from these kids who have also been a consistent presence in his life for entirely different reasons
And Douglas is notorious for deflecting and pushing back when someone else decides that he’s in the wrong. All that potential turmoil means the time between Donald finding out and Douglas “dying” was probably like. Intense. To put it mildly
All this to say: Douglas is still a DICK lmao and the point of this post is NOT to be like “Douglas deserved better” or even “Donald is to blame.” It’s more about how Douglas is a notably emotion-driven character and how it affects his dynamics and actions, both positive and negative
It’s also my favorite kind of angst- where technically, things could have turned out okay, or at least better than they did, if everyone involved hadn’t been such a mess
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