A bit about Hyain (Patreon)

Hh - yAin

(ain sounds like aim)

A lot of my worldbuilding decisions boil down to asking myself "why not? it's my world." The Hyain came from me thinking about how on Earth species will adapt to capitalize on ecological niches that aren't filled. You can see it in areas of the US where large predators have been wiped out. (loose ex: Where there are no wolves, coyotes have an opportunity to grow larger over generations to take advantage of the lack of competing predators.) I wondered: how would that sort of ecology work in a world that has essentially one predatory mammal?

Combine that thought with hyena being more closely related to felines than canine. Stick those thoughts in a blender for a while, and... Well, what if 'hyena' took on the roles that the Canidae family does in real life?

When it comes to designing RoC characters the Hyain are a fun deviation from being fully feline-focused. They're probably the most varied type of Elviran in physical traits. Anatomically a Hyain can fall on a spectrum between 'lion' and 'hyena' which introduces some wild elements to combine! All of the characters pictured above are Hyain who (aside from the sibling trio) are all unrelated.