Pern: Slasher Wherry and Prey

(Originally posted in 2008.)

More background art for Kadanzer Weyr ([link]).

You didn't think I was kidding about the theropods thing, did you? Hope not! I was one of those wee little girls who was deeply into dinosaurs. Years later, I just fell in love with the concept of the smart, dangerous velociraptors in "Jurassic Park" (although, yes, what's in the movie is in fact deinonychus, not velociraptor; *shrug* And I'd really love to see a movie that took advantage of the new theories about feathered raptors; but, I digress).

It was a short jump from there to the idea that if I was going to approach Pern's wherries as theropods rather than strictly as birds, it only made sense that if Pern naturally (when the colonists landed) still had wherry species big enough to make a respectable 1/4 of a meal for a dragon, then there'd have to be something native that preyed on that. (It sure wouldn't have been firelizards, which were too small and focused on littoral prey species. And wild whers didn't exist until the colonists started trying to create dragons.) Enter the slashers!

Here, one is preying on a marsh wherry. (It's a further extrapolation that wherries, and other native Pern critters, would have the same mood-ring-like color-changing compound eyes that the firelizards do.) The marsh wherry is probably about half as tall as a man. So slashers aren't huge -- but you still wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alley, you know what I mean?

Now that I see this solidly colored, I'm not happy with the slasher's tail; it shouldn't be that big. Meh. Also, this pic isn't actually meant to suggest that they can fly. Both of these are flightless species, but they use their wings for a variety of purposes, including to support short glides.

(Pen and ink, Copic marker coloring, some PS effects.)