I'll just clip this, it seems obsolete now. You're welcome!

Thanks for that!

Sylvorpas are based off of axolotls, I'm pretty sure lol

Yea, and I think I remember reading that somewhere

So here's some data and hypotheses regarding how big Sylesties are.

In the descriptions of various Sylesti species, the Sylesti Generator's List of Species gives average heights and weights for the species. Unfortunately, the data on heights are not much help, because the descriptions don't say how species' heights are measured. For example, most real-world quadrupeds are measured from the top of the shoulder to the ground--but are Sylesti quadrupeds measured that way, or from the top of the head, or from the line of the back, or what? Therefore, I use weight, rather than height, as much as possible. However, I do have to use height eventually, to scale the pet image to the image of a human avatar.

I begin with the Bulbori and the Qitari.


In the real world, I am about 5'7" tall. Therefore, I created the image above by assuming the height of my avatar is 5'7" and scaling the pet images accordingly. Yes, there is a problem with this route--avatar images are roughly 5 heads tall, just like human children, while real human adults are roughly 6 heads tall. The only way I can see to proceed is to assume that Sylestia's humanoids are proportioned the same way that Earth's human children are.

The Bulbori: Bulbories are more like rabbits and hares than they are like any other Earth animals. It was fairly easy to locate images of rabbits weighing about 10 kilograms, which is about what Bulbories weigh. However, few images showed them with anything that I could use to scale a Bulbori image. I finally watched a number of videos showing pet rabbits of about the right weight. I noticed that each rabbit was a generous armful for an adult, the tops of their heads fit nicely into an adult's palm, and their ears were roughly eight to ten inches long. This information allowed me to size the Bulbori's image. As you can see, she would be an armful for me to pick up, her head would fit my palm, and her ears are a bit longer than my hand (wrist to middle fingertip). This, then, is the size of an average Bulbori.

The Qitari: A Qitari is built like an equine, even though its hooves are cloven. The average Qitari weight is about 650 pounds. A 650-pound equine would stand roughly 4'8" tall at the withers (top of the shoulders), so it makes sense that an average Qitari would also stand about 4'8" at the shoulder. Using my presumably 5' 7" avatar for scale puts the Qitari's withers at the height shown.

It's rant time.
The gill array is obviously from an axolotl or something similar: three pairs, pointed tips. Except...are they even gills? This assumes that sylvorpas use oxygen, and actually need to breathe.


Unlike axolotl or any other amphibian with external gills, they don't have any branching filaments (and you can see them, those gills are more filament than muscle strut) to increase the surface area available to catch and filter oxygen--just three pairs of lumps. These don't seem effective for...actually breathing. Perhaps, like frogs, they can exchange oxygen and waste gases through their skin by staying moist. But those head adornments wouldn't be gills.

An odd name comes up in every gene (M3 slot) that changes these growths: Fins. There are a few Crowns and a Horn that changes these growths, but the recurring one is fins. There isn't a single Gill among them.

Fanned Head Fins, Leafy Seadragon Head Fins, Mystic Head Fins. Those completely replace the head growths, and yet the vorps are fine. If those were gills, those vorps wouldn't be able to breathe (and evolution says therefore wouldn't be able to keep those mutations in the gene pool).

Concluding the head-growths rant: Those most likely are not gills: vorps either have lungs and breathe air (like frogs or toads) or slowly absorb oxygen through their skin (like frogs and some newts/salamanders).

Oddly enough, they also seem to have mammalian traits.

"Sylvorpas, whose ancient ancestors hailed from the sea, have only been seen living on land for the past few centuries."
This seems to suggest them being entirely aquatic and more seafaring, as saltwater amphibians aren't so common. It's the salinity. So our options for the ancestors are either fish or marine mammal, pretty much.

"Since their bodies have no hair or fur, they must rely on a thick layer of fat under their skin to keep warm."
This points to mammalian-type ancestors, as fish, which are cold-blooded, don't rely on insulation to keep warm. This also points to another real-life ancestor with four limbs, body fat, and a long tail with a little fin at the end: Perogecetus, the presumed ancestor of modern whales.

Read about it here. Or on Wikipedia.

This early mammalian ancestor, a deer-like creature that took back to the water, had features well-adapted to life at sea, but also small hoof-like growths on their toes and a weight-bearing skeleton for moving about on land. As evolution progressed, they lost their amphibious capabilities, detaching weight-bearing pelvises in favor of a tail, front legs turning into flippers, back legs shrinking into vestigial little lumps and tails developing cartilaginous struts to support the horizontal fan modern whales have.

Toothed whales also lose most of their hair after birth, but they retain the follicles. Baleen whales have little whiskery bits, almost too small to see, along their snout-areas. It also fits with vorps not having hair.

The one part that I'm absolutely at a loss for are the eyes, squid are invertebrates. The closest animal I can find with irises that take up its entire eye (which are also large portion of the head) like the vorps are a small primate called tarsiers:

Most likely, it's just a design choice. But many features of the vorp point, surprisingly, to mammals.

So...sylvorpas seem to be ancient whales with axolotl gill-like growths, that depend heavily on water and need to stay very moist, though they can leave the water. I'll go now.