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AUTHOR'S NOTES

To everyone: Hi :]

So yeah... I have thought about making this. Because why not and someone gave me a fun shoutout just a few days back and I would like to say hi back to that guy who did that. Say hi back, guys.

Decided I would have a concept to a possible comic series that I might work with. For a while now, I thought about the original storyline (I initially built Chimeric Chronicles around Benny the red kite then branched it off eventually in late 2023 to everywhere else) and it might not be implemented well to my liking. Plus, I do like turning this into an anthology, rotating stories from one and another rather than staying with one main character at a time. Eh, its an idea I might scrap or not. But in case I scrap that one, I think Benny and the whole ITS/Wolf College saga can be abridged here as it shares a lot of similar themes/premise, albeit less fights on campus.

Yeah I messed a bit around and had a private conversation about what I could do or sort of push around the ground sloth character I made a while ago that was partly associated with the were-gorgonopsid relict (so someone liked gorgonopsids and that type of animal at that time). I ended up just thinking of an ensemble, like not a superhero-styled ensemble, but you know I used to like the show Timeless, that was one example of not using superheroes to create a small team of at least three people to work against an evil. I think it is possible to just do the same thing here, you know, a group of ragtag people with amazing skills. Oh wait, that's just a RPG adventurer session.

You get the idea though. I want them all in what I could say, is a "plausible" group photo of the time, something formal. Chimeric Chronicles is basically (or at least part of it, thats why it used to be called The Erstwhile Decade) set in the 1920s/1930s currently and even though photography and cameras have improved substantially, I think the stiffness of those group portraits could be tweaked a bit. Characters on the other hand... I guess that it is sort of pretty diverse on a certain angle, albeit only "culturally". In terms of clades, not so much...

One more thing is that I'm awful in the subject of topic of palentology and archaeology in general, which I just realised. So I think this vision might not be the one that might feel "nice" or accurate unless I dug through research to start feeling smart. Hence its more so a concept than something that I think should definitely happen. I think the way I placed things could not have happened in real life, but its all of an embellishment guys.

There's also a bit of retconning too in order for this story to be partly palatable. But I want to try and keep them minimised as I can, so... I don't know if I'll be contradicting myself because of this.

Also black panthers are technically melanistic jaguars or leopards, they are not a species of their own. Though here, its an ordinary werejaguar, I just don't understand the arbitrary divisions (especially with the typical furry art) of considering a panther as its own "species", especially when I placed all of my money and investment into just doing this by taxonomy. It's like dividing hybrids like mules into their own species. I guess I reached a point that I'm playing 5D chess at that point.

===

LORE DUMP (or concept, I guess)

The "Sabine Cynodonts" is a rather strange group, bound together by a commonality and passion of ancient civilisations, history and animals for different reasons. Aside from the few lecturers and professors (yes, the gorgonopsid here, Yulia, is a professor) in the background and them being weremammals (with one obvious exception), none of them have any commonalities that resonate with one and another. They name themselves as that from the fact* that many of their forms are of cynodonts, which would later become modern mammals of the real world.

Initially, these people have glanced each other in the University of Sabine ("US"; oh my, but UOS is also acceptable I guess), dismissive of what would come next. They are here for the sake of being here. Yet, their differences are put aside when they were brought on a trip to the state of Yellowstone in the summer of 1932 (whether they invested on it for a break or were brought on board for that field trip to learn practical skills outside of a dormitory, that depends on their reasons), where a group of amateur diggers belonging to a branch of the Suebic Empire admit to digging up and scavenging for a lost site rumoured for centuries in tales of the ancient Kitalid/Perikian tomb that could unlock access to forbidden, ancient lore that could shake the current world order. Perhaps, for a while, they can figure out where it is before they manage to raise an army of ancient werebeasts under their belt or perhaps for sure, mythical creatures, would reemerge into their mundane world. (I know, it feels like Indiana Jones and The Mummy [the one with Brendan Fraser] all over again lol)

And yes, being a shifter may be considered a fact of life for many and that all the fantastic creatures may be deemed as insane or mythical today, but their ancestral legacy, alongside the regular Wanderers, still linger to this day through therianthropy, a thing that everyone, except for a minority of non-werebeast humans, sees as normal and part of humanity's "soul".

===

THE CYNODONT PLAYERS

The crew. The league.

In terms of the backgrounds of the players or members of the temporary Sabine Cynodonts, they are pretty diverse in their own way. They usually don't fit the model Olympian citizen that the conservative nationalists of the Republic prefer to take the lead, the regular male Albionese/English settler that is well-off, while also being religious and educated. In fact, they pretty much defy the whole paradigm. Even the not!Germans, the Suebians, are strayed from the Albionese following the Olympo-Suebian relations split of the Great War- there is growing mistrust in the 1920s/1930s that the Mittelpakt (aka "uncivilised Patarnia") is undermining democratic, liberal values of the Olympian Republic. Of course, you also have different economic classes joining the fray that do not necessarily fit the mold.

(This is part of a reason why I might have personal troubles thinking of how to branch all of these, compared to the safe bet of the were-red kite guy or a few other ideas I have lying around. But I just think its interesting if I choose that path for the sake of it. Scooby-Doo did that, sort of, during the '60s. I think this is also just "funny" in a sense of getting back at the shoutout, to create something that is cooler and edgy than a safe bet of Evangelical students attending an Evangelical college or a werebird growing more powerful by the year, aka Benny the Red Kite. I guess you might consider elements of this ensemble to be "self-inserts" in that some share common interests with me- but at least it didn't involve me, lmao, imagine that was the case, I would gladly eliminate all werebeasts for being too embarassing- jk.)

(For notes, though, the University of Sabine is the usual public university, funded by the state government and maybe federal too at times. So its not private or religious in any way, compared to IOTL, Brigham Young University as an example [a LDS/Mormon institution]. University attendance rates are also low around that time, but that sort of changed similarly to OTL post-WWII America, when the Progressive-led Congress at the time allowed veterans who fought in Laurentia and Aquitania to attend university with heavy subsidies for a limited time.)

---

Sariye Achmad (naked mole rat; Heterocephalus glaber)

Sariye comes from a large family of were-molerats that used to hail from Ajuraan, until the socialists (partly backed by the Crivichian Communist Party, which was then growing influence after the collapse of the imperial monarchy/tsardom) won an election with a plurality in 1917. With some of his family being tied to the political elite of traditionalist circles, the revolutionary. As a child, he could only remember the old country as it was prior to the Great War as his family arrived a year later to the shores of Osnerola at just the age of 8. His family then would have to start over again, to work in the factories, obtain citizenship for the exiled family and ensure that their children could thrive in their new homeland. Coming from a background of having a source species of the naked mole rat, he is surprisingly healthy compared to some of his peers (actual naked mole rats are immune to cancer and live longer than regular rodents), despite a lack of regard of his diet and being overworked by studying geology, a close companion to his weird hobby. Sariye is also an amateur cartographer, basically drawing maps in his spare time and collecting atlases from esteemed magazines and publishing houses, whether be fantastical or poor imitations of alternate worlds.

Pije Icheli (jaguar/panther; Panthera onca)

A foreign student from the neighbouring country Tetzoca (not!Mexico, oh my), that is able to study at a well-known tertiary institution like the University of Sabine for anthropology, specifically digging into historical fields of battlefields, medieval mounds or buried temples. Coming from the state of Purepecha (territorially similar to OTL Michoalan), his thoughts of the Kitalid civilisation as one of his homeland than of Olympia seemed glaringly obvious, down to the legacy civilisation and their former position of Emperor (Tlatoani). Such program and visa was introduced in the late 1920s in the Olympian Republic as lobbied by some private educational and religious institutions, including the Temple of Faithful Light, to allow foreign nationals to come for a few years to complete their courses. By the time he transferred to New Tarraco, Pije believed the Olympian Republic was the "corrupt" bourgeoisie society, despite being insisted by his parents that Olympian education is preferable over local higher education (see China/Nepal/India as an example IOTL), a thing that seems to be common in the country and in the continental Suyu/Amazonia too. Aside from his divisive opinions, he does help foreign students (which is not a lot admittedly) get through a bit of assimilation into a foreign life that they haven't tried before.

Sasha Gilmore -Pavlenko (Wakashan/Shasha ground sloth; Nothrotheriops shastensis)

Born between an Indigenous father in western Sabine and an Ulichi mother (who she immigrated in the 1890s as a young woman from then the Crivichian Empire), where his father gave Sasha the primary form of a weresloth, his perception of the world around him had been different. Sloths are often known to some to be lazy to onlookers, a false myth, but compared to the rest of the weresloths, he was indeed "different" in the way he thinks of solutions to problems otherwise solved within the moment. To him, the solutions don't come until it hits him later like a comedic short. An amateur paleontologist who is also studying zoology to better understand invertebrate animals that he likes, Sasha has a strong interest in early Paleozoic lifeforms, disinterested in seeing the faces and heads of many werebeasts. Outside of a fondness to trilobites, Sasha has a small greenhouse dedicated to algae and moss from his family home (that is rather close to the University of Sabine) and dedicates himself to also collecting various exotic plant seeds at home, which his mother also believes is beneficial in nurturing his wisdom.

Osburn Muller (walrus; Odobenus rosmarus)

From a wealthy, though less notable family of were-walruses with roots from northern Suebia, who first immigrated to Olympia in the mid-19th century in the then-admitted state of Sabine, to set up shop on groceries and introducing preserved seafood to frontier settlements, Osburn would rather prefer to study the past that seemed to intrigue her desire to know humanity's origins than to simply continue the legacy of continuing the growing franchise of department stores in southern Olympia. Regardless though, her tuition fees are already paid from the start from her generosity of her parents, something that most of the group is unable to do (we have student debt in the 1930s in this world lmao), basically securing her path to be a historian and writer. She carries with her own pet otter, Ottokar (weird, I know and yeah, I don't get why that exists) that she brought over to campus and is defensive of keeping him, putting off some of the local university's staff and other students, that seemed to only permit dogs and cats into the dorms. In recent years, she had been receiving rumours as a result of her family background and growing political division between the Mittelpakt and the Olympian Republic, despite never raising much question about her past and being a fourth generation Suebian-Olympian, she was already assimilated by civic nationalism.

Judith Richardson (N/A)

The token human or Wanderer in this group (and the oldest, the rest of the werefolk there are in their early 20s), Judith was already raised in an disadvantaged social background from the start, where the "animal people" is the norm while the ordinary are seen as abnormal. Her parents, on the other hand, had been converts to the new faith dedicated to the bird-like deity Rezani, the "rational" deity that saw new light. In a doctrinal change that caused division in the Temple of the Faithful Light, they saw the conversion and proselytisation of Wanderers as an avenue. Despite not being a full-blooded werebeast like the rest, both of her parents sought to break the mold and excel her to their best of their abilities in the state of Vanderbilt. Judith would go on to attend a program in New Tarraco (where the University of Sabine was located) that admits non-werebeast humans (the preferred "neutral" term for Wanderers) into academia and higher education after completing a year of missionary work, deciding to personally study therianthropy or the "science" of shapeshifting and ancient werefolk magic, through the lens of a foreigner. Aside from trying to understand the werebeast and being devout (compared to the rest who are secular or irreligious), Judy also has an acute knowledge of past creatures told through tales of ancient werefolk civilisations and had considered pursuing legendary creatures in a while, in a new, but pseudoscientific field of cryptozoology.

Mira Hsi (red panda; Ailurus fulgens)

From the western region of Chinchau, her family were recent immigrants (she is second generation in this case) that benefited from the Dual Union Pact in 1889 at a time where the economic strangulation of Huasian states had been happening from Patarnian expansionism and a mutual alliance between both countries were being considered to be "brotherly" after the Olympo-Tetzocan War and subsequently the War of Attrition against the United Kingdom (despite extreme cultural differences), arriving in mainland Olympia in Sabine in the 1890s. They came to New Tarraco to take over a small hotel. During her childhood and as a teenager in the 1920s, she did not pay attention to traditional roles, instead she payed attention to a growing popularity of board games that came out of the Great War: war games with toy soldiers and rules to go by. A bit of an anomaly and being unable to serve the Olympian Army directly (where women are not meant to serve directly in the battlefields) and partly pressured to gain higher education, she opted to instead take linguistics, a study that she didn't like, though she is fluent in the Chinchauese form of Cathayan and Albionese anyway (compared to the multilingual interpreter Pije, heh). Eventually, the interest of conflict turned her to building a few traps and mechanics. Joining the expedition and field trip in 1932 for her would alleviate and give her opportunity to at least think of quitting something she had been barely passing.

Ottokar (regular domesticated otter; Lutra lutra domesticus)

Named after a Moravian (not!Czech ITTL, though that would be Bohemian by our standards and not Moravian) monarch, Ottokar is Osburn's animal companion and at least not a werebeast in disguise. Both fit well as they share a bit of interest in the waters, like both of their source species (or in the case of Ottokar, his own kind, as the term "source species" is typically confined to werefolk only) and a curiosity of a forgotten world. For everyone, owning a pet is not new. There are more domesticated variants than in our world thanks to werefolk being able to make some connections with their own beast forms against regular animals (especially into the 14th/15th centuries), but it isn't that necessarily far-reaching (for instance, big cats aren't domesticated but ostriches, opossums and kangaroos are). As long they served some sort of purpose, which wild otters were adept in fishing, its coats (yeah, hunting guys) and keeping locals in river settlements clear, it is likely going to be tamed.

---

Despite not having much in common, as explained before, they did catch the ire of weregopher professor Basilicos Flynn alongside were-sabrecisor (or gorgonopsid in our world) Yulia Andreyeva, as their supposed brief assignment of being in a small group (out of at least 21 students) during the summer and doing some basic practice or trial of digging up fossils had turned into something else, a conspiracy and web of shady ties to the Republic's growing rival in the so-called mini-Quiet War (the prelude to the War of the Hummingbirds post-1940s), the Suebian Empire and its satellite states, allies and colonies of conservative, authoritarian governments and a desire to claim the weresaurian heritage of the world- in the name of its legendary founder and were-Archaeopteryx, Arvo. With the Great Depression in 1929 flatlining the booming economy of continental Patarnia, one illicitly endorsed market and demand for artifacts grew.

===

If you survived my ramblings and notes, congratulations. I don't think I would like to write this again at the moment, lol. I hate writing backstories and a story with it sometimes, if its not a funny power fantasy thing.

I like worldbuilding, but yeah, as you may have noticed, bit amateurish, but I also wanted to show off a bit of background history of everyone (normal civilians and not politicians) or the people in there in somewhat unorthodox ways, that ties to current events indirectly, but they don't cause a lot of issue or fuss fundamentally aside from a few ruffles.

We have a Discord server, well, for Chimeric Chronicles now, the link is here: discord.gg/DRQM8aKYm8

Yeah, I did it for the CYOH with the map concept (though I intend to formally bring it up with the main episode too), now I have posted something that is "major" and not just cringe posts, I think it makes sense to try and aim that shot. Hopefully this one would sort of do well in a surface level.

Keep in mind that this isn't an art server dedicated to commissions or whatever (yeah don't join if you are seeking for art style improvements/feedback) and its sort of just meant to be the place for lore and tidbits of mine- but you are sort of free to do that anyway. It is also heavily guarded to ensure that, well, you're human. You have to be approved manually to join the server for the server's sake of security. If that too isn't your liking, as in, you want immediate access than to wait for the mods or me to manually approve you- perhaps also not join the server.

Description

AUTHOR'S NOTES

To everyone: Hi :]

So yeah... I have thought about making this. Because why not and someone gave me a fun shoutout just a few days back and I would like to say hi back to that guy who did that. Say hi back, guys.

Decided I would have a concept to a possible comic series that I might work with. For a while now, I thought about the original storyline (I initially built Chimeric Chronicles around Benny the red kite then branched it off eventually in late 2023 to everywhere else) and it might not be implemented well to my liking. Plus, I do like turning this into an anthology, rotating stories from one and another rather than staying with one main character at a time. Eh, its an idea I might scrap or not. But in case I scrap that one, I think Benny and the whole ITS/Wolf College saga can be abridged here as it shares a lot of similar themes/premise, albeit less fights on campus.

Yeah I messed a bit around and had a private conversation about what I could do or sort of push around the ground sloth character I made a while ago that was partly associated with the were-gorgonopsid relict (so someone liked gorgonopsids and that type of animal at that time). I ended up just thinking of an ensemble, like not a superhero-styled ensemble, but you know I used to like the show Timeless, that was one example of not using superheroes to create a small team of at least three people to work against an evil. I think it is possible to just do the same thing here, you know, a group of ragtag people with amazing skills. Oh wait, that's just a RPG adventurer session.

You get the idea though. I want them all in what I could say, is a "plausible" group photo of the time, something formal. Chimeric Chronicles is basically (or at least part of it, thats why it used to be called The Erstwhile Decade) set in the 1920s/1930s currently and even though photography and cameras have improved substantially, I think the stiffness of those group portraits could be tweaked a bit. Characters on the other hand... I guess that it is sort of pretty diverse on a certain angle, albeit only "culturally". In terms of clades, not so much...

One more thing is that I'm awful in the subject of topic of palentology and archaeology in general, which I just realised. So I think this vision might not be the one that might feel "nice" or accurate unless I dug through research to start feeling smart. Hence its more so a concept than something that I think should definitely happen. I think the way I placed things could not have happened in real life, but its all of an embellishment guys.

There's also a bit of retconning too in order for this story to be partly palatable. But I want to try and keep them minimised as I can, so... I don't know if I'll be contradicting myself because of this.

Also black panthers are technically melanistic jaguars or leopards, they are not a species of their own. Though here, its an ordinary werejaguar, I just don't understand the arbitrary divisions (especially with the typical furry art) of considering a panther as its own "species", especially when I placed all of my money and investment into just doing this by taxonomy. It's like dividing hybrids like mules into their own species. I guess I reached a point that I'm playing 5D chess at that point.

===

LORE DUMP (or concept, I guess)

The "Sabine Cynodonts" is a rather strange group, bound together by a commonality and passion of ancient civilisations, history and animals for different reasons. Aside from the few lecturers and professors (yes, the gorgonopsid here, Yulia, is a professor) in the background and them being weremammals (with one obvious exception), none of them have any commonalities that resonate with one and another. They name themselves as that from the fact* that many of their forms are of cynodonts, which would later become modern mammals of the real world.

Initially, these people have glanced each other in the University of Sabine ("US"; oh my, but UOS is also acceptable I guess), dismissive of what would come next. They are here for the sake of being here. Yet, their differences are put aside when they were brought on a trip to the state of Yellowstone in the summer of 1932 (whether they invested on it for a break or were brought on board for that field trip to learn practical skills outside of a dormitory, that depends on their reasons), where a group of amateur diggers belonging to a branch of the Suebic Empire admit to digging up and scavenging for a lost site rumoured for centuries in tales of the ancient Kitalid/Perikian tomb that could unlock access to forbidden, ancient lore that could shake the current world order. Perhaps, for a while, they can figure out where it is before they manage to raise an army of ancient werebeasts under their belt or perhaps for sure, mythical creatures, would reemerge into their mundane world. (I know, it feels like Indiana Jones and The Mummy [the one with Brendan Fraser] all over again lol)

And yes, being a shifter may be considered a fact of life for many and that all the fantastic creatures may be deemed as insane or mythical today, but their ancestral legacy, alongside the regular Wanderers, still linger to this day through therianthropy, a thing that everyone, except for a minority of non-werebeast humans, sees as normal and part of humanity's "soul".

===

THE CYNODONT PLAYERS

The crew. The league.

In terms of the backgrounds of the players or members of the temporary Sabine Cynodonts, they are pretty diverse in their own way. They usually don't fit the model Olympian citizen that the conservative nationalists of the Republic prefer to take the lead, the regular male Albionese/English settler that is well-off, while also being religious and educated. In fact, they pretty much defy the whole paradigm. Even the not!Germans, the Suebians, are strayed from the Albionese following the Olympo-Suebian relations split of the Great War- there is growing mistrust in the 1920s/1930s that the Mittelpakt (aka "uncivilised Patarnia") is undermining democratic, liberal values of the Olympian Republic. Of course, you also have different economic classes joining the fray that do not necessarily fit the mold.

(This is part of a reason why I might have personal troubles thinking of how to branch all of these, compared to the safe bet of the were-red kite guy or a few other ideas I have lying around. But I just think its interesting if I choose that path for the sake of it. Scooby-Doo did that, sort of, during the '60s. I think this is also just "funny" in a sense of getting back at the shoutout, to create something that is cooler and edgy than a safe bet of Evangelical students attending an Evangelical college or a werebird growing more powerful by the year, aka Benny the Red Kite. I guess you might consider elements of this ensemble to be "self-inserts" in that some share common interests with me- but at least it didn't involve me, lmao, imagine that was the case, I would gladly eliminate all werebeasts for being too embarassing- jk.)

(For notes, though, the University of Sabine is the usual public university, funded by the state government and maybe federal too at times. So its not private or religious in any way, compared to IOTL, Brigham Young University as an example [a LDS/Mormon institution]. University attendance rates are also low around that time, but that sort of changed similarly to OTL post-WWII America, when the Progressive-led Congress at the time allowed veterans who fought in Laurentia and Aquitania to attend university with heavy subsidies for a limited time.)

---

Sariye Achmad (naked mole rat; Heterocephalus glaber)

Sariye comes from a large family of were-molerats that used to hail from Ajuraan, until the socialists (partly backed by the Crivichian Communist Party, which was then growing influence after the collapse of the imperial monarchy/tsardom) won an election with a plurality in 1917. With some of his family being tied to the political elite of traditionalist circles, the revolutionary. As a child, he could only remember the old country as it was prior to the Great War as his family arrived a year later to the shores of Osnerola at just the age of 8. His family then would have to start over again, to work in the factories, obtain citizenship for the exiled family and ensure that their children could thrive in their new homeland. Coming from a background of having a source species of the naked mole rat, he is surprisingly healthy compared to some of his peers (actual naked mole rats are immune to cancer and live longer than regular rodents), despite a lack of regard of his diet and being overworked by studying geology, a close companion to his weird hobby. Sariye is also an amateur cartographer, basically drawing maps in his spare time and collecting atlases from esteemed magazines and publishing houses, whether be fantastical or poor imitations of alternate worlds.

Pije Icheli (jaguar/panther; Panthera onca)

A foreign student from the neighbouring country Tetzoca (not!Mexico, oh my), that is able to study at a well-known tertiary institution like the University of Sabine for anthropology, specifically digging into historical fields of battlefields, medieval mounds or buried temples. Coming from the state of Purepecha (territorially similar to OTL Michoalan), his thoughts of the Kitalid civilisation as one of his homeland than of Olympia seemed glaringly obvious, down to the legacy civilisation and their former position of Emperor (Tlatoani). Such program and visa was introduced in the late 1920s in the Olympian Republic as lobbied by some private educational and religious institutions, including the Temple of Faithful Light, to allow foreign nationals to come for a few years to complete their courses. By the time he transferred to New Tarraco, Pije believed the Olympian Republic was the "corrupt" bourgeoisie society, despite being insisted by his parents that Olympian education is preferable over local higher education (see China/Nepal/India as an example IOTL), a thing that seems to be common in the country and in the continental Suyu/Amazonia too. Aside from his divisive opinions, he does help foreign students (which is not a lot admittedly) get through a bit of assimilation into a foreign life that they haven't tried before.

Sasha Gilmore -Pavlenko (Wakashan/Shasha ground sloth; Nothrotheriops shastensis)

Born between an Indigenous father in western Sabine and an Ulichi mother (who she immigrated in the 1890s as a young woman from then the Crivichian Empire), where his father gave Sasha the primary form of a weresloth, his perception of the world around him had been different. Sloths are often known to some to be lazy to onlookers, a false myth, but compared to the rest of the weresloths, he was indeed "different" in the way he thinks of solutions to problems otherwise solved within the moment. To him, the solutions don't come until it hits him later like a comedic short. An amateur paleontologist who is also studying zoology to better understand invertebrate animals that he likes, Sasha has a strong interest in early Paleozoic lifeforms, disinterested in seeing the faces and heads of many werebeasts. Outside of a fondness to trilobites, Sasha has a small greenhouse dedicated to algae and moss from his family home (that is rather close to the University of Sabine) and dedicates himself to also collecting various exotic plant seeds at home, which his mother also believes is beneficial in nurturing his wisdom.

Osburn Muller (walrus; Odobenus rosmarus)

From a wealthy, though less notable family of were-walruses with roots from northern Suebia, who first immigrated to Olympia in the mid-19th century in the then-admitted state of Sabine, to set up shop on groceries and introducing preserved seafood to frontier settlements, Osburn would rather prefer to study the past that seemed to intrigue her desire to know humanity's origins than to simply continue the legacy of continuing the growing franchise of department stores in southern Olympia. Regardless though, her tuition fees are already paid from the start from her generosity of her parents, something that most of the group is unable to do (we have student debt in the 1930s in this world lmao), basically securing her path to be a historian and writer. She carries with her own pet otter, Ottokar (weird, I know and yeah, I don't get why that exists) that she brought over to campus and is defensive of keeping him, putting off some of the local university's staff and other students, that seemed to only permit dogs and cats into the dorms. In recent years, she had been receiving rumours as a result of her family background and growing political division between the Mittelpakt and the Olympian Republic, despite never raising much question about her past and being a fourth generation Suebian-Olympian, she was already assimilated by civic nationalism.

Judith Richardson (N/A)

The token human or Wanderer in this group (and the oldest, the rest of the werefolk there are in their early 20s), Judith was already raised in an disadvantaged social background from the start, where the "animal people" is the norm while the ordinary are seen as abnormal. Her parents, on the other hand, had been converts to the new faith dedicated to the bird-like deity Rezani, the "rational" deity that saw new light. In a doctrinal change that caused division in the Temple of the Faithful Light, they saw the conversion and proselytisation of Wanderers as an avenue. Despite not being a full-blooded werebeast like the rest, both of her parents sought to break the mold and excel her to their best of their abilities in the state of Vanderbilt. Judith would go on to attend a program in New Tarraco (where the University of Sabine was located) that admits non-werebeast humans (the preferred "neutral" term for Wanderers) into academia and higher education after completing a year of missionary work, deciding to personally study therianthropy or the "science" of shapeshifting and ancient werefolk magic, through the lens of a foreigner. Aside from trying to understand the werebeast and being devout (compared to the rest who are secular or irreligious), Judy also has an acute knowledge of past creatures told through tales of ancient werefolk civilisations and had considered pursuing legendary creatures in a while, in a new, but pseudoscientific field of cryptozoology.

Mira Hsi (red panda; Ailurus fulgens)

From the western region of Chinchau, her family were recent immigrants (she is second generation in this case) that benefited from the Dual Union Pact in 1889 at a time where the economic strangulation of Huasian states had been happening from Patarnian expansionism and a mutual alliance between both countries were being considered to be "brotherly" after the Olympo-Tetzocan War and subsequently the War of Attrition against the United Kingdom (despite extreme cultural differences), arriving in mainland Olympia in Sabine in the 1890s. They came to New Tarraco to take over a small hotel. During her childhood and as a teenager in the 1920s, she did not pay attention to traditional roles, instead she payed attention to a growing popularity of board games that came out of the Great War: war games with toy soldiers and rules to go by. A bit of an anomaly and being unable to serve the Olympian Army directly (where women are not meant to serve directly in the battlefields) and partly pressured to gain higher education, she opted to instead take linguistics, a study that she didn't like, though she is fluent in the Chinchauese form of Cathayan and Albionese anyway (compared to the multilingual interpreter Pije, heh). Eventually, the interest of conflict turned her to building a few traps and mechanics. Joining the expedition and field trip in 1932 for her would alleviate and give her opportunity to at least think of quitting something she had been barely passing.

Ottokar (regular domesticated otter; Lutra lutra domesticus)

Named after a Moravian (not!Czech ITTL, though that would be Bohemian by our standards and not Moravian) monarch, Ottokar is Osburn's animal companion and at least not a werebeast in disguise. Both fit well as they share a bit of interest in the waters, like both of their source species (or in the case of Ottokar, his own kind, as the term "source species" is typically confined to werefolk only) and a curiosity of a forgotten world. For everyone, owning a pet is not new. There are more domesticated variants than in our world thanks to werefolk being able to make some connections with their own beast forms against regular animals (especially into the 14th/15th centuries), but it isn't that necessarily far-reaching (for instance, big cats aren't domesticated but ostriches, opossums and kangaroos are). As long they served some sort of purpose, which wild otters were adept in fishing, its coats (yeah, hunting guys) and keeping locals in river settlements clear, it is likely going to be tamed.

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Despite not having much in common, as explained before, they did catch the ire of weregopher professor Basilicos Flynn alongside were-sabrecisor (or gorgonopsid in our world) Yulia Andreyeva, as their supposed brief assignment of being in a small group (out of at least 21 students) during the summer and doing some basic practice or trial of digging up fossils had turned into something else, a conspiracy and web of shady ties to the Republic's growing rival in the so-called mini-Quiet War (the prelude to the War of the Hummingbirds post-1940s), the Suebian Empire and its satellite states, allies and colonies of conservative, authoritarian governments and a desire to claim the weresaurian heritage of the world- in the name of its legendary founder and were-Archaeopteryx, Arvo. With the Great Depression in 1929 flatlining the booming economy of continental Patarnia, one illicitly endorsed market and demand for artifacts grew.

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If you survived my ramblings and notes, congratulations. I don't think I would like to write this again at the moment, lol. I hate writing backstories and a story with it sometimes, if its not a funny power fantasy thing.

I like worldbuilding, but yeah, as you may have noticed, bit amateurish, but I also wanted to show off a bit of background history of everyone (normal civilians and not politicians) or the people in there in somewhat unorthodox ways, that ties to current events indirectly, but they don't cause a lot of issue or fuss fundamentally aside from a few ruffles.

We have a Discord server, well, for Chimeric Chronicles now, the link is here: discord.gg/DRQM8aKYm8

Yeah, I did it for the CYOH with the map concept (though I intend to formally bring it up with the main episode too), now I have posted something that is "major" and not just cringe posts, I think it makes sense to try and aim that shot. Hopefully this one would sort of do well in a surface level.

Keep in mind that this isn't an art server dedicated to commissions or whatever (yeah don't join if you are seeking for art style improvements/feedback) and its sort of just meant to be the place for lore and tidbits of mine- but you are sort of free to do that anyway. It is also heavily guarded to ensure that, well, you're human. You have to be approved manually to join the server for the server's sake of security. If that too isn't your liking, as in, you want immediate access than to wait for the mods or me to manually approve you- perhaps also not join the server.