Chiros

Chiro

**Chiros** are winged Sapiential-Synths capable of flight. Unlike Avios which have feathered wings and bodies, Chiros have membranous wings with fur.

Chiros are far more uncommon than Avios, rarely produced and often highly specialised to serve a specific purpose of design; usually night-watchmen and spies. Even more rarely, they are produced by Risio.

## History and Purpose

#### **Concept and Creation**

By the end of their designated time, the Avio concept had come the furthest with the first Type-3 Prototypes ready to be grown, and Daniels, pleased with the potential and branching other concepts that had sprung from the evolution of the Avios doubled the initial funding he had initially intended to reward the winners with.

With this money, Avio development sped up and broadened with Pavlov taking some samples to experiment with patterns and colours with, and Eve designated for long term viability and stability of the genetics with permission to go further and create more Synths from the research; With this she went on to produce Chiros, Raptors, Pteros, and assisted with the creation of Preternaturals and late-stage genetic modification to existing products.

#### **Production**.

Chiros were very easy to produce and were actually among the most successful Synths in production with a 78% success rate, only second to Canids. They also cost far less than Avios, and could be grown quicker.

##### **Avio vs Chiro Production**

Production of Chiros struggled developmentally as Avios were prioritised by Eve Mira and Guy Daniels over Chiros due to preference rather than genetic issues. Despite all the promotion of how Chiros could alter their wing shapes better than Avios could, and could be made for a cheaper price and produced quicker with higher success rates, the preference for Avio Volants was overwhelming.

Risio temporarily took on producing some Chiros, but after they didn't sell as well as Avios due to not being as aesthetically pleasing, they pulled back on production, sending most of their stock to Atlas as Beta testers.

## Biology

Chiros are similar in design to Avios, however they lack feathers and scales, and are instead covered by plush fur and have membranous wings.

### **Genetics**

Because the wings were the dominant arms, it often lead to their grasping arms being very short and having webbed fingers. Often there was a side effect of the thumbs of chiros being super long. A lot of preternatural Bases have come from the genetics of Chiros due to their strange aging, their sensitive hearing, and naturally social and communal spirit.

### **Internal Biology**

**Bones**

The bones of the wings are slightly flexible, allowing them to bend when under flight stress, not to any visibly noticeable degree but enough that it helps to allow for rapid wing adjustments.

### **Physical Biology**

**Wings**

In concept, Chiros were made to resemble bats, however this is almost entirely superficial and conceptual as the actual wing structure of Chiros does not align with bats at all.

Chiro wings are usually long and broad, more similar to hawk and eagle based Avios, with four elongated fingers covered with a soft plush fur and a grasping thumb-alula, but are proportionally much shorter than the wings of an Avio of equal height. The bones of the wings are slightly flexible, allowing them to bend and flex when put under stresses induced by flight.

Though they are based off the concept of bats, there are differences with Chiros wings to their base in that Chiros wings have hyper flexible cartilage supports called *Costals* that support the wing structure in a similar way to insect wings. If Chiros have damage to their wing-membrane, it can usually heal in a week or two.

Like with Avios, there was the intention to produce multiple 'breeds' of Chiros, but in the end there were only two; *Capewinged* and *Freetailed*.

As Chiros are lightly covered with fur they actually can have a huge range of colours and patterns across their body and wings, even if the colours aren't as vibrant or as intricate as Avio's feathers.

**Senses**

* Hearing is a prioritised sense of Chiros, followed by sense of smell and touch. Taste and sight are very reduced and are comparable with human senses.

**Reactions**

* The reaction time of Chiros faster than Pards or Canids, however as they're not overly aggressive these reactions speeds are better for flying and manoeuvrability than combat.

**Strength**

* The grasping arms of chiros are very strong, but the pound-per-pound force exerted by wingbeats is phenomenal.

## Chiros as a Species

#### **Capewinged**

*Capewinged Chiros* usually just have large bat-like wings, with no tail but a very long spine and neck.

#### **Freetailed**

*Freetailed Chiros* on the other hand have a short tail where the lower portion of the wing membrane between the index finger and the tail is connected and supported by costal cartilage radiating out from the spine. The larger surface area this generates means that Freetailed Chiros have better flight capabilities than the Capewing.

##### **Longtailed**

Some development of the Freetailed Chiro has taken place within Atlas bunkers in Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia to develop Chiros with longer tails and thus larger wing surface areas however these are rare to come across.

#### **Pteros**

The Pteros species is classed as a subspecies of Chiros, that is more of an amalgam species than a direct subspecies breed of Chiro.

### **Abilities**

* Echolocation and Superior hearing, able to hear hidden frequencies.
* Superior sense of smell, on a level with Canids.
* Hyper efficient blood and circulation.
* Higher muscle density per kg of muscle.

#### **Benefits**

* Chiros were cheaper to produce than Avios, and had higher success rates with surviving past infancy.
* Were fully grown by the age of two to four, where as Avios took a minimum of 5 years to be fully grown for Risio-made Type-5 and up to 12 years for Standard Type-4.

#### **Drawbacks**

* Wing bone stress meant that with the flexing of the bones, there were higher risks of the fingers and membrane being broken. Healing wings took longer in Chiros and was more costly than replacing feathers on Avios via Imping
* Were harder to modify without major drastic changes in appearance.
* Patterning was hard to determine as the genetic database used included many colourations.

## Known Chiro Characters

* Freeborn
* Dragonfly

## See More

* Synths
* ARCDA
* Avios

## References

1. ↑ *Sapiential-Synth:* "A Synth that bares resemblance to a human in that they can talk, think, create, and understand complex things."
2. ↑ **Imping**:  *the implantation and replacement of broken **feathers** with new ones.*

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