Ziz

* Beast form
 Affiliation
 Position
 Nationality
 Family
Joanus (father)
Lilith (sister)
Behemoth (brother)
Leviathan (brother)
Ra (brother)
Anzu (brother)
 Significant other(s)
 Weight
 Gender
 Hair Color
 Age

Ziz is the all-powerful god of air magic, as well as a religious icon of contentment, freedom, and exploration. He lives among the clouds and travels to wherever he pleases through the skies and upon the ground itself, while still upholding the responsibility of a god and watching over his followers and whatever human he fancies. He has a habit of disguising himself as a human and befriending humans that he comes across in his travels, but refuses to grow too close knowing that they will eventually die.

## Concept and Creation

Ziz was imagined to be one of the god characters of Mana et Mecha, without any previous inspirations or references. The choice to base him off of Ziz from Hebrew mythology came from the character Leviathan, who was based off the beast or the same name, and was strongly associated with Ziz and the land-dwelling beast, Behemoth. The choice to make Ziz have some resemblances to Quetzalcoatl was inspired by the Pokemon, Rayquaza, who had also been based off of Ziz from mythology but had a rather serpentine/draconic appearance akin to Quetzalcoatl.

## Personality

Ziz is a passionate, serene, and overall happy god of the wind and skies. He always encourages his followers and other humans to embrace freedom and independence, to go wherever they wish and do whatever their hearts desire. He is loving and friendly towards everyone, mortal and immortal, at least the ones that he deems worthy of such treatment.

However, despite his great love for humans, he truly knows little to nothing about them. Sure, he knows that they live short lives, that their magic is nothing compared to his strength, and that they must go through much more turmoil and hardships than him. Yet, he is absolutely oblivious to the fact that they can feel negative emotions. He tends to disregard them entirely and treat humans with much less respect unintentionally. However, he slowly is getting better at understanding them with each new companion that he makes, though with how quick mortal lives fly by, the lessons usually don't stick to him for long.

Yet even with his carefree and careless nature, he still can become rather serious when it comes to other gods. If there is conflict of any sort, Ziz is normally the first among the gods to address the elephant in the room and get right to the source of the problem. This has a tendency to make his siblings somewhat hot-headed or annoyed, but he doesn't seem to notice or care about that. This is especially the case with his brothers, Behemoth and Leviathan. Ziz has been historically known for doing things as little as stopping arguments between them all the way to disrupting a near earth-shattering battle between the other two gods and convincing them to be peaceful, or forcing them into it with threat of their fathers getting involved. As for his other siblings who aren't so prone to fights, he does his best to get along with, though he has been emotionally drifting away from them for several millennia.

## Trivia

* Ziz is based on the giant bird beast with the same name in Hebrew mythology, and he shares this theme with his brothers Leviathan and Behemoth.
* Ziz is quite the talented singer, and this equates to the Hebrew mythology stating him to be the celestial singer.
* His outfit in his human form is based off of a male ballet dancer.
* Ziz's beast form is based of of the Quetzal, a bird native to South America. This is meant to be a reference to his secondary inspiration, the mesoamerican deity, Queztalcoatl, as his long tail feathers are often mistaken to be serpent-like, and thus several Samadurian scholars have depicted him to be a serpent-like creature rather than a bird.

## Gallery

These arm feathers were so much better drawn than mine