Believable Non-human Character

I've given a lot of thought about how a centaur could exist. I mean, I've thought of it ever since I was a kid. I once saw this kit where you could see through the skin and see how all the bones and organs fit together. I'm pretty sure it was something that needed to be put together maybe something like a puzzle. I never got a chance to actually look at it. I never got to handle the box even. But then, not long after that, I saw one of a horse. I so wanted to get both of them and see if I could build a centaur out of the pieces. But then I've never seen them again, and I know I wouldn't be able to mold the pieces well enough for my idea to work.

So that left me with my imagination and what little I know of the anatomy of both creatures. Of course the biggest issue is things like a heart and the intestines, because if you just shove them together, you get two. Here is how I put them together in my head and subsequently in my book, Druid Derrick.

Heart, digestion, and reproduction is all in the horse part where they belong, albeit with a few alterations which I'll get into later. Up in the human half is all the throaty stuff normally found in the neck of a horse, though sized and adjusted just a little differently too, what with the more upright posture.

So how does the chest and arms work in all this, you ask? Quite simply, really. We all know that the bone structure is there to support muscle, and there is an entire chest and back structure necessary to support arms, even the ribs are important in this, SO they are there. Upper body ribs in a centaur are less important for protecting vital organs so there aren't so many of them and they are wider to support more muscle as well as the bone structure of the shoulders. Shoot a centaur in the human-half heart and you'd be lucky to get past a rib let alone hit an artery, which is there.

That accounts for most of what one might see, but there are other differences smaller and more subtle.

• The hand:

We know from archeological digs that the horse evolved from a small critter that actually started out with five toes. What might count as your little finger and your thumb never touched the ground, and through evolution, they quickly became vestiges. Of the three remaining toes, the two outer toes withdrew up into the ankle leaving only the center toe we see today. If you feel around in that area, you can still feel something of a narrow palm-like structure, like if you were to squeeze your thumb and little finger together.

Since I didn't know about the five finger thing with early horses, I went with a four finger structure, giving my centaurs an opposable thumb, but it's not like ours. For us, if someone were to tell you to hold up your primary finger, you'd probably hold up your first finger since it is the most versatile finger on your hand. If you were to ask my centaur to do this, he or she would hold up their middle finger. It is the heaviest and strongest of the three, and their thumb is directly opposite that finger. For us it would be like it was growing out of the middle of your wrist, and no, they cannot set their hand flat on the ground.

• Eating:

The digestion of a horse is something like that of a human, only they have a much larger gut. To my thinking, since centaurs are hunters, their diet would be much like ours, getting little useful sustenance from grass. Following that logic, their gut would be trimmer around the belly. Now if you were to stand a grain-fed horse next to a grass-fed horse, the grass-fed horse might look pregnant by comparison. I took that comparison one step farther toward the skinny end and gave them a noticeably thin waist and possibly a tighter appearing rib-cage. I figure this structure would also lend to agility if fighting in close quarters. Also this trimness gets a little thick around the middle with childbearing and age. I mean, we all get kinda thick around the middle as we get older.

• Face:

Faces are interesting, and centaur faces are a study in blending. They need to have a humanoid face, but I let them be a little heavier than your average man. Since they are hunters, their eyes are in front, but they are still very horsey in appearance - not human eyes - no whites to speak of, and not inset like ours.

Their noses and mouths are very horse in nature, being more molded into their face than ours, and being more closely molded into their lips, which are also very horsey - You wouldn't put lipstick on these lips no matter what. However the mouth is flexible and articulate like ours making speech possible, they just look horsey.

Their hair is also very horsey, as is their ears. They have a mane which gives them the horsey forelocks and it trails clear down their human-half spine until it reaches their horse-half withers.

• Size:

I took an image of an average man standing next to an average horse and the man's shoulder was about even with the horse's withers - that's the top of the spine at the shoulder. I figured a centaur would be roughly the same as a man sitting on said horse, so if your average man was to approach one of my centaurs, his head might be about even with the centaur's elbow.

• Coloring:

For this, I'm using every kind of horse color I can think of. There are dominate kinds of coloring per herd, but centaur clans also tend to mix as young males are known to travel to other clans in search for a mate. Not always, but it happens frequently enough to keep the colors mixing. And since they are covered entirely in horse hair just like any horse, the coloring can extend even onto the face, and it's not always symmetrical.

• Society:

I had a lot of fun with centaur society. There is a ritual with the changing of leadership, and there is a very elaborate affair surrounding a marriage, but I don't think I'll go into it with this post. Suffice it to say, since I have a marriage, I need to have a divorce something too.

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A Centaur's Mating

Druid Derrick

I'm sure you've heard me talking about this book before - my longest-living work in progress, and very likely my longest work in progress when all is said and done.

Anyway, I recently had something of a small problem. In an effort to help another, which my character always tries to do if he can and if it's logical, I threw him into a second wedding - an unofficial one - one he has no intention of consummating (though I might decide to mess with him there too - haven't decided).

Anyway, Derrick waltzed into the centaur village carrying the fruits of his latest hunt intending to trade the meat for someone to turn the pelt into a winter coat, and the only way he was going to be able to carry the carcass for half a day was, logically, in the form of a centaur. 

Unbeknownst to him, young male centaurs do such things when they are in the market for a mate. If the filly of his desire is in his own village, he presents the kill at or near the front door of her father's door (proximity might be an indication of how open he was to other advances). Yes, centaurs can take in more than one mate - the average is two or three. Though it happens, both mates are seldom selected at the same time.

If the young suitor can't find anyone in his home village, he goes to another village to look and presents his kill in the center of the clearing. Eligible fillies are quick to help him unload and present his kill to the leader of the clan. If he's impressed, enough the young hunter gets to choose a mate. The meat is not given away, not to the leader of the clan or to the filly's father, it is to be the young couple's first supplies in their house.

There's another part of this mating that is of importance. It is a father's responsibility to see to it his daughter has a home to move into as soon as she accepts a mate, and it is the wives in her father's house, commonly all acknowledged as her mothers, who are responsible for furnishing the house with the basics at the very least.

The filly's mothers and other female friends will take her aside and make sure she's all prettied up for her special day. If the young male is new to the village, the village leader will take him around to meet all the families. During these meetings, he is treated to a taste of whatever the man of the house is most willing to show off - usually some kind of food or drink. The women in the house will add a small decoration to the visitor by braiding in a colorful strip of leather and/or combing an aromatic oil into his mane and tale.

The end of the day is crowned by the filly's father throwing a feast. During this feast, the young couple is on display in all their splendor, in the very center. If they ate at a table, they would be in the center of the table. Centaurs don't sit at tables though, instead, rugs or pelts are spread out on the ground, the males rest on them with their first wives beside them. Second wives serve their seniors before settling themselves. The lowest wife generally manages the children, though some are allowed to attend if they can behave properly. Since the young couple is the center of the event, they are expected to be the very last to leave the 'table'. Also, for the duration of the feast, they feed each other. Yes, they are expected to eat and drink until everyone else has asked to be excused or until the host has run out of food. It is a huge embarrassment if the host runs out of food, but those gathered generally try to avoid such an occurrence. Just like in every other small village, everyone knows everyone's at least somewhat. For instance at a poor couple's feast, guests would start to beg off after the first plate. However, a rich couple's feast might be more fun, as everyone is doing their best to test the new couple's endurance to the limit. Yeah, they gotta keep eating and drinking to the very last. How big is your bladder? Am I evil or what?

After the feast, the young couple go home and start their life. Have I missed anything? Please let me know if you have any ideas to add. It's all fun.

My druid, Derrick, took a girl, when it became clear that she would no longer be accepted back into the home of her father. All her life she had been blamed for the death of her mother, who died in childbirth when her twin was born wrong. Since her birth mother was dead and her father basically rejected her, her 'mothers' allowed her to run wild most of the time, giving her the minimum attention that would keep her alive. Terrified of dieing in childbirth like her mother, she had rejected too many previous advances to mate. For a filly to be kicked out of her father's house wasn't really all that bad; she could still carve her own home out of the hillside and take care of herself. She is generally not cold-shouldered by anyone just because she was single and on her own. It also didn't mean that she stopped getting advances, but such an act was still an insult perpetrated upon her by her father. There are many forms of insult, but bullying isn't very common at all.

Derrick's accepting this mating enable the girl to use the home her father was required to build for her. But since he is already married to a human woman who lives in the city, his intentions are pure. Besides, how will he explain to his wife that he married a centaur? I'm going to have fun with that one too. At least now he has someone who will make the coat he needs. I'm sorry, his city wife wouldn't have a clue. Can you see her if he was to come to the door with some kind of carcass, in this case a mountain goat? "Here honey, I need you to tan up this hide and stitch me up a coat." She'd be like, "What?" And yes, she is fully away of who and what he is, but I'm thinking this would be going a bit too far.

So now Derrick has someone else to be responsible for. His world is becoming more complicated by the year. Just wait until he finds out his (city) wife is pregnant.

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