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Witchwing — Description
universe: :iccondeathband-artwar:

Witchwing MkII flying over the delta of the Gindi river, Trantis, ARD 497.

the war in the skies is nothing new to the planet Khai, which by the end of the fifth century after the rise has had flying beast riders and lighter-than air for a while, but the airplane represented a true paradigm shift: they could easily go double or even triple the speed of even the fastest shirds on a horizontal line.

get in, scout, get out. the Taber megeocracy had no consistent answer to enemy scouting airplanes.

enter the witchwing project. the goal was simple: get a flying caster (skylock) in range of enemy aircraft and shoot them down.

after heated debates the engineers finally settled on a design.

the plane carries both HCF (Hyperphysically-Charged Fluid) and gasoline, the former transmitted to the user thorugh a BIHRRS allowing the witch/wizard-pilot to replenish their reserves for offensive casting or to send the magical power back to the engine for an extra push (pictured above).

armament consists of one air-cooled single barrel machinegun and whatever spells the pilot can cast.

this world is not familiar to the concept of camouflage, so when the manufaturers were told to make the machine easy to hide on the ground they just stamped some plants on the canvas.

the cockpit would sit in front of the wings, allowing spells to be cast in a wide arch upwards, downwards and in front of the machine, the propeler was placed on the back so as not to get in the way of projectile spells and to bring the gun closer to the operator. a triple wing would increase lift and thus manouverability and turning ability.

the result? oh, it performed okay.
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So, this is the canonical version of the witchwing, the one from before is not featured in the group because it's from a time where I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with deathband. yes ,this is more technologically advanced than most things showcased thus far from the world but keep in mind that we have a timeline with progression.

The technologies in Khai are not developed in the same order to the ones from Earth, for example the gun uses black powder, though there are more extreme examples. the existence of magic also has repercussions on technology.

Background is a photo taken by my dad then edited my me. foreground is digitally-coloured traditional pencils.

I used this tutorial by jflaxman but the lineart I did at the start wasn't really suited for it so I had to improvise some stuff. next time I'll do better.
www.deviantart.com/jflaxman/ar…

Critique welcome, I'll appreciate any feedback.