Species

The grifix are a closed species created and developed By MysteriousShine. The grifix are an equine species with feline traits. Every grIfix has a set of gems on Their chest that are the source of their magic. Their Soul uses their magic to manifest in the form of a spirit animal called "sphirix". Every sphirix Is unique And characteristic for their grifix.

(This page refers to the common grifix features. Go to Divided Grifix features)

✦✦Standard physical Features

These are features shared by all grifix.

✦ Equine body, similar to that of ponies

✦ paws on the front legs

✦ uncovered hooves on the back legs

✦ wings with a disctinctive shape, made for flying through narrowed spaces

✦ White, grey or black coat, never colored.

✦ fur fluffs in certain pArts of their body (cheeks, ears, chest, legs. Optionally on wings, hooves, paws, tail, chin or the top of the ears.)

✦ one colored feather on each of their wings

✦ a distinctive ear shape

✦ 3 yellow freckes on every cheek

✦ Fangs

✦ distinctive hair texture (think of pony hair as human hair and grifix hair as alpaca wool)

✦ hair sParkles

✦ 7 gems that produce magic, 3 tear-shapeD big ones, 4 small round ones, displayed always in the same pattern: one big tear shaped gem in the middle and two smaller tear shaped gems on each of its sides. Two Small round gems under the middle tear gem and one small round gem under each of the smaller tear gems.

✦ A sphirix

✦✦Optional TrAits

These tRaits all have a certain grade of rarity, and therefore are not free to use. Please check the Traits page for information on their rarity.

✦ FLuffs on their hooves, paws, wings, ear tops, chin, tail.

✦ Gems on other parts of their body

✦ a forehead or butt gem, which may have a floating orb above in the shape of a platonic solid

✦ various tail shapes

Etc.

Please refer to the traits page for more.

✦✦description

recommended for immersion. goes a bit into the lore of each feature.

The grifix are winged, equine creatures with paws at the front legs and uncovered hooves at the back legs, having the coat always colored in a shade of white, black or grey. Though they resemble a pegasus, their wing shape is different, because the pegasi wings are designed for weather control and speed in the open sky, but the grifix wings are designed for agility and speed through the narrow trees of the forest. Because of that, they are also unable to walk on clouds.

The grifix have cheeks, ears, chest, and leg fluffs. Occasionally they can also have wing, hooves, paws, chin, top ear or tail fluffs, or even have their mane replaced by fluff. Their ears have a unique shape, different from the pony ears.

They don’t have any horns for magic - their magic comes from the chest gems (technically, they’re not gems, cause they’re organic and part of their body, but that’s how they’re called). Occasionally, they may also have a gem on their forehead or butt that is always surrounded by a magical glow. They may have some small light beans near their fluffs, but it’s a rare thing.

The hair tends to be spiky, due to it’s different texture than the texture of the pony hair. You can think of the pony hair as having the same texture as the human hair, but the grifix hairs are thinner, similar to the alpaca wool. Due to that their hair tends to be shorter, because it breaks easier. It doesn’t exclude having long hair though. Additionally, their magic causes the hair to always sparkle, and it can also sometimes cause the rest of the fur to sparkle.

The Grifix have sharp fangs, due to being natural predators, like felines.

Some grifix change their coat during the winter, the fur getting white or a light natural color and losing all the fluff color, but getting a feline pattern (like leopard, tiger, or no pattern at all).

✦✦THE MAGIC

The magic of the grifix comes from the chest gems, those acting like a constant “magic factory”. But unlike the unicorns and other creatures’ magic, they constantly produce magic, even when it isn’t used. That causes magic to leak in the air and cause some side effects, like the hair sparkle and the sphirix, and when more grifix gather together the magic can get even stronger side effects, such as lighting up the special lights the Everfree Village is decorated with or creating a magic dome that keeps predators and other creatures away.

The magic power of a grifix usually increases with the darkness of their coat, so usually dark grifix are stronger than white ones.

If the magic of a grifix is overused and the magic flow stops, all the magic manifestations will fade and stop, including the sphirix (which often leads to very strong panic attacks due to them being used to always have it by their side. These panic attacks can even lead to madness or death if not stopped soon enough).

✦✦Magic manifestations (or magic leak effects):

1. They cannot be seen by adult intelligent creatures (which are ponies, griffons, hippogriffs, dragons, yaks, changelings, kirins, cows, minotaurs, or anything else like that), but can be seen by children and animals, and also, by deers (which have a very strong friendship relationship with the grifix in the Everfree Forest, being both the only intelligent creatures living there).

2. Sparkly hair

3. Magic flow around the forehead/butt gem.

4. Where there are many grifix gathered together their magic creates a magic dome around that area which keeps outside any baneful magic and intruders. That’s why the Everfree Village is not affected by the Everfree’s crazy magic, and they can live there peacefully. The field also makes the houses of the grifix and all that is inside invisible to outsiders, and if any other creature enters the field it is sent back on it’s way, creating the impression of walking in circles.

5. Light Beans - For a short period in spring, the magic of the grifix increases so much as it condenses around their fluffs and forms solid shapes, which is what the light beans are. It takes around two weeks for them to grow, condense, and fall off. They all fall off during the same day, which is known as the Heartfire Holiday (the Spring Equinox). There are also grifix that have those permanently. For them, they still fall off that day, but pretty quickly grow back and stay on during the whole year, and two weeks before the Heartfire Day they may grow bigger. The Light Beans glow because they absorb magic from the air and turn it into light. After they fall off, they actually work exactly like before, still glowing. After a year the glow kind of fades away, but for that year they can be, in fact, used as lights by the grifix. The whole Everfree Village is decorated with them, they are used as nightlights even if they stay on all day (cause they can't be turned off). The Light Beans can be yellow, blue or green, but they all turn yellow short after they fall off.

6. Night Glow - it’s an ability that only some grifix have. It’s actually more sort of a fluorescence, but it’s still a magic manifestation. If the grifix has The Night Glow, their fluffs and other parts of their body glow. Sometimes it can even make patterns on their body, which is similar to their sphirix markings pattern. It only manifests at night. 

7. Magic Glow - it is produced when a grifix experiences a magic boost. It’s produced by an extreme magic energy that doesn’t last long. During the magic glow, their gems, freckles, the white of their eye and their hooves start glowing. Their paw pads glow too, sometimes with a unique pattern on them. Their footprints also glow for a few seconds, fading after that. So, when a grifix with Magic Glow walks, they leave a light prints trail behind them. Sometimes, their sphirix disappears, but it’s not like when the magic is overused. The sphirix actually fuses with the grifix, and some of the traits of the sphirix might appear visible on the grifix, like the tail, wings or claws made out of magic. This allows the grifix to use it’s magic at full power, showing the actual strength of their magic.

8. Common Dreams - When two grifix that have a strong bond sleep together or close to each other, they can have common dreams. This manifests like a single dream, in which they are both together. However, this also depends on their state of mind, so if they need some alone time they don’t have this kind of dream.

9. Gender Flow - the biological gender of the grifix can be changed by their magic if the grifix strongly believes and wants it. More details here.

10. Apparitions and Yokai - only occur in really big communities ssuch as the Frozen Empire (see here)

11. The most important manifestation, The Sphirix.

✦✦The Gems

All the grifix’s magic comes from the gems. They are like a little magic factory. They ALWAYS have the same pattern: Three big gems tear-shaped and four round ones:

They may have aditional gems on their body, but those do not play much of a rule in magic production. They may also have one tear-shaped gem on their forehead or butt, which is always surrounded by a magic flow. This gem does not produce much magic, and it cannot be used. It just produces a slow magic flow, which, influenced by the magic strength of the grifix, may take different shapes:

✦ Weak magic: very small magic flow

✦ Normal magic: small magic flow

✦ Strong magic: big magic flow

✦ Powerful magic: magic flow with orb

✦ Very powerful magic: magic flow with orb system (up to 3 small orbs)

✦ God magic: magic flow with complex orb system (more than 3 small orbs)

The orbs can only be spherical or with a platonic solid shape. Even if the gem is covered by hair or something else, the flow would still go through it. Only silver can stop the flow.

✦✦THE SPHIRIX

Each grifix have their own sphirix. The sphirix is actually the grifix’s soul which uses the magic in the air to take the shape of a spirit animal that can only be seen by the grifix who owns it. It has a separate consciousness than the grifix but they can share thoughts. It mostly has the same personality as it’s grifix (they are the soul of the grifix, so they are the same person). The grifix and the sphirix can not be “friends”, they’re the same person, so saying that would be wrong.

If the magic is overused, the sphirix can temporarily disappear, just to appear back when the magic starts flowing out again. However, that can be very dangerous because the grifix can get very bad panic attacks from the sphirix’s disappearance.

Every grifix has a sphirix. Without one, they die.

The kids’s sphirix don’t have a fixed shape, being able to become any animal they want.

A sphirix cannot leave their grifix side. They will always be around them and can not get farther than a few meters from their grifix. If they get too far, both the sphirix and the grifix would be in great pain (it’s literally tearing their soul apart).

When the grifix gets to maturity, the sphirix settles to the most suitable shape and it cannot change anymore. However, a special ceremony is required for this. If the ceremony isn’t performed on one grifix, it can have extremely harmful effects on them, their magic getting uncontrollable and dangerous, being harmful to the Grifix and even causing death. This can only be prevented if the Grifix has an extremely powerful magic, which somehow provides some sort of stability, but it also requires special training to keep it under control (the Everfree Village Queens go through special training since they never go through the Sphirix Shape Ceremony).

The sphirix have gems like the grifix too, but they can have them in different places, not only on the chest. However, the gems have the same pattern, just the area on the body they are placed in may be different. The sphirix are always the same color as the grifix’s gems, because they’re made of the gem’s magic. They usually have abstract markings on their coat. Sometimes they don’t have them at all, and rarely they can represent actual things too. The sphirix never changes it’s markings, not even when it changes its shape as a kid.

The sphirix usually float around, having no weight, so they can be aquatic creatures too.

The sphirix can see each other, but they cannot be seen by other grifix than their own.

They are genderless, their gender and biological sex being defined during their lifetime, depending mostly on what the grifix considers them. Therefore, it’s not unusual that the sphirix have a different biological sex than the grifix. When they’re young, they can also change through the biological sex of the animals they take the shape of. However, around the Sphirix Shape Ceremony the sphirix usually has the gender decided so they will take the shape of an animal with that biological sex. Sometimes it’s not much of a difference but there are animals that look very different depending on the biological sex. The sphirix can change their gender later in life, but not their bilogical sex.

When the grifix's soul is wounded (I'm talking about trauma), the wonds show on the sphirix. The wounds can be minor and heal as the trauma heals, or be permanent and then the sphirix ends up scared for life. This mostly happens in the case of childhood trauma, since that trauma is the most likely to stick and affect someone during their whole life.

The sphirix isn't always named at birth, and their name is whatever the grifix starts calling it. Unually they get a name whenevr the grifix starts talking and names it whatever. That sometimes leads to some weird names, but that's how it is (the same way children name their teddybear). Sometimes though, the parents name the sphirix but that's a bit weird for them to do since they can't see it. In the Everfree Village they can ask the Healer for name suggestions, since the Healer can see it. The sphirix's name ALWAYS consists of one word.

Quick sphirix drawing tutorial

Sphirix examples:

Sphirix drawing tutorial: 

Old sphirix drawing tutorial 1 ✦ More complex Sphirix Drawing Tutorial

This tutorial works best for ibisPaint. You can scan the QR codes to get the brushes I use.

Super easy tutorial:

✦✦BREEDING AND GENDER

The grifix’s breeding is very different from the other species, being performed through magic. That is the reason why they don’t have to be opposite genders to breed. Also, because of the lack of sexual organs, the biological sex of a grifix is very insignificant. It’s much easier for them to change their gender because of that.

✦ When the grifix want a baby, they use their magic to create an egg where the baby grows. When they make that spell, is the only time when two grifix can see each other’s sphirix, which makes it very intimate. 
✦ Twins aren’t born in different eggs - they’re born in one egg, and you can’t be sure at the beginning if they’re going to be one or more (even if an egg with twins is usually bigger). 
✦ The parents can only make one egg at a time - unlike the birds or griffons. 
✦ The egg just magically floats, so there’s no need of a nest. It has to be kept warm though. If something is wrong with it or it’s too cold it stops floating - so that’s a very bad sign. 
✦ The egg is formed from the parent’s magic, not inside their body. The egg will constantly absorb the parents’ magic from the air through the incubation period, using it to grow. If a parent is absent and the egg will mostly absorb the other parent’s magic, the baby will look more like that parent. If both parents are absent the egg dies. However, the healers have certain herbs which they can use to stimulate the egg into absorbing magic from other grifix to save the egg.
✦ The eggs can have markings, which are the same as the ones the sphirix of the baby will have.

✦✦ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

✦ The grifix are afraid of Tomatoes (those creepy red round fruits that pretend to be vegetables! How could you trust them - 😤). Good thing you don’t find too many tomatoes in the middle of the Forest.
✦ They can eat meat - unlike the ponies (that’s why they have sharp teeth). Their diet is mostly made of herbs, fruits and vegetables (but not tomatoes!), but they do enjoy a good hunt. They may also eat small animals raw, such as mice and birds.
✦ They hunt similarly to the cats, but only small animals. When the warriors go to haunt, they use weapons and stuff, but if a grifix wants to eat a mouse or something, they just start sneaking through the bushes and catch it.
✦ They have much stronger senses than the ponies. They have a very strong smell, they can hear ultrasounds, and they have a slight night vision.
✦ Lovers mostly kiss like the ponies, but they also gently lick each other like the cats do. Though, they don’t “wash” with their tongues like the cats. They wash with water.
✦ Their magic is the only magic that can completely kill a timberwolf (without them regenerating back from their wood), but even so, it’s hard to kill them, and they only do it if there’s really a need for that. Most of the grifix injuries are made by timberwolves, being their biggest natural enemy.