Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-29684190-20181107222709/@comment-25936766-20181111010754

Phantomlink959 wrote: One thing I personally noticed about the Sphinx, looking at it from the perspective of someone who believes they are the same, is that all of the differences between them would serve a single function. Flight optimization. The problem is, the changes are still too severe, which completely breaks the pattern we've seen with literally all other elders. Not to mention they even have different names, instead of the Sphinx being Adjective Manticore. And some of the changes would change so little that even if we followed your idea, they are so petty that it makes no sense for those changes to even happen. Such as the entire skull changing shape, or the Manticore losing a whole toe. Or the Scorpion Tail turning into a Snake Tail. You can't forget that one, it's pretty hard to miss. Besides, the Manticores can already fly very well and they aren't even slow fliers despite the size. They easily catch up with the train, in fact. So why would they even need that many changes?

The Sphinx is sufficiently larger than Manticores that if it had the exact same design, or was simply bigger with more armor, it would be barely (if at all) capable of flight. ''According to all known laws of aviation, Manticores should not be able to fly. Their wings are too small to lift their fat little bodies off the ground.''

The Manticore, of course, flies anyway, because Manticores don't care what humans think it's impossible.

And memes aside, we got a giant bird that is capable of actual flight despite being dense enough to crash against rocks and shrug it off, while if we tried to apply real-life logic it shouldn't be capable of anything beyond fancy gliding (in fact, birds far smaller than the Giant Nevermore can't actually fly for real).

There's also the Sea Dragon, which can just take off to the skies, float in mid-air and dance around even without deploying it's wings.