Wow, I really hope you haven't stopped continuing this...it is EXCELLENT!
I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions, and especially the culture you have crafted with these gryphons.

All-in-all, a very well-done piece of work,

-ST

Harr.

*Taken direct from The Badlands webcomic:

"Widely known as the sadist of the Badlands, the Cereus Peashy is a psychotic mess of wayward emotion, hell bent on acts of intense violence for personal gain."

*I've seen some things past the first chapter and really...it isn't too different, or anything at all. They still seem to think in the same way and have the same morals. Seriously. I've seen poor renditions of christianity/wicca/greek/norse mythology that claimed to be "different."

All I'm asking is for something that makes sense with what, who, where they are and so forth. A Few legends does not a culture make.

-Just...don't rely on the damn spellchecker to do your work for you. It lies. Often. Very often. Now what I want you to do is to go back and reread this until you're sick of the sound of your own voice, then go fix every single spelling and grammatical error.

-If they're quarantining sick gryphons, then the whole point is moot if they just let anyone wander in and out of the quarantining area. It's common sense. One gryphon goes in, comes out as a fresh vector for the spread of disease.

-"He was...away."

"Darkear...long apprenticeship."

And so forth. I won't waste my time typing up a whole brand new response, but instead recycle one that I did for another person that suits this one just fine.

"All right. ALL RIGHT. There are some things which should be shown, and there are some things that should be told. Usually, it takes a LOT of writing experience to tell exactly what should be used for what, but I'll tip you off on one of the basics:

Character traits, relationships and emotions should almost always be SHOWN. Problem here is, you mostly try to TELL me these.

"Truthfully, they loved each other dearly, as only brothers and sisters can. When they were children, they were constant companions, running through the woods like wild animals. They often went days only speaking to each other and they seemed like two halves of one person. As they got older, they no longer spent all of their time together and began to make other friends--as siblings are wont to do as they grow--but they remained connected with a strong bond which they were not even fully aware existed. Their family had always been a close unit, and after Uncle died, they leaned on each other for solace. There had never been any question of them sticking together, but now, Ava knew that things were changing."

and...

"Later in the afternoon, Ava walked the short way to the village to buy some cloth from the weaver and visit her friend, Cora. Cora worked in the inn her parents owned and after Farren, she had always been Ava’s best friend. Since there were always travelers passing through on their way to the north country, Cora always had the latest news, and she and Ava spent many a happy hour dissecting whatever tidbits they learned from the inn’s guests."

Now I find myself wondering why on earth I should believe you? Because you're the author? Authors ** up regularly-I've seen self-described "Epic romances" that were **-tension-whine-lust-do it all over again crap, people with "(insert character attribute) eyes" acted in the exact opposite manner and more crap on those lines...

I'm sorry. Don't tell me Alida the Bard is blind, crabby, and Bortos is her best friend. I know her better when she snaps at her assistant for being late fetching her shoes, where the hell is her guide dog again, how she mustn't be late meeting Bortos like she has every friday for the past five years, by the gods does the world know how hard it is to be blind AND WHERE IS HER TEA?

Now, I can safely tell how Alida looks like, her clothes, her hair, that careful, limping gait she uses to walk around, how her cane swings about and that black silk blindfold she wears as not to scare the children and so forth, so long as it's unobtrusive and hopefully serves another purpose such as driving the plot forward or characterization (maybe she has a soft spot for children and doesn't want to scare them with empty eye sockets?)

It really depends on the circumstances and what you're trying to show or tell, but I've given you a rule of thumb."

You get my drift, or do I need to explain further?

Furthermore, another quote, especially when you are writing someone's thoughts:

"Then there are the mistakes of perception—most often, who’s good and who’s evil. Most of the time, with teenage heroes, the ones they think are entirely trustworthy are, indeed, entirely trustworthy. Somehow, despite coming from an isolated backwater village and only now traveling in a wide variety of different political and social landscapes as well as not having one iota of experience with so many people, they know all the wildernesses of the human heart.

Hi, Canon Mary Sue. When your character’s perceptions are identical to reality, there is no choice but to hack her apart and bury her at the crossroads."

-W-WHAT? Isn't it winter? Why are there still leaves on the trees? Even dead ones should have fallen off and turned into mulch long ago, and green moss...

Out of cheese error. *brain explodes* Please, please don't tell me you forgot you just wrote it was winter a thousand-odd words ago.

"The apprentice den was a simple overlap of trees on the edge of the forest, the leaves providing a roof for the occupants and the overhanging leaves of a willow serving to cover the entrance."

Nope, definitely open-air. Grass survives the winter because it's buried under snow-it should have frozen long ago, and moss...ugh. No, no trees are going to be that thick to cover everything-even a tropical rainforest canopy won't stop some snow from getting to the ground.

Not. Making. Sense.

-But seriously, though. This isn't a 20th-century society of plenty where people can afford to have their children do nothing except go to school. Just look at the way of life in third world countries: children work as soon as they are possible to do so. Simple tasks like finding food, taking care of other kits and keeping living areas clean should either be instinctive or taught from an early age, by the end of their childhood they shouldn't need to be taught how to forage or hunt.

Further comments on education system as plot and writing warrant.

Harr.

All right, ALL RIGHT. *Gets out Cereus Peashy effigy* Let's take a quick look at what we have here, hm?

-"The rest had flew to Whisper Forest". Flown.

"For the creaturez fighting," creatures. Why? It's not better if you spell it with a "z".

-...

How far EXACTLY is the Whisper Forest from the Black Valley? Sound does NOT carry well through air, or any other gas for that matter, so it can't have been very far. In that case, why aren't the civilians evacuating, if only temporarily? If they're that close, why has every gryphon capable of combat left the rest of the flock, leaving them wide open to any group of enemies that's been able to flank their forces and push across?

Why are they even sleeping?

This doesn't make sense, and goes to show how details can make-or break any sense in the plot.

-It's *HIGHLY* unlikely that any vultures will be coming to feed off carrion during the nightime. Yes, a few species of New World Vultures have a fair sense of smell, but given the chaos down there and myriad of smells from the place, it's unlikely they'd circle around in the sky waiting and waste energy, especially if there are no thermals to keep them up at night. If you must have them, they'd probably be perched somewhere and waiting for the conflict to end.

That point aside, though, a cursory few minutes of research turned this up:

"The Old World vultures found in Africa, Asia and Europe belong to the family Accipitridae, which also includes eagles, kites, buzzards and hawks. Old World vultures find carcasses exclusively by sight. While Several species of New World vultures have a good sense of smell, unusual for raptors, sight is still predominantly their method of finding carcasses."

It's akin to reading about people walking through a temperate dedicous forest and encountering a tiger. (Yes, I've seen this before.) Ravens and crows might be more sensible, albeit overused carrion birds, but if you must have a nightime battle, so be it.

-All right, I'm annoyed. Why bother having gryphons if they're going to act, think and behave in exactly the same way as humans do? Why should they have the same thought patterns? The same way of looking at the world? The same morals and beliefs? You might as well replace "gryphon" with "human" and nothing would have changed, except a few cursory details.

That's why I'm so opposed to having anything at all take human forms. Now, there could have been very compelling reasons for said similarities, but most of the time it's not even explained, as if 21st-century new-yorkers were zapped into gryphon forms and dumped into a fantasy world. If you don't explain the reasons such similarities evolved from their history, culture and biology, the reader is justified in assuming it's a stupid thing.

At the very least, the physical should affect the mental, social and spiritual worlds. I'll give a small example of how physical affects mental-when we humans are searching for danger from an unknown direction, we tend to look AROUND us, but not up or down. Don't believe me? The next time you're with some friends, shout "will you look at that!" without pointing anywhere and see where they look.

By contrast, a flying creature will be looking down onto the ground a lot-and thus expect possible danger from there, too, as well as from around it.

Thus, the physical body affects the way we think-and it's only one of the most simple, direct ways.

So think carefully. Why would gryphons do this, behave like such, go there? Is it because THEY would do this, or is it because PEOPLE would do it?

Think very carefully.

Interesting idea and cute names, too. I don't see many stories about gryphons/griffins in books or on the internet. It might be that I haven't been looking around this site for very long, but I think this idea is unique and original.

Keep going, AKA update soon.

Yay, gryphons! Very cool. I like it; you write well.