Backstory From My Old Comics: Talon is Bazil's only and very neglected son. He was born with epilepsy, which prevents him from using magic. (Every attempt he's ever made caused him to have seizures.) Since he can't use magic and also because he is rather weak, his father sees him as being useless to his cause. Talon is shy and often bullied by other mountaindevils (they shredded his wings so he couldn't fly away to escape). Thus, he spends most of his time alone. With little else to do, he learned to draw and has developed into quite a talented artist. He is one of the few mountaindevils who does not view Professor Nucleo McRaven as a traitor to the species, but rather as an inspiration. Despite Talon's rather miserable living conditions, he remained optimistic that someday Bazil would abandon his mad crusades. He bears no ill will towards anyone, not even his father's enemies. When Bazil failed to return home after a very long time, Talon decided to risk his life and ask Chance Tomasaro if he knew what had happened. Chance found the condition Talon was in to be so deplorable, that he came to realize it wasn't mountaindevils he hated...just Bazil. Chance has been looking after him ever since. Talon eventually became good friends with Cory McRaven. Although Talon could draw, he couldn't read or write, so Cory became his tutor and helped teach him. However, Cory found it difficult to trust Talon at first, since he is the son of one of their worst enemies, and she believed he'd eventually betray Nucleo. Eventually it became clear that Talon feared living a life being judged by Bazil's misdeeds, and Cory started to see something more in him than he could see in himself. Ultimately, their relationship helped foster Talon's confidence. Talon isn't much of a fighter and his only weapon for the longest time was a small knife that he used for little else than lock-picking. Later on, Chance and Nucleo helped teach him how to use samurai swords and a bo staff. He is about 13 years old. Character Design Notes: Talon is a character whose design I only very recently created. My older versions of Talon looked far too much like Nucleo McRaven with Bazil Kyradius's color palette. I don't know why, but I just had trouble coming up with a mountaindevil design that didn't look like Nucleo. One reason I didn't work too hard on him before is because he's also a difficult character to deal with storywise and I had often thought about dropping him from the scripts entirely. (The version of him that I created for The Minerva Project was completely different in both personality and origin story.) He still remains one of the more "mysterious" members of the RAU, due to his somewhat-inhibited nature. I'm not even really sure why I decided to include him in this series, but he does act as a good counterbalance to some of the more chaotically-natured characters. Also, without another younger character around, that would probably mean Cory would end up hanging around with Jack Sheen, and I just felt more comfortable writing Cory/Talon scenes than Cory/Jack scenes, especially since Cory and Jack were never meant to become girlfriend and boyfriend, and judging from their personality differences, I don't think they ever would. Because the old versions of Talon were based on Nucleo's design, they are wearing very similar clothes. The new, modern version of Talon wears a green, black, and red outfit that very much resembles Chance's military uniform. That's because it's an outfit Chance used to wear when he was younger. He had given it to Talon to replace the tattered shirt and shorts he was wearing when he had come to Chance's Dragon Palace for help. First RAU Gallery Appearance: Study Hall Blues Ugh, bleh. That's the Minerva Project version of Talon in the center of the bottom row. He actually kinda ruins this whole picture for me now. Although Talon and Cory in this picture are supposed to be slightly older than the age I usually draw them as being, I still ended up using it to make Talon's current RAU Avatar. (Click for larger image.) Talon is peering over Chance's shoulder in the discontinued "massive group picture". (Click for larger image.) If it wasn't for the fact that I remembered drawing this for The Minerva Project, I would've thought this was Nucleo. Bleh, again. Talon with Chance. This didn't turn out too well. I was still working on creating his new modern design at the time. But at least I was finally starting to get farther away from the old "Nucleo-Talon" hybrid. I didn't finish this one because I messed up on it too badly. Talon and Nucleo. I was getting better at drawing Talon's modern design at this point, and I wanted to have a side-by-side comparison of the young Nispatian mountaindevil to the gruff, older Aridian mountaindevil to prove to myself that they no longer looked too much alike. I don't think there's any mistaking one for the other here, even in black and white. Same picture, inked. Same picture, hand-colored. The first I had attempted to hand-color anything in years. Same picture, computer-colored. I was comparing how things looked when hand-colored to computer-colored and trying to decide which I liked better.