Villains are a staple of SciFi and pretty much most genre fiction. And while I don’t plot my books, I did know who the ultimate bad guys were, how the story would arc through the series and lead the Syn-En back home.

But I didn’t want to jump into war.

I wanted to ease into the world of the Syn-En; I wanted set the stage of worse things to come. And it all started with a single race and was rooted in Human history.

In many ways, the Skaperians are traditional villains. They view themselves as superior to Humans because of their technological achievements. Humans must overcome their technology to prove themselves worthy as equals.

But a featherhead by any name is very much like us.

Like most conquerers they view their colonies and inhabitants as lesser beings. To make things even more interesting, I had the Earth and its inhabitants traded as a territory in a distant war, one where we weren’t involved in, but effected us nonetheless.

The Skaperians had a similar evolution to ours in that their distant ancestors had scales. And scales changed into both feathers and fur. I know of no law that says a species can only have one. Of course, if you want to believe there’s another force (like the Erwarians or Meek) who made them that way, so much the better.

As a personal joke, I gave the Skaperians two opposable thumbs. Why? Because we point to our thumbs as proof of our superiority to those species without thumbs. By that logic, the Skaperians are better than us.:D

The Skaperians have backward joints because I wanted to draw a visual comparison to the power cats and crickets have to jump and pounce. Predator traits. These changes also gave them similar strengths to the cyborgs without the aid of technology.

I spent pages developing the Skaperian history, deciding how it was to be designed. Most of it never appeared in the book, but some did, in particular the fact that women ruled Skaperian and were its warriors. To twist this much used trope, it was the Syn-En who viewed the society as odd. To them, implants were implants. But to Nell, she would recognize the kind of society, feel at home in its prejudices, and still rail against the injustices.

Well, that’s enough for now. If you have any questions about the series, shoot me an email or comment below and I’ll answer.

Until next time!