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Log entry #2: Heritage
[which is a new name for my Bakugan AU posts; will be explained eventually >:>]
I am going INSANE over the concept of Hydron being a Canine Vestal. While Zenoheld is an Avian Vestal.
When it comes to inheritance-related genetics of the Vestals, there's obviously a couple of situations to consider.
1st type. Two Vestals of the same exact type having a child. This means a Canine-Canine child, a Feline-Feline child, or an Avian-Avian child*. Such a child will retain the same type as their parents, and the specific features will be a combination of the features of their parents. An example would be a Canine-Canine child, inheriting a wolf form from their mother, but the fur colour and downturned ears from their father.
2nd type. Two Vestals of a similar type having a child. This means a Canine-Feline child. Such a child will most often generally resemble one of their parents, but have a considerable amount of the other's features. An example would be a Canine-Feline child, whose transformation form looks like a wolf like their Canine mother's, but has a short muzzle and can hide their claws like their Feline father's.
*If the Avian Vestals cared to learn more of the Earth world, they would realise their own forms are often as different from one another as Canine Vestals are from the Feline ones. They can resemble simple pigeons and flashy parrots, but also mighty eagles and gloomy vultures. The children of two Avian Vestals are thus hybrids of both parents, just as the Canine-Feline children. This, however, is not spoken of, and the Avian-Avian children are typically considered the same as the 1st type. An Avian Vestal is an Avian Vestal, the important thing is that they've been given a feathered form.
3rd type: Things get dangerous when an Avian Vestal has a child with a Canine/Feline one. The child has a chance to be a hybrid, but that chance is statistically so low it can well be ignored. If such is born, it's often shunned, seen as near blasphemy - a mixture between the divinity of feathers and the dirtiness of fur. Other than that, it's a nearly 50/50 situation - they'll be born either an Avian, or a Canine/Feline. This, of course, is where more trouble comes - in most cases, an Avian Vestal will be more respected, and a Canine/Feline one will be more of a disappointment. The situation is even more dire, for the relationship between an Avian Vestal and a Canine/Feline Vestal will almost always be a misalliance, and if the child is not born Avian, both them and their Canine/Feline parent may be rejected.
(4th type: Rarely spoken of. If a Vestal has a child with a creature from another dimension, it will often bring unexpected mutations to the offspring. There's a story going around about a half-human Vestal that sports a fish tale and fins when in transformation form.)
What if a situation happened, though, where an Avian-Canine child would not be the result of a misalliance? Canine/Feline Vestals among the highborn are extremely rare, but there is a family or two (quite literally) of such. And in troubling times, it might have proven necessary to arrange a marriage between the royal heir and one of those families, to show support of the Canine/Feline lower classes, growing less fond of their rulers every overpopulated, underfed day. Only no one truly expected the child of that marriage to be born a Canine, in the image of his mother...