Bendy Satyr

This is a gift for my good friend Aldric because I thought of her art a lot while drawing this! ^_^ The character was designed by me but he reminded me very much of her art! And I also came up with a story for this species:

For unknown reasons, satyrs can make some of the world's best contortionists when trained with care, they even have a special class of dancing contortionists called kerhori, they're trained at the temple since an early age and always take part in the Sun-worshipping rituals. Because of their flexibility they can be taught to be able to curl the body up into a nearly perfect sphere that is seen as the symbol of the Sun which is their highest deity.

During a ritual a kerhoros would be allowed to hold onto a special golden bar in the temple which allows to balance while holding the posture depicted above and this bar is designed specially for this purpose. The golden bar can be held by only one satyr at a time and it's sort of a special privilege. Usually rituals are combined with an intense training session for all trainees in the temple and all other kerhori except the chosen one would be simply tied up to the ceiling with silky ribbons, they don't leave any bruises and just help to hold the spherical shape during the ceremony.

It's not unusual for little orphans and beggars to end up in the temple to be trained as kerhori dancers in exchange for food and shelter. However, not all of them are orphans and some of them have families where usually their parents also were kerhori in the past because kerhori would often fall in love with each other and make families. Needless to say how proud they're of their young daughters and sons learning to assume those wonderful postures!

p.s. The picture actually started without the ribbons and was going to be named "Dancing Satyr" but I thought that my viewers would keep pointing out that he'd lose his balance like that, so I added the ribbons but they also made me think of this story, so it's all good ^-^