The world of Eyrie is full of creatures both extinct and extant. I only set a few rules for myself while writing. First, the only fantastic creatures would be the gryphons and their opinicus cousins. Second, no dinosaurs or pterosaurs. And finally, mammals could only show up as an invasive species. All the roles mammals normally filled would be taken care of by the different types of gryphons.

Since writing Eyrie, one of the requests I most often had was to hear about the real life equivalents of each of the animals. I think that’s a great idea. With artistic help from Sydney (@SmatterBrain on Twitter) we delved into a few of the favorites.