Then the next day, tired and hungry after weather magic, she goes up to Urtho's.

Urtho is in the process of being nudged over by a polite but insistent hertasi from his desk to the conference room next door, where lunch appears to be laid out for both of them. He looks absentmindedly confused about this, but his expression clears when he sees her, and he smiles. "Azabel! You asked to eat with me today, I heard, how delightful."

"Yeah! I want to ask you about making gryphons." Also she wants to eat her entire lunch in five seconds flat. She should start bringing snacks to class. Omnomnom.

"Worked hard this morning, did you." Urtho seems amused about this. He eats his own food and waits for her mouth not to be full. "So. What sort of questions about gryphons did you have? It's rather a broad topic."

"How'd you decide to make them?"

"Well, no one had ever made an intelligent race of flying beings before, and I suppose I wanted to see if it was possible. Also they are very beautiful, are they not?" He sounds so proud.

"They are, they're really cool! Was making them both intelligent and flying a special technical challenge for some reason?"

"Well, intelligent creatures have large brains, right? Which are heavy. Gryphons would actually be much too heavy to fly without magic; they are based on eagles and also several different species of great cats, but I worked in substantial natural magic as well."

"They're really strong! My gryphon friend can carry me, even."

“Oh, are you friends with one of my gryphons?” Urtho chuckles and looks even more pleased. “What is their name? I make a habit of meeting all the new ones.”

"Skandranon. The hertasi introduced us when we were little."

“Awwww, how sweet. He is certainly very talented! I make sure to go watch the aerial competitions every so often and I think I recall he is a rising star, there.”

"Yeah, he's one of the best! How many gryphons are there, I know it's a lot but many of them are away from the Tower a lot..."

"- Hmm, let me think. Two hundred and...something...adults. More children than that but -" he looks a little embarrassed, "but I am still perfecting their species and the children sometimes have fatal medical problems. I am hoping to eventually have enough of them for a healthy breeding population."

"Oh dear. Are all the adults first-generation?"

"Approximately yes, if you count Skandranon's generation as not yet being adults, which I think is right - gryphons will physically mature faster, like their source species, but mentally they are more similar to humans on that, and the oldest generation born to gryphon parents instead of, well, in my laboratory, is not yet twenty."

"Why did you make two hundred of them before you had them all right for sure?"

"Oh, the two hundred adults are all quite healthy and well - it is just that in the early stages of species-creation their traits will not always breed true, and there is not really a way to test it except for having them breed and - well, saving the healthy children and not the others."

"So even knowing how the children sometimes turn out you couldn't make a new laboratory gryphon which didn't have babies that turned out that way?"

"No. At least, no one has yet discovered a theory that would let us get it perfect and verify this without waiting to see." His eyes twinkle. "You seem quite interested in the topic. Perhaps you will be the one to discover this!"

"I don't think I'm ready to have two hundred children."

Urtho chuckles. "Of course not just yet! When you are older, I mean, you have plenty of time. I was eighty before I even attempted to create a species. ...Anyway, I have been doing all of the talking here. Did you have particular questions?"

"Did you raise them yourself or did you have help? What do most of them do all day, I know Skan's parents are busy a lot but I don't know what they do. How much did you decide about how they are and how much just happened? Did you make any species before gryphons, ones that weren't people or that didn't work at all?"

"Oh, I certainly did not raise them myself! The hertasi did most of that, they are very good. In terms of work, right now, the gryphons do aerial scouting for the Crown - it helps replace Farsight checks - and some of them are mages, I cannot recall which breeding pair are Skandranon's parents so I am not sure what they do in particular. I - decided some things? I wanted them to be graceful in the air, and have good distance vision, and be strong. ...I did run some experiments before the gryphons, with smaller animals, it is recommended to try on that first for mages engaged in species creation. None were very successful."

"Why did you go ahead with a people species if your not-people species weren't very successful? And I meant did you decide things about like their personalities..."