"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..."

"- Well, I did get to the point that my non-sentient species were healthy and survived, they were just not very interesting and were not magical. And, no, not so much. Personality is especially hard to engineer deliberately."

"It seems like whoever made the hertasi probably did some of it."

"...Hmm. Yes, it does seem so. They were the work of another mage, a little before my time. Adept Narath. I...think that he discarded many attempts before he had them the way that he wanted."

"- discarded many attempts? - if this is all in the books I can read it, that just sounds... bad."

"He started with lizards as a base, so the earliest attempts would not have been people. I am not sure whether that is in his books on it. But...yes. Personally I think that trying so many times just to get a species with the exact personality one hopes for is - not especially kind to the discards."

"It's probably really hard on the gryphons when their babies don't turn out okay."

Urtho nods solemnly. "Right now I select only the most well-adjusted and mature of them to bear young, for that reason, and they generally have litters of two or three so at least one is generally viable. But...yes. It is not easy."

"...you select them?"

"- Yes? How else would I do it?"

"They could... decide on their own?" Is he matchmaking them or just screening couples, how does she ask that -

"That would not do! Some youngsters would inevitably decide to have a baby together and then they would be bad parents!"

"I guess since they grow up physically really fast you could have an age limit but you made two hundred of them and didn't mostly raise them, how do you tell whether they'll be good parents or not? Who screened you before you made two hundred of them?"

Urtho seems quite nonplussed by the question. "The hertasi worked to raise them and I consult them about who is ready to be a parent. And, well, I was eighty before I even began on this work!"

"But nobody had to say you were allowed, did they? What if you die, can the hertasi do whatever lets them have babies without you?"

Urtho blinks a few times, as though he needs to actually stop and think about that. "...Well, I have some decades left in me. By the time I am in my dotage, they ought be completed as a species and then I will, I suppose, let them do as they wish." He sounds a bit reluctant about it.