If you have the time I have a quick question about one of your previous characters, Avi from Rogue Trader: where did you get the inspiration for her (language, customs, physiology etc) and why did you chose to go with a OC xenos rather than one established in the lore? Thanks!
I don't mind at all. The inspiration mostly came from Greco-Roman mythology, Star Trek, and actual corvids. Most of her people's social tendencies are based on crows: materialism, vindictiveness, ingenuity, and mutual respect. We keep learning new things about the intricacies of crow societies and their intelligence. Some of the stuff I drew from is actually outdated now. Example: I'd originally written that her people have funeral services that an entire village will attend. When I wrote that, contemporary thought was that crows flock around their dead as an honorary service of a kind, but it was discovered last year that the murder of crows that hang around their dead are actually performing an investigation into the cause of death, so that the whole group will learn from it.
Appearance wise, she's based on harpies. I wanted to play an alien that wasn't as, well,
alien as the other two options at the time (Orks and Kroot). Eldar and Tau were not yet playable at the time, and finagling either of those would've been even harder than drafting up a Star Trek style of alien, switching around some stat bonuses, and using the Kroot Mercenary tree. So that I didn't totally break established lore, I did a lot of research into lesser alien races established in the 40k universe and the ways they were handled. It was kind of important that they were lore friendly.
Their language was based on Esperanto, which was created in the late 1800s to be a kind of universal language. It didn't stick, but it's still spoken by a couple million people. I picked Esperanto (and then altered many of the common phrases Avi used in order to sound more alien) because it is an airy language that doesn't use as many labial sounds (m's, p's, v's, etc) as other languages. This was so that their language sounded more like a bird-song.