Name: Delilah Rhodes (Lilah)
Race: Vycerian*
Age: 21
Height/Weight: 5'4" / 34
Eyes: violet
Station: Medical Officer, Black Knights Fighting Wing
Combat Skills: Prefers light weapons or stunners. Some skill with blades.
Medical Waivers: Near-sighted (20/80); Acute Ocular Photosensitivity (Protective Lenses Required)
Outstanding Demerits: Consistently scores poorly in close-combat.

...So. My Editor-in-Chef (not a spelling error!) stopped by to hang out the other day and see how the Bob Kiwi: Private Eye rewrite was coming along. I told her I'd finished the first chapter and a half and might be done by the end of August, which just goes to show that I lie like a cheap area rug. Then we got to talking about the next few books' worth of stories.

At some point in time, the Shades of Grey storyline was touched upon, despite the fact that it is a large, unwieldy, complicated, and altogether dark tale currently sitting about 12 stories back in my workload queue. (I like it, though. It's D'Gal and the Black Knights' backstory. And D'Gal is, after all, my most favoritest villain in the series...) ANYWAYS, this seemed to give my creativity demons the impression they could drag out their notes on this story and work on them a bit, and since crushing muses in the midst of a project invariably leads to an acute case of writer's block, I permitted them a short furlong of running amok.

...And I like Lilah. She's soft-spoken, contemplative, incredibly non-confrontational, and by all rights a pacifist. Her vision's too weak for the flight program; she can't hit a target further away than 15 yards; and her hand-to-hand combat skills barely cover the basics of self-defense. And on top of all that, she goes through so much black dye that her XO has quietly put in a request to have her evaluated for OCD. (After all, just how crisp and unfaded does her uniform need to be, anyway?) Were it not for Vyceria's current dire straights, she would never have been conscripted into service in the first place.

:3 Anyways. There's more to her than I'm saying, of course, though the hints are there for those that like unravelling mysteries.

....I'll probably scrap this once I get around to inking/coloring it, which right now I'm too terrified to attempt for fear of messing something up....or getting even MORE sidetracked....but simply for reference purposes, Vycerian uniforms are black with red trim and gold embellishments. Rank insignia are pinned on the collar and sideboards.

Also, ducks completely break my brain. It took HOURS to get her beak to look, if not right, then at least not horribly WRONG, and really the entire rest of the drawing including the uniform design took less time than that. (Then again, she's only the second duck I've ever drawn...)

• Vycerians are a race of ducks, a sub-species of Platyrians whose plumage has over centuries of microevolution shifted from the snowy-white of their mother species to a warmer and more protective black. Some years past, their sun suffered a sudden and catastrophic explosion, triggering a rapid increase in its size and burn-rate that has scorched their planet and triggered mass hysteria as scientists now estimate the sun's remaining life expectancy to be a matter of decades. Efforts to perform planet-wide evacuations, however, have been met with resistance and even open hostility from the rest of the Platyrian Empire, as their world is situated on the empire's far borders and is seen as strategically vital to their ongoing war with the Intergalactic Bagels.