Hex Combat Form Ref

Some info on the combat form of everyone's favorite little guy!! I love Hex just as much as everyone else but dang do people really adore him a lot more than I thought lol, I notice updates genuinely do better when he's in them 😂 I came up with Hex really only because I knew I wanted to have familiars in the comic, can't have witches without 'em! Hazel got a black cat because I wanted her to have the most stereotypical one, I really enjoy playing around with stuff considered cliche and figuring out how to make it my own. Hex has been in the story since I think 2020? But I actually had barely interacted with cats irl until I got my own in 2021, so that definitely helped give him more of a personality which is what I think most people are drawn to. Before he was really only an accessory, so I'm glad that changed.

 The whole third eye concept comes from the fact that his name was originally Hecate! I got inspired by how the Greek goddess has three heads, and figured I could showcase that by giving him three eyes. Hex was initially supposed to be his nickname, but then it just kind of became his name. It helped that "Hex" is also a lot easier to fit onto that nametag lol. Combat forms were just a natural progression from there, I needed familiars to be able to fight and all. The first version I did from 2020 on the third slide kept him with housecat proportions, just larger overall; he also used to have a torn ear for no real reason, it got annoying to remember though so I ended up getting rid of it. The white accents were also originally just a Hex thing, I didn't want him to be solid black and thought a white tail-tip was cute. As I further developed the story though, I thought that maybe those accents could actually be part of familiar anatomy, and so I gave him his little white forehead line representing his third eye. I then got inspiration by looking up refs of lynxes to base his combat form on, and that's when the idea of flames kinda came into play--if the white represented his eye, then I needed the tail to represent something too. The bob tail really worked since the flame takes off the tip, essentially it all just kinda fell into place as I went along.

Hex was pretty much the blueprint for how familiars work, and their official lore now is that all familiars are black in color, regardless of what kind of animal they are. They all have white accents which mark the locations of their eyes and flames, and the amount of those is determined by their (and their witch's) level of strength, which can increase. All familiars' magic is magenta, but their normal eye color will differ based on reasons I won't quite reveal just yet. Familiars are a supernatural species in their own right that have formed a symbiotic relationship with witches, providing their power and aid in exchange for protection and safety. Obtaining a familiar is expected but optional, so not all witches have one. Once bonded to a witch they change their form to an animal of the familiar's choosing, and the bonding process is permanent. Their mindset also shifts to that of the animal they choose, so Hex is still mentally a cat (though they retain their intelligence and ability to understand human speech). Combat forms give familiars a more 'primal' look, which is why cat familiars take after big cats, dog familiars would take after wolves, and so on. They grow a few sizes larger than their OG form, that of which can only really be animals on the smaller side. Transforming into an elephant or something like that would expend too much of the familiar's energy, and would also just be impractical lol. Flames are meant to be a show of familiars' magic, their excess power almost leaking out of their bodies and thus needing somewhere to go when they transform. Their extra eyes are then used to see and detect things invisible or somehow obscured--magically or otherwise--like radars. Familiar lore will for sure be explored in the comic, though I have a feeling there's gonna be a lot of further lore posts in my future :P