First drawn October 2023, but I did some touch-ups today to remove some stray marks and improve readability.

These characters are the top group of Year 226 graduates at Caelus, a state-funded military academy that trains young people with magic powers. Graduates become messengers– magic users authorized by the state of Aeris to use their powers to uphold the law. Although Aeris is formally a liberal democracy, the military and especially its Messenger elite have come to dominate the government, the market, and much of society. The project Caelus will focus on this graduating class as they are incorporated into the military's upper ranks, and how their unusually reformist attitudes split into irreconcilably different views about how to create a freer and more just Aerisian society– though some of them abandon that quest entirely. Here's a quick rundown of who they are:

- Thorn (cardinal), from a superstitious desert backwater, an ambitious and brilliant radical who sees the big picture with unusual clarity
- Azure (blue jay), from the capital, an ever-passionate optimist and bleeding heart who believes in souls and that people are inherently good
- Seer (duck), from the capital, the son of a right-wing Senator who aspires to become a liberal politician, variously the lover of both Azure and Thorn
- Io (yellow canary), an orphan from a manufacturing town in decline and member of the Jovians, whose farfetched dream of becoming an engineer was squashed by her unusual magic talent
- Ganymede (osprey), another Jovian who turns to the priesthood of the state church after finding himself unable to bear being a Messenger
- Europa (flamingo), another Jovian, a rule-follower with clear-cut dreams of going into magic academy administration
- Arcturus (snowy owl), a mostly silent and pensive young man who proves powerless against the court system
- Caesar (ostrich), a sweet soul who was tormented for his weight and left Messengership for small business ownership
- Pan (mandarin duck), Cirque's twin, an irreverent but lovable jokester who prefers to avoid political questions
- Kai (mockingbird), a former teen tennis prodigy-turned-Messenger, the intelligent but drug-addled cynic and constant devil's advocate/black sheep of the group
- Flora (Lady Amherst's pheasant), an extremely powerful Messenger with quiet ambitions to catastrophically undermine the institutions that praise and also devalue her
- Cirque (mandarin duck), Pan's twin, an eccentric with a dry sense of humor and no sense of self-preservation