Not only are you fast and creative, but you pay wonderful attention to details. As soon as I saw the name Sabrenal, my heart fluttered for a moment in joy - quickly followed by, 'omg, I wonder if she saw the part about...' - and then I saw your concept. I like it. I want to take it one step further, but for now let's leave it at that.
Okay, so I have to admit I have been refining my knowledge of
Utahraptor (N America) and
Megaraptor (S America) and I think I can clearly state that we want the Raptorinal to be a Dromeosaurid, which is like that of Utahraptor, Deinonychus, Velocirator, et al. This is in stark contrast to the monster Spinosaurid-like front-clawed Megaraptor we have in our MMIs. After a lot of thought, and now seeing that size reference chart online I am a lot more inclined to produce a large-sized iconic representative of that variety.
I will make you a deal to compensate: We retain the original Raptorinal as the 'base' creature, and develop a large-sized advanced 'general' caste creature with further abilities, and the 'Companion' of this race (should there be one in the end - and by this I mean a racial paragon or leader of this type of dinopriminal) would be an even further huge-sized advancement beyond that. I think our Generals should have paladin-like traits. I forget the Favored Class I had in mind for them atm, but that is my thought on it.
I will have to return to Sabrenal - my mind was not set on that concept yet, but I can see you did a great job with it. I will run over it again later.
Also, you mentioned a concept you were working on for Psittacosaurus (Parodinal) - but I never saw it. I would love to even see a draft at this point, and get your input on the other things I had written down for them, such as the
mind blade idea.
I am still open to new naming ideas for sure, but is there any way to make the Gorgonopsian variety sound any less like Gorgon, so there is no mistaking the identity for that of the scary bull-like creature from MMI/mythology?? Gorgonal does that to me when I hear it, so I suspect anyone using or hearing this for the first time might also make that assumption without some sort of precedent to compare it to... (aka, your DM looks at you after snagging this off a web page and says rather bluntly and semi-educated, "Well, after your initiative and spot checks, you can plainly see you're fighting a GORGONAL," and holds up a picture... Is it related? Should you not make that guess? Should I look it up when I go home?) That's really my only beef on the current name. It should also somehow embody the spirit of most therapsids in general, but I know where your inspiration is coming from... The only restriction to naming conventions for these creatures is that they end in 'al' - all guardinals share this name segment alone.
Gorgosinal, Gorgonopsinal, Gorgontheranal, Gorgothenal, Therapsinal, Therapsidal, Therapsal, Thernal are all possibilities in that sense, and really many more. I know anything with Gorgon in it will run the risk, but we are only fighting against the naming of that one species as it is - and we both know that it has the same lore as the mythological creature of real-life Earth... So I am pretty flexible on it - but Gorgonal just runs that line really close. I think maybe even Gorgosal has less of that feeling and still keeps the letters of
Gorgonopsian/Gorgonopsidae/Gorgonopsina section of Therapsida.
I really want your honest input on the Sivanal write-up and what your feelings are on the Incarnum stuff. Is it approachable from knowing nothing about Incarnum? Do you perhaps know stuff about Incarnum or not? I'm also really enjoying making the drawing for it, and hoping to do the same for all the rest of these and many dinos/prims as well (potentially a publication?)....
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