Harpy
Large Arial predators with adaptations towards both ambush hunting and persistence hunting exemplifying their place in a grey area between monster and person. Some harpies in highland areas favor swift dives off of sheer cliffs onto unsuspecting targets. Others utilize their magical voices to lure in travelers, banking upon the fact that only weak willed, and presumably weaker targets will fall for their lure. Others still embrace persistence hunting and mundane deception, soaring so high as to resemble vultures, and diving only to consume helpless targets….
Basic Information
Anatomy
The harpy body plan fuses arm and wing, rather than having separate arms and wings. This has the advantage of improving flight, to the detriment of fine motor skills. Harpies have human like faces, though they lack noses. Like birds, their bones are hollow, but their bones also serve a double role as lungs, increasing buoyancy and making up for increased mass. Despite their sentience and somewhat humanoid body plan, harpies are classified as monstrosities.
Genetics and Reproduction
Harpies, for some reason are a nearly entirely mono gendered race. Male harpies are entirely infertile, with mating instead occurring exogenously among other races, or via magic. Harpies as a whole have very little genetic diversity, to the point that they have changed very little over their history. The use of magic for breeding has the effect of amplifying generational similarity to the extent that each generation can be roughly seen as a clone of the last, at least in some cases. The lack of a mating capability among male harpies hints at the current state of the harpies being an unnatural one, as few if any other races (even the orcs) cannot breed naturally within their species.
Growth Rate & Stages
Harpy wings grow very quickly, and the rest of the body catches up. While harpies are dangerous in adulthood, during their youth, harpies make easy prey. Thus, flight is essential. The first lesson a harpy is ever taught is how to fly, it is said, as it is the one skill that a harpy must master above all others to survive. Without it, no strength, even that gained from adulthood is enough to ensure a serviceably long life. Tragically, or not depending on your point of view, the harpy life expectancy is short regardless.
Ecology and Habitats
Harpies can be found about anywhere, though most often, they can be found where there are high altitudes and defensible areas for nests, such as mountains, some forests, and seaside crags. Though harpies need and prefer such locations for their defensibility. Harpies struggle with the cold despite their plumage, and typically settle for lower, but more mild sites to build nests. For this reason, harpies can usually not be found on mountain peaks, except for individual or small groups of full adults, and it is nearly certain that such a place is not their residence.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Harpies are known as man eaters, but scavengers is more fitting. Harpies do not typically enjoy enough food security to be fitting, given that very few, if any sedentary harpy communities exist, fewer still who could even potentially farm for themselves. The lack of proteins in most vegetation also tends to make at least some meat a necessity. Thus emerges the most prominent issue for harpykind, a large population of harpies does not tend to have the means to sustain itself, which either drives further expansion of their range, or over scavenging to the point where other species take notice and action against the harpy community living there, forcing migration or death.
Biological Cycle
Harpies tend to moult and change in appearence as they age, typically in pigmintation. Some may even migrate to other areas of the continent when it begins to chill outside to stay in an appropriate enviroment.
Behaviour
Harpies are imitators par excellence. They tend to take up the habits and languages of the people around which they live. Harpies are also exceptional collectors who can identify valuable objects at a glance, this originates in the often symbiotic (or parasitic) relationship they have with witches. Harpies are also quick learners, as such, those who put their minds to skills often reach some level of proficiency.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Harpy vision is highly tuned towards distant objects. This comes to the detriment of vision near to their eyes. This has the effect of encouraging harpies to fly high, or otherwise find high perches, as close range ambushes or other similar strategies are not viable. This has also had the effect of making harpy personal effects more tactile than visual, as the same keen sense of spatial awareness that allows harpies to gauge the wind also grants them a finely tuned sense of touch.
Civilization and Culture
Naming Traditions
Because of the limited population of harpies. Harpies tend to have only one name, which is either simply a sound, or a word which a given harpy heard and found fitting for the hatchling. A good majority of harpies are not even named, owing to the rather solitary nature of most harpies. When harpies share a name, they tend to distinguish based on where said harpy came from.
Beauty Ideals
Most art, or beauty in general tends to be unique. Most harpies tend to find colors, and textures the most striking for beauty. Individual harpies with respect to self grooming tend to either emphasize either meticulous self cleaning, or simply letting the feathers fall where they may.
When harpies have leisure, some take the time to leave behind markings in striking colors, those who could be said to live in a more extended harpy grouping even may come up with distinct emblems. Either to mark territories, or simply a memory. Among the harpies, memory is precious, and nearly entirely dead. The oral traditions, and other typical cultural touchstones for other societies have generally yielded to immediate necessity among harpies, leading to cultural moribundity.
Relationship Ideals
Most harpy relationships are “familial” in structure. Or in friendships. Birds of a feather flock together after all. Most often, harpy relationships tend to be more caustic than warm. It serves as a defensive mechanism for over-attachment and an outlet for combativeness that tends to become pent up during solitude.
Common Dress Code
Harpies sometimes wear clothes. Mostly made by other species. As sewing is rather difficult for harpies to do. Otherwise they tend to wear simple coverings, skulls, other ornaments.
Common Taboos
Not many. But there are a few rules.
1: It’s bad luck to refuse anything from a witch. (Which encompasses practically anyone with magical prowess).
2: Do not fight on the ground. Just don’t.
3: Never get too comfortable.
History
Nobody really knows how harpies came to be. Because of the lack of a literary tradition, primary and secondary sources are scarce. In the histories of other species, harpies have remained relatively constant as collectors, scavengers, and monsters. This lack of change is somewhat pervasive in the psyche of the species, with ennui and depression becoming especially common among older harpies, who have more time to consider the future of their species as their bodies atrophy.
Common Myths and Legends
There is one shared myth among harpies and in the rest of the world:
She who sings without a voice. The first recorded harpy. There was one story that depicted harpies as not monsters. A trickster god. To teach mankind the rules without inspiring fear.
Many animals struggled to create a totem which would explain the rules.
Eventually four humble creatures were found up in a tree. A singing coyote. A crow that sang without a voice. And a raven which wanted to steal the light. And the listening rabbit. These creatures were said to eventually become the harpies, gnolls, vorpal rabbits, etc. The crow was said to become the first of harpies, the one who sang and made silence. She is something of a boogeyman for harpies, whose singing is oftentimes the center of their existences.
Genetic Descendants
Lifespan
70 eclipses
Average Height
5'11" - 6'3"
Average Weight
160 - 200lb
Related Organizations
Drops
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