Harpy
Basic Information
Anatomy
A humanoid species with the torso of a person, their arms are replaced with wings, and their legs are the claws and scales that of birds. Typically, small, wing-like ears grow out from their heads in place of ears. Their overall facial features are sharp and fearsome, with only a few sub-races approaching something resembling 'soft' or 'round'. As aerial monsters, harpies are generally athletic, trim, and possess little body fat. Combined with their notorious disposition, this has earned them a well-deserved reputation for one of the nastiest predators in the sky.
There is some variety to the visual profile of harpies, normally a result of adaptation to either environment or role. Colder climate dwelling ones possess more feathers, almost appearing fully covered in a fur-like equivalent. Temperate, hot, and/or humid ones are more familiar to most people with their bird-like limbs and human-like torsos. High-speed harpies may be sleeker in both form and feather disposition, helping obtain their absurd speed thresholds. Stronger (for a harpy) ones may bulk up, centering more on aerial mobility and power than one of speed or agility.
Overall, their human-like portions are covered in very fine, short feathers (often easily confused for fur). Their faces are accented by particular growths, such as on the brow, chin, jaw, cheeks, etc. In a sense, this is a kind of visual fingerprint, as to their eyes each harpy's facial features are very distinct at the family-level of recognition.
Their color ranges are across the spectrum, and chiefly complimentary to their natural environment. The human-like skin, when enough of their feathers are gone for it to be seen, can vary between pale, peachy, and dark browns, as dictated by their native environment.
They are mildly sexually dimorphic, with the females possessing wilder looking feathers, wider hips, and enlarged breasts. Males are usually more visually complex, possessing numerous colors, higher clarity dispositions, and other attractive qualities compared to females. Otherwise, at a glance, it can be difficult to distinguish males and females apart if one is unfamiliar. As a whole, one could consider them a 'female-expressing' species in a physical sense, with only their coloration usually betraying one's sex.
Biological Traits
Keen Senses – They have strong eye sight and hearing, letting them hunt from hundreds of meters up in the sky.
Light-weight Body – To better serve their primarily air-centric lifestyle, their bones and body have shed a considerable amount of weight. Blunt trauma, in particular, is devastating against them.
Wind Magic – Their magical inclination, should any exist at all, is type-locked into wind magic.
Territorial – Harpies are absurdly territorial with each other and their 'competition'; but for those they see beneath themselves, they ignore (as they're normally prey).
Lacking tool-workable appendages, the harpies make do with what they can involving their feet and mouths. Their wings are normally reserved for very delicate activities, such as fanning each other, petting one another, and so forth. To outside views, the usage of their talon-tipped feet seems threatening if not downright dangerous, but it is no more to them than it is a human grabbing another human. Other species, however, do not benefit from this familiarity and often treat such normal gestures with serious alarm and concern. For the finest of operations, their mouths and tongues are used, but understandably this is usually a rare decision.
They're especially susceptible to physical restraining, as it directly interacts with their instincts. If they are restrained or overpowered, they become supple and subservient. As an example, locking one's thighs around a harpy's head is one of their ultimate dominating techniques. If you're willing to brave them potentially biting your junk apart, they'll quickly submit. Face-sitting, by proxy, is also considered a power move. These often do not have sexual connotations to them, though for many others it is a hard-to-ignore appearance. Hugging is an intimate maneuver, as it means opening one's self up in a very vulnerable manner.
Genetics and Reproduction
Hybrids normally inherit their father's characteristics heavily, and it isn't uncommon for hybrid harpies to gain so much body mass they can no longer fly normally (if possible at all, it's usually a form of gliding). They do adopt some color tendencies, but this is reflected on the tips of their feathers if it does appear.
Civilization and Culture
Relationship Ideals
Power and dominance dictate the harpy mindset in all ways, including romance. Being naturally poly-amorous, their system is based more on one supreme mate (typically female), and then subordinate mates. So long as the appropriate amount of pampering and attention is given, the dominant is content to let their subordinates do as they please (even with breeding). The net result tends to be, in frank terms, a mess of harpy genealogy and family structure. In their minds, all children belong to the dominant, which is 'good enough'.
Thus, harpy courtship centers on forming attractive qualities (beauty and power, primarily), demonstrating one's ability to either pamper or be pampered (by establishing dominance), and providing for their mates (in either safety, food, or sex). Physical activity in general is their most stimulating past time, with intellectual pursuits being regarded as strange or unknowable. Games they are fine with, so long as the rules are simple enough to learn and their oversized wings can participate.
Civilized harpies tend to adopt the norms of their dominant culture, though their underlying instincts remain. In some ways, they are amplified, as the normally indulgent impulses are suppressed to enable cohabitation.
Culture and Cultural Heritage
Distinctly predatory, and normally raised in rudimentary societies, harpies are mean, nasty, and utterly vicious. They recognize the need for cooperation, but it is always a social power struggle, and those on top can often be supplanted by more cunning or dangerous peons than expected. Ambition, is thus, punished unless one has the means to protect or endure with it. Where power is not threatened or displayed as such, however, they do take care of their own.
Lacking in the hands necessary for fine creative work, many harpies seek expression through song or body, invariably creating a dynamic range of expression. These dances, rituals, methods, and more can be seen as quite strange or alien to others, but they all take pride in it. In many ways, the most peaceful dialogues that happen with harpies tend to be during open-air festivals or other gatherings.
Harpy society could be seen as turbulent, and while it has spikes of great turmoil, it is also reasonably stable. Once the overall power structure finishes a transition, normalcy returns almost as if nothing has really changed ... until the new powers decide to do something. So long as food and sex are in abundance, most harpies are content to be lazy hedonists. Those who feel a higher, learned calling, only have options in joining the strict religious orders or leaving completely for another species' civilization.
That itself is quite difficult, considering most current civilizations regard them as problematic pests at best.
In a classical demonstration of 'nature versus nurture', however, is that many harpies born in other civilizations exhibit reasonable civility and personality. Their physiology not withstanding, one can find them fulfilling a number of niche but valuable roles, such as messenger delivery, reagent/archaeological surveying, construction, farming, and other fields that make use of their aerial talents. Harpy scholars–an oxymoronic term in itself–are even possible, with some becoming the only meaningful authorities on their wilder, tribe-like brethren.
History
A world-renowned species comparable to dragons in notoriety, though for vastly different reasons. Whether seen as pests, guardians, messengers of the Goddesses, or what, harpies are voracious aerial predators. Chiefly subsisting on a meat-centric diet, they are selectively picky about certain kinds of fruits and nuts to complement their food. Combined with their mindset, a great deal of cultures often give warnings to children and the infirm to be careful or a harpy may snatch them away.
This same disposition has, along with their tool-unfriendly physiology, left the harpies in a perpetually deadlocked Neolithic stage of development. Rudimentary farming is present in the largest of tribes, but it is seen as a simpleton's novelty compared to the art of hunting. In a perhaps ironic twist, they are capable of some astounding feats thanks to their wind magic. The current mega-tribes inhabit large floating islands above the cloud-layer suspended by their magic, a veritable peak of civil achievement for them. Considering the lack of any notable writing save chicken scratch, it boggles scholars how they achieve such strenuous feats.
Thus, much of the history of the harpy tribes and their species can only be drawn in relation to what writing other cultures have made. This, itself, is somewhat unreliable, as the norms of those cultures can misunderstand the nature of harpies. Little oral or verbal traditions carry on through the generations, save the most renowned and world-shaking events.
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