Anon, what are your setting's harpies like?

>>96253078 (OP)
straight outta Strofades

Bats with TITS

>>96253078 (OP)
If I'm including a race like harpies, I'm probably going to be having them be the generic bird people. Which means the ladies will have their lower bodies all monstrous, but otherwise be ladylike with some additional bird features.
Wheras the men will have human legs, big beefy human arms, and a bird head. Possibly torso as well, it's tricky with harpies since they have wings traditionally. Normally I'd stick most of the monstrous parts on the upper body for males, but oh well.

>>96253078 (OP)
I don't think I've ever used a harpy in my 10+ years of DMing.

>>96253078 (OP)
I run WFRP. Harpies are beastwomen in my games. Yes, I am aware there are ancient G&F novels with beast-does, but I prefer to just have the harpies be them.

>>96253144
I've used them, just not in my own setting.
My traditional use for harpies are carrying party members the fuck away, and for sitting in a tree near the party while they're doing something challenging to add the universal pressure of girls watching.

witches can turn into harpies and form harpy covens

>>96253078 (OP)
Why does that look so much better than the rest of the artist's work, I don't understand.

>>96253078 (OP)

>>96253078 (OP)
They live in the top of tall towers where they jerk off and push adventurers to their deaths for fun

They lure Human men to eat them and feed their chicks.

>>96253078 (OP)
Corvid-based doctors, traders, and messengers drawn from a single instance of the animal-wife story with an only slightly magical carrion crow that attained human form by bodging together a face-stealing ritual and necromantic empowerment in the middle of a Chinese Warring States-esque fuckhuge battlefield to practice EXTENSIVELY with and a peasant conscript with really nasty issues around mortality that rubbed off on the wife.

When the much nastier than usual flight of the classic story model occurred, the wife went back to normal-ass carrion crows and about three crow-generations later realized she kept a near-human lifespan. While the immediate line of descent was extinguished with extreme prejudice for actively hunting people down for increasingly elaborate live sacrifices, some of the adapted-for-birdbrain shapeshifting lessons rubbed off on a few flocks of other species of corvids that settled out in the germ-line at "wings for arms and bird below the waist" and kept pursuing less-assholish methods of life extension, including for their non-hybridized and thus still normal-ass-bird relatives.

Thanks to the lifespan difference between the just-smart-bird and harpy populations allowing for savants to test against senescence, they've gotten to ~40-60% life extension on humans, ~85-150 years post-youth-mortality life expectancy for themselves, and a wondrous two and a half fold lifespan for the "pure" birds... Which for perspective is "only" a hundred years on the common raven. There are of course nigh-miraculous reagents and rituals of dubious morality to go far longer, but due to the cultural scars of "man-eating rape-flocks" it's REALLY harshly biased toward the widely-applicable.

>>96253078 (OP)
>thread image by Mossa
Brave anon.

>>96253078 (OP)
Like cute anime girls. They're nomads and explorers, with a lover in every port. Effectively stateless so they don't have much in the way of rights in many places.

>>96253078 (OP)
In ancient times, they were a group of women who were cursed after killing and devouring a Nephil, turned into half-bestial scavengers. Of course, said Nephil had enslaved said women as his harem, so one might say he had it coming, but consuming divinely-cursed flesh and offending heathen deities nonetheless has consequences. Some became violent and feral and succumbed entirely to their curse, becoming the Harpies of legend. The most powerful of these ended up being worshiped (or feared) in their own right as Furies. A smaller number retained more of their intelligence, but were still subject to the same cannibalistic urges, and rather than wandering abroad, used magic to lure sailors to their island, becoming the Sirens.

Of course, as most of the games I run are set in the modern or near-modern era, almost all of the harpies are long since dead or fled. Those who weren't slain in the age of heroes or the classical era ended up retreating to secluded mountain-peaks or isolated islands after the Incarnation, when they lost most of their magic and thus their ability to terrorize humanity.

>>96253078 (OP)
Depends on which of my settings it is.
Some of them don't have harpies.
Some of them do, but they're only in-world fiction.
Others have them, but I never thought about actually making them.

>>96253078 (OP)
Traditional games?

>>96253333
I'm kind of pissed how much more I like it than his other work.
I wish I had more stuff like this.

>>96253078 (OP)
Harpies and mermaids (sirens) are variants of the same race of monsters. They kidnap young women and kill men. The young women are converted into new harpies/mermaids and the men are eaten.

>>96253078 (OP)
Why don't you tell us about yours?

>>96253078 (OP)
>Anon, what are your setting's harpies like?

Distantly related to Sphinx, they're rude, mean, kinda cute, kinda stupid, but they have that same morbid curiosity and a vague cunning that belays an ability to become fantastically intelligent if given the resources. Both the males and females look similar, but in bird-fashion it is the males that possess the larger breasts and garish colouration.

Obligate carnivores, they have a fondness for picking up prey and dropping it off the side of the mountains they live on to let the fall kill them. They prey on small to medium herbivores, but will also attack people if it's convenient or if they happen to be loaded with irresistible treasures (anything shiny or colorful like polished glass or bronze, coral, pearls & shells, exotic feathers, gold & silvery jewelry). The exception is Aasimar. Harpies are very broody, very cliquey, and very prideful, and see the Aasimar as a "fellow great winged people", capable of peacefully co-habituating with the more humanoid Aasimar despite the stark contrast in alignments/disposition.

Harpies are also completely subservient to their much larger, more powerful cousins, the Sphinx; out of a mixture of admiration and abject fear. Most Sphinx will have a brood of Harpy nesting in some unused corner of their lair whether they invited them or not.

>>96253221
What is this, a comic for ants?

>>96254863
>640x5910
>for ants
View it at full size, retard.

>>96254725
>but in bird-fashion it is the males that possess the larger breasts and garish colouration.
You were so close. I could give you the garish colouration but the breasts thing is weird. The males aren't the ones who produce eggs they don't need the excess body weight.

omg why are her testicles so big???

>>96253214
nice colours

>>96253078 (OP)
futa, obviously
next question

>>96255186
>The males aren't the ones who produce eggs they don't need the excess body weight.

Anon you're quoting:
Many bird species are deeply monogamous and share brooding responsibilities; they take turns sitting on the egg, bringing food, some sea birds like penguins and albatrosses need to do this or they'll starve due to the massive gaps between foraging, and every carnivorous bird I can think of is much the same way. There are 2 species of bird (that I can name atm) that produce something like milk: flamingos and pigeons, and in both cases both the males and the females produce the substance. Birds simply do not share the same sexual or reproductive norms as us.

If Harpies do indeed have breasts then it stands to reason the males would have the bigger more 'voluptuous' knockers: both because either of them would be capable of nursing their young, and because the male harpy is the one doing the explicit sexual display.

>>96255242

>>96253078 (OP)
My setting is early modern fantasy.
Physically they look exactly like OPs pic. They are (mostly) carnivorous nomads and hunter-gatherers, they keep chickens and fowl as livestock, use pigeons for communication and falcons to hunt, and ride griffins, pterosaurs and giant eagles. They are greedy, violent, cruel and curious. Shiny things fascinate them and they have no qualms about roasting a human over a firepit. 9 out of 10 harpies are female so many outsiders assume them to be an all female race. Male harpies are cockatrices, they are larger, rarer, poisionous and much more violent. Harpy families are harems of 20-50 females and one male, like lions or elephant seals. Occasionally, hundreds or thousands of harpy families will gather into flocks and migrate until they find a suitable base and roost there, sacking and raiding anybody in their path.
Harpy soldiers tend to be archers, slingers, scouts, messengers and airborne light cavalry. They also have hot air balloons, like the Nazca hot air balloons. Most of the time they are auxiliaries and mercenaries for other armies.
Harpies are terrified of dragons, who are seen as devils in their worldview. They worship the angels of the setting. They are great singers, can copy any sound and have very strong oral traditions that stretch back centuries, so harpy sages and lorekeepers are sought out by scholars. The exact words of an ancient sorcerer-king in his own voice repeated by a harpy hundreds of years later is considered more trustworthy then a book.
Their origins are debated, from a human subspecies, to sinful women cursed, to animals given sentience, demons conjured up from hell.

>>96255225
How does that interact with the dynamic of their flight? Does the erection work as a rudder?

>>96253078 (OP)
Fake.

>>96253333
This is 4chan, not troonsky.

>>96255186
I assume anon means something like this

Cloacas? or harpeepees and harpyssy?

>>96253221
Now I want to know what happened next

>>96253078 (OP)
Giant crows with large, dextrous feet and near human intelligence. Functionally, they're basically gypsies, getting driven from place to place whenever the locals get sick of them.

>>96254319
Yes, harpy’s are in traditional games
>>96253078 (OP)
It’s a cursed state inflicted on vain women, one of the three curses of Sru, god of mirrors(Gorgons and Hags being the other two) they keep a beautiful head/face but the rest is filth encrusted and buzzard like. They stink to high hell, don’t realize they have been cursed and attack anyone who doesn’t act infatuated with them or doesn’t shower them with complements

>>96254863
> Open in new tab
> Remove the "m" before the jp at the end
Someone on 4chan taught me this a week or so ago, it's literally the most useful thing I ever got from this website

>>96256443
the artist's name is "Pocketss" they have a lot more comics with the harpies and also with other creatures. Mainly goblins.

>>96256595
Thanks, serves me right for browsing on mobile :-/

>>96253144
Then let me throw an idea at you that I've used mountain-living ambush-hunter butcher bird harpies.

>>96254499
Just because the rest of artist's portfolio contains some questionable stuff is no reason to stop enjoying the good parts.

>>96257464
Though it becomes somewhat harder to justify when everything but the one good image is the weird shit.

>>96256729
I'm on mobile and I did it just fine.

>>96253078 (OP)
They're part of an extradimensional invasion force of hobgoblins. Bred from the base hobgoblin stock, they serve as scouts and a harassing force. They're not particularly smart and not as useful for grunt work as goblins, but they serve a purpose because they need less of a supply train.

>>96253078 (OP)
Taloned limbs, arms as wings, different variations thematically aligned with some types of birds, otherwise pretty human-looking. Birds of prey are like hunters, while birds associated with omens are shamanistic.

>>96253078 (OP)
Harpies are very dangerous monsters in my game. May carry away fallen players (which means insta death), are quite strong and employ a few hypnotic spells.
May steal horses and pets If the players have them.
When It comes to appearance, well, I like to imagine them not much different from your picture.

you can tell a lot about a man on where he sits on the harpy arms debate

>>96258285
Do go on. What a short and simple assertion that you didn't explain even slightly.

>>96258295
it was just a joke on what types of harpy media people consume anon

>>96257496
This dude was always weird but somehow he managed to get worse over time. He doesn't even do absorption anymore.

>>96256650
>>96256443
>>96253221
She was born from a good egg. Fertilized and all.

>>96253078 (OP)
Would

>>96253078 (OP)

>>96253078 (OP)
Screeching, bloodthirsty predators with huge, perfect tits that lull in retards that are soon devoured.

>>96253078 (OP)
Them, along with birdmen, are subservient to a giant Roc that tyrants over the sky. Compared to the birdmen, they obey less out of loyalty and more out of fear.
Generally look like pic related, except for the old Baba harpy of the tribe. She looks like a traditional harpy with the body of a bird and head of a person. I will never explain why.

>>96253078 (OP)
Food source for other demihumans

>>96261796
Forgot to mention, but they are both violent, stupid, and generally detest outsiders. Not very nice despite their appearance

Like sirens just in the air. No real intelligence, they are basically beasts. They may lure you in with song or repeated learned phrases, or they may just straight up attack. They may often be lead by a hag who controls them from the nest area in the mountains, hills, islands in the ocean or in the deep forests.

>>96253078 (OP)
One of several beast races that inhabit the unexplored east. Like the cynocephalae, the horned ones, sheepmen, and occasionally centaurs, groups of harpies can be found serving as mercenaries or foederati for the human kingdoms slowly pushing eastwards. Harpies, however, are unique for a few reasons: first, they are an all-female race; second, all adult harpies can fly; third, they can interbreed with males of almost any other race (but all offspring are harpies). This combination of attributes makes them tremendously popular as soldiery, but their rather lax conception of things like "law and order", "property", or "consent" means that they rarely stay in one place for long.

The harpies in my setting can be both male and female or a secret third gender that is achieved upon unlocking their special powers that I am still cooking as a homebrew mechanic for my setting.

>>96254851
What's that from?

>>96262740
Man, if only there was a way to read the filename...

>>96254863
Phoneposter scum

>>96253078 (OP)
unf

>>96253078 (OP)

Gun-toting autocrats. They start with hunting rifles as hatchlings and graduate to semiautomatics by adulthood. Some train even harder to field miniguns and ordnance launchers. They still have to remind themselves that sapients aren't on the menu anymore.

Thirsty for man-cock.
There, I said it, fuck the rest of you for being cowards.

>>96256138
anything princess tutu adjacent is good
>>96256182
reddit also hates him

>>96253078 (OP)
>Anon, what are your setting's harpies like?
Harpies were originally produced by wizards, specifically by using a "humanization" spell on normal birds. while recent populations are stable and healthy, nevertheless their arcane origins have made them caughtious of true humans. modern harpies can be split into five categories
>Songbird harpies
usually harmless, these smaller variants come from species such as hummingbirds, robins, sitchbirds or pittas. some braver individuals of this variety have found themselves elevated to stardom for their singing prowess
>"True" harpies
the largest group, made from species such as doves, crows, ravens, magpies... and generally anything else that doesn't neatly fit into another class. presumably you don't need an explanation of these ones
>Hunting harpies
Dangerous, these tend to be larger than the average and hail from species such as eagles, falcons, owls, and albatrosses. smaller adventurers will find them willing to outright kidnap individuals to hold for ransom, though most will just lose an arm if not welcome in their territory
>Landlocked harpies
the second rarest type, produced from usually flightless birds such as penguins or ostritches. not much is really known about these, aside from the fact they are great at stealth.
>Arcane harpies
an outlier class from those foolish enough to try to humanize a mythical beast, such as a roc of phoenix. tend to copy the same abilities as it's origins, which usually means a height above 12 feet tall and quite the prideful nature.
anyone who survives making one is likely to end up a plaything, though there is no evidence they don't just kill their creators.

Semi-feral abominations; science and sorcery gone wrong.

>>96258285
back of the head

>>96271853
Just assume the animal-wife origin story ends with bird-fucking.

>>96253078 (OP)
scavengers, mostly

>>96253078 (OP)
Productive members of society

>>96253078 (OP)
Not like whatever your hideous calart feces in the OP looks like you faggot janny boardshitter.

>>96253078 (OP)
soft

>>96274620
Being unable to speak moon, I assume she can add or remove her chest fluff at will.

>>96274783
It's chingchong, not moon. Summer and winter lumage.

They are dumb. animal levle intellgince. and are all female.

The male parts are tengu and are actually sentient

>>96253078 (OP)
>Anon, what are your setting's harpies like?
Very large, intelligent, sarcastic harpy eagles that can talk. They are used as messengers and familiars.

>>96253078 (OP)
Sex crazed fiends of the sky that EXCLUSIVELY search for White human male mates to abduct.

>>96253214
Which artist is it?

>>96262752
I'm on a phone. I can't see the file name and downloading it automatically gives it a series of numbers for the name.

>>96278878
lurk more

>>96253078 (OP)
I've never actually had them. Harpies don't come to my mind as fantasy creatures for whatever reason.

>>96253078 (OP)
I think basically every modern setting either treats harpies as a generic mob monster, or conflates them with sirens and has them be "seductive" somehow (or just makes them monster girlfriends, pic related)

Harpies in Greek myth were variously wind spirits, servants of the gods (Zeus mostly), or semi-divine themselves, sometimes with powers of prophecy.

>>96253214
It's not tainted with the subtle or not so subtle guro/rape touches put into most of his art.

>>96262740
>>96279204
Ronja the Robber Daughter on Netflix

>>96253078 (OP)
For my modern fantasy system they come in a few varieties. They're all female and can reproduce without a mate (or with one, they have a special naming convention for having a father) which produces a physical clone of the mother. They have three-fingered hand-talons so they can actually use weapons, can fly, and are small (meaning they can carry and lift less and struggle with Oversized tagged weapons). They live in treetop cities near the not-elves in the setting. Their naming convenetions are based on what they become known for when they come of age (I.e., a harpy who is a fast flier might be known as She Who Soars on Updrafts), and if they have a father they add "Tree of [Father's surname" to that (I.e. She Who Soars on updrafts, Tree of Smith idk I suck at names). Their native tongue is a form of birdsong. They all have natural talon weapons that let their Unarmed Attacks do Cutting damage. The Subspecies are:
>Songbird
Bright colors, charismatic.increase the penalty for the Distract Action by +1 (reduces the target's next defense check), +1 to Initiate Checks.
>Raptor
Based on birds of prey, bigger, stronger, better at grappling (+1 bonus).
>Raven
Corvids. They're smarter, know an extra language and gain +1 to resist (mental) saving throws.
>Runner
Land birds like ostriches. They have a faster ground speed, cannot fly, reduce the Skill Requirement to wear all armor by -1, and gain +1 to the Demoralize action's imposed penalty (reduces the target's next attack check) because they're basically australians.

There's also generic subspecies options:
- Draconic makes you a Wyvern
- Half-Breed depends on the father.
- Highblood makes you angelic with swan-like features
- Lowblood makes you demonic with bat-like wings and horns
- Undead makes you a ghost or skeleton as it does for the other Species.

Pic is an OC I drew that i've co-opted into art for the handbook, classified as a Songbird.

>>96253078 (OP)
Weird Ugly long-necked creatures that lives high in the mountains and feed on travelers that fall from the sidepaths, lulled by their songs. More scavengers than anything. They are born from magical storms from curses created by hags.

>>96279204
>I-I'm on a phone!
Switch to desktop view or literally just tap the file size under the thumbnail

>>96284295
That pic activated more neurons than I thought it would.

>>96284592
It was good enough to have someone comm me to basically design a Harpy OC for them based on hair/feather color, clothing color, and vague personality, picrel (which I'm probably going to use for the Raven art in the handbook if I get his permission, I"ll throw credits in that part of the book if he does for the character concept).

>>96253078 (OP)
Abominations made through biomancy, and meant to be fancy/sexy/creepy pets for the higher classes of a decadent empire of elven mage-kings that collapsed not so long ago (some 400 years before the setting's present) after provoking what's basically the setting's version of WW1 and WW2 rolled together into a single conflict.
Many of them escaped into the wild after the fall of their masters, and now proliferate in a wide territory that's mostly uninhabited but through where a lot of caravans connecting West and East pass through, so no sortage of victims to prey upon. They can reproduce fast and are quite intelligent for what's basically a breed of humongous, bloodthirsty crows, so the dumbest have already been wiped out and only the cautious and really smart remain.
A very few of them are developing true sentience, probably due to the human essence used in their making, and are starting to distanciate themselves from their savage kin while trying to establish a society of sorts, but are basically flying cavemen at the moment. They refrain from killing people, tho.
Male harpies exist (I call them "mehero/s", just tor differentiation), but they look just like the females minus tits and longer claws.
Your pic is pretty much spot on of their looks (i love Mossa), but they can vary a lot in color, including bright greens, reds and blues like those from tropical birds. They were created to be pretty to look at, after all.
>>96273122
>Semi-feral abominations; science and sorcery gone wrong.
mein negger

>>96253078 (OP)
Hideous dangerous monsters, pic related.

>>96284797
Is the artist on the internet anywhere?

>>96285170
I am the artist, but I don't draw all that much. I just really like harpies. And robot girls, but I'm not confident in my ability to draw robots well. Rule about advertising and all that, the mods already hate me here for not being terminally online, but if you shove the rainbow bird into google image search it's the first result by my measure anyhow.

>>96285195
Oh, whoops, misread the previous post. Keep up the good work

(unrelated random harpy picture)

>>96253078 (OP)
Vicious, petty, hungry and immortal. They are a punishment from the gods, malice itself granted ageless flesh to spread misery, pain, filth and infection across humanity. Harpies are not clever, but they are supernaturally strong and tough and every moment not spent causing anguish is used to plot and one up one another in ever escaling plans for their cruelty. They will eat your children in front of you, tear out your eyes and come back the next day to shit and vomit in your wounds and call it a mercy they did not do worse.

>>96253078 (OP)
disgraced valkyries that eat corpses on battlefields. basically flying ghouls with crow heads


>>96253214
it doesn't have the guro/rape/anorexic fetish the rest of his art gets splattered with

Up until this moment, I thought I was maybe a bit too into harpies. I have a fair few images saved, and I could rattle off the names of a dozen or so artists who regularly draw birb girls.

But I was just looking on danbooru for an image to post in this thread, and I noticed something: of the ~5,800 images tagged "harpy" on danbooru, *over 53% were uploaded by the one user*

I don't know who you are, Veraducks, but you've suddenly made me feel very normal.

Quick sketch of how they were described in my last campaign.

>pretty women wearing what looked like feathered capes were sitting by the water with their backs to us
>had seen sailors wearing the same thing; assume its the local style
>hair worn in very low bangs, smiling and chatting
>too far away to make out what they're saying
>fighter goes up to speak to them
>one looks at him, makes a beckoning motion to come closer
>as soon as he's near, her neck fucking stretched out like green heron and she throws open her "cape", which are actually her wings, her arms were actually her legs this whole time
>she grabs him by the throat and another grabs him by the arms so he can't draw his weapons
>the others start singing as they lift him off the ground, mesmerizing us so we couldn't attack
>they choke him out and then dash him against the rocks while more harpies come to start eating him
>it was two against seven at that point, so we abandoned him
>later found out that the sailors sew the feathers of harpies on their stuff to discourage harpy attacks at sea

>>96286330
>disgraced valkyries that eat corpses on battlefields. basically flying ghouls with crow heads

I like this idea.

>>96286723
Thank you for making me feel better about how much I like bird people by proxy. I also feel a lot closer to normal, knowing Veraducks is out there.

I had a writeup but it was too long.

https://files.catbox.moe/aaiyq9.txt

>>96253078 (OP)
Flat chested because they're birds not mammals (in reality because it's my fetish)
Not sure about the cloaca

>>96290027
>Not sure about the cloaca
A gentleman shouldn't care.

Seems unavoidable, if they're birdy from the waist down

>>96278878
mossacannibalis

>>96289751
Never trust a Pelgrane

>>96253078 (OP)
I use harpies as low level flying enemies all the time.
I never describe them, secretly they're big tiddy sexo harpies but no one must know my fetish.

>>96253078 (OP)
In my campaign, once you get harpies in your party, you are stuck with them for life.

>>96293353
I had harpies once, sometimes they come back.

>>96293363
We normally disguise ours. Most other parties don't fuck with us once they realize we carry. Harpies, that is.

>>96293085
That's why I explicitly work the feathers around the hips and thighs on my designs.