Harpies, Kaimeran (5e Creature)

Kaimeran Harpies

• Harpy
• First Mother

“	When the old gods vanished, our eyes opened. A new god, the many-headed Voskardlok, took the fields and halls of the old gods and made them his own. He promised all would be safe under the watch of his many eyes, so long as they abided his laws. Some chose to remain, trading freedom for safety, but many of us left to make our own way. Our brothers the ogres and trolls scatters to all corners of the world, while our sisters the mermaids claimed the meadows and reefs. Our ancestors, the Seven Daughters of the Sky, flew across the shallow sea and made a home on these very mesas. Four of our sisters then took to the sky, one flying in each of the singing winds hoping to find a perfect home. The three remaining sisters began to lay eggs. These were the Great Mothers Maru. The Great Mothers have since had many children: all of us here! We have made the mesas overlooking the prairie a home, though it is a dangerous place. Someday, our sisters will return with news of the world, and hopefully they will have found a safer place for our true home.	”
—Yalena, a Free Harpy, recounting a founding myth of her people.

Homunculi are quite frightening and awe-inspiring, made more extreme by the fact that there are so few scattered throughout the Known-World and beyond. Of these known, perhaps the most wonderous are the Children of the Sky, known also to the Assembly as sirens, or harpies. Among the few homunculi capable of reproduction, harpies are found in the highlands of Arvel, Pakardia, and have scattered reports from Kairul to the east, but the most well known colonies rest on the Ni'Khari mesas north of the Known World, occassionally seen by the Shu nomads flying over the Houze Prairie.
Children of the Sky. As with all homunculi, harpies are genetically human, they simply have genes from additional animals that makes them express traits of that animal. In this case, harpies express traits of teratorns with some other birds thrown in such as eagles. In particular, it appears the size of Kaimere's black teratorn made them ideal candidates for this cross, as they are about the same weight as a human being. Unsurprising given their size, harpies are far from acrobatic when it comes to flight and require either a running start or a high vantage point to launch from before they can take flight. This seems to be one of the reasons Houze harpies live in mesas, with the added benefit of allowing them to employ their exceptional vision and providing them with protection. While they do express supernatural healing typical of advanced homunculi, harpies are by no means invincible and can be slain by such predators as big cats and cockatrices as well as larger predators like megaraptorans and terror birds. The metabolism of a harpy is extremely demanding: although they do possess photosynthetic cells in their skin, they still require three times the food of a human of the same size. Although those on the Houze Prairie do have ginkgo nuts as a significant portion of their diet, harpies are primarily carnivores with no qualms about eating humanoids, though very rarely the Houzie harpies may trade with the Dolani nomads. When hunting small game like hares and gazelle, harpies prefer to catch it on the wing as they are vulnerable on the ground and flying before landing draws unwanted attention. On occasion they kill or injure larger game by dropping rocks on it but they have to act fast to butcher the carcass as while their 5-7 meter wings are usually enough to scare most hyenas and cockatrices away, even a single brave soul among the pack can turn the harpies from dominating a kill to being counted among the feast.
As expected by a homunculus with such strong bird genetics, harpies have extremely keen vision, able to see in the ultraviolet spectrum meaning their prey all but glow against the background. However, their most impressive sensory ability is their ability to detect "windsongs," the harpy name for electromagnetic fields which they can detect due to trace elements of magnetite in their noses. Windsongs can be partially seen and felt but most importantly for harpies heard, and they use them to tell direction just as readily as they do looking for landmarks on the prairies.
There are no male harpies: harpies are all female and reproduce via the laying of an egg that is a clone of the mother. This is not uncommon among homunculi, especially those that have survived past the Ages of Demons and Witches. This lack of genetic diversity is represented in the 3 lineages of harpies seen on the Houze Praire: red, gold, and black. Averlith and Pakardiant harpies are either black or silver and show a greater degree of feather coverage than the more tropical prairie harpies. Most homunculi capable of reproduction are far removed from their original ancestors, but harpies can actually count some of these original homunculi among them, known to harpies as the "first mothers." The Houzie harpies alone have 3 first mothers among them: Koro the Gold, Zinea the Red, and Maru the Black. Maru is the head of the colony, although all 3 first mothers have a degree of mental control over their respective matrilines, though it is not absolute and for the most part the harpies work together and the young harpies follow their first mothers willingly. And this this is where Assembly understanding of harpies ends, as harpies are extremely distrustful of outsiders, even when vouched for by the Dolani who are themselves not very keen on those outside their group. As such, much of the information on hapries is second or even third hand, but even then the awe and fear they inspire is clear.

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