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Thursday, August 8, 2019

Harpy ecology?

In fantasy roleplaying, harpies typically sing (due to confusion with the sirens) to lure male adventurers with the intent of copulating with and then eating them. Like a lot of all-female monsters, actually. How repulsive!

There have been plenty of attempts by others at dealing with the ecology of the harpy, so I won't try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, I only offer a few isolated suggestions.

Appearance and variants: Harpies have a diverse array of appearances in historical art and popular culture. Perhaps GMs might want to reflect this in the game.
  • Perhaps harpies have variable physical appearances, without altering their game statistics. 
  • Perhaps harpies are shape changers who can tweak their appearance without changing their statistics. 
  • Perhaps there are harpy variants with different statistics due to different physical features, like smaller size or scorpion tails or such. The supplements on harpies I listed in the prior post provide plenty of examples.

Reproduction: Fantasy games generally oscillate between harpies being all-female and raping male humanoids (again, like a lot of all-female monsters) or including both male and female members to reproduce normally (sometimes with males being uncommon and/or flightless). Here are a few examples and variations:
  • The Slayer's Guide to Harpies posits that harpies are asexual. They are notoriously bloodthirsty because they require humanoid blood to nourish their eggs, like mosquitoes.
  • Legendary Races: Harpy uses the all-female rapist version. It further posits that some harpies are born as sterile intersex individuals named "harpidite," who grow up to be oracles.
  • Creature Collection Revised uses the two-gendered version. It further specifies that male harpies are flightless and never leave their aeries.
  • Spanambula suggests calling male harpies "boreadors."

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