Harpy/Avian Society and Technology?

[Mr. Mask]

Anyone put much thought into the technology and society of harpies or other avian creatures? Thought it might be a fun subject to discuss.


Do you have a specific avian creature of your own, or a take on harpies/other avians? Have you a picture of where their homes are, or what their society is like? Or how they get food? Or how and why the wage war?

Do you have any interesting ideas related to harpies?

[Skaven]

I would imagine their dwellings would be much further spread out due to their increased mobility and need to spread their wings to fly.

I would also imagine they would build high, away from all the dangerous of the ground.

Consider ignoring all ground based doors all together: they wouldn't need / want doors where groundlings can get to them. Have a hatch on the roof or something.

[goto124]

How do you open doors, hatches, windows, etc when you have wings and talons instead of hands? What about weapons?

Or did we assume winged humanoids?

[Mr. Mask]

Well, if they have no hands, you'd hope they'd have a strong beak-like implement. Parrots manage some pretty impressive stuff with just their feet and beak (and birds will use their wings for some things). Making technology is probably easier with hands, though.

You can speculate in either direction, more or less. Lacking hands may mean the harpies would need human slaves, though.

[Cazero]

Consider ignoring all ground based doors all together: they wouldn't need / want doors where groundlings can get to them. Have a hatch on the roof or something.

I would not go that far. I doubt an avian specie could carry heavy loads while flying (also see : swallows and coconuts), wich means they would still need cart for transportations of massive quantities of goods.
They are still likely to block ground access as much as possible. All of them might include elevators that can only be activated from the top.

[Mastikator]

I can imagine their houses featuring landing balcony, with doors going straight into the air, completely inaccessible to someone who can't fly. Only having staircases and ladders indoors.

They would probably invent clothing that improve their flying ability, like having built in sticks to perhaps allow the harpy to lock their wings into place for longer glides without expending muscle strength.

They might even attach propellers on their backs for increased flying capacity, only using their wings for steering and generating lift. With clothes that protect against wind the high-tech harpies could reach flight speed similar to modern airplanes and would be able to stay airborne for hours longer than their primitive cousins.

[Yora]

I have harpies which only have claws like bats, but no real hands, though with three fingers. Their technology is close to that of Neanderthals. They can make sharpened wood, crude leather, and simple sewing, but with their hands they just can't make anything much more sophisticated. They have a male to female ratio of 1:4 and males almost always stay with the village, so they are very rarely encountered by outsiders.

[Mr. Mask]

Any thoughts on what weapons your harpies would use against enemies on the ground? Or against other flying harpy-like enemies? In the even of being wounded, what do you think harpies would do to survive the fall, or to get home?

[JusticeZero]

Ravens use prehensile feet and their beak for complex manipulation.

[Mr. Mask]

True. But at the same time, what takes a human a few seconds to do with hands, it seems to hake them a few minutes. That's not to say they don't have brilliant little minds--some people I know couldn't solve the puzzles they do.

[Lord Raziere]

lets see, they probably wouldn't have stairs.

when you can just fly up and down everywhere, stairs become kind of redundant. the only way I'd see them implementing stairs is for the elderly or the wing-disabled to use. they'd probably consider anyone who can't fly as kind of like people in wheelchairs or something.

problem is, unless they have big flying beasts to transport things as well, they will need land animals to cart supplies around and thus would need to be ground-bound for that.

though its more plausible for their society to travel more and have knowledge of distant places. when you can fly around above trees and such, you can explore a lot more when you have a good view from a distance, not impeded by solid terrain and so on, and they're probably great mapmakers because they can just fly up, take a look from above, memorize it and then fly back down and draw it out. I imagine that it'd be hard for them to get lost or at least harder.

also, traversing up mountains is easy- just fly up- so they probably laugh at mountain climbers and don't consider going up mountains all that big of a deal.

in warfare, bomb drop tactics probably come about much earlier. just light a torch, fly up, drop it on a building you want burned, assuming the flame doesn't go out from the air friction...maybe use a lantern?
or just wait until dynamite is invented and use that. or, most simple, just pick up rocks and drop those. rain of rocks, no long archery training or complicated crossbow engineering needed, just gravity and stone.

also, their eyes would have to be real zoomy for flying, so they'd be good archers to.

all in all, if these people were in the same fantasy world with other races that can't fly, you have the potential for these guys to become very dangerous conquerors over everyone else, flight just grants them so many advantages all by itself that it both tactically makes them superior AND gives them a social darwinistic justification to consider themselves superior.

[goto124]

also, their eyes would have to be real zoomy for flying, so they'd be good archers to.

'Wait, how exactly am I supposed to hold this bow? With my bird-wings? Squawk!'



The thought amused me. How do you think they might try to overcome the problem?

[Feddlefew]

The thought amused me. How do you think they might try to overcome the problem?

Early birds had what amounted to two fingers and a thumb attached to their hand/wings, so I'd personally model any bird people after them. They might not have quite the manual dexterity humans have, but they'd be able to make and use simple tools.

Of course, when in flight there's nothing stopping them from just using their feat.

[goto124]

Of course, when in flight there's nothing stopping them from just using their feat.

May I make a joke?

Special Feat for Avians:
Humanoid Hands
With this feat, your character will gain extra dexterity in 2 of its limbs, allowing it to manipulate and use tools and other objects as if they had human-like hands. If your creature had no limbs to begin with, it will grow 2 new ones. Any functions the limbs served beforehand, such as flight, will be retained and unchanged from this feat.

[Milo v3]

May I make a joke?

Special Feat for Avians:
Humanoid Hands
With this feat, your character will gain extra dexterity in 2 of its limbs, allowing it to manipulate and use tools and other objects as if they had human-like hands. If your creature had no limbs to begin with, it will grow 2 new ones. Any functions the limbs served beforehand, such as flight, will be retained and unchanged from this feat.

Also. Whitetext

[Segev]

One thing to keep in mind when considering dwellings: birds need a lot of room to spread their wings sufficiently to fly. So if they don't have stairs, they'll have large open spaces with large gaps in the floor/ceiling, as they would want to be able to jump down and glide to the next level or fly up through the opening without banging their wings on anything. They'd also need swooping room on the upper end so they can fly up and land safely.

They probably build big. Where primitive humans emphasized small buildings with walls to enclose, the harpy primitive society likely has roofs as the first, most important thing. They provide shelter. Then floors, to extend the landing area, though that would likely be a "catch-net" first, for storing things that don't balance well on perches. Walls would come later. Their predators largely come from below and above.

And in all cases, again, they build for big and expansive. That is, lots of open airspace for ease of maneuvering. To them, open air space is as important as open floor space is to people. Moreso, since they can't stop to delicately maneuver unless they're awkewardly hopping on floors or perches.

[Mr. Mask]

Admittedly, there are a few birds who use enclosed houses they can't fly around in so well, so harpies might be fine with a more human-like house with a harpy-like entrance. Also, birds like parrots love to climb and are very good at it, so it may extent to harpies (where rather than stairs, they have ladders).

[Ettina]

They have a male to female ratio of 1:4 and males almost always stay with the village, so they are very rarely encountered by outsiders.

Why? Virtually every species that has sexes is 50:50 (although some have differential death rates). What makes them the exception?

[Mr. Mask]

Lions tend to have female-heavy populations, due to their species natural selection tendencies (their birthrates are about 50/50 gender-wise). In a civilized harpy society, I'm not sure why the males would all be dying (it might be a pretty savage form of civilization).

[Solaris]

Why? Virtually every species that has sexes is 50:50 (although some have differential death rates). What makes them the exception?

I'd venture the guess that the root reason is due to the classical depiction of the harpy being female, with a possible explanation somewhere along the lines of a proto-eusocial superorganism. Multiple female harpies to a clutch cooperate with raising each others' hatchlings, and quite possibly they have lower fertility (maybe the first daughter is fertile, but the others aren't). It'd work for the same reason an ant colony does, though on a smaller scale.
There's also the possibility that they eat their mates after breeding to keep the male population down.

The fact that it doesn't work quite so well as the human method of raising children might explain why harpies aren't the master race.

[Admiral Squish]

Have you ever seen bird-feet work? Particularly arboreal birds? It's like they've got four thumbs. The digits have really remarkable range of motion and in an intelligent species I suspect they would be quite capable manipulators. I could imagine having a wing-thumb-claw or two for the sake of clinging to things, or carrying things around the ground, but I think the vast majority of their manipulation ability would lie in their feet. Perhaps they were limited technologically by the fact they could only use one at a time while on the ground, but the real taking-off point for harpy tech would be some sort of stool, chair, or hang-bar, something that would allow them to lift both feet off the floor/perch and put them to work on whatever they're doing without worrying about balance.

The big problem with large harpy societies, in my mind, is how you get a civilization out of them. There might be bands of hunter-gatherers, but that doesn't really scream unified culture to me. There are a couple reasons why they probably wouldn't have that much in the way of civilization. The first is fire. You can't exactly start fires while perched up in trees, and you certainly wouldn't be able to start one one-handfooted. And if you think about it, so much of human development and human civilization has depended upon fire, it's hard to imagine a society without it. The other concern is the lack of a food surplus. In hunter/gatherer societies, everybody takes part in the hunting and gathering, because they typically can only provide enough food for themselves and a few elders, officials, and injured individuals. Without agriculture, aquaculture, or some other reliable source of abundant food, your society can't support specialists. No growth as a culture. They could have been uplifted by trade/violence with groundling, being exposed to more advanced technology, and, if they get good enough with it, they could use that to raid the groundlings for THEIR food surplus and be able to support specialists that way.

You know... I like the idea of a limited male population. In a lot of birds, it's the males who are all colorful and display-ariffic, sometimes even to the point where the males are less capable of survival. What if that's the case here? Like, the males are smaller, might more brightly colorful, and are considered the ideal of beauty. Of course, they're rubbish in combat, so males end up getting claimed by groups of females based on attractiveness, and end up being, essentially, very pretty house-husbands that take care of the roost, the hatchlings, and the equipment, while the wives are out hunting and raiding.

[Acacia OnnaStik]

I'd make them nomadic- migratory, you might say. Their dwellings are mostly temporary roosts, and their personal possessions are easy to carry in their dexterous feet. They forage on the way, a practice that's earned them a very bad and not entirely deserved reputation for thieving- agricultural communities generally hate the sight of them.

In a high-magic setting, I'd give them flying caravans.

[Mr. Mask]

North American eagles and some prey birds come to mind as cases of females being larger. With hyenas, this is generally to avoid the males eating the young, which would imply the males being pretty savage in harpies--but I don't think that is the case with eagles. The male has to do a lot of the hunting, and have been witnessed feeding their young, which suggests strong maternal instincts. Maybe they're bigger to protect their young from predators more effectively? It has even been suggested the male being smaller has advantages, like swifter hunting.

Chairs shouldn't be too challenging for bird persons, and making nest-like camp fires up in rocky areas would be easy. Fire might be awkward, as it can be pretty awkward even with human hands to get a fire going. Stuff like rolling a stick in the palms of your hands might be too complex for bird appendages, which could be a problem for early harpy society.

[Feddlefew]

The reason female birds are generally larger is because they need the extra volume to accommodate their reproductive organs, since egg-to-parent size is relatively large.

[Mr. Mask]

Do you mean specifically with North American eagles and certain birds of prey, or for birds overall?

[Brother Oni]

I doubt an avian specie could carry heavy loads while flying (also see : swallows and coconuts), wich means they would still need cart for transportations of massive quantities of goods.

Depends. Are they African harpies or European ones?

'Wait, how exactly am I supposed to hold this bow? With my bird-wings? Squawk!'



The thought amused me. How do you think they might try to overcome the problem?

Modified bows, much like Matt Stutzman:

Spoiler: Matt Stutzman

Show

While he's using a modern olympic recurve compound bow, many of his techniques could be adapted for an avian species with no hands. They would have a lower cap on their draw weight though, since teeth aren't as strong as hands.

[Mr. Mask]

Couldn't they secure the bowstring to a strap on their bodies, for higher draw-weights? If they have beaks, I wonder what kind of draw-weight they could manage.

[Brother Oni]

Couldn't they secure the bowstring to a strap on their bodies, for higher draw-weights? If they have beaks, I wonder what kind of draw-weight they could manage.

I wasn't aware that there was a version of harpies with beaks - all versions I've heard of had human heads/faces, with the only variation being either a bird body or a female human torso.

As for securing the bowstring to a strap, that's certainly possible, but then the mechanics of securing the strap in the first place and releasing it at full draw, becomes an issue.

[Mr. Mask]

Oh, sorry. Was thinking of other potential avian peoples who are sometimes depicted with beaks.

It's a good point with the body strap. I was figuring they could rig a system with two straps. One is over the bowstring, and the other is the catch/release strap. When you want to fire, you catch the two straps together and push with your foot, then release the second strap. At least, that's the idea.

[Cazero]

Couldn't they secure the bowstring to a strap on their bodies, for higher draw-weights? If they have beaks, I wonder what kind of draw-weight they could manage.

It's not a question of weight grasping, it's a simple question of weight ratio.
Since merchandise doesn't migrate, they would need lots and lots of strapping and trained carrying teams. Doable if you don't want to use land roads, but not really efficient compared to the wheel.
edit : wow, I didn't realise it was all about bows. Silly me.