You'd also need someone to help you preen the feathers on your back, for aerodymanicness, unless you had a bird head and neck and preened your back with your mouth. Although the neck should, at least, be a little longer and have some sort of tendon arrangement so that looking forward while flying is easy.
Also-the thing with harpies tending to pretty themselves up. Some birds apparently like jewelry. Scientists noticed that, in a bird species that had 'harems', banded males had larger harems than unbanded males, on average. Banding a male increased his reproductive success. So your harpies might have a Thing for jewelry. Also, how do they dispose of the dead? ETA: Burial, sky burial (feed it to the vultures), funereal cannibalism (can be a good idea if there's no prion disease, a horrible idea if prion disease can be a thing, like it is in humans), cremation, feeding the bodies to the sea/giving up the bodies to the land, feeding the meaty bits to Weird Livestock and turning the bones/integument into jewelry... more edits: today is apparently typo day
I am, of course, assuming that there's Weird Livestock. I'm imagining their livestock generally being smaller animals, like thrushes, and rats, and rabbits, and chickens, because it'd be really hard for even a human-sized bird to move a dead bull. Aaaaaaaaaaand now I'm imagining harpies getting dogs from humans and having draft dogs. Draft goats are probably more likely. Harpies probably have SOME draft animals, for moving goods around, but not for moving able-bodied adults around, because flying. Nobody wants to go around on the ground or water at one-tenth speed when they could be flying, except maybe merchants with cargo-humans and seafolk are more likely to sell big things than harpies, who are more likely to be like travelling musicians or deal in knowledge.
are you kidding they LIVE for shinies This one's gonna vary a lot by culture, naturally. Fire is shaping up to be significant to them, that may be a popular one. Or cairns. I think consumption of or adornments made from pieces of harpy, dead or otherwise, have probably been popular at some times and considered creepy at others. Like Victorian hair art. I was entertaining the idea of harpies never having done the whole domestication thing and maybe even vaguely disapproving of it, in contrast to the seafolk's extra-heavy use of same. Maybe, again, that's cultural, but I don't see any harpy society as being terribly livestock-heavy; if it flies it's nigh-impossible to herd, and if it doesn't it's not much good to the sun-chasers. Something like rabbits, though? Maybe up to goat size? I could easily see the settlements keeping some of those. (They could of course do it while vaguely disapproving of it, it's not like human societies have had any shortage of necessary jobs that are looked down on...) Draft dogs sound hilarious but it doesn't seem to fit terribly well, alas. I think I may give them goats, though. Or like alpacas or something, there's no need to be entirely Eurocentric here. Oh, yes, they are absolutely the news and entertainment whenever they arrive. But you must give them shinies. Because shinies.
News and information are going to be considered very valuable in these cultures-it's worth shiny fancy jewelry, after all. That goes for humans and seafolk too-they'd be used to having a worldwide winged information network, paid in shinies of various types. Oooh, thinking about how harpies generally, at most, switch between a Summer Town and a Winter Town-do they do a bowering thing? Like, do they, especially the males, try to decorate their homes as much as possible to impress others? If so, most harpy homes are probably art-designs in the architecture and painted on the walls, and lots of shiny objects being made with the express purpose of being decorations for the home. I've seen one alien species-a burrower-which had the saying "drape the burrow, not your back"-do harpies have something like "gild your home, not your wings"?
Also-towns would not arrange in the same way our towns did! Prosperous towns would probably be on 'flyways'-air travel routes. So you'd get more cliffside towns-updrafts-and also more towns near island chains that form flyways over the ocean.
I might have missed it upthread, but what's your stance on harpies re: trees? An old D&D setting of mine used to have a nomadic bunch of harpies that flash-built treehouses as sanctuaries when they migrated around the world and then stripped them apart when they left. I was always fond of the idea of people knowing where the birdpeople were by the dangling structures overhead.
Treehouses would probably be a good idea, along with cliffhouses; harpies could have a door that just leads to a straight drop, or an unfenced balcony, and use it as a takeoff point-it'd be easier than taking off from the actual ground, as they could substitute a shallow dive for a run-up.
Well, yeah you know the sun-chasers are in town because every tree big enough to handle the weight suddenly sprouts brightly colored everything. There's probably some metaphorical language about flowering and fruiting that gets used to describe their presence.
Thinking of seafolk art-do they do seafloorscaping? Like, growing coral reefs in certain patterns or whatever?
Coral gardening is a big yes. Both as art and for practical purposes, like to give their tamed fishies a nice place to live. Plus just sea plants, especially in places that aren't right for coral. More conventional art forms include mosaic (with colorful shells and bits of coral, or glass from the surface if they're being fancy) and carving. And of course the byssus textiles but that's less for their own enjoyment. Suddenly got an image of a sort of suncatcher/stained-glass dealie made with colored glass buoys and the Fancy Place below where you're swimming through all that colorful light. I love it.
The sun-catching harpy culture hero is Rainbow. His brightly plumed wings spread horizon to horizon when he uncovers the sun from the clouds. Gotta come up with more legend, like why he always evades anyone who tries to reach him. I kinda want it to feel less mythological and more tall-tale. Like Paul Bunyan or something.
