Overview
The Song-Carry Harpy is the feudal, certain voice of The Scream Spire, a feathered, shrieking aerial raider of the sheer tower who carries the song and keeps the high rings, the spire's feudal, cunning, and most certain voice. It stands just under 1.83 m tall, broad-winged and patient, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept songs rather than years. Where the Spire-Sense harpy senses the scream, the Song-Carry harpy of the spire carries the song, and it has been carrying the first song on the first ring for a very long time.
Habitat
The Song-Carry Harpy keeps to the high rings of The Scream Spire, a sheer tower of bare stone where the summit is wide enough to hold a nest and the air is a constant shriek. Its dwellings are hollows of bare stone and kept scream, their floors dissolving and re-forming with the shriek, their faces catching the grey shimmer of the spire on the inside and the shelter of the stone on the outside. It favors the higher rings where the song runs widest and the carrying is widest, the places where a song can be carried without the spire's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Song-Carry Harpy is about 1.83 m tall, broad-winged and patient, with wet grey plumage that reads as cold in the grey spire-light. Its wings carry the sea-black wing-bands, a deliberate mark worn as a record of the long art of the carrying, and its talons end in the bone-white talon-tips of the spire, the color of the spire's own stone at low shriek. Its eyes are pale washed-out spire-white, bright and certain beneath the brow, and they hold still in a way that no other eye on the spire does — they are reading the song.
Behaviour
The Song-Carry Harpy is feudal, cunning, and profoundly aggressive, a creature of long songs and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It waits before it carries, often for hours, waiting on a ring or a prey or a song until it understands the shape of the scream, and only then does it carry, and then with an exactness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Song-Carry harpy is a debt the spire will keep long after the carrier has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Song-Carry harpy is no open-sky fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the carry and the spire itself, not force. Its primary defense is the spire, for it knows every hollow of the high rings and can lead a pursuer along The Scream Spire until the pursuit loses its nerve and its footing in the bare stone. Should it be forced to act, a Song-Carry harpy is quick and precise, 10 m/s through the shriek and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, dimming a light, holding a ring, or carrying until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Song-Carry harpy is attuned to the long word of the spire, for the word is the carrying and the carrying is the whole of its power, and a harpy that has a spire and a talon and a song does not need a spell that is not its own. Its primary domain is illusion, and its named powers are the spire-sense, the sky-sight, and the song-carry, and it is not attuned to any art that is not the spire's own, and the not being attuned is the whole of its way of being free.
Society
The Song-Carry Harpies keep to The Scream Spire in feudal, cunning spire-nests of fifteen to forty around the high rings, bound by the songs they carry rather than by blood or by place, led by the Scream-Queen. There is no elder beyond the Scream-Queen, for a harpy that has carried the most and kept the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a carry and the carry is the whole of their society.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Song-Carry Harpy is a culture of the kept song, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is feudal and cunning is the only honest word on the spire. They keep no records, for a harpy that has carried a song does not need a record, the carrying is the record, and the carrying is feudal and cunning and does not fade. Their stories are slow and quick, told on the ring at the low shriek, and they are stories of songs carried and screams kept and the feudal, cunning difference between them, told in a voice that is shrieking and means every carrying.
Home
The Scream Spire is the Song-Carry harpy's home and its carrying, a sheer tower of bare stone where the summit is wide enough to hold a nest and the air is a constant shriek, where the harpy carries its songs and keeps its feudal, cunning words. It is a strange and quick place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Song-Carry harpy has learned to live on that spire rather than against it. The grey shimmer of the spire that runs across the high rings is the spire's own, a cold light that the harpy has come to read as the color of a kept song.
Relations
The Song-Carry Harpy keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of The Scream Spire, a truce of kept songs that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the bare stone. To the grey shimmer of the high rings the Song-Carry harpy is a feudal, cunning, and absolutely aggressive presence, a washed-eyed carrier that is at home on the rings and on the song, and the shimmer has learned to glow wide and let the carries pass, for a harpy that has carried you has decided you are a promise and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the spire, the Song-Carry Harpy is the feudal, cunning edge of the tale, the place where the songs are kept and a scream is carried and a carrying is read. It is the figure that carries a new song at the low shriek and holds the spire very feudal and very cunning, and the figure that, when the truce with the spire-sensing harpy grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old carry feudal and cunning and absolutely aggressive.