Guild Wars 2

If I understand the lore correctly, they’re an all-female species that reproduce through “molesting” males of other species.

How on Tyria did the first Harpy come to be?

:3

From what the lore says, there are legends that say they were once servants of Dwayna, which would kinda explain the wings, and an unknown event caused them “to be casted down from the heavens”.

Who gave birth to the first one is anyone’s guess.

What came first, the harpy or the egg? We’ll never know ^^

How did the first grawl came to be? Or the first charr?

Answer: Magic or Evolution.

It’s a bigger question as to how they reproduce at all. I believe that harpies can mate with a large variety of species, given how there are some which seduce grawl in Fireheart Rise, but grawl aren’t indigenous to Elona where harpies were first seen. And though they’re said to kidnap humans only for feeding or target practice for their young, I wouldn’t doubt they have extra activities for the men. Their pheromones are aphrodisiacs after all.

Well, if the Elonian legend is correct, the original harpies would likely have been semi-divine – it’s possible that this carries with it an element of ‘able to reproduce with anything’.

Under that circumstance, it’s likely that the originals have male counterparts… or didn’t need to, due to being not subject to aging and created by Dwayna directly. However, I suspect that the proto-harpy race is an actual race that Dwayna, Melandru and possibly Abaddon (there is an old description of pre-Fall Abaddon with wings, although it’s hard to find nowadays) arose from.

Harpies are another old favour of the gods that have fallen. Their story is probably pretty similar to Jotun. They arrived to the world with the 6 gods, after the last awakening of the elder dragons. At some point (before or after the Age of Giants) the Harpies turned against Dwayna and they became fallen.

It does seem that the 6 gods have a history of abandoning their followers. Humans just happens to be next.

It has been indicated that Harpies can mate with other races, even the Grawls which is totally unrelated to them.

draxynnic.3719:

However, I suspect that the proto-harpy race is an actual race that Dwayna, Melandru and possibly Abaddon (there is an old description of pre-Fall Abaddon with wings, although it’s hard to find nowadays) arose from.

I wonder agreed with this notion – or that, alternatively, harpies were an attempt to mimic this race that failed.

However, GW2 has been making me think more and more that Dwayna and Melandru (perhaps Abaddon given that old description) were largos who ascended into godhood. Dwayna’s skin is pale blue – like largos’ – all three are described with wings (which largos’ fins would easily be mistaken as), Dwayna’s statue utilizes a model which was originally meant to be a risen female largos, and both Melandru and Abaddon are associated with the deep water in some means (Melandru via Mellaggan, Abaddon being obvious, Lord of the Everlasting Depths and all that). Not to mention Abaddon’s motto that contains “Act without Mercy.”

And that’s not including the links shown between largos and Orrians.

CHIPS.6018:

Harpies are another old favour of the gods that have fallen. Their story is probably pretty similar to Jotun. They arrived to the world with the 6 gods, after the last awakening of the elder dragons. At some point (before or after the Age of Giants) the Harpies turned against Dwayna and they became fallen.

Except that there’s no notion that they came with the Six to Tyria – they may have been banished to Tyria after or during their fall.

@CHIPS: There are three flaws in your assertion. First, the Elonian legend is still just a legend, and Tyria isn’t like so many other fantasy universes where every single legend and folktale you hear turns out to be the literal truth. Second, nothing says that the entirety of the pre-harpy race fell, just those we know – there could still be a full society of non-fallen harpies in Dwayna’s realm, and its possible that only a handful were excluded even if the legend is true (albeit a promiscuous handful). Third, as I think has already been mentioned in this thread, Thruln’s testimony is highly suspect for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the testimony of the ghost thruln in the norn ‘Strength’ storyline – who lived at the time the fall of the jotun started – making no mention of the gods at all.

@Konig: The largos-like statue in the Dwayna cathedral is corrupted just like the other statues in Orr. There are unfinished statues of Dwayna in Malchor’s workshop – unpowered and thus likely to have avoided Zhaitan’s attention and subsequent corruption – that look like the GW1 statues, and it would have taken a massive conspiracy to hide the master statue looking completely different to all the other statues around Tyria, especially since the Cathedral of Zephyrs wasn’t exactly hidden away from the general populace. To me, it looks like at some stage ArenaNet discarded the idea of risen largos (possibly because having largos zombies running around would ruin their mystique – weren’t we also promised risen mursaat at one point?) and looked at the resources they had and at plans for a corrupted Dwaynaesque image and decided ‘ehhhhh, close enough’.

To be honest, I’m also beginning to think that the ‘ascended largos’ theory has so much traction simply because people want it to be true – just like the mursaat theories of old (remember when everyone thought the Enchanted were ancient mursaat remnants?)

Whoever said that it was hidden? Before the corruption took over it, who’s to say what it looked like? A largos wouldn’t be much different than a winged human in appearance. Turn the wings from being smooth to feathery, and bam, you get an angel figure.

And no, we were never promised risen mursaat – that was pure fan desire because the risen took hold of the Ring of Fire.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Whoever said that it was hidden? Before the corruption took over it, who’s to say what it looked like? A largos wouldn’t be much different than a winged human in appearance. Turn the wings from being smooth to feathery, and bam, you get an angel figure.

And no, we were never promised risen mursaat – that was pure fan desire because the risen took hold of the Ring of Fire.

By that argument all winged humanoid creature can share a common ancestor. Imps, Largos, Harpies, Murassats, etc.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Before the corruption took over it, who’s to say what it looked like?

That’s my point about the unfinished statues in Malchor’s workshop. We can see what the template in Malchor’s mind looked like, and it matches the traditional statues of Dwayna as seen in Guild Wars 1.

And the supplemental point is that the original statue in the Cathedral of Zephyrs wasn’t hidden – if the statue had truly looked like that before the Cataclysm, then why is it that every statue since that’s used it as a base has shown the traditional feathered, angelic appearance?

CHIPS.6018:

By that argument all winged humanoid creature can share a common ancestor. Imps, Largos, Harpies, Murassats, etc.

Hardly. Imps look nothing like the others (and we know for a fact they’re elemental demons), and mursaat wings are vastly different.

Besides, my argument isn’t that they’re of same origins, but that the depictions of Dwayna were altered to go from “looks like a largos” to “looks like an angel” over the course of Malchor’s blindness.

@Drax: You do realize those “Unfinished Dwayna Statues” were made when Malchor went blind?

As to the original statue – I’m not saying it did look like that, because clearly no one but a mother could love that face. However, artistic creativity clearly played a role in the statues – otherwise there’s no explanation for Melandru’s wing’s sudden appearances and disappearances. Or Grenth’s – or how he goes from old cloaked goat-skull wearing man to young muscular man in a helmet.

He was blind, but he was good enough to sculpt despite being blind, and Dwayna was literally the last thing he saw and probably stuck in his mind forever. I’m pretty sure he could manage the difference between feathers and and what are probably technically more a specialised form of fin than wings.

We know Zhaitan has had a corruptive influence on the statues, and we have one statue that is extremely distinct from every single non-corrupted representation of Dwayna. I’m going to go with the explanation that doesn’t rely on every single sculptor since propagating a deception that Dwayna had feathered wings when, up until the Cataclysm, anyone who visited Orr could see the original.

(stupid site erased my post…)

You make it sound like it’s a malicious act. I wouldn’t really think that it’s beyond creative license and personal depiction to give a goddess of air feathered wings instead of however-you’d-describe-largos-wings.

Besides, it’s obvious as all hell that this very same thing happened to the other gods’ statues. Main offenders being Melandru and Grenth. GW1 versions: Grenth is an old man with a long beard and robe; Melandru is sprouting from a tree and has feathered wings. GW2 versions: Grenth is a (seemingly young) muscular man with a warhelmet; Melandru is not coming from a tree but sitting on one, and lacks wings on a whole.

I don’t think Dwayna or the others are Largos. I don’t recall any of their depictions to have long and pointy ears, and Dwayna’s wings are supposedly feathery real wings, not the Largos “wings” which are really fins.

Plus, Grenth is said to be the first god born of Tyria. Largos as far as we know are a Tyrian race so if the others were originally Largos, Grenth wouldn’t be the first one. Aditionally he doesn’t share his mommy wings, so I think those wings are more related to Dwayna’s powers than her original physical traits.

There’s at least one depiction of Grenth with wings – which is seen in both games. And who says Largos are of Tyria? Fun fact: we don’t know whether 90% of the races are of Tyrian origin or not.

Again that would be an abstraction to symbolice his divinity or a manifestation of his powers. That Malchor made his sculture without wings means that even if he could grow them (though in that particular one it might be more related to the author trying to represent his divine aura) they’re not a natural part of his body. And those are too feathery wings.

You’re right we don’t know the origin of most races (for what we know, it’s even possible Tyria was unhabited and all races came through the mists in different eras), but I don’t think having wing-like forms attached to the back is a hint for Largos origin, specially when Largos’s lack the feathers as they’re for swimming.

Also, Largos seem to be VERY unfamiliariced with other races (the first ones you meet hunt anything as prey and challenge and later they start to be more sociable, probably like what happened the first time asuras met sylvari) so why would 3 largos with godly powers asociate with non largos gods and go help races unknown for them?

If it were only the presence of wings, I’d agree with you. I’m not saying it’s so or its likely, but it’s possible and imo, increasingly likely. (Side note: how can we be so certain Malchor sculpted Grenth’s statue? It’s heavily implied that Malchor was Grenth’s father so that makes a bit of a paradox unless Grenth is a time traveler – though it should be noted that Grenth’s only half-god, so him thus being half-largos could explain why he’s not always shown with wings).

As to largos socialness – I kind of disagree. The other races don’t show much knowledge of largos, but they show knowledge of other races. They know full well of the kodan’s Claw being among the strongest, Sayeh even knows Orrian, and no largos speaks with unfamiliarity about other races (even about sylvari). It’s always them who are unknown, never the other way around.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

(stupid site erased my post…)

You make it sound like it’s a malicious act. I wouldn’t really think that it’s beyond creative license and personal depiction to give a goddess of air feathered wings instead of however-you’d-describe-largos-wings.

Besides, it’s obvious as all hell that this very same thing happened to the other gods’ statues. Main offenders being Melandru and Grenth. GW1 versions: Grenth is an old man with a long beard and robe; Melandru is sprouting from a tree and has feathered wings. GW2 versions: Grenth is a (seemingly young) muscular man with a warhelmet; Melandru is not coming from a tree but sitting on one, and lacks wings on a whole.

I’m not saying it was malicious, although it would be marginally easier to believe if it was a deliberate conspiracy. What I’m saying is that the other examples you give, there are multiple depictions of each style – for instance, the Ascalonian mural of Melandru shows a winged dryad emerging from a tree, while the Kournan mural shows a wingless woman resting on but descrete from a branch. In the case of Dwayna, there is only one example of a depiction of Dwayna without feathered wings – and that is a statue that is known to have been corrupted by Zhaitan.

I find it difficult to believe that in all the time between Malchor’s life and the Cataclysm, there has not been a single artist who decided that, hey, rather than propagating the false image of Dwayna as a bird-winged human, they would depict her true form as shown by the original statue in the Cathedral of Zephyrs. I find it even more difficult to believe that in multiple efforts at creating a more accurate depiction of Dwayna, even blind, Malchor goofed and gave her feathered wings every single time.

If there was just one other depiction of Dwayna with largos-like wings that could be confirmed as free from Zhaitan’s corruption, then your argument might have a valid point, but there aren’t.

What I think has happened here is that, like the other corrupted statues, ArenaNet wanted the corrupted statue of Dwayna to appear decomposed. One of the most obvious ways to ‘decompose’ a feathered wing is to lose the feathers – but a plucked bird wing isn’t really all that imposing. It wouldn’t surprise me if, should we ask around, it turns out there are other concepts floating around that weren’t used – and eventually they threw up their collective hands and decided to use the Orrian largos model because it was close enough. Considering that it’s corruption of a statue and not actual decomposition of an organic being, the corruption of the statue doesn’t have to match what decomposition of a bird wing would actually produce.