I love Harpys I kinda wish they were pepoles same with drau what made u make them monsters instead of people's
Harpies and drau were originally considered people in the old Fairy Tale Rejects comics, but they became monsters when I overhauled the series.
I did this because I already had so many sentient species, I felt like I needed to organize them into some kind of hierarchy. There were some creatures that felt unnatural and "plague-ish" upon Gaia, and I needed to explain their hostility/incompatibility with other lifeforms.
My solution: These are not natural beings created by Gaia, they are the result of her peoples playing God. They are like invasive species being clumsily thrown into an ecosystem where they don't belong, which explains how they don't quite "fit in". It explains why their natural behavior is so incompatible with other species around them.
It also explains why some monsters are more problematic than others. Skorpius, for example, are hostile to absolutely everything around them. Their existence is a plague in every situation; there is no scenario where they benefit Gaia or her ecosystem at all. That's because Gaia didn't create them, they were created by the Divine of Hate for his own selfish purposes, with no consideration for Gaia.
More intelligent monsters, like harpies and drau, are just as individual as any person, they each have their own personality and experiences in life. Though the World Athenaeum considers monsters "lesser" than peoples and lower on the cosmic hierarchy, this is only their opinion, it is not the objective truth.
Some people have different ideas about that. Here's a quote from Karenza, the Divine of Love:
"...Worship me not, and worship no one, for there is no being in the whole cosmos greater or lesser than any other. All is beautiful and all is wicked."
Notice she says "being" and not "person". This includes beasts and monsters. Karenza believes that monsters are equal to peoples, despite lacking a soul.
Monsters have a reputation for being "evil", but this is rarely true, especially for the more intelligent ones. Though they can't feel love, this doesn't mean they're all walking around with malicious intentions. Most of them are just trying to survive, just like any other living creature.
Their main problem is that they are living in a world that wasn't made for them, because they were not made for the world. Each monster was made to fulfill some divine's selfish desires. Their existence is quite tragic.
Monsters get shunned in most societies, but there are other cases where they are accepted as equals. For example, there is a kobold named Tojum living in Drifter's Hollow. She works at the local clinic as a nurse, and aside from the odd prejudiced remark here and there, the villagers largely treat her the same as anyone else.
Tojum claims she doesn't understand the concept of love, yet she isn't evil or malicious. Her job is literally to help people. She doesn't do this job out of love like Dr. Che does. Rather, she's just working to earn money so she can survive in a world that wasn't made for her. She's doing what everyone else does, living just like the peoples around her.
I think this goes for most other intelligent monsters, including drau and harpies. Drau have a reputation for performing necromancy, but that's because they were created specifically to be necromancers in Titania's army. Harpies have a reputation for being thieves, because they were literally created to steal valuables for Varas.
Kobolds were created to be soldiers, but look at Tojum. She's doing the opposite of killing--she's saving lives. So, not all monsters follow the path that was drawn out for them. Many break away and forge their own path, and they can make themselves more compatible with other life on Gaia this way. Not all of them are doomed to be a plague upon the world, this can be a choice they make in some cases.
Just some food for thought, in case anyone feels like monsters are just brainless enemy-fodder for the heroes to defeat. I want to make it clear that this isn't the case! They are thinking, feeling, living beings. They just happen to have different origins than the peoples, and the World Athenaeum categorizes them differently because of this.
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